Mokaila therefore said that the notion that foreigners dominate the sector is not a true reflection.
“We are working towards giving Batswana an added advantage in the tourism industry and we have reserved certain citizen economic activities for locals,” Mokaila told reporters on Tuesday.
The government through the ministry has made several reservations that will allow citizens to participate directly in the lucrative tourism industry. Some of these reservations are in the mobile safaris, boating and campsites, and guesthouses that provide services to the tourism industry.
Mokaila was addressing the media as part of preparations for next months meeting of the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) to be held in Gaborone. About 250 delegates and 48 ministers from WTO member countries will attend the conference.
The ministry said since the reservation were made, several locals have shown interest in the tourism industry, which is the second largest contributor to the country’s GDP after the diamond industry.
There are currently 542 licensed tourism outlets throughout the country - 225 of which are citizen owned, while 179 are foreign owned, Mokaila said. This is an improvement from the past years when the facilities were still monopolised by foreigners.
However, several top class tourism facilities like hotels in the tourism hub of Botswana are still foreign owned. Several potential investors have in the past complained that it was difficult to break into the hospitality industry and compete with the existing hotels.
There are numerous hotels in the lucrative tourism hot spots of Maun and Kasane, with most of them still owned by foreigners.
Some citizens argue that they are only relegated to the guesthouse business, which is not as lucrative as the lodges and hotel business.
“It is difficult to engage in this business because it is expensive to raise money and a lot of whites in the industry already own their own concessions,” one prospective hotel owner in Maun said.
He identified land as one of the impediment for people like him who want to invest in the industry. He argued that the Land Board is either not willing or takes time to allocate land.
“Batswana are there in this business, but the majority of them are not in the big scale industry, they are in the guesthouse business,” he said.
However Mokaila dismissed the idea that Batswana have no presence in the hospitality industry.
“The industry is not wholly white owned although we admit that is not enough. We are actually looking at privatising the campsites and reserving them for Batswana,” Mokaila said.
