Do we want to have tourists!

[Michael Alexander]

This irritated me...... As many of you know, I built a website just to show any potential tourists what we have here. I have known for a number of years that many outsiders wanted to visit. There is plenty to see and do here...... Anyhow towards the end of last year, the politicians said, don't worry about the clearances, we can get it done in 5 days...... so i put the site out there and provided , free of charge, exposure for the various accommodation  places in town, we had a few people apply ....... we even had a director of a major tour company in Namibia visit over December.......

Then we got a big one, Fly in Safari's , this is an international group that fly groups of tourists around Botswana, Caprivi, down the coast of Namibia and onto Ai-Ais and out to South Africa, they always wanted to come to Omund, but could not get it arranged. It's only 26 people ...... So through the site, they got hold of me and I passed the mails onto the various accommodation people...... this dragged on for about 2 months and at the end of the day the following happened...\

1) The politicians did'nt get it right, you cannot clear within 5 days..
2) The Accommodation guy was not interested.....

The mind boggles, I have now handed the email over to some catering people who can see the potential and hopefully they will arrange for this group to spend two days here.....

What get's me, is that the locals want to make money, but do not seem prepared to , promote or put any effort into making tourism a reality in this town....

I know that tourism will not sustain Oranjemund, but make no mistake there is no reason why the two cannot operate alongside each other, perhaps compliment each other....

The big gripe I have from the mines perspective about tourism is two fold.....

1) I know that they are only interested in their core activity. However, they used to run very popular mine tours. This was stopped a number of years ago. Then people that used to run this venture for the mine wanted to run it themselves. Obviously they did not havbe the funding to purchase the vehicles to perform such tasks,all they could see was the pot of gold at the end of the tour rainbow...... then obviously other people attached to various NAMDEB depts tried to get in on the act.... at the end of the day and two years wasted the whole thing fell to pieces..... people that thought they knew how to setup such a concern, not as easy as that when everyone is fighting over the pie..

2) The mine may stand back and say that they only mine diamonds, but do they not realise how important it is for such a large African based mining company to have an efficient PR campaign/department, obviously one of the easiest methods was the mine tours. They should be running this themselves, it would take 2 people , a bus driver with a bus , a fax machine and telephone and Bob's your uncle..... any person with a sound business mind can see that this operation would/should make a small profit and cover the salaries of the individuals of those running it , at the same time once again letting the world see their mine, see that their operations are not tainted, see the grand scale of the operations involved in recovering one carat of crystal from the womb of the ancient Namib desert..... see how the mine is rehabilitating the area and above all bring the town tourists......

All major mines throughout the world provide mine tours, we used to have one of the best, what happened..... ?


Just  my Sunday morning 2 cents....

ps.... I remember how I shook my head in disbelief when our OPS schoolkids had to go on a mine tour at neighbouring Rosh Pinah, because we don't do it..... What a scandal, what a sham, how can you grow up in one of the world's most famous diamond mines and never even know what goes on in there..... it was the norm in the 60's.70's, 80's and half the 90's for OPS kids to go on the mine tour, a plus if you got to see your father plying his trade....

[SandyB]

Heartfelt comments Mike  and  a  definite ...         to those  parties that messed it up ....  gawd  sounds like they couldnt even organise  a pissup in a brewery ....  shame on them ....  PS  tell them the coffee is cold and the  milk already curdled on top ...

[John Haycox]

I can't believe it.  No mine tours for OPS.  Goodness, when we were children we regularly went to the mines.  I don't know how children can be brought up there, and never see the workings of the place.

I'm lost for words.

[Michael Alexander]

Just to add to the above gripe, I have stated this elsewhere, what is a potential tourist company actually going to be able to show tourists, now that most of the historical part of the mine has been removed......