One can’t help but have some measure of sympathy for Myra Sekgororoane, the Chief Executive Officer of Botswana Tourism Organisation.
She has one of the toughest jobs around, and it is not made any easier by high public expectations and the power of political interests at play.
Naturally and almost in direct proportion, the double-whammy of public expectations and political interests have increased as the tourism sector has itself significantly grown into a money spinner and became one of the country’s top GDP contributors over the recent years.
While Sekgororoane is often blamed for everything that goes wrong within the country’s tourism sector, she hardly ever gets credits, if any, when things go right.
As we sit for an interview she is keen to point out that many of public perceptions about the sector are not supported by figures on the ground.
While there have been concerns that tourism has, like the rest of the economy, taken a knock on the back of economic slowdown, Sekgororoane holds that the figures speak of the opposite.
Throughout the interview, she repeatedly talked of “resilience” shown by Botswana’s tourism sector.
She, however, is adamant that there are things that the country needs to do differently if the sector is to keep up with the pace including high competition for foreign capital. Some of those things, she is quick to point out, are beyond the mandate of the organization she presides over.
One such thing, she says is the turnaround time in availing land for people who have money and skills to set up tourism facilities, including hotels and lodges. These people, she says, are not just looking at Botswana, but other countries, which makes time all the more essential.
As in other economic areas, tourism investors have complained about the ease (or lack of it) of doing business in Botswana.
And this has proved a big handicap that Botswana Tourism Organisation has had to grapple with.
More specifically, Sekgororoane is concerned that under Botswana laws, tourism is not recognized as a distinct land use.
Instead, the sector is bundled under the ambit of commercial use, a generic grouping that fails to take into account the sector specifics.
“This means that we compete with all other sectors, which in itself is a failure to recognize the fact that tourism has own peculiarities and sensibilities. When it comes to tourism, compatibility is very important and it does not help to locate a hotel next to a welding workshop,” she said with clear frustration.
BTO has been calling on land authorities to classify tourism as land use on its own, but to this stage it has not happened.
This has had a stultifying effect on people willing to commit their money because bundling the sector with others not related to it brings with it unnecessary uncertainties that have the potential to undermine the viability of such facilities like a hotel once set up.
While Botswana has traditionally been a high value, low volume destination with immense attention paid to a few countries like Germany, United States of America and the United Kingdom as the backbone of arrivals, Sekgororoane says the world economic recession has brought in a new reality which is that there is an imperative need to diversify the base.
This has led to new initiatives aimed at cultivating emerging markets, chiefly, Brazil, China, Russia, India and South Africa.
The BTO Chief says BRICS countries are potentially big markets for Botswana and so far all research into the viability of venturing into those countries has been positive.
“We have always maintained that we should keep an eye on the BRICS for possible opportunities. And we have been proved right.”
The more difficult part, however, has been to strike the delicate balance of convincing the industry to go to those markets. And that is the rub.
The response so far from the operators has at best been muted, with some clearly saying they are not ready for BRICS markets, mainly on account of such barriers like language and the necessary investments that will have to be committed to break barriers.
“Going forward, BRICS is the future. And we have to respond in kind. Tourists from those countries demand that if we want them we have to communicate them. This means that guides have to be trained in their languages because in tourism guides are an integral part of the trade,” said Sekgororoane.
But how about prices, does she not believe that Botswana’s tourism facilities are overpriced?
She agrees that the “high value, low volumes” culture has played its part in the existing disconnect, but adds that since recession there has been some self-down grading both by facilities reducing their prices but also tourists opting for cheaper options.
“One big area in our efforts to do away with a perception that Botswana is a high value, low volume destination is to diversify our tourism base.”
She says the traditional destinations like Okavango, Chobe and Tuli have made their contributions and it is high time the country looked at other areas that are not as environmentally sensitive, said Sekgororoane.
In that respect, she reckons that villages and cities are, in the future, new areas of growth for Botswana’s tourism sector.
“In that respect it is important that we can no longer just rely on wildlife. New products are the future. Product diversification is a must and tour operators have to include new products as part of their packages. We have to look at promoting archaeological, cultural and heritage sites as part of product diversification,” she said.
Accordingly, Botswana Tourism Organisation, she says, is already working with communities across the country to jumpstart the tourism into this new but potential resourceful direction.
In the Tswapong sub-district, the parastatal is working with communities at Goo-Moremi to market cultural sites as tourism destination. She adds that many such similar ventures will open across the country as BTO establishes synergies with community based organizations to take advantage of the concession agreements already held by different communities.
“There is a big opportunity there and our hope is to unlock that potential. Some communities are sitting on it with no skills, not marketing knowhow and in some instances no accountability.”
Yet another area that BTO is working on as part of their strategy to diversify tourism sector base is to promote travel, leisure, recreation and entertainment as part of the package.
Sekgororoane says just pushing the development of lodges can hardly be sustainable as a marketing strategy.
She says it is important to also have facilities like those of sports.
And there is a hunger among people coming here for entertainment, which she concedes with gritted teeth has taken a knock since government decision to introduce stiff liquor trading regulations.
“We have to be full of life. People know Botswana but they are asking difficult questions on entertainment. We have to work on it. Entertainment and recreation have to be developed. We are competing with other countries and they are scoring higher than us.”
Promoting domestic tourism is yet another hot potato that BTO continues to grapple with.
While volumes have been growing, Sekgororoane says there is room for improvement.
Once again she traces low appetite for tourism travel among Batswana to a belief that Botswana is a high value, low volume destination. So far calls by BTO on high value destinations in the Okavango and Chobe to come up with special rates for Batswana have been hampered by internal dynamics in that schedules for Batswana to travel there often coincide with those of dollar bearing international travellers.
