Namibia's travel industry is approaching pre-corona levels

Almost 864,000 tourists visited Namibia last year. This was stated by Tourism Minister Pohamba Shifeta yesterday at the official presentation of the Tourist Statistical Report 2023. This is an increase of 87.4 per cent compared to 2022.

The figure includes all inbound tourists, including business travellers and travellers visiting their relatives. Holidaymakers make up less than half. According to statistics from the Ministry of Tourism, their number was around 424,000, more than 45% of which came from the neighbouring countries of South Africa (160,621 / 37.9%) and Angola (33,699 / 7.9%).

Over 158,000 (37.2%) of Namibia's holidaymakers came from Europe. The so-called DACH countries Germany (71,172 / 18.2%), Austria (5,041) and Switzerland (9,910) continued to be the most important overseas market for Namibia. The Benelux countries of the Netherlands (12,420) and Belgium (4,312) were ahead of the United Kingdom (14,758) and France (14,222). A significant proportion of travellers also came from the USA (22,544) and Canada (5,062).

Debate on the percentage in relation to the 2019 level

Overall, Namibia accounted for around 54 per cent of the number of inbound travellers in the pre-corona year 2019, according to Shifeta. However, this percentage seemed far too low to tourism experts.

At its annual general meeting in January, the Namibia Airports Company (NAC) announced that it had already achieved around 73 per cent of the 2019/2020 level in its financial year from March 2022 to March 2023. The Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) had even reported an increase in bed occupancy of 1 per cent for 2023 compared to 2019.

A closer look at the Ministry of Tourism's figures quickly reveals the reason for the discrepancy. Of the approximately 1,595,000 registered tourists in 2019, more than 800,000 came from Angola and Zambia. In 2023, only just under 170,000 visitors from these two countries were counted. This results in a drop of around 630,000.

If the figures for these two countries in both comparative years are disregarded, Namibia reached around 88 per cent of the 2019 level in 2023.

2024 should surpass pre-corona year 2019

The Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) is hoping for a significant increase in the total number of travellers from Germany this year. He expects around 110,000 visitors, explained Matthias Lemcke, NTB Director for Europe at the Frankfurt office, when asked by Namibian.org. In 2019, the figure was a good 97,000. This includes all travellers (holidays, business, visiting relatives and others).

The fact that hardly any flights to Namibia are available for the high season, which is now starting, seems to confirm the optimistic forecast. Discover Airlines currently flies non-stop to Namibia. Ethiopian Airlines offers direct flights from Frankfurt via Addis Ababa to Windhoek. Turkish Airlines is another airline under discussion.

Sven-Eric Stender