Angola has big potential as a visitor destination, and as a sector, tourism could be a driver of non-oil growth and jobs. But high costs and red tape are deterring overseas visitors and the country needs to work harder to deliver on its ambitions.

Blessed with a long Atlantic coastline, a diverse interior of tropical forests, mountains, desert and bush, Angola has the potential to become a major African tourist destination. Keen to wean its economy away from its dependence on oil and shake-off its war-torn reputation, the government is pushing hard to promote the country’s offerings at tourist fairs around the world and it has set ambitious targets for visitor numbers and job creation.

But despite this enthusiasm, and an increase in hotel and leisure facilities and direct flight connections, prices remain exorbitantly high and entry visas are excruciatingly hard to come by.

“Angola definitely has a lot of potential for tourism,” says Oscar Scafidi, who co-authored the second edition of the Bradt Guide to Angola and is keen to play down the country’s media image of being war-ravaged and covered in land mines. “There are some areas where there are real opportunities, such as high-end eco-tourism, and the surfing at places like Cabo Ledo is fantastic, so that could attract a lot of people,” he adds.

Building barriers?

But Mr Scafidi admits that while Angola has the potential in its offerings of niche attractions, such as fishing and birdlife, regional competition is an issue. “I think the country does suffer a bit from being so close to South Africa and Namibia, where you can do a lot of the same things a lot more cheaply and easily,” he says.

For a prospective tourist, just getting into Angola can be a major challenge. The country's notoriously stringent visa system requires a potential visitor to have been invited from within the country by a fax to the consulate where they are applying, and having fully paid hotel reservations and air tickets. People entering by car from the south in Namibia face fewer problems, but getting permission to fly into Angola can take weeks, if not longer.

In February, Angola's minister of interior announced a new tourist visa would soon be introduced to help ease restrictions, although few people had any knowledge of how it would work or when it would come into force.

Civil war legacy

One of Angola’s big challenges remains its legacy of war: three decades of post-independence civil war destroyed its infrastructure and ravaged its education system, leaving many parts of the interior inaccessible by road, and populated by an unskilled workforce.

While capital city Luanda has developed apace in recent years, it still has limited public transport options and has only recently introduced a commercial taxi service. Moreover, the country’s reliance on imported consumer goods – along with institutionalised corruption and monopolised supply chains – has earned Luanda the ubiquitous tag of being one of the world’s most expensive cities.

A room in a five-star hotel will cost on average $500 a night (for a four-star hotel the average is $430, and for a three-star it is $280, according to ProPrime property consultants), and restaurants are pricey too, with a meal for two easily exceeding $100.

On the up

But changes are afoot: from just 61 hotels in the whole country in 2008, there are now nearly 200, with 25 new establishments due to open by the end of 2015, according to secretary of state for tourism Paulino Baptista. Restaurant openings have also mushroomed and a number of new beach, golf and wildlife lodges have sprung up, popular for weekend breaks among both expatriate workers and newly moneyed middle class Angolans.

Claudio Silva is an Angolan entrepreneur who co-founded the country’s first restaurant and hotel review site, Luanda Nightlife. He has recently quit a well-paid job at a mobile phone company to run the business full-time, such is the growth in consumer demand.

“There is a lot going on in the restaurant industry that is very positive,” he says. “Last year, we organised the first Luanda Restaurant Week and we had 26 venues take part. This year, I’m looking at a list of 50 restaurants already, and we’re going to expand into [the large coastal city of] Benguela.”

With the growth in hotel and restaurant offerings, prices are slowly coming down. There are now more mid-market offerings, but with many high-earning expatriates on expense accounts and wealthier Angolans continuing to pay over the odds without blinking, many popular venues lack incentives to reduce their charges.

While acknowledging there was now more competition than in the past, Mr Silva says: “We really need lower prices if we want to attract tourists. People just aren’t going to come here if it’s to be more expensive than somewhere in Europe or the US.”

 

Angola's developments

The Okavango Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area is a giant cross-border initiative spanning Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Angola is making much of its part in the project, located in its remote south-east, although few details have emerged of provisions for tourists in the area.

