Tourism landscape anticipates further surge in 2024 – Hospitality Association
The hospitality sector celebrated a resilient performance in 2023 according to insights provided by the country’s Hospitality Association (HAN), Chief Executive, Gitta Paetzold, Friday, revealing notable trends and shifts in the international travel landscape.
According to Paetzold, in the HAN tourism occupancy reports for December, 4th quarter, as well as the Annual report for 2023, while the average room sales for 2023 dipped just under 2% compared to 2019, there was a remarkable silver lining in the form of a 1% increase in average bed occupancy from four years ago.
Paetzold said this surge can be attributed to the rise in leisure travel to Namibia, with double room occupancy surpassing that of business travel.
The share of leisure travel in 2023 reached nearly 90%, a substantial increase from just under 84% in 2019, signaling the resilience and growth of the leisure travel market compared to its business and conference counterparts, she said.
“The share of the Namibian visitors at our 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 the two nations face,” she explained.
In contrast, European markets, particularly the German-speaking countries, saw a healthy increase, constituting 34% of total guests, up from just under 30% in 2019, she noted.
“The U.S. market has also shown a healthy growth, reaching 4.12% in 2023, while visitors from the UK and Ireland made up over 3.6% of our guests in accommodation establishments,” she added.
Looking ahead to 2024, Paetzold said international trends for 2024 include even more demand for high-end, high-quality tourism, and 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,” she concluded.
