CAPACITY building for tourism at local government level is critical to improving the overall planning for and management of South Africa’s tourism industry.

Identified as one of the problem areas that needs to be resolved as part of the Tourism Sector Strategy, under public comment until July 31, lack of understanding and knowledge of tourism at a local government level “should be addressed as a matter of urgency”.

Local government is where tourism delivery takes place and there are many issues related to tourism planning and management within this sphere of government.

There are few dedicated, or part-time, tourism personnel and experience. Knowledge of tourism is extremely limited and with rare exceptions no budget is allocated to tourism and planning and development activities often ignore tourism.

The inherited situation from the national department responsible, now COGTA, is that there is no requirement to plan or budget for tourism support.

The current lack of specific budget allocation towards the development of tourism at local government level is particularly problematic, and should be addressed as a matter of urgency.

The Sector Strategy outlines several actions to address the issue.

It states that there must be engagement with SALGA (South African Local Government Association), national treasury and COGTA to ensure that a comprehensive framework for the tourism activity at local level is developed, including ensuring that budget is made available for tourism within relevant local municipalities.

Several sub-actions are outlined including:

•    Develop a set of minimum responsibilities for local government and identify municipalities in terms of whether these have high, medium or low tourism potential as an economic driver. Each of these levels would then have different standards and different planning and budgetary requirements.
•    Conduct an audit of the current skills levels of tourism officials within relevant local government and develop and roll out training programmes to address the skills gaps.
•    Roll out tourism awareness and understanding training at local government level.
•    Create monitoring and measurement mechanisms to track the tourism performance of local municipalities.
•    Investigate ways of unlocking the tourism potential of municipal tourism assets, such as resorts, caravan parks, museums etc through partnerships with private sector.

If you have any views on this issue or how the sector’s strategy needs to be changed with regard to research and knowledge management, simply submit your comments to the National Department of Tourism at strategy@tourism.gov.za well ahead of the July 31 deadline.
 
The countdown is on with only 33 days left to comment – don’t miss the opportunity to make your voice heard.