25 Jun 2014

There is need to take advantage of the Okavango Delta’s recent listing as a world heritage site to attract more tourists to Botswana.

Various stakeholders said this on the side lines of the world heritage committee meeting. Botswana’s ambassador to Kuwait, Mr Manyepedza Lesetedi, said the country needed to move swiftly to capitalise on the publicity and interest that came as a result of the listing.

“We should have a tourism promotion mission in the near future,” he said. Between June and August, temperatures soar to high degrees and that is when people in the Middle East go for holiday to various destinations.

He said, it was already a milestone that the Minister of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Mr Tshekedi Khama, got interviews with the international media. “Hopefully this exposure and the listing will interest people in the gulf states,” he noted.

This could also be a niche for Botswana because the country did not get a lot of Arabic tourists. However, Mr Lesetedi spoke of the need for tour operators to actively market themselves in various forums and not depend entirely on government.

One such forum is the annual Arab Travel Market that takes place in May in Dubai. “People in the Arab states are not very exposed of Botswana, at least with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates it is better because they have flights that operate between their countries and some African states,” he said.

These countries, he explained, had active private sectors, which helped in the development of the tourism industry and the economy at large, something he hoped Botswana could learn from.

Mr Thuso Palai, the brand manager for Brand Botswana, said Botswana had to strike the rod while it was still hot. He said the 1000^th listing was a unique selling point for Botswana.

“With the listing, this means that people cannot talk about the delta without talking about Botswana,” he said. “The challenge therefore is that we must sit down and come up with a strategy to utilise this interest that we have aroused.”

The marketing manager at Botswana Tourism Organisation, Ms Obenne Mbaakanyi, said the iconic number will help reinforce their message. She said the Okavango Delta was the flagship of Botswana tourism and this listing provided a fresh perspective.

“The delta has already won several awards before but to have it listed as a UNESCO world heritage site is big,” she explained. Inviting the international media is one strategy she felt would increase publicity of the delta even more and help sell it.

The Okavango Delta was listed as a world heritage site during the eighth session of the world heritage meeting, becoming the only African country to do so in this sitting. ENDS