Namibia’s hospitality sector hit near-prepandemic occupancy levels of nearly 70% in August, driven largely by European safari tourists and domestic wedding celebrations.
Simonis Storm Securities analyst Almandro Jansen says the landmark performance sits comfortably above the 69.05% recorded in August 2025, and 2.35 percentage points above the August 2019 pre-pandemic benchmark of 67.18%.
Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) chief executive Gitta Paetzold is happy with the sector’s performance.
“August 2026 did surprisingly well in terms of room and bed occupancy. It seems the high-end market is performing very well, although August is generally the peak of tourism season.
“That’s when most Europeans travel, especially our French and Italian travellers, as well as German-speaking central Europe,” she says.
Jansen says the August performance was driven by safari peak season and wedding season.
“Internationally, August sits at the height of Namibia’s dry season safari calendar, when wildlife concentrations around Etosha National Park’s waterholes peak and European visitors come for their summer holidays,” he says.
“Domestically, August is traditionally a peak month for weddings and family celebrations in northern Namibia,” he says.
Jansen says northern Namibia delivered the strongest occupancy nationally at 76.28%, up 4.90 percentage points from 71.38% in August 2025.
“However, this is still below the exceptional 77.84% recorded in August 2019,” he says.
The coastal region recorded 71.77%, the strongest August on record for the region, beating 70.16% in August 2025 and the August 2019 benchmark of 69.91%.
The southern region posted 64.31%, down 5.20 percentage points from 69.51% in August 2025 and 9.59 percentage points below the August 2019 benchmark of 73.90% – the widest gap to pre-pandemic performance of any region this month.
“The decline appears to reflect softer leisure demand at Sossusvlei and the Fish River Canyon relative to prior peak seasons, a trend worth monitoring into the remainder of the third quarter of 2026,” Jansen says.
Leisure travel accounted for 95.17% of all August 2026 arrivals, up from 94.30% in August 2025 and 7.77 percentage points above the August 2019 share of 87.40%, confirming that Namibia’s accommodation base is more leisure-dependent today than at any point pre-pandemic.
German-speaking central Europe remained the dominant source market at 32.22% of beds sold in August, marginally below the 32.52% recorded in August 2025 but still above the August 2019 share of 30.23%.
Namibian domestic travellers accounted for 13.30% of beds sold, up 2.31 percentage points from 10.99% in August 2025, but still 10.73 percentage points below the 24.03% domestic share recorded in August 2019.
Paetzold, however, expresses concerns about bookings ahead – especially for the latter part of the year, as well as next year.
– email: matthew@namibian.com.na
