The Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) has said that Namibia’s hospitality sector holds great promise in 2024 with the country still high in demand for the leisure traveller.
Delivering the tourism occupancy reports for December, 4th quarter, as well as the Annual report for 2023, the Association said that while the average room sales in 2023 may have ended up just under 2% lower than in 2019, the average bed occupancy is over 1% higher than 4 years ago.
“This speaks to the increase in the share of leisure travel to Namibia, which sees more double room occupancy, than with business travel. In fact, the portion of leisure travel in 2023 was just under 90%, compared to just under 84% in 2019, as sign that both the business and conference travel markets have not yet recovered to the extent that the leisure travel market has recovered and even grown last year,” said HAN.
Furthermore, the share of the Namibian visitors at tourism establishments dropped slightly last year, from 26% to just over 22.7%, while the South African component also saw a drop of just under 1% to 7.14% in 2023.
“This speaks to the economic limitations faced by the two nations.”
The European markets all saw a healthy increase, with the German speaking countries constituting some 34% of total guests, (up from just under 30% in 2019), while the French and Italian market also saw increases of about 1.5% each.
“While we are aware of the growing economic downturn in European countries, the number of people there still financially strong enough to travel, and the habitual strong urge to travel by Europeans in general makes this a secure travel source market.”
The US market has also shown a healthy growth, reaching 4.12% in 2023, while visitors from the UK & Ireland made up over 3.6% of our guests in accommodation establishments.
“From discussions with some players in the industry, it would seem as though these occupancy indicators, while reflective of tourist movement into Namibia may not include the visibly high increase in self-drive and camping tourism in Namibia, while the occupancy figures also do not reflect the healthy growth in tourism revenue through especially the growing high-end tourism segment gaining popularity in Namibia,” said HAN adding that the international trends for 2024 include even more demand for the high-end, high quality tourism.
“It is encouraging to see the development of many such new properties offering this service in Namibia. Furthermore, global operators predict that camping will go premium, with an increasing demand for camping travel across the globe, a market also well served by Namibia. Furthermore, sustainable and family travel are in demand, and journeys that allow for memories to be made.”