About

Summary

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was established in January 2004 as a United States government corporation to implement the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA).  MCC’s mission was to reduce poverty by supporting sustainable, transformative economic growth in developing countries, which create and maintain sound policy environments.  MCC is designed to support innovative strategies and to ensure accountability for measurable results.

The aim of this project was to set targets for MCA projects being implemented in the tourism sector in Namibia.  These included the measurement of tourist arrivals and employment, improving the management and infrastructure in Etosha National Park, and successful marketing such as generating tourist arrivals from targeted markets and increasing activity on the Namibia Tourist Board (NTB) website.

Our Approach

Forecasting tourism arrivals is not a straightforward process due to the many factors that impact on demand for travel.  The strongest factors are the state of the global economy, and in particular the economic situation in the key generating markets (in the case of Namibia: Europe and the United States), global security (tourism does not flourish in destinations that are unsafe or perceived to be unsafe), and health (global pandemics such as SARS and bird flu can severely affect the movement of tourists). Other factors that are more destination-specific include transport links (such as the availability of flights), marketing campaigns, and other exposure (often unplanned) such as a destinations featuring in a popular film.

As many of these factors are impossible to predict, the targets for Namibia were mainly based upon the economic situation in the key source markets (in particular RSA, Angola, Germany, UK, USA, France, and for non-leisure tourism Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe) as well as other known factors such as marketing actions of the Namibia Tourist Board and transport links from key source markets.  This research was undertaken though interviews with expert stakeholders and desk-based analysis.

Outcome

A total of 12 tourism indicator targets were identified, and data for these were calculated to provide initial baseline values.  Targets for a four-year period were calculated to allow MCA to measure the effectiveness of their tourism sector projects against these targets.  Targets included jobs created through tourism, gross revenue at national parks, and unique visitors on the NTB website.