Tourism to generate P5.9bn in 2014
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday March 21, 2014 16:10
The WTTC is the foremost research and statistics authority on tourism, conducting annual economic assessments on 184 countries around the world. The WTTC’s annual Economic Impact Reports analyse current and historic performance of travel and tourism sectors in the selected countries, while also providing projections for various indicators over a 10-year horizon.
For Botswana, the reports are critical, as local statistics bodies do not compute direct or indirect travel and tourism earnings, employment and/or economic impact in their research.
Researchers said their estimates indicated that travel and tourism activities had directly contributed P5.5 billion in value to the local economy last year, representing an increase from the P5.2 billion the WTTC had originally forecast. The Council’s calculations for direct contribution include the value created by hotels, travel agents, airlines, other passenger transport services, restaurants and leisure industries that deal directly with tourists.
The figure is equivalent to total internal travel and tourism spending within the country, less the purchases made by those industries including imports.
“This primarily reflects the economic activity generated by industries such as hotels, travel agents, airlines and other passenger transportation services, excluding commuter services,” researchers at the London-headquartered organisation said in their report on Botswana released this week.
“It does include, for example, the activities of the restaurant and leisure industries directly supported by tourists.”
At P5.2 billion in 2013 and a forecast P5.9 billion in 2014, the figures indicate the travel and tourism sector’s continued position as one of the country’s critical non-mining economic sectors. Statistics Botswana estimates that by the third quarter of last year activities in construction had contributed P4.5 billion to the economy, followed by manufacturing at P3.6 billion.
According to WTTC’s figures, visitor exports or the spending within the country by international tourists for both business and leisure trips, was pegged at P8.97 billion in 2013. In 2014, the Council expects visitor spending to rise 8.3 percent from the forecast arrival of 2.6 million tourists.
The Council’s researchers also forecast that the number of people directly employed in travel and tourism in 2014 will rise by 2.3 percent from 31,000, while the number of those employed indirectly would increase to 70,000 from 67,000.
“Direct employment includes employment by hotels, travel agents, airlines and other passenger transportation services but excludes commuter services,” the Council’s researchers said.
“It also includes, for example, the activities of the restaurant and leisure industries directly supported by tourists.
“The total contribution of travel and tourism to employment includes wider effects from investment, the supply chain and induced income impacts.”
Looking further into the future, the WTTC projects that in the next 10 years, Botswana’s travel and tourism sector will grow by 5.8 percent annually and directly contribute P10.3 billion to the economy in 2024. By the same year, the Council expects the sector to account for 41,000 jobs directly, while tourist arrivals will reach 3.9 million at the end of the forecast period.
Analysts expect government’s massive infrastructure investment programme to support the travel and tourism sector’s stronger performance in 2014 and years ahead. The programme has seen billions of Pula pumped into expanding and modernising the country’s airports, roads, sewerage, telecommunications, ICT, electrical grid and water supply network.
*This story has been updated