12 Mar 2019

It is a given, tourism industry is a money spinning business in Botswana.

It comes right on the heels of the mining industry in terms of contribution to Botswana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

A while ago, BOPA had a riveting yet informative discussion with the principal tourism officer from the Department of Tourism to find out the extent to which Batswana in and around Francistown have leveraged on the comparative advantage of the second city strategic location as a gate way to the country’s most sought after tourism destinations.

Interestingly, Mr Khutsafalo Tsile relayed to this reporter that his office was fairly satisfied with the number of Batswana who have ventured into tourism, particularly the ever increasing number of licensed tourism facilities registered by citizens.

“There are 198 tourism enterprises registered under the Francistown office alone and this speaks volumes about Batswana growing interest in tourism,” he said.

Certainly, the numbers validate this growth as in 2015 the Francistown Tourism Office only recorded 139 licensed tourism facilities and the numbers have since grown substantially.

Francistown Tourism Office oversees service provision to the rest of the city, North East District, Sowa Town, Tonota and Tutume sub-districts.

Overall, the area boasts of 64 bed and breakfasts, 33 commercial guest houses, 17 lodges, 42 hotels, 12 camp sites, nine tourist transfers, 10 travel agencies, four mobile safaris, three self-catering facilities, a single backpacking venture, a cultural village, one quad biking company and one zip line.

Mr Tsile said a total of 12 businesses were 100 per cent owned by males, 15 were owned 100 per cent by females, six such ventures were fully owned by youth while the remaining 165 were joint ventures.

He said the operations had a positive impact on the community by way of employment creation as well as boosting the economy.

That said, Mr Tsile was quick to buttress the fact that there still remained ample room for improvement and further growth as tourism enterprises owned by Batswana were predominantly centered around guesthouses as well as bed and breakfast facilities.

There is need, he said, for Batswana to venture into medium to large scale tourism enterprises such as hotels and lodges and low scale activities such as camping and mobile safaris.

Nonetheless, Mr Tsile was happy with the success rate of tourism enterprises owned by Batswana, whose success rate he said was fairly high.

He said for instance, that out of the 198 ventures licensed within the area of his jurisdiction in the last two years, 185 were blossoming while only 13 have closed shop.

To try and close some of the grey areas, especially to bring about awareness to Batswana already in the tourism industry of what the industry is all about and its impact on the economy, the department of Tourism has, through its Tourism Industry Training Fund taken to finance the skills training programmes for employees at basic, intermediate and advanced levels in key areas of the sector.

Mr Tsile mentioned that training was undertaken to develop the required level of performance and right attitude.

“However, the department is experiencing unwillingness of tourism business owners to release personnel for training, thus making it difficult to facilitate training,” he said.

In an attempt to mobilise the community, Mr Tsile said the department does community outreach programmes on regular basis, among others; kgotla meeting, school presentations, Bojanala radio programme, which airs every Thursday at 5:45pm, mounting exhibitions during trade fairs and district shows.

Also, he said the department took part in ‘Taking Services to the People’ which is a district commissioner-coordinated programme, whose primary purpose is to create awareness among the general public about services rendered by different government departments.

Mr Tsile said the programme gave his department an opportunity to educate Batswana on the benefits of tourism, mandate of the department, areas of opportunity, licensing requirements and many others.

The department of Tourism is responsible for the development and implementation of policies, strategies and programmes to ensure sustainable tourism development and has established tourism offices in Maun, Kasane, Ghanzi, Tsabong, Francistown and Selebi Phikwe to facilitate easy access to services rendered thereof. ENDS