What does innovation mean to you?
Tourism is an extremely vast field for innovation as a complex cross-cutting socio-economic system. Creating a tourist product, tourist services, booking of air – and train tickets – all these processes have reached a new level with the introduction of the latest developments in information technology.
Innovation in tourism as elsewhere is in collaborative actions between Government, academia, corporations, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and start-ups, investors, supporting business partners (accelerators, incubators, etc.) and other stakeholders. Innovation requires initiative, ideas, and commitment.
In the tourism sector, different companies such as hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, car rental companies and entertainment companies provide different services. Therefore, companies in the sector are in competition with each other to satisfy the tourists and ensure the continuity of the tourists. For this reason, innovation is needed to gain a competitive advantage.
Why do innovation and entrepreneurship matter?
Innovation and Entrepreneurship have a symbiotic relationship: we need to keep on looking for new ways of doing things and improving experiences and service delivery. The two interchangeably prompt and advance development of skills, infrastructure, new concepts, and new solutions.
It is not a coincidence that the most developed nations are also the ones with the highest levels of entrepreneurial activity and innovation. While starting from a minimal level of development helps the two, for example, through basic access to capital and institutional stability, the impact of innovation and entrepreneurship on the economy and society more broadly cannot be overstated. In fact, the impact goes over and beyond such as increased productivity, competitiveness, and job creation, and spills over into areas as diverse as regulation, infrastructure, the environment, and social inclusion.
How do you breed a culture of innovation within your organization?
Training and allowing every team member to share their ideas and new thinking; and not only to share but follow the execution of such ideas for the benefit of the tourism sector. Everybody matters; sharing challenges with teams to initiate solutions is critical.
The biggest challenge is to rethink tourism and transform the sector with the support of new ideas and talent. There is a need to revisit the demands of the hospitality industry in the post pandemic world, and an innovatively talented workforce is needed to maintain the needed sustainable and universally accessible tourism, which is expanding.
Our strength is the experience of having tried out many different perspectives and doing plenty of agile explorations. Nowadays both competitive environments and preferences of the consumers are constantly changing in the sector. Under these conditions, we must keep taking the pulse of the market and carrying on with various innovations. Innovation provides renewals and changes in the goods and services in the tourism sector as it is in every area, it facilitates the work of tourism employees, helps to promote and marketing the unknown and incorporates the customer into the production process.
Do you consider yourself a disruptive thinker?
Yes, I innovate, I am passionate, and seek positive change in the organization. I strive to draw good ideas from others for the betterment of organizational culture, top notch customer service and efficient service delivery. For me, it’s all about leaving my comfort zone and trying and doing new things consistently.
What is the biggest challenge facing Botswana and how do you believe it can be overcome?
The decline in tourism activity because of COVID-19 has so far been the greatest challenge. We need innovative ways to bounce back and collaborate with the information communications technology talent to bring the tourism product offering closer to the traveler through customercentric inventions.
In lieu of the climate change challenges, we must also always bear in mind that sustainability is not just an environmental issue, but involves working to achieve a balance between environment, governance and economy, and society and culture. We need to reflect on tourism value chains and develop practices to address changing consumer needs and develop local policies and projects for more resilient, digital, and greener solutions. The aim is to strike a balance between economic, social, cultural, and environmental needs, including the protection of cultural heritage, to ensure the mid and long-term sustainability of tourism.
What leadership skills do you value most?
I identify with:
- Visionary – in this transition and recovery period of the tourism sector, keeping everybody focused and steering clear of deterrents with single messaging of the collective is crucial.
- Innovative – to me an innovative leader isn’t a creative genius but gives others the freedom to develop their own ideas.
- Learning agility – tourism is a dynamic sector and calls for continuous research and adaptability to emerging market trends for one’s destination to remain relevant in the global competitive space.
What has been the toughest business related challenge that you have overcome?
Covid-19 brought everything to a standstill; and at the height of the pandemic I led a team to develop standard operating procedures for the tourism industry to ensure travelers confidence in the destination as well as to facilitate a bounce back of the tourism sector. All can attest to that given the waivers that the tourism sector were given by the COVID-19 Task Force to facilitate domestic travel and the opening for direct charter flights in to Botswana; all because the tourism sector landed itself well when it comes to adherence to protocols.
Tell us about an initiative or venture that you have participated in that has had a positive impact.
The development of Tourism categories specific COVID-19 protocols known as Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). These procedures focus mainly on Health and Safety as an assurance that the destination is ready and safe to host visitors. We collaborated with other stakeholders like the Ministry of Health and Wellness and Tourism industry champions to extensively engage on an exercise to monitor and gauge the level of adherence and commitment to the set SOPs across the country and ensure that tourists are assured of their health and safety when traversing through Botswana and the tourism facilities.
Where does your passion lie and how have you pursued that professionally?
Seeing exciting and new things happen/move; work with people; tagging the team along so that we are at the same pace.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
Inspired by seeing positive and impactful change in the lives of people. All this is drawn from my daily Bible devotions.
