The Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) says it cannot implement a single pricing system due to the diverse nature of the industry.
This comes as calls have been getting louder for hotel and lodges to charge room rates as opposed to per person rates to promote domestic tourism.
The Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) recently revealed that it was engaging tourism operators to consider sweeping changes on accommodation pricing, amid concerns the existing pricing regime is inhibiting tourism growth and is costly for the Namibian traveling public.
“While the industry is always flexible to adhere to new trends of the world, yes we are aware of the fact that people are calling for room rates, the rating structure in Namibia is diverse and can’t be easily changed by calling just one rate only now, because it depends on what is actually added to the actual sale of the room and services that are added to it,” HAN CEO Gitta Paetzold told The Brief.
“In general, Namibia has a diverse pricing system. You have some people that charge per room, while others have a tiered pricing system because other establishments have an all-inclusive rate, bed and breakfast, which makes a difference if there are two people sharing a room.”
She added that some operators in Namibia have already adopted room rate pricing, with other services charged separately, while some have opted for all inclusive packages for their guests.
“I know the international community has been calling for a one room rate, but what you will see is that you will be charged a room rate only and the other services will be added. Many people have adapted to that pricing system, but have changed their approach to the all-inclusive packaging,” Paetzold said.
“So you can’t say Namibia has to adopt just one price per room, irrespective of the number of people because we will have to take off all their services that are charged together worth the room rate.”
On concerns that the current per person pricing regime by hotel establishments was impacting domestic tourism, amid affordability concerns, Paetzold said, “It depends where you go. It’s easy to generalize because some lodges have family prices. So they know if you travel as a family, they do have rates for that. So there is no one rate that lodges are charging. I don’t know where it’s coming from.”
NTB CEO Digu //Naobeb, however, told The Brief that while the board did not have powers to order the pricing structure review, it was hopeful an amicable solution would be found to drive domestic tourism.
“We cannot dictate that to the industry and this will be a recommendation because there is no law that also provides any mechanism whether the government can say this strategy must be adopted and applied. We are operating in a free economy as adopted in our constitution, so we can only recommend who adopts it and how soon they need to adopt it.”
HAN is a representative body of the hospitality industry, comprising of hotels, guest houses, guest farms, lodges, rest camps, restaurants, conference centres and catering services.
* A poll run by The Brief on its twitter page shows that 93.6% of votes support the adoption of the per-room-rate as opposed to the per-person-rate.
