The tourism sector has suffered the most during this pandemic. The state of coronavirus in the African continent seems to be getting better, despite a slight increase in cases in some areas. A country such as Zambia has reopened its bars and learning institutions. On the other hand, Nigeria resumed its international flights allowing people to enter the country.
This trend of countries relaxing their restrictions is reducing the tension in the continent and the world at large. However, countries are still feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. For example, Namibia reopened its national borders giving foreigners the chance to visit it. Unfortunately, the tourism sector is recording low numbers of visitors from other countries.
The Tourism Sector
Tourism is an important sector in any country because it creates employment, and states get foreign exchange for development.
The airstrips in the country decided to reopen its borders as early as this month had commenced. Namibia hopes to bring back jobs in the state’s tourism sector. This is after the coronavirus pandemic had caused a lot of people to lose their jobs, hence bringing the economy down.
The tourism sector in Namibia is the 3rd biggest origin of foreign exchange after the fishing and mining sectors. In 2019, the country got more than a million foreigners to its tourist attraction sites.
Tourist Attraction Sites in Namibia
Namibia is a beautiful country that has a diverse culture and tourist attraction sites. When one visits the country, he or she will find good animal parks and coastal deserts. Besides, there are other sites such as Sossusvlei, Etosha National Park, Skeleton Coast, and Damaraland.
What Carla Feely Said
Carla Feely is the owner of Windhoek Game Camp.
Feely says:
“The international tourism market is going to take more than a year to recover from that. For the locals, we’ve dropped our prices, and I must say, we’ve had a perfect response from them. This is especially from the Windhoek people since we are still in lockdown now.”
This is a similar situation in Kenya. The Bonfire Adventures came up with cheap packages for the locals to visit the Maasai Mara site to see the wildebeest migration.
The current Health State of Tourism in Namibia
Reports say that the 1st international flight had less than 50 passengers from the countries of Germany, Kenya, and Austria. The health authorities needed the visitors to show documents indicating a negative virus test outcome. Few of the passengers who were on board were foreigners as the bulk were just those who had the opportunity to come back home.
There is also a concern from store owners due to few tourists in their shops. One of the store owners says that the usual number of tourists is between 2000-4000 in 1 month. The number currently is less than 200 a month.
The COVID-19 Pandemic is Still Out There
As much as the tourism sector is trying to revive, the rate of infections in the country has not slowed down. Volunteers are using loudspeakers around tourist-visited towns to tell people again to observe health directives such as social distancing.
Covid-19 Stats in Namibia
According to the data of health authorities, Namibia has over 9,000 cases of coronavirus and over 100 fatalities. The number of recoveries is less than 7000.
MORE:
