“Namibia is an experience rather than a place”

Many years ago, when Namibia was still the best kept secret in the fast developing world of tourism, the newly created Namibian Tourism Board undertook a journey of discovery to establish what that special ingredient was that made Namibia so distinctive and exceptional that people who have been here once, return again and again.

That is easier said than done. How do you go about finding that “something extraordinary”? And once discovered and identified, how do you put that something into words that would become a message sent into the world? You need an emotive message that resonates with potential visitors globally and evokes the very feeling that Namibia lovers experience when they think about Namibia and describe Namibia.

We cannot compete with countries which allocate marketing budgets that equal our GDP and have the influence and resources to counter small countries’ efforts to gain market share. Which meant that in order to grow our tourism we had to be smarter.

Experts in primary markets were tasked to consult visitors and stakeholders to identify what it is about Namibia that appeals to them most. These consultations and the outcome of focus groups engaged over months provided the result we were looking for. The powerful conclusion was that Namibia is an experience and not a place.

Namibia is not Etosha or Sossusvlei or the Fish River Canyon or the Brandberg or any single place. Namibia is an experience that touches your heart and your soul. At the end of the process Namibia’s distinctive memorable identity became recognisable. From all the research the experts extracted the qualities which distinguish us from our competitors. At last the core brand values that would guide every marketing effort were identified. The essence of the Experience Namibia was distilled in four words: Namibia is RUGGED, NATURAL, SOULFUL and LIBERATING.

And after almost two decades the essence of what Namibia offers has not changed. 46% of our land is under some form of conservation management – one of the highest percentages in the world. 17% is protected as national parks, which includes the entire coastline except for the towns. Environmental management also includes communal conservancies, nature reserves and private land. With our small population spread out across 824,268 km2 of land we have less people per square kilometre than any other country in the world (although Mongolia challenges us on that). But nobody can deny that we have the largest number of endangered black rhino roaming free.

Nor can we deny that we have been so successful in developing a wonderfully thriving tourism sector supported by good policies for the protection of the environment and the inclusion of communities in the benefit of this development, that when it all came to a grinding halt it left us staggering.

At Venture Media we had only one option and that was to do what we have done successfully for three decades – spreading the message of our country with words and images, evoking the emotions encapsulated in the core brand values.

Ours has always been a team effort of writers, photographers, artists, sales people, corporate and tourism partners, our Ministry of Tourism, the NTB, NGOs and…

We thank you all.

This is Namibia – a collective project to tell the world who we are, and that we are ready and waiting for you.

The Venture Media Team