By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 13

Tourism earns Namibia foreign exchange and jobs. Marketing it to investors is now part of one board's job.

Tourism is one of Namibia’s largest earners of foreign exchange and among its biggest employers, built on parks, desert and wildlife that need little embellishment. The new investment board inherits the task of marketing that appeal to investors, not only to visitors.

A sector that sells itself, almost

Namibia’s draw is genuine: more than twenty parks and reserves, from Etosha to the Namib, and a reputation for eco-tourism that a promotion board does not have to invent. What the sector still needs is capital for lodges, camps and the services around them, and the coordination to route that capital to the right sites without an investor tramping between separate offices for each approval.

This is where a central interface can help. By promoting tourism as a priority sector and coordinating projects, the board can shorten the path for an eco-lodge investor who today must assemble land, concessions and permits across several ministries, and can keep marketing the country to operators who have never considered it. Aftercare matters here too, since a lodge that succeeds is the surest advertisement for the next one, and a returning operator is cheaper to win than a first-time entrant.

The scenery is ready; the investment pipeline is what needs building.

For a hospitality investor or lodge operator weighing Namibia in 2020, the board’s creation offers a single point of contact for a sector long marketed to tourists but rarely coordinated for capital. The decision is whether to test that interface early, and help shape how tourism gets promoted, rather than waiting for the old queue of offices to reassemble.

Sources: The Namibian; Priority Sectors: Tourism (NIPDB); Tourism (Namibia Trade Network)