Intercontinental Hotel and Casino in Luanda was first announced in late 2007, and the arrival of such a big international brand was hailed as a sign of Angola’s booming economy and tourism potential. The site, located beneath the plush Miramar district, has become a city landmark, even though the hotel is yet to open after eight years of construction. An IHG spokeswoman says that the project is “on hold”, although a recently flurry of construction activity on site has stirred rumours to the contrary.

Angola International Airport is a new airport that has been under construction on the periphery of Luanda since early 2007. The $3.8bn project, being built by an opaque Chinese-Angolan joint venture called China International Fund, is slated to have two runways, two terminals and the capacity to handle 13 million passengers, making it one of Africa’s largest airports. Luanda’s current airport, Quatro do Fevereiro, was upgraded in 2009 ahead of Angola hosting the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament, but it remains cramped and inefficient, with notoriously slow immigration queues.

Pestana Bay Hotel is a $280m flagship development by Portugal’s Pestana Group that was announced in 2010 and was supposed to be completed in 2017 in a landmark location in Luanda's city centre. However, in March this year, Pestana group president Dionísio Pestana told a Portuguese newspaper the project was “on hold”. Several other major developments around the city also appear to have had the brake applied due to the downturn in Angola's economic fortunes since the drop in the price of oil.

Baia de Luanda, Luanda’s bay, formed by the jutting out of the strip of land known as the 'ilea' has undergone a remarkable makeover in the past six years. The stagnant water has been drained away and large areas of the bay reclaimed to create an attractive palm tree-lined promenade dotted with parks and cafes. The next stage is to create a new financial district with hotels and living spaces, and on the Ilha, which already boasts some of the city’s best beachfront restaurants, create a brand new leisure zone. Like many Angolan projects, the launch was flashy but progress since has been slow, most recently attributed to the fall in oil price.

Cabo Ledo is long-time favourite weekend destination for Luanda-based expatriates who like to surf. However, the beach is undergoing some major development. A number of hotels and lodges are already open and more are in the planning. The government hopes to make Cabo Ledo an international surfing hotspot, although some feel over-development may spoil its rustic charm.

The numbers game

One significant development for Angolan tourism has been its recent inclusion on the itinerary of cruise ships making their way down the Atlantic coast, and the province of Namibe, close to the southern border with Namibia, is becoming increasingly popular with South Africans on fishing and surfing trips. In 2014, official tourist numbers for Angola reached nearly 500,000, although that was down from 650,000 the year before, and only a tiny portion were actual holiday-seeking tourists, with most being workers visiting on temporary visas for meetings or entering the country ahead of regularising their labour status or residency.

Paul Wesson, who was born in the UK but is a long-time resident of Angola, set up Eco-Tur, one of the country’s first tourism companies, 10 years ago. Although initially catering to predominantly expatriates seeking weekend excursions to waterfalls and national parks, he says interest from overseas is growing. “We have received a lot of interest from tour companies from Japan, the US and the UK, all of whom see Angola as a new and exciting destination to add to their portfolios,” he says.

Mr Wesson points to attractions such as the Kissama National Park, restocked with animals and heavily rehabilitated since the end of the civil war, and the new Okavango Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area, which Angola shares with Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

He acknowledges the development of tourism in Angola has been slower than some had hoped, and that the rebuilding process had taken some years to implement and consolidate. But he adds that there is a lot of new infrastructure that will benefit tourism, as well as a new government tourism promotion plan and a revised visa regime, although he too remains in the dark with regards to how the new entry system will work.

Oil dominance

Despite the ongoing reservations about Angola’s high prices and uncertainty over visas, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), an industry member group, is betting on the country as a rising star. Its 2015 report, published in March 2015, ranks Angola eighth out of 184 surveyed countries for its tourism growth prospects. However, not only is this growth coming from a very low base, in terms of tourism’s absolute contribution to the national economy (about 3% of gross domestic product [GDP]) the WTTC ranks Angola 172 out of 184 countries. 

