Team Namibia, NTB take hands

Team Namibia and the Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) kicked the new year off by signing a memorandum of understanding to commence with their strategic partnership.

The agreement will lead to a marketing collaboration between the two organisations. Team Namibia will provide access to its traditional and digital marketing platforms to the NTB through joint campaigns and through predominantly the regular distribution of content in order to reach the Namibian market, and increasingly, to targeted audiences within the region.

The NTB will also be encouraged to use and display the trade-marked “Supporter of Team Namibia” logo on its marketing material, both nationally and internationally, as well as to encourage tourism businesses to join Team Namibia as members.

This will ensure that the Team Namibia brand will become widely recognised in support of all sectors and industries in Namibia. The most prominent display will be at the upcoming International Tourism Exchange (ITB) in Berlin in March, and at the Indaba Expo in Durban in May 2019 on the Namibia destination stand.

In addition, there will be collaboration with regard to the attendance and participation at selected local trade fairs, exhibitions and events. In this regard, Team Namibia plans to arrange a business-to-business networking event for Namibian manufacturers, producers and service providers to present their offering to local tourism businesses.

The NTB supports Team Namibia’s mandate to raise awareness for the need to shop, buy and procure local products and services. Next to facilitating the building of networks between businesses, it also includes the encouragement of local buyers of travel services to explore the tourism destinations and products within Namibia.

Trade balance

According to the account director of Team Namibia, Bärbel Kirchner, domestic travel generally can have a positive impact on Namibia’s trade balance, especially if Namibians were to spend their discretionary income locally and not only import travel services by travelling to tourism destinations outside the borders of Namibia.

“Travelling internationally widens one’s horizon and helps to gauge how as an individual and as a community one is able to compete in a global market, as well as learning from others, which is very important in our interconnected world. Considering our currently negative trade balance, we can reduce the import of international tourism services by buying and supporting our local tourism industry,” Kirchner says.

Ambassadors

The chief executive officer of the NTB, Digu //Naobeb, saus developing the domestic tourism market will always be important to the body. “We want Namibians to experience our own tourism product and fall in love with our beautiful landscapes and our prolific wildlife and explore the scenic and cultural highlights in the different regions within in our vast country. I believe that as Namibians we all are the best ambassadors of our country, through our collective reach to international markets, sharing our individual experiences, via the spectrum of digital platforms.

“Considering the vagaries of the global economy, a strong domestic market, generally facilitates building resilience and reducing dependencies on international markets.

“Building up a domestic tourism market is particularly important to address the question of seasonality and to help our tourism businesses to increase occupancy during the less busy months of the year. We believe that an active collaboration with Team Namibia will help us to achieve this objective,” //Naobeb says.