As efforts to diversify the country’s economy heighten Botswana Tourism Board (BTB) has flexed its muscle to expand its operation in the process stretching the sector’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP).
The development follows the scrapping of the Botswana Tourism Board Act which was replaced by the Botswana Tourism Organisation Act.
Under the new Act, BTB will exercise its mandate as Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO) and trade as Botswana Tourism,
Botswana Tourism will still be responsible for grading, classifying all licensed tourism establishments to market, promote the country’s tourism and facilitate business investment within the tourism industry.
Myra Sekgororoane chief executive of Botswana Tourism was confident the new name will help market the organisation and clear confusion that has been attached to the organisation.
“This is specifically intended to differentiate and to avoid confusion by reference to the Board as in governing entity or Board of Directors and the organization. The functional way out of the evident confusion was to drop the word ‘Board’ from name of the organization, and thus rename Botswana Tourism Board the Botswana Tourism Organization,” said Sekgororoane in at a media briefing.
The new Act is different form the old one in that it has only five board members including the chief executive position.
“In the old Act board members were nine including board of directors and the organisation was not clearly differentiated as evidenced by the new Act,” explained Sekgororoane.
The BTO chief said that they are planning to diversify the tourism sector in Botswana by focusing on investments promotions. BTO has noticed that they have been monotonous on their priorities and, therefore, decided to expand their projects to other areas such as cities and less developed places.
BTO has some very interesting new projects on the works which are sure to provide excitement for both locals and visitors.
For instance, Sekgororoane stated that they have projects such as Tsabong equtourism, adding that they intend to bring camels into the desert as a source of attraction. Activities such as camel safaris and camel racing will be provided at this tourism institution.
The Kenyan camel association is said to be assisting in this project as they already have a successful establishment in Kenya.
Another interesting project is in Kasane, where the Seboba project will feature a virtual cultural village. The cultural village will represent many tribes in Kasane. Locals are expected to be expected to participate in this adventure to explain and showcase their culture to the tourists.
The new projects are expected to benefit Batswana in terms of employment and improvement of standards of living.
Botswana tourism will now promote the whole country as a package rather than promoting only specific areas.
BTO mentioned their current achievements such as the recent Okavango Delta winning Tourism for Tomorrow Award in China earlier this year.
“This award has brought with it a lot of free publicity which the organisation would have otherwise not been able to afford,” said Myra Sekgororoane.
“The world now knows about Botswana,” she added.
Meanwhile Sekgororoane announced that BTO receives funds from the government, with developmental budget of P15 million and an operational budget of P7 million.
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Botswana Tourism Board gets new name ”
