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Provincial Tourism Resource Audit To Boost Development and Job Creation

31 July 2008 Economic development, small tourism enterprise development and job creation in the Northern Cape is set to receive an important boost with the commissioning of a tourism resource audit by the provincial Department of Tourism, Environment and Conservation.

This is a significant tourism management initiative flowing from the recommendations contained in the Tourism Master Plan adopted for tourism development and promotion in the province three years ago.

The end goal of the project is to use information generated through surveys for guiding a process whereby tourism businesses and attractions are clustered together thus creating attractive regionalised tourism experiences spread out across the province.

The tourism experience clusters will be designed in such a manner that it meets the tourism market needs. Creating the clusters is part of a stronger drive to attract a significantly higher number of visitors to the Northern Cape, but also to occupy them for a much longer time in the province. Once this is successfully accomplished, more money will flow into the provincial economy through increased tourist spending while more jobs will be created as the need to offer more services to tourists filters through the provincial tourism and general retail industries.

In an effort to improve the practical skills levels of staff in the Tourism Directorate, teams made up of staff members under guidance of a specialist service provider, will do surveys in the provincial regions. The aim is to create a database of all tourism businesses and attractions in the Northern Cape.

The tourism resource audit surveys will consist of personal visits to tourism enterprises and tourist attractions, no matter how small or big, in areas with a strong local tourism industry and telephone interviews in other areas. Tourism product owners will be requested to fill out a questionnaire designed to profile each tourism business or attraction.

Survey interviews will take roughly 30 minutes to complete and will cover key product information such as:

• Name of establishment;
• Type of establishment;
• Bed capacity of rooms (where applicable);
• Additional services offered (e.g. conference facilities, chapel, spa, etc.);
• Contact details;
• Physical address and physical location (GPS waypoint);
• Market segments that use the product;
• Type of market activities that are undertaken;
• Challenges faced by products; and
• Keenness to be part of a cooperation marketing campaign.

Once available, the survey results will be used to create electronic maps indicating the location of all types of tourism businesses and attractions in relation to provincial roads, rivers, large game parks and dams. These electronic maps will then be used to identify opportunities for further tourism business and attraction development in the province, as well as the finalisation of the clustering of the tourism experiences to be offered in the Northern Cape.

The success of the study depends on full cooperation and support from the tourism product owners. As a tourism product owner, tourism service provider or key tourism stakeholder, their input and contribution to this survey will be invaluable. To ensure that all the relevant tourism services and tourism products are captured in the Departmental databases, we request the assistance of all product owners in providing detailed feedback to the assigned project team.

Work has already started in the Frances Baard, Kgalagadi and Pixley Ka Seme districts. As of the 14th July 2008 surveys will be conducted in the Siyanda and Namakwa districts.

The Department therefore would like to raise the public’s awareness that project teams will be travelling through their regions to gather information. The team will be made up of officials from KPMG, the service provider appointed by the department, as well as officials from the Tourism Directorate of the Department of Tourism, Environment and Conservation.

The Department would also like to assure all product owners that their inputs will be treated as confidential information and only be used for internal planning processes.

The tourism product owners are welcome to contact the following persons should you wish to verify the credentials of the team calling at your door or find out more about the project:

• Drinie Samson (Director: Tourism Management, DTEC):
082-319-6050 / 053-807-7319

• Johann van Schalkwyk (Manager: Partnerships & Industry Development, DTEC)
079-525-3854 / 053-807-7381

• Sipho Mampe (Manager: Research, Planning & Quality Management, DTEC)
082-414-0295 / 053-807-7378


Issued by the Department of Tourism, Environment and Conservation

Mr. Mandla Ndzilili/Mr Clyde Malander
Tel: 053-807 7373/053 807 7369
Cell: 082 776 4337
Fax: 053-832 1026
Email: mndzilili@ncpg.gov.za / cmalander@ncpg.gov.za

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