Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) is in the process of developing a tourism recovery plan to reboot and rebuild the tourism sector after the industry last year took its biggest knock following the pandemic.
This was revealed by tourism minister Pohamba Shifeta during his address in parliament on Wednesday. Shifeta noted that the tourism recovery plan will be dynamic and practical, and will respond to continuously evolving scenarios of the Covid-19 pandemic and the different ways in which the global virus is impacting the sector.
According to him, since independence, the tourism sector has shown sustained year-on-year growth, culminating in a record breaking 1.596 million tourists arriving to visit Namibia in 2019 alone.
The Tourist Statistical Report for 2020, however, shows that only 169 565 tourists arrived in that year. Of that figure, 81% of the arrivals were during the January 2020 to March 2020 period before the pandemic reached Namibian shores. This shows an overall decline of 89% in terms of tourist arrivals to Namibia in 2020, compared to 2019.
He indicated that the tourism revival initiative statistic report for the period September 2020 to March 2021, during which the tourism revival initiative has been implemented, shows that 61 663 international tourists arrived in the country.
“This is below our expectation and is likely to be due to the trend for would-be travellers from source markets to stay home and the continued fear to travel,” he said. He added that lockdown measures and travel restrictions in various countries also continue to hamper the recovery of the sector.
Shifeta explained that the situation has had an unprecedented impact on tourism businesses, including restaurants, accommodation establishments, tour guides and tourism transport operators.
Businesses operating in the sector have also had to endure declining revenues, scaling down of operations, capital losses, retrenchments, wage reductions, increased prices of inputs and disruptions to supply.
Shifeta also noted that although there is a slow recovery, there has been an increase in arrivals over recent months as a number of accommodation establishments, restaurants and places of leisure have opened up for business and airlines have resumed leisure flights to Namibia.
