During 2018, Botswana received a total of 1,830,274 visitors, with 90.4 percent of them said to have been tourists, the tourism statistics annual report published by Statistics Botswana recently shows.
The report stipulates that it is a 3.5 percent increase in the number of tourists compared to 2017. South Africa accounted for 35.0 percent (639,867) of the visits while those from Zimbabwe represented 29.5 percent (539,059) of total visitors during 2018.
The majority of tourists, 83.2 percent (1,522,256), reside in the SADC Region.
The report shows that the top ten overseas countries recorded 224,360 tourists, accounting for 12.3 percent of total tourists (1,830,274) during 2018. Of the 224,360 tourists that reside in the top ten overseas countries, more than a quarter, 28.6 percent (64,126) were residing in the United States of America followed by those residing in Germany and the United Kingdom at 18.8 percent (42,111) and 14.9 percent (33,392) respectively.
According to Statistics Botswana tourists refer to both same day visitors and overnight tourists.