Putting Tourism In Indigenous Hands

ALLOW me to air my view about tourism in this country.

There are talks in Parliament these days about tourism. Quite often politicians discuss how they would like tourism to be owned by local indigenous people.Tourism is a luxury and very expensive industry; one would need at least five years or more to be fully established.You need to put in a lot of capital in order give the best, required up to standard service value for money.If tourism businesses are well run and provide top-notch services they can never go wrong.SMEs who are lucky to obtain small loans from the banks struggle to pay it back as they are given a short grace period.This hampers the operations of the business and a familiar scenario is they find themselves closing down just after two years of operation.Until Government injects millions into local tourism empowerment for people to have access to market (can be achieved by attending international trade fairs and networking sessions – and this costs thousands of dollars by the way); training to attain much needed skills, tourism ownership by Indigenous Namibians would be yet another far fetched dream that would take decades if not centuries to be realised.Tourism Fanatic Via e-mail Note: Name and address provided – EdQuite often politicians discuss how they would like tourism to be owned by local indigenous people.Tourism is a luxury and very expensive industry; one would need at least five years or more to be fully established.You need to put in a lot of capital in order give the best, required up to standard service value for money.If tourism businesses are well run and provide top-notch services they can never go wrong.SMEs who are lucky to obtain small loans from the banks struggle to pay it back as they are given a short grace period.This hampers the operations of the business and a familiar scenario is they find themselves closing down just after two years of operation.Until Government injects millions into local tourism empowerment for people to have access to market (can be achieved by attending international trade fairs and networking sessions – and this costs thousands of dollars by the way); training to attain much needed skills, tourism ownership by Indigenous Namibians would be yet another far fetched dream that would take decades if not centuries to be realised.Tourism Fanatic Via e-mail Note: Name and address provided – Ed