Ideally, tourism graduates should be proud of being highly trained to work in the tourism industry as it is a priority sector for one of the six core pillars of South Africa’s growth. Existing literature indicates that tourism graduates are abandoning the labour sector that they were highly trained for.

This motivated me to conduct research, with the main aim of determining tourism graduates’ perceptions of work in tourism. This writing is therefore based on my study research findings.

My main findings underlined that the working career of the majority of tourism graduates was, on average, four years before exiting the industry to pursue a different career. This was mainly attributed to predominance of unfavourable work conditions across the tourism industry. These included: high labour turnover, poor job security, slim chances for career progression as most companies are family-run; and, most commonly, low salaries and no health care or retirement plan benefits.

Additionally, tourism graduates find it difficult to access decent work as their tertiary tourism qualifications seem not to be valued in the tourism labour market. Tourism employers also seem not to comprehend the benefits of recruiting university tourism graduates compared with employees who can do the job without qualifications.

Such findings call for a need for tourism role players to sustainably address the poor image and status of work in the tourism industry, a priority sector for South Africa’s growth. Unfortunately, key tourism role players are neglecting the subject as they mainly focus on increasing tourist arrivals. The following sections briefly discuss shortfalls by the public and private tourism role players in promoting inclusive and sustainable tourism growth, particularly by not addressing the negative aspects of work in tourism.

The tourism public sector

The National Department of Tourism (NDT) should be fully aware of the nature of work in the South African tourism industry as the 2011 National Tourism Sector Strategy (NTSS) prioritised creation of sustainable employment in tourism. Unfortunately over four years have passed since the department showed priority interest on work in tourism, yet no noticeable progress has been made, a reflection that a priority objective in the NTSS has become a policy rhetoric without practical means to improve work in the sector.

In addition, the public sector also legislate labour laws that seem unfavourable to tourism employees, a noticeable one being the 2015 hospitality sector minimum wage of approximately R15 per hour. It was clear from the study that most graduates criticised this minimum wage gazetted in the labour law.

The South African public sector also implemented controversial immigration laws from a tourism perspective, as the industry deemed them volatile to tourism growth and particularly to the stability of work in tourism.

The tourism private sector

The tourism private sector is seemingly not capacitated or perhaps not motivated to address the unfavourable working conditions mentioned earlier. The main excuses for this shortfall include tourism seasonality and the unpredictable business environments such as disease outbreaks and controversial government policies. These factors definitely pose great threats to the survival of tourism organisations.

Despite these factors, the majority of tourism organisations have formidably expanded from being small tourism firms to market leaders. This indicates that such organisations were profitable enough to be capable to improve their employees’ wellbeing. Instead, the majority of the tourism organisations myopically neglect to invest in human resources and chiefly focus on expanding other business areas. This causes a high staff turnover, a dominant feature in the tourism industry, and a shortage of professionals with tourism-related skills.

Overall, tourism employees are vulnerable to the current state of work in tourism, as the public and private sectors in tourism are neglecting to improve work in the industry. This calls for a need for tourism role players to collaborate in establishing focus areas to address the unfavourable work conditions in tourism. This should improve the working career of tourism graduates and eradicate shortage of professionals with tourism-related skills in the industry.