Namibia: Tourism Revival Crawls Alongside

Even with world travel constraints, the tourism and hospitality sectors proceed to exhibit terrific resilience, line minister Pohamba Shifeta has explained.

“We, in the govt, are acutely aware that folks are much more cautious about travelling, but they want to travel,” he remarked final 7 days at the launch of the domestic tourism marketing campaign.

“For this reason, the requirement of a adverse PCR examination is now a lot more peaceful to not more mature than seven days, which is extremely generous in comparison to world standards and norms to revive the industry.”

By the conclude of the 3rd quarter of final year, 64% of enterprises noted profits losses of in excess of 50%. The toughest-hit was the manufacturing sector, transport, tourism (which include dining places and accommodations) and design.

Shifeta believes that immediately after the 1st wave of Covid-19, defying grave anticipations, there is a rebound in vacation.

The total vacationer arrivals of 169 565 in 2020 symbolize a massive 89.4% decrease in comparison to the 1 595 973 holidaymakers who frequented the country in 2019.

The market also famous that on average, 7% to 10% occupancy was witnessed in quarter 3 and quarter 4 of 2020, according to Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) levy returns facts.

The common occupancy for quarter 1 and quarter 2 in 2021 elevated between 10%-15%. Of that, about 70%-80% of the normal occupancies were driven by domestic visitors. As a result, Shifeta said domestic tourism provides the primary likelihood for driving recovery, albeit all subsectors like the high-stop fly-in safaris and tour functions will not considerably reward from it because of to restricted market place measurement and affordability.