Tourism Statistics - Government of Botswana

Estimates of internal tourism consumption have been put together based upon:
Inbound International Visitors;
Domestic Tourists; and
The domestic component of an outbound trip by Botswana residents.
Each of these components is discussed in the following sub-sections.
2.2 Inbound International Tourists
The expenditure by Inbound International Tourists can be divided into:
Expenditure by tourists themselves in Botswana, on which they can report;
Acquisition of tourism and other services by Tour Operators spending in Botswana on
behalf of tourists, from the money already paid to the tour operator (or travel agency, or
ground operator) by the tourist as part of the package tour price; and
Expenditure by Same-day visitors who are coming across the border and not staying the
night.
Each of these is reported upon in the next sub-sections. There are other expenditures that need to
be estimated from other sources but these are not included for the time being.
2.2.1 Direct Spending by Tourists themselves
The Visitor Arrival Statistics, from CSO/DOT, based upon the entry/departure cards (E/D Cards)
collected by the Department of Immigration at the border posts indicate the numbers of people
entering and leaving Botswana. From this information tourist arrivals have to be derived, taking out
returning residents and various other categories of border entrants that are not included in the
Inbound Tourist statistics.
Definitions of Basic Tourism Units (from UNWTO) are shown in
Annex 8. Details of some of these definitions are given in Annex 9.
This gives an indication of the complexities in deriving information
on tourist arrivals.
Since Botswana has a large number of road border posts (24) as
well as several airports (4), the collection of such statistics is a
major operation requiring considerable cooperation between
several Government Departments.
Cooperation has been good both, inter alia, for the collection of
tourist arrival statistics and for the visitor sample surveys carried
out by DOT. The DOT published the tourism statistics for the
period 2001 to 2005 in a publicly available document as shown in
Figure 2.2.
Figure 2.2 – Tourism Statistics Publication
The tourist arrivals for 2001 – 2004 are shown in Table 2.1. A substantial increase in tourist
arrivals in 2005 and in 2006 is anticipated. Provisional Figures for 2005 are 1.675 million. One
cannot understate the significance of the two neighbouring countries of South Africa and
Zimbabwe. An exceptional situation exists with Zimbabwe, generating travel that has a complex
mix of motives. Numbers are large and most travel is through the border post of Ramokgwebana.
The proximity of the major towns/ cities in South Africa such as Mafeking, and also Pretoria and
Johannesburg, together with family ties and commercial ties across the borders, inevitably results
in substantial international travel. This includes cross-border travel, some of which will be within
the „usual environment‟ and thus should not be counted as tourism.
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