Another bumper month for tourism The Namibian tourism industry has smashed records once again with accommodation establishments that recorded another bumper month. According to statistics provided by the Hospitality Association of Namibia (Han), October has seen a record of more than 84% occupancy across the country.
This is more than 20% higher than in October last year.
During the month of October, a total of 47 submissions were made from accommodation establishments representing 35 670 rooms.
Of these, a total of 30 310 rooms were sold.
Figures indicate that lodges in Namibia outperformed other sectors during October in terms of occupancy and is a clear indicator that leisure tourism, and in particular, the upper-end market is performing extremely well at present, says Han.
The total number of rooms available at lodges during October was 5 896 of which 5 005 were sold.
The sector that performed the worst was backpackers which out of the 186 rooms available only 36 rooms were sold during October.
Furthermore, the data indicates that during October, the north managed to sell 98.7% of its 7 533 rooms, closely followed by the south which sold 90.13% of its 7 378 rooms and at the coast, 80.7% of the 11 011 rooms were sold. The central region sold 75.2 of its 9 748 available rooms.
Meanwhile, the majority of travellers in the country during October were Namibians (29.2%) and South Africans (13.4%)
In August, Namibia also recorded the highest occupancy for that month in a decade with an average room occupancy of 71.7% recorded by tourism accommodation establishments last month.
ELLANIE SMIT