How tourism can coexist with COVID- 19

To date the crush in international tourism due to the coronavirus pandemic is said to have the potential to cause a loss of more than $ 4 trillion to the global GDP for the years 2020 and 2021. This is attributed to the pandemic’s direct impact on tourism and its ripple effect on other sectors closely linked to it. As the year 2021 proceeds we are at a point where it has been a year and a half of unprecedented times since the start of the COVID- 19 nightmare. Alas, we remain hopeful and can see globally how countries are slowly trying to reopen their borders for essential travel. We remain cautious when it comes to travelling and we are encouraged to stay within our areas to keep this pandemic contained. Vaccines have begun being rolled out and some countries are doing better than others, antigen testing is quite costly, but it is what it is. While Tourism and Hospitality have been hard hit, the industry continues to attempt to plan for the next normal that will include how the world will coexist with COVID- 19. It is clear that tourism is a lifeline for millions, and advancing vaccination to protect communities and support tourism’s safe restart is critical. From an African perspective, over the next few weeks, UNWTO plans to work with all its signatories to create a common roadmap towards establishing a tourism Brand for Africa. This is said to include establishing common values and goals and identifying funding needs and opportunities as well as providing branding toolkits for destinations, including guidelines and recommendations and training and capacity building in market intelligence, digital marketing and data management. Talk about making hay while the sun shines!

This sounds incredible and I hope it will be achieved. Through partnerships with the African Union and the private sector this initiative is planned to promote the continent towards new global audiences through positive, people- centred storytelling and effective branding. One of the starting points of this is based on the idea that, “African destinations must take the lead in celebrating and promoting the continent’s vibrant culture, youthful energy and entrepreneur spirit, and its rich gastronomy”. This speaks to our local tourism in Botswana too. While domestic tourism in the country remains one of the ways of restarting the industry as well as controlled mobility protocol to ensure safety, the country also needs its own streamlined localised capacity building initiatives and tool kits that will ensure that cultural tourism, youth and tourism, entrepreneur and gastronomy tourism will be branded and shaped in a sustainable manner to be ready when the industry restarts. The idea is continuous improvement. Continuous improvement that will be critical to the recovery of jobs and generation of much- needed resources, especially as we remain a developing country, that is notably dependent on international tourism to grow and evolve.