According Lesedi Karanja from the Department of Tourism, 41.7 percent of tourism businesses are currently owned by the locals while 42.8 percent of tourism businesses belongs to foreigners. He was speaking at a services forum organised by Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) forum held at Maun lodge last week
The forum ran under the theme 'Enhancing the local participation in tourism for their funded tourism business in the country'. It also emerged at the forum that a lot of locally-owned tourism establishments could be facing closure for failure to meet required standards for grading by the Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO). Presenting at the forum, BTO executive, Bigani Setume said most of the locals mostly own guesthouses and mobile tour operations while the hotels and lodges are predominantly foreign-controlled. Of the 67 guest houses owned by the locals, 27 are single star and 11 of them two star guesthouses.
There is only one five star guesthouse owned by a local. Setume said BTO could not grade some of the establishments owned by the locals, as they could not meet the required minimum standards. "If the owners do not make efforts to improve their establishments, they may be closed down soon," she said. Giving an overview of the challenges facing the tourism sector, CEDA identified lack of marketing strategies, poor customer service, and inadequate investment in the promotion of facilities as responsible for poor performance of some of the existing operations. Some of the challenges include the lack of skilled labour in the industry which is expected to become worse as the industry grows and the demand increases. CEDA observed that few of local operators are able to meet the demands of an upscale international tourism while the standard and type of services and amenities offered by local operators vary widely.