This highlights how oil continues to dominate the national treasury and tourism is still only a very small part of the economic jigsaw.

The Ministry of Hotel and Tourism may have a long way to go before it can challenge the Ministry of Petroleum for economic supremacy, with oil currently accounting for about 50% of GDP. But, unlike the hydrocarbons sector, which is capital heavy and jobs light, hospitality is labour intensive, and it does have the potential to create badly needed new employment opportunities for Angolans. The government is targeting the creation of 1 million new positions linked to the sector by 2020, although the WTTC’s numbers are rather more modest, forecasting a total accumulation of 170,000 industry jobs by the end of 2015.

Skill shortages

Skill gaps, however, remain a major challenge. Visitors frequenting Luanda’s main tourists spots complain of the poor level of service and lack of English spoken in a country where the first tongue is Portuguese.

Although service quality has improved in the past few years, with the capital now boasting three five-star establishments, outside of the urban areas, Mr Scafidi acknowledges that there is still a long way to go. “The further into the peripheries you go, the harder it will be to find things that meet Western standards,” he says. “The language can be a barrier; not that many people speak English outside of Luanda, so it is helpful [for visitors] to speak some Portuguese if they are travelling alone.”

In an effort to address this skills shortage, in December 2014 the country’s new sovereign wealth fund, the Fundo Soberano de Angola (FSDEA) announced it would be investing in a national hotel school. Located in Benguela, the Academia de Gestão da Hospitalidade Angolana will provide training accredited by Switzerland’s Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne to a mix of full- and part-time students.

Mitchell Prather, managing director of Djembe Communications, speaking on behalf of the FSDEA, says that construction has begun on the campus and that the first intake of students is due to take place in February, at the start of the 2016 academic year.

Courses will initially be for Angolans, but the longer term plan is to open it up to students from around the region, although it is not clear if the language of instruction will be Portuguese or English.

“A thriving hospitality sector is vital for the national development and complements the FSDEA’s long-term investment approach that seeks to maximise economic and social returns for the state and citizens of Angola,” said FSDEA chairman José Filomeno dos Santos. “I’m confident that the academy will play an important role transmitting the skills to the next generation of professionals, so that they can be successful in their careers and ensure the services needed for this long-term sector.” 

The bricks and mortar

The FSDEA is also planning to invest in hospitality bricks and mortar through its $500m Hotel Fund for Africa vehicle, though to date it has not revealed any details of its targets. “A private equity vehicle is analysing opportunities at the moment, looking at existing hotels and also greenfield sites in Angola and in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Mr Prather.

The FSDEA may be bullish about high-yield tourism opportunities in Angola, but the country is yet to attract any major international hotel chains. A number of big names, such as Intercontinental, Starwood and Marriot, have been linked to Angola, but none of the much-hyped projects have materialised and as yet the only international operators are from Portugal, Angola’s former colonial power and major trade partner.

Mr Silva says that while he knows the country has a lot to offer, Angola still has a long way to go before it can hope to become a popular tourist destination. “We don’t really have a tourism industry at the moment,” he says. “We have people who live in Angola for work and they need somewhere to go to eat and spend the weekend.

“There is a lot of official rhetoric and as a country we have been talking for many years about tourism and how it has the potential to be an integral part of our economy, but I would personally like to see more action.”

He welcomes the introduction of a new tourist visa, but urges other steps too. “We have a very rich culture and we need more museums and venues so we can showcase them more effectively. We also need to do more to preserve our cultural landmarks, rather than tearing them down and building shopping malls. These things are important for tourism.”

PLEASE ENTER YOUR DETAILS TO WATCH THIS VIDEO

All fields are mandatory

The Banker is a service from the Financial Times. The Financial Times Ltd takes your privacy seriously.

Choose how you want us to contact you.

Invites and Offers from The Banker

Receive exclusive personalised event invitations, carefully curated offers and promotions from The Banker



For more information about how we use your data, please refer to our privacy and cookie policies.

Terms and conditions

Join our community

The Banker on Twitter