Batswana increase participation in tourism sector

Pauline Dikuelo | Wednesday March 18, 2015 09:57

When making a presentation before the committee of supply recently, the minister said from the 1037 licensed facilities, 654 are wholly owned citizens, and 153 are joint ventures while the remaining 230 are non-citizens. This is an improvement from the December 2013 figures, which indicated that there were 937 licensed facilities, out of which 561 were wholly-citizen owned, 148 joint ventures and 228 non-citizens. “The government remains committed to expanding the tourism sector as one of the areas to diversify the economy away form mining, “ he said.

The Ministry is also currently developing management plans for Letsibogo, Thune, Dikgatlhong and Shashe dams, which will guide tourism development within the dam lease areas.

According to Khama, his ministry has also requested to lead the Kasane-Kazungula redevelopment project with the strategy to position the area as a tourism hub. The project has the potential to employ approximately 6000 people during implementation of its various phases.

“Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) continues to grow as they managed to generate close to P10 million in the past financial year through the projects they carried. This was made possible by our continued support to communities for transitioning to non-consumptive tourism,” he explained.

Khama also said communities are venturing into non-traditional tourism areas such as cultural and heritage tourism. He further said these projects contribute to both the diversification of the tourism product and poverty eradication through job creation in rural areas. Khama, however, said that his Ministry has been facing some mitigating challenges like lack of up to date statistics to assist in making informed decisions, air access, passenger infrastructure as well as turnaround time for permits for investors, adding that it is important to ensure that these are improved as they are critical in growing the tourism industry.

The tourism industry in Botswana contributes about 10 percent to GDP and employs about 35,000 people.

Researchers from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) estimate travel and tourism activities to have raked in revenue amounting to P4.8 billion in 2013.

The tourism sector seems to be recovering from last year’s Ebola scare when the American and European tourists placed a blanket ban on the whole of Africa due to the epidemic outbreak in West Africa.  Last year, local tour operators in the Okavango Delta said arrivals had taken a knock in the second half of 2014, while bookings for 2015 were estimated to have sunk by a sector average of between 30-50 percent. With the tourism industry being one of a major economy activity and employer in Botswana, tourism operators blamed their clients’ limited knowledge of African geography, as the affected West African countries are closer to Paris and London than to safari hotspots such as Botswana and Zambia.