National Tourism Sector Strategy Launched

The National Tourism Sector Strategy (NTSS) was launched yesterday by the Minister of Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, who said it would help position tourism as one of the fundamental pillars of the South African economy.

“The NTSS is a result of intense collaboration between the National Department of Tourism (NDT), an advisory panel of top industry minds, representatives of a variety of professional bodies in the tourism sector, academia, provinces, tourism-marketing agencies, civil society, local and national governments and members of the public,” said Van Schalkwyk.

“The process of formulating the strategy, gathering and incorporating comments and input and fine-tuning this product was comprehensive and consultative and the result is a sector strategy we can all collectively take ownership of,” he added.

The NDT received more than 37 000 inputs on the draft strategy, which was published in May last year. “These were considered and further bilateral consultations on the revised draft strategy were held with stakeholders,” said the NDT in a statement. “The final document has therefore been more than 18 months in the making and was formally approved by Cabinet on March 2, 2011.”

“The vision of the NTSS is to position SA as one of the top 20 tourism destinations globally by 2020, and I believe our concerted and focused efforts as a sector will enable us to reach this goal,” said the Minister.

Key focus areas of the NTSS are:

- Arrivals – the strategy will direct the achievement of increased numbers of tourists to SA, with a target of increasing foreign tourist arrivals to 15 million in 2020.

- GDP – the aim is to increase tourism’s contribution to GDP from an estimated R189,4bn in 2009 to R499bn by 2020.

- Job creation – the aim is to create 225 000 jobs by 2020.

To achieve these three overarching objectives, the NTSS will focus on:

- Domestic tourism development – by increasing the number of domestic trips from 30,9 million in 2009 to 54 million by 2020.

- Regional tourism development – by establishing five SA Tourism offices within the continent by 2020.

- Emerging markets – the NTSS requires that in terms of the determination of target markets and marketing approaches we recognise the need to leverage on the platforms facilitated by BRICS.

- Business Events – by establishing a National Convention Bureau under the auspices of SA Tourism, which will be operational in the new financial year.