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PMR's Editorial philosophy:
"It is only by standing on the shoulders of
giants that I have been able to see further."
Sir Isaac Newton,
1642–1727
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Editor’s Pulpit
Tourism to the rescue
Barbara Wood, Executive Chairman & Editor-in-Chief
Tourism in South Africa is a key sector as identified by the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA) for future growth and job creation. Can tourism rescue South Africa’s economic growth rate – which is currently under threat because of all the known, and amply debated, challenges of power shortages, galloping crime rate, continued unemployment, unabated HIV/Aids occurrence, impacts from the US sub-prime crisis and resultant recession?
Many of these factors will keep tourists very far from our shores (particularly crime). For tourists, it can still be romantic to eat their meals by candlelight, if there are power outages. Experiencing mugging, robberies, murders, rapes, heists, etc., will not only chase them from our shores but will also make them warn other potential tourists and investors against ever coming to South Africa. However, once ‘brave’ tourists reach South Africa, they will expect a lot more, to make up for coming to a country where they were told to fear for their lives. The tourism industry faces not only the challenges of keeping tourists safe, but faces the challenge of a lack of skills.
The Tourism and Sport Skills Initiative is a partnership between the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), the Tourism, Hospitality & Sport Education & Training Authority (THETA) and the National Business Initiative (NBI) to identify, develop and acquire priority skills in the tourism industry. This is in order to contribute meaningfully to the ASGISA and Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) objectives for transformation, growth, skills development and job creation in this sector.
The collaboration resulted in the launch of the 2008/9 Tourism Sector Skills Plan (SSP).
An efficient and growing Tourism sector requires that the supply of skills matches the demand – not only in numbers but also in terms of international standards. The current skills trend in the sector indicates that demand far outstrips supply. This is further compounded by the fact that the current training and development strategies seem unable to both remedy the current situation and to meet the requirements of the near future. Skills such as leadership and management, executive chefs, business management, marketing, languages, communication, information technology, financial management and customer service have been classified as scarce and critical skills.
Mike Tsotetsi, CEO of THETA officially launched the annual SSP for the sector which lays the groundwork for the implementation of appropriate skills and is an important tool for service delivery.
Moeketsi Mosola, CEO of SA Tourism, commended the industry on the progress it has made but reiterated that much work still needed to be done. The importance of developing tourism skills among learners at primary, high school and tertiary level was emphasised. The NBI’s Travel & Tourism Programme (TTP) plays an important role in supporting Tourism educators nationally. The TTP is an example of some of the initiatives underway to strengthen the delivery of tourism-related learning in the education sector.
The Department of Labour’s Florius Prinsloo also commended the sector for the progress made and outlined various initiatives that the Department has undertaken, most notable of which is the codification of occupations in the Country.
However, a concern was raised by Brett Dungan from Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa that the skills partnership required a cohesive effort from industry to ensure the development of suitable staff in the run-up to 2010 and beyond. Such a process will require ongoing and meaningful engagement between industry, DEAT and THETA.
Education providers will be brought into the national tourism plans to ensure the development and alignment of training programmes to the scarce and critical skills needs of the sector, as identified through the Tourism and Sport Skills Audit conducted in 2007.
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