The weekend before AHIF will feature various inspection trips to see some of Namibia’s best hospitality investment projects and tourism attractions.
The Africa Hospitality Investment Forum (AHIF), which is the premier tourism and hotel investment conference in Africa, attracting many prominent international hotel owners, investors, financiers, management companies and their advisers, will take place on 25 – 27 June 2024, in Namibia.
The venue will be the Mövenpick and Mercure hotels in Namibia’s capital city, Windhoek. Both properties are receiving a total makeover after they were acquired in 2021 by a fund managed by Kasada Capital Management, the leading independent real estate private equity platform dedicated to the hospitality industry in Africa. Consequently, AHIF will showcase the relaunch of both properties.
For many delegates attending AHIF next year, the conference will involve a “safari” in more ways than one. The weekend before AHIF will feature various inspection trips to see some of Namibia’s best hospitality investment projects and tourism attractions. They include spectacular desert scenery, awesome adventure sports and sensational safaris, on which it is possible to see endangered black and white rhino, antelope, cheetah, elephants, giraffes, hippos, lions, ostriches and zebras. The trips will not only be educational; they will also provide valuable networking, as participants will also include delegates from AviaDev, Africa’s premier airline route development conference, which will be scheduled at the same venue, at the end of the week before.
In the seven-year period prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Namibia’s tourism sector had been growing consistently. According to the country’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, visitor numbers grew by around 5% per annum, from just under 1.2m in 2012 to 1.6m in 2019. However, the pandemic pummelled the country’s tourism industry, with visitor arrivals in 2020 falling below 200,000. Since then, they have recovered – by 40% in 2021; and they jumped by 98.1% to 461,027 in 2022.
Source : Travel Daily News
