Hotels record boom over festive season
Keikantse Lesemela | Friday January 9, 2015 15:12
In an interview with BusinessWeek, Head of Marketing & Sales at Cresta, Patrick Chivese said they had recorded a good performance over the festive. “ Despite the Ebola fears, we received a lot of visitors in most of our hotels but this time around we recorded more African visitors than the international ones, but overall business was impressive,” he said.
Chivese also said destinations such as Maun, Kasane and Okavango Delta attracted both domestic and international tourists so the business performance is always positive in these areas.
“We received a lot of visitors in Maun Kasane areas. Although there were less international visitors, local visitors boosted our business,” he said.
Chivese hastened to add that although business performance was good they had recorded low performance in urban areas.
“In cities like Gaborone and Francistown the business performance was very low, we had to close some of our operations and release most of our staff to go on leave because visitors were coming in small numbers,” he said. However, Lansmore General Manager, Ruppert Elliot said they had seen a growth in business performance this time compared to 2013. “Our business performance over this festive has been very good, we have recorded 10 percent increase in business performance compared to the previous year. However most of our visitors were locals than international,” he said.
Hotel and Tourism Association Botswana Communications Manager Tebogo Oletile, said hotels had recorded a good business performance during the festive season boosted by the local visitors.
“We have talked to several hotels and lodges but they indicated that they have seen more local visitors than the international visitors but they have recorded good business performance,” she said.
In a recent speech during the Botswana Travel and Tourism Expo (BTTE), Minister of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Tshekedi Khama indicated that African countries had of late, suffered declining tourism income as many travellers had cancelled their trips to the continent over fears of the Ebola virus.