22 Feb 2021

The Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism, through the Department of Tourism, will undertake a study on tourism leakages with a view to identify opportunities for addressing them.

Minister Philda Kereng explained that tourism leakages occured when revenue that should be accrued in an economy was lost to another country.

Ms Kereng pointed out that leakages were an intrinsic part of the tourism sector owing to the nature of how it conducted business globally, especially the customer centric approach which necessitated that products were brought closer to the market.

She clarified that tourism operators in Botswana required partnerships with global tourism wholesalers to sell packages on their behalf while the operators on the ground focused mainly on the hosting of guests.

Furthermore, Ms Kereng noted that global tourism wholesalers worked with Botswana destination management companies to also promote and sell packages to ensure a wider distribution of Botswana tourism packages globally.

Botswana, he said, had embarked on some citizen empowerment initiatives aimed at increasing citizen ownership of tourism enterprises, not only to empower and grow locally owned tourism enterprises, but also to ensure tourism income was further retained locally, thereby reducing leakages.

Ms Kereng also said domestic tourism campaigns were continued to stimulate domestic demand of the local product, and not only to reduce over dependence on international markets which were susceptible to external shocks, but also to ensure that most of the bookings were made locally.

The minister pointed out that reliable and fast communication connectivity between end-user or consumer and host would be a valuable contributor to encouraging direct bookings, thereby cutting off commissions in between.

Maun West MP, Mr Dumelang Saleshando had wanted to know the interventions in place to ensure that leakages occasioned by external bookings were minimised.

MP Saleshando further wanted to know if there had been any study to look into the magnitude of such leakages.ENDS