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NAMIBIA continues to record more foreign tourist arrivals, which have resulted in a national occupancy rate of 61,3% during August 2022, compared to 51,0% in the prior month and 20,7% in August 2021.

According to the Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) chief executive Gitta Paetzold, this is very encouraging and proof of the success of the tourism initiative started two years ago.

Year-to-date (YTD), the national occupancy rate averages 36,2%, compared to 20,2% for the same period in 2021 (January to August), showing an improvement in tourist inflows.

“Namibian tourism is back on its feet,” said Paetzold. “And the recovery is faring better, even by global measuring standards.”

“However, we seem to be reaching our capacity in terms of the other services that would help fulfil the whole tourism package. These are flight availability and car rentals,” Paetzold said.

In maintaining this momentum and keeping occupancy levels afloat, Namibia will have to address issues around the availability of rental vehicles and flight access.

HAN has received reports of potential travellers who have cancelled or postponed a visit to Namibia due to rental car shortages and limited availability on flights.

“This signals that tourist demand for Namibia remains high and provides the country with an opportunity to stimulate economic activity,” said Simonis Storm in an analysis.

The analysts observed that the proportion of Namibian guests at local hospitality establishments dropped from 17,9% in July 2022 to 15,7% in August 2022, indicative of improved foreign arrivals in Namibia.

Most guests at nationwide hospitality establishments came from Germany, Switzerland and Austria (34,4%), France (11,8%), Italy (8,9%), Benelux (6,1%) and South Africa (4,9%), said Simonis.

Regarding the purpose of travelling to Namibia, 95,3% came for leisure, 2,7% for business and 2% for conferences.

Simonis said hospitality establishments in the northern area recorded the highest occupancy rate of 67,9%, followed by the central area (60,5%), southern area (57,2%) and coastal area (56,2%) in August 2022.

YTD, Namibian airports average 12 044 international arrivals per month, compared to a monthly average of 3 840, a rise of 213,7% for the same period from January to August last year.

According to data, July 2022 recorded the highest number of foreign arrivals since October 2019. With no Covid related restrictions or regulations (allowing unvaccinated travellers to enter and no need for a negative PCR test result) will bode well for tourist inflows in coming months.

Improved international, regional and domestic arrivals at nationwide airports can support economic activity for the air travel component of the transport sector, said Simonis.

“In addition, tourism has a wide value chain, benefiting SMEs and employment in rural areas, as well as other industries such as professional services (forex and travel agents) and the retail sector,” said Simonis.

Simonis said Namibia had benefited from its visa openness policy in attracting tourists to the country.

Namibia is one of five southern African countries that improved its visa openness measure the most during the 2016 to 2021 period, according to the 2021 Africa Visa Openness Report.

Namibia is now ranked 19th in terms of visa openness (compared to 38 in 2016), where the first is “most open”.

Benin, Gambia and Seychelles offered visa-free access to all African visitors in 2021 and 2020. During 2021, 72% of African countries could visit Namibia visa-free.

The main contributor for the improved rankings is Namibia’s new visa-on-arrival policy for the nationals of 47 countries worldwide, which includes 27 African countries.

This policy was introduced in September 2019 for tourists, visitors and investors entering Namibia. During 2020, 75% of all visitors in Namibia came from other African countries, up from 72% in 2019.

Within the African context, Namibia currently requires a visa for 15 African countries, no visa for 13 African countries and 25 African countries who can apply for a visa on arrival. – email: [email protected]