A lifeline for aviation and tourism industry

VETARUHE VETAA KANDOROZU

Please allow me a space in your newspaper to share my thoughts on how we might rescue our aviation industry in Namibia.

I am a retired politician who served as a regional councillor of Otjozondjupa Regional Council elected from Okakarara constituency for 15 years from 2004 to 2020. I am not an expert in the aviation industry but as a frequent flyer of Air Namibia, I developed love, passion and empathy for aviation over the years. As a result, I have been following various discussions on Air Namibia and publications on local as well global aviation administration to educate myself on how the aviation businesses operates.

My objective with this article is to share my understanding with fellow Namibians, political leaders and mostly our government on how we can empower the local aviation and tourism industry to become resilient to any economic crisis with the hope that this action might turn our parastatals into profitable entities contributing to the national treasury rather than just being bailed out or depending on government funding.

It is fact that the tourism sector is one of the biggest contributors to our national economy or GDP but we need to ask ourselves the following questions in order to get a better understanding of the chained impact of a tourist to the local economy at different levels:

• how does a tourist get into and out of the country?

• where do they stay after disembarking from the flight?

• how do they get to their destination within the country?

• who receives and hosts them?

• where do they spend money while they are in the country?

Although tourists fly with different international airlines to our country, in my view Air Namibia as the national airline might ensure the biggest pivotal role in bringing in tourists and cargo in the long run because foreign carriers will only persist with their operations for as long as the market and environment is lucrative for their business. Should a situation arise whereby the country is facing an economic crisis and demands slow down, they will withdraw their routes at any given time. Various studies have shown that the allegiance is all about profit if they aren't any, they leave with immediate effect like they did in our neighbouring country Angola, which resulted in a high number of locals being left stranded or unemployed.

Therefore, I strongly believe that we must think out of the box and come up with restructuring strategies which might turnaround our national airline in order to get it back in the sky, where it belongs.