Tourism Statistics - Government of Botswana

Whilst P 0.9 billion is the Government budget for (1) and (3) above for 2006/2007, the precise
content of this expenditure is not clear.
Similarly with Businesses there is no allocation of intermediate consumption towards Hotels and
Restaurants. Some 3% to 4% of intermediate consumption within the economy is not implausible.
The balance between these different sources has been adapted from the Social Accounting Matrix
for Botswana from 1996/97. There, the Absorption Matrix indicated that the total supply of the
commodity, „Hotels and Restaurants‟ was used in the following manner: -
Commodity Absorbed by: P million 1996/97 Percentage
Households 59.0 11.8%
Exports 210.9 42.3%
Productive Activities – Intermediate Consumption 120.7 24.2%
Central and Local Government 108.0 21.7%
Total Output 498.6 100.0%
Source: Social Accounting Matrix 1996/97
The above has been adapted on anecdotal evidence to the figures below.
Households Businesses Government Exports Total
Breakdown 5.0% 28.0% 25.0% 42.0% 100.0%
Turnover in
Hotels and
Restaurants P.
million 204.1 1,143.0 1,020.6 1,714.5 4,082.2
But only a proportion of this turnover is associated with tourism. Also the turnover has to be
divided between hotels themselves and restaurants. There are number of guideposts to the
possible scale and composition of components of the hotel and restaurant trade. These are: -
The turnover established through the National Accounts procedures (P4.1 billion in
2005/06);
The balance between domestic arrivals and foreign arrivals at hotels (35:65 in 2005);
The earnings that can be obtained from the capacity in tourism accommodation (nearly
8,000 beds);
The data from the Government Budget;
Information on business operations; and
Information on hotel and restaurant operations.
In relation to the figure for hotel and restaurant turnover of more than P 4 billion in 2005/06, to find
a reasonable fit with this information it has been necessary to assume that the hotel: restaurant
split is around 39:61 and also to assume that the non-tourism component is up towards 20% for
the hotels and over 70% for the restaurants.
Putting together estimates such as these, which could be described as broadly plausible, is a
temporary measure in order to find reasonable orders of magnitude. A key issue is that using
information from both the demand side and the supply side compromises the independence of the
approaches and any subsequent reconciliation of data on demand and supply. However in the
absence of more information this has been necessary.
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