The United Kingdom (UK)’s decision to place Namibia back on the red list and temporarily ban flights will impact the recovery of the country’s tourism sector.
Namibia’s tourism sector had anticipated the continued removal of travel restrictions globally to aid its recovery after having been hard hit by the COVID-19 outbreak with total tourist arrivals via airports during 2020 declining drastically by 81.9% compared to a decline of 8.6 percent registered in 2019.
According to Bank of Namibia figures, the decline was 97.8% year-on-year, from March to December 2020.
“The listing of Namibian with other Southern African countries will affect us. The European ban sets us back in terms of our recovery. The sector had been doing well and we now had hope for the sector, with many countries in Europe putting us on their green list. This ban will psychologically affect the prospective tourist and arrivals,” Ministry of Environment and Tourism Spokesperson, Romeo Muyunda told The Brief.
Shelly Louw, PSG Namibia Research Analyst, said the emergence of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern identified in South Africa (also known to be present in Botswana, Israel, and Hong Kong) is likely to be a major blow to the local tourism industry, which had been gearing up for a bustling holiday season.
“Although the presence of B1.1.529 has not been confirmed in Namibia yet, the country’s close ties with South Africa, where the variant was identified, makes it a target for travel bans. Furthermore, Namibia’s low level of Covid-19 vaccinations, and the fact that this new variant could possibly be ineffective against existing vaccines due to its many mutations, spells danger for the local tourism industry, with tighter restrictions on the horizon. As of November 24, only 11% of Namibians were fully vaccinated, according to figures from Our World in Data,” Louw said.
The research analyst added that Namibia’s tourism industry recorded its best month since the start of the pandemic in October, with national average bed occupancy just shy of 34%, up from barely less than 5% during the worst of the pandemic lockdowns in Q2 2020, but far below the pre-pandemic level of nearly 55%.
“The positive tourism momentum in October came on the back of the relaxation of domestic Covid-19 containment measures and Namibia’s removal from other countries’ travel ‘red’ lists. There were strong annual increases in bed nights sold to tourists from German-speaking Europe (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), South Africa, France, and the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg) countries.”
According to government projections, the tourism sector is expected to experience negative to zero growth until well into 2022, with real recovery only possible when international tourism returns to pre COVID-19 levels.
Namibia’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Linda Scott said she was disappointed by the UK decision, calling it “heavy handed”, as the country had not recorded cases of the new variant.
“This approach is very heavy handed as no case of the new variant is in Namibia. So disappointing to see the UK take this heavy-handed approach!” Scott said in a social media post,” she said in a social media post.
