Hospitality nears 70% occupancy on strong European demand

The hospitality sector, one of Namibia’s biggest employers, is operating close to its structural peak, with national room occupancy at 69.53% in August 2026, as strong European leisure demand continued to underpin the tourism industry.

These latest Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) statistics, analysed by Simonis Storm (SS) analyst Almandro Jansen, indicate that August occupancy narrowly missed the symbolic 70% threshold but remained above both the 69.05% recorded in August 2025 and the 67.18% pre-pandemic benchmark recorded in August 2019.

Jansen described the result as a significant milestone for the sector, which employs more than 36 000 Namibians, particularly because August marks the height of Namibia’s dry-season safari and tourism calendar.

“August 2026’s 69.53% national room occupancy, narrowly short of the symbolic 70% mark and 2.35 percentage points above the August 2019 pre-pandemic benchmark, confirms that Namibia’s peak season is running at, or close to, full structural capacity,” Jansen stated in the analysis.

The sector’s performance was recorded across 93 reporting properties, compared with 121 in August 2025 and 128 in August 2019. This means the stronger occupancy rate was achieved despite a considerably smaller reporting base.

The sector’s immediate outlook will now depend on whether August’s exceptional performance translates into sustained demand as Namibia moves out of its absolute peak season.

Jansen noted that the next few months will provide an important indication of the recovery’s durability.

“With DACH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), Italy, France, and Benelux now accounting for nearly two-thirds of all beds sold, Namibia’s European positioning continues to deepen structurally,” Jansen noted.

The September performance will therefore be particularly important, as the industry moves towards the shoulder season and the final quarter of the year.

“September and the shoulder-season transition into Q4 will be the key test of whether 2026 can sustain its position as the strongest year in the post-pandemic accommodation cycle,” Jansen said.

For hospitality operators, the August numbers point to strong international demand and increasingly tight peak-season capacity. Buttheregional divergence, particularly the weakness in the south, and the sector’s growing reliance on European leisure travellers mean that the outlook remains uneven.

The central question for the remainder of 2026 is consequently not whether Namibia can attract tourists during its peak season, but whether the industry can maintain sufficient demand, market diversity and domestic participation once the exceptional August conditions begin to fade.

“The result confirms that August 2026 is the strongest August in the post-pandemic dataset,” he said.

**Northern and coastal regions **

The Northern region delivered the strongest performance, with room occupancy reaching 76.28%, up 4.90 percentage points from 71.38% in August 2025.

The result reflects peak safari demand around Etosha National Park and the Kunene corridor, while the traditional August wedding and family-celebration season also provided additional domestic demand.

The Coastal Region also performed strongly, with occupancy rising to 71.77%, up from 70.16% a year earlier. The figure was 1.86 percentage points above the region’s August 2019 benchmark and represented its strongest August on record.

The Walvis Bay-Swakopmund corridor continues to benefit from leisure tourism and transit traffic, while business travel linked to logistics, energy, and other coastal economic activity provides an additional demand base.

Windhoek and the Central region, however, recorded a sharp year-on-year decline, with occupancy falling from 61.20% in August 2025 to 54.83%.

Jansen cautioned against interpreting the decline as evidence of a broad deterioration in demand.

“The Central region’s apparent decline is better read as a base effect from an unusually large conference calendar in August 2025 than as a genuine loss of demand,” Jansen added.

Business and conference travel accounted for only 3.91% of Central region beds sold in August 2026, compared with a combined 34.95% a year earlier. This indicates that Windhoek benefited from an unusually strong corporate, conference or government-event calendar in August 2025.

Once that distortion is considered, Jansen’s analysis suggests that the region’s underlying leisure performance is broadly comparable with its 2019 position.

**Southern region concern **

The Southern Region provides a less reassuring picture. Occupancy fell to 64.31% from 69.51% in August 2025 and was 9.59 percentage points below the 73.90% recorded in August 2019. This was the largest gap to the pre-pandemic benchmark among the four regions.

Unlike the central region, the decline cannot readily be attributed to weaker business travel, which remained close to 1% of beds sold in both periods.

The softer performance at destinations such as Sossusvlei and the Fish River Canyon could therefore indicate weaker leisure demand.

Jansen identified this as an issue to monitor closely. “The Southern Region’s softness against both August 2025 and August 2019 is a genuine area to watch as the sector moves through the remainder of Q3,” he said.

**Regional perspective **

On the regional front, tourism growth has been noted across Southern Africa, East Africa, and the Indian Ocean islands. Rising international visitor numbers, expanding air connectivity and significant investment in hotels, resorts and tourism infrastructure are creating new employment opportunities across the region. However, this growth is also exposing a critical challenge, notably developing the skilled workforce needed to sustain it has become just as important as attracting investment.

“We see these countries as forming what we call Africa’s hospitality triangle,” said Viren Sookhun, Managing Director, Workforce Staffing Africa. “These are distinct tourism markets, but they are becoming increasingly interconnected through visitor movement, investment, and hospitality development.

They also face many of the same workforce challenges, which means there is an opportunity to approach skills development on a regional rather than a country-by-country basis.”

Sookhun added that, in terms of hospitality skills development, the focus should be on local recruitment as the priority wherever possible, supported by targeted training in customer service, language proficiency and international hospitality standards.

The objective should be to create sustainable local talent pipelines rather than ongoing dependence on international recruitment.

*– ebrandt@nepc.com.na *

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