The local tourism sector is at the tail-end of its traditional peak season, a high-traffic window running roughly between April and October.
This period is preferred by tourists as the dry winter conditions provide for better viewing of various species through the usually lush wilderness and easier sightings as they gather around the fewer water sources.
The peak season is also associated with better navigability of the bush tracks areas due to the comparatively lower rainfall in winter, compared to summer.
The travel and tourism industry is one of the country’s key sources of foreign currency, with international arrivals spending nearly P6 billion in 2019, a figure that dropped to P1.4 billion in 2020.
Figures made available by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) show that in the latter year, the local travel and tourism sector shed at least 17,000 direct and indirect jobs despite an extended wage subsidy programme by government as well as other interventions targetted at businesses.
Even after government reopened borders in December 2020, tourists from traditional markets such as the United States and the European Union (EU) could not readily travel to the country as their insurance providers were wary of the State of Emergency (SoE), which was only lifted in September last year.
This year’s peak period is the first international arrivals and local tourism operators have enjoyed without the shackles of pandemic restrictions, which in 2020 and last year, included travel bans, movement restrictions and tight testing protocols at borders.
A Mmegi newscrew which was recently in Kasane and Maun, observed high volumes of international tourists at various facilities, with many of the visitors reporting that when the pandemic hit, they had opted to defer their travel rather than cancel their bookings.
The Hospitality and Tourism Association of Botswana (HATAB), the industry body representing 50% of all licensed operators, championed the “don’t cancel, defer” strategy to deal with COVID-19 and reports that some improvement has been noted this season.
“We did see an increase in our arrivals this season, but we should unpack this to say we are comparing against the numbers in 2020 and last year because of what was happening then in terms of restrictions and the SoE,” HATAB CEO, Lily Rakorong told Mmegi yesterday.
“To be clear, when we say bookings for this season are up, it’s not a bumper harvest because we are comparing to the prior year when there was very little coming through.
“In fact, we are perhaps 25 to 40 percent in terms of average occupancies in the industry for the first half of the year and of course this differs from one operator to the other.”
Many of the international arrivals this season are deferred bookings made as far as two years ago and delayed by the onset of COVID-19. In Kasane, Mmegi encountered a Canadian couple who said their original booking for the Okavango Delta had been made before the pandemic.
“Our plan was to travel in August 2020, but the pandemic put an end to that,” said Mark, a tourist from London, a city in Ontario.
“Our travel agent told us we could possibly get space in August 2021 but we were then advised that we would have to wait further.
“We are overjoyed to finally be in the country and see the animals and scenery we have been excited about for two years.”
Last year, as the region emerged from the Delta wave of COVID-19, analysts noted that a race to open had quietly begun in the region, with countries eager to position themselves and their tourism hotspots as the first open to arrivals.
That deferrals account for most of the traffic this season is being read as a vote of confidence in the country’s tourism product and its weighting against rivals in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Zambia.
“I would say that there are those that kept the faith and others who are even now booking for the future,” Rakorong said.
“However, we cannot deny the fact that there are those that when Botswana was taking long to relax its restrictions, they came up with other options.”
Okavango Wilderness Safaris, one of the country’s largest luxury tourism groups and employers, confirmed the improvement in business over the peak season, albeit with caveats.
“Okavango Wilderness Safaris are enjoying occupancies that considerably exceed those achieved during the previous two seasons,” managing director, Kim Nixon told Mmegi.
“However, it is worth noting that these are not yet approaching those achieved prior to the pandemic and an appreciable number of our bookings during the current year have been rolled forward from the previous two years.”
He added: “It may take as long as until 2024 for levels of business to return to those prevailing pre-pandemic.
“The recovery will depend upon many factors beyond the control of operators, including the availability and cost of long-haul airline seats arriving in the region.”
The industry’s recovery however is threatened by the changing circumstances for potential tourists in key source markets such as the US and the EU.
Inflation is escalating globally, fuelled by supply constraints dating back to the height of COVID-19 and worsened by the impact Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had on global food and fuel prices. In response, central banks across the world have been raising interest rates markedly, tightening discretionary spending among consumers.
For Botswana, whose “high value, low volume” policy for the prime tourism hotspots means higher product pricing than the regional average, the threat is on the horizon. As a luxury, tourism competes for pocket space alongside jewellery, property and other assets, and the tightening conditions for consumers means fewer bookings for the upcoming peak season and beyond.
“The high rates of inflation and interest in both market countries and Botswana are also a significant concern and may hinder recovery, something that all in the sector are having to deal with,” Nixon said.
“We continue to operate and deliver per our business strategy, leveraging the expertise of our team, the wider group depth of insight into the market and the industry, and the important stakeholder ecosystem we continue to build upon, ensuring the necessary strategic action and agility as needed.”
Industry players face the real possibility that the recovery in this year’s peak season will be stamped out, even before tourism returns to its prepandemic level of activity and revenues.
For HATAB, deteriorating economic conditions in source markets are “one of the bigger concerns” the industry has going forward.
“There’s a lot happening in the market because with interest rates rising, this affects commodity prices which essentially makes Botswana more expensive and so we are actually very concerned.
“We have to actually see exactly what is happening and what the trends will tell us.
“In our view, we should be having our ducks in a row with research, measuring to see everything that can inform us about the direction that we could go in.“What is key is that as a destination we have been saying to our partners in government that we should draw up a tourism recovery plan.
“We need a plan that we can all develop and say this is how we are going to get out of this situation.”
During the COVID-19 paralysis, the industry pushed harder for domestic tourists, with specials and packages. The WTTC estimates that in 2020, for the first time, spending by Batswana exceeded that of international arrivals, with the former amounting to P3.3 billion, eclipsing the latter by nearly P2 billion.
However, that “fall-back” is not available for the tourism industry this year, as local inflation trends at 14-year highs, while interest rates have been increased three times thus far. In addition, figures from Statistics Botswana indicate that the drop in employment figures from 2020 has continued, despite government’s relief measures and the reopening of the economy.
For the tourism industry, the lessons on agility and resilience learnt from the COVID-19 shock will have to come into play should the source markets enter an economic slowdown, a development that appears increasingly unavoidable.
