The Prime Minister, Dr. Motsoahae Thomas Thabane officiated at the sod turning ceremony for the proposed construction of the tourism information centre and gallery valued at M22.6 million on Wednesday 17th April, 2019. The construction of the new toursm centre will be at the Old United Nations Club in Maseru and is scheduled to take nine months to build.
The centre will be a three storey, 2300 square meters building with modern facilities featuring the iconic mokorotlo design, which is a symbol of the Basotho culture. Once completed, the centre will house a digitised marketing platform, amphitheatre, art and crafts gallery, archives as well as a restaurant, coffee shop and ten retail shops.
The digital marketing office has been introduced to reduce travel cost to trade fairs as it will be an online tool to provide information on Lesotho’s tourism attractions, tour packages and accommodation facilities to meet the demands of the global tourism market.
The construction of the centre is an initiative of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Cooperatives and Marketing implemented under the auspices of the Private Sector Competitiveness and Economic Diversification Project. Upon completion, the centre will be handed to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment.
When the project is complete, the government of Lesotho will also appoint a private operator on a competitive basis to run centre on contractual arrangement under the Private Public Partnership model to ensure return on investment and also to meet the strategic objective of the World Bank and the government partnership framework, which is focused on the improvement of the business environment and the diversification Lesotho’s economy.
The new centre was designed by a local firm the Nako Eliso MGTP Quantity Surveyors and the project is supported by the World Bank to assist the government of Lesotho to take advantage of the tremendous potential the country has in tourism as a sector identified in the National Strategic Development Plan two as one of the mainstays of economic diversification and job creation for Basotho.
The country has been without tourism information centre for the past nine years following the tragedy of Basotho Shield that was completely gutted by fire. The new tourist information centre and art gallery will be a central hub and tourism gateway in Maseru through which international tourists will access tourism information.