Minister of Tourism, Tokozile Xasa consulted with the tourism industry on the Draft National Tourism Sector (NTSS), on August 7, at Radisson Blu, Sandton, Johannesburg.

The consultative session aimed to solicit inputs and try to stimulate the public and private sectors to ensure alignment and the sharing of resources in the implementation of the NTSS after approval by Cabinet. 

The NTSS is a tourism development framework with the vision of South Africa becoming a top-20 tourist destination in the world by 2020. In 2017, Spain, France and Germany took the top three places in the world for tourism, as per the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report with SA currently ranked 53.

The NTSS also serves as a guiding document for economic growth and job creation in the tourism sector.

“The NTSS is a long-term framework that responds to the country’s development imperatives. We want to align ourselves to the NDP and contribute to the national agenda to inclusive growth by creating jobs and growing the economy. As we finalise the review of the strategy, we want to ensure that we contribute directly to the economy of the country,” said the Minister.

She also mentioned that key among their targets was to achieve an increase of direct jobs to one million by 2026, which sees a jump from the 702 824 direct jobs that were recorded in 2015.

Director-General, Victor Tharage, presented the draft NTSS, with the emphasis on five strategic pillars of the strategy, being effective marketing, facilitating ease of access, visitor experience, destination management practices, and broad-based benefits.

Tharage said for the destination management practices to work, collaboration was essential and must come into play. As for marketing, he said as SA did not have deep pockets, all marketing campaigns had to be effective.

Tharage touched on seasonality, which has been a popular topic, especially amongst the tourism industry in the Western Cape and said to combat it, the industry was aiming to embrace sporting events during the low seasons.

 “Sustainability in the South African context depends on transformation of the sector. Our approach needs to be evidence driven,” said Tharage.

The 15-member NTSS Review Panel of Experts is scheduled to meet on August 10 to consider the public submissions and recommend the Final Draft NTSS to the Minister for endorsement.

In her brief Xasa emphasised ocean tourism, and the promotion of SA’s coastline, as well as township tourism as major selling points for South Africa, as they already receive high numbers of annual tourists, and this is something she suggests SA could grow even further. On closing, Minister Xasa said: “We want industry to embrace the ‘We do Tourism’ campaign.”