Non-profit organisation Youth Tourism South Africa (YTSA) has formed alliances with the events and art industries in the push for tourism recovery post-COVID.

YTSA was formed last year after the founders identified a gap in the market for developing youth tourism. The organisation’s primary focus is to educate youth in tourism and to give a voice to all those involved in the industry.

In a webinar this week, YTSA outlined its plan to unify the tourism, events and arts industries.

Once travel restrictions were implemented in South Africa, YTSA surveyed members to learn where help was needed and how to plan ahead for post-COVID. “We started with one WhatsApp group with Eastern Cape-based operators and quickly found that people wanted to be a part of it on a national scale,” said YTSA Director, Lizani Smith. She added that the organisation now ran over 80 WhatsApp groups for tourism businesses nationwide.

“Within these tourism business groups we kept seeing events and arts businesses asking if we could assist them, and that is why we decided to align,” said Smith. She told Tourism Update that the tourism, events and art industries were the first to be impacted by the pandemic and were the last still struggling to recover.

“The industries are well interlinked. To make an event happen, you have entertainment and it impacts tourism in terms of accommodation and venues,” said Smith.

Although domestic leisure travel is permitted, Smith said the events and art industries would only feel a benefit once gatherings of more than 50 people were allowed.

“To adhere to all the protocols is too expensive,” she said, explaining that cleaning venues and providing sanitising and personal protective equipment wouldn’t be sustainable until more guests were allowed.

She said once this happened, the results would reflect in tourism through restaurants and accommodations.

In the meantime, she said, YTSA had created a protocol council – a central resource for each industry to access updated protocols and best practices.