MTPA acting CEO Justus Mohlala. Picture: Supplied
Mpumalanga townships and villages are set for a treat when tourism month kicks off across the country next month.
The fourth annual provincial expo hosted by Jakada Holdings (Pty) Ltd, in partnership with the Mpumalanga Tourism & Parks Agency (MTPA), will this year be focusing, among others, on township tourism.
This year’s tourism expo will be hosted from October 4-6, and the main aim is to bolster township economies and curb unemployment across the province.
The aim of the expo is to promote domestic tourism in South Africa and the Mpumalanga province.
Speaking at the media launch at Kanyamazene township near Nelspruit last week, MTPA acting CEO Justu Mohlala said the expo was a vehicle for regional tourism integration in the spirit of the Triland agreement signed between Mpumalanga, the Kingdom of Eswatini and Mozambique.
He said township tourism had always been their priority point to grow tourism.
“In the past we developed a strategy that was focussing on the second tourism economy which looked at township and village tourism.
“It first has to do with the mind shift both as the consumers and of the tourism experiences in the township and those that are offering the experiences... The priority now is that we need to take tourism to the second economy which is the villages and the townships.
“First we have to develop the products. There is potential in both villages and townships. That needs to be natured and packaged properly so that it can be sold out there,” Mohlala said.
He added that in their endeavour to take tourism to the townships and the villages, they were working with the tour operators.
“Where there are products that are worth exposing to international tourists we speak to them to consider them,” he said.
Asked if crime played a big role in preventing tourists visiting townships, Mohlala brushed it off intimating that the crimes didn’t necessarily take place in the townships themselves.
“The issue of crime happens in transit. The crime that we have experienced is not exactly in the townships... We also have tourism awareness campaigns that we have put together.
“This is so that local people don’t look at tourists as targets but as people who will grow the economy,” he said.
He said the entity wanted to see this expo growing from what it is now to something bigger so that it becomes a signature expo because the province was preferred by tourists.
“This entity is mandated to support small businesses and the youth to participate in the tourism mainstream... We have quite a number of programmes that we are rolling out that are targeting the youth. We are working together with the universities. Their graduates are getting experiential learnerships with us... We expose them to the different areas within tourism, depending on what they studied.”
The Star
mashudu.sadike@inl.co.za
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