Tourism a soft career option often shunned – Mmatšatši Marobe
15. Oct, 2008
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Durban – Speaking at the inaugural National Tourism Career Expo currently held in Durban, Chief Executive Officer of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa, Mmatšatši Marobe said, for far too long “our” industry has taken the back seat, while many other industries are busy recording substantial growth attracting fresh talents on a continuous basis. “If you look at career options such as accountancy specifically the Chartered Accountant field, annually there are good recordings of students registering for such a field of study at institutions of higher learning while the same cannot be said about tourism.”
Marobe said part of the reason for low recordings in new entrants is due to many factors which largely revolves around the perception of tourism as a soft career option often shunned – seen as a study area for students with no ambition or with no other option. “However we view this mentality as quite frightening considering that tourism is highly regarded by many countries all over the world to be the driver of economic growth, entrepreneurship and job creation. The same phenomenon has taken effect in our very own country with tourism regarded as one of the priority sector within government.” she said.
She said it is against this background that as the tourism industry, “we also need to pause and take responsibility for the negative perception attributed to our sector by students and other sections of society.”
“It has taken us a long time to know and understand that we were a mystery sector to many people in our society – with many of them not understanding the sector – how we make money and how we run our businesses on a day-to-day basis. “for a while we took pleasure in knowing that fewer people understood our sector – not even concerned by the fact that students and graduates were not choosing to pursue their career dreams in our sector.
“Our eyes only opened when some of our major role players in the sector begun to experience problems in securing and retaining the skills required assisting them in running their businesses successfully”
According to Marobe as early as 2006, with the skills concern rising and putting pressure on the sector’s growth, then the tourism industry embarked on an industry wide skills audit to understand the extend of the skills challenge.
She said in the 2006 National Skills Audit, the industry identified key focus areas to address the skills challenge and this include identifying critical skills and addressing quality assurance concerns with training service providers. “The results of the audit found that tourism industry is very service orientated and accordingly the industry is relatively labour intensive resulting in a constant need for skilled labour which is highly dependent on knowledge transfer, up-skilling and on the job training programmes.”
This Expo serves as a platform to encourage school learners, students and unemployed youth to pursue a career in tourism. Even though the tourism sector is one of the largest and most diverse industries in the world, it remains a largely untapped sector when it comes to attracting young individuals to choose it as a career.
In giving a picture of the industry’s outlook, Marobe said the current employment profile provides indication of the skills demand, for instance the current number of employees is estimated at 600 000 and about 100 000 are registered with Tourism, Hospitality, Sport Education and Training Authority (THETA).
The number of enterprises is estimated to be above 40 000 and about 20 000 are registered with THETA. About 90 percent of the registered enterprises are SMEs and they employ less than 50 people. A total of 72 percent are employed either as service workers, casuals or unskilled labourers. Fifty four percent of the employees are female and a majority is employed as service workers. Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal house about 76 percent of the enterprises whilst the other six provinces share the remaining 24 percent. “This is a clear indication that the supply of skills in our sector needs some serious overhaul, as we are in an industry that consists both of a stock and flow of skills.”
“Unfortunately, at present, the stock of skills in this sector does not match the demand, and the flow and formation of skills is not optimally geared to remedy the situation or to meet the requirements of the near future. In short, the stock of skills to the sector is inadequate to the enterprises and therefore there is a need for new entrants, concludes Marobe.
The National Tourism Career Expo is running from 14 to 16 October in Durban. The TBCSA will extend the project to other provinces as follows: Gauteng – Monday 20 October 2008 – University of Pretoria followed by University of Johannesburg on Wednesday 22 October and the last leg will be held at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in the Western Cape on Thursday, 23 October 2008.
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My name is Muzi Mohale a full-time travel blogger, your host at Travelwires.com responsible for all editorial on this blog. I blog about the travel and tourism industry in Africa. Apart from blogging about tourism, I also run 
I have been a hospitality technology professional in the tourism and vacation field for 20 years. I completely agree that young people and commerce official in any government, should see the tourism field as an ever growing industry and one that is generally very positive for a countries “public diplomacy” and enviornment. Hospitality and tourism knowledge is a skill set that is readily transferable around the world as well.