The entire process of living in Zimbabwe is something of a risk at the current time, so you may think that there might be very little appetite for visiting Zimbabwe’s casinos. In reality, it appears to be functioning the other way around, with the desperate economic conditions creating a larger ambition to gamble, to try and locate a fast win, a way out of the crisis.
For almost all of the people surviving on the abysmal local money, there are 2 popular forms of gaming, the national lotto and Zimbet. Just as with most everywhere else in the world, there is a state lotto where the chances of winning are unbelievably tiny, but then the jackpots are also very big. It’s been said by financial experts who look at the situation that many do not buy a card with a real assumption of profiting. Zimbet is centered on either the domestic or the British football divisions and involves predicting the results of future games.
Zimbabwe’s gambling dens, on the other foot, mollycoddle the astonishingly rich of the nation and travelers. Up until a short while ago, there was a extremely large sightseeing business, founded on nature trips and visits to Victoria Falls. The market woes and connected conflict have cut into this trade.
Amongst Zimbabwe’s casinos, there are 2 in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has 5 gaming tables and slots, and the Plumtree gambling den, which has only slot machine games. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has just slots. Mutare contains the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, both of which contain table games, slot machines and video poker machines, and Victoria Falls houses the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, the pair of which has gaming machines and tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s gambling dens and the above mentioned lottery and Zimbet (which is quite like a parimutuel betting system), there are a total of 2 horse racing tracks in the nation: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the second city) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Given that the economy has contracted by beyond 40% in recent years and with the connected poverty and bloodshed that has come about, it is not known how well the tourist industry which is the backbone of Zimbabwe’s casinos will do in the next few years. How many of them will be alive till things get better is merely not known.