In its tenth year, the National Tourism Career Expo (NTCE) will be hosted for the first time by the North West province in South Africa, from September 28-30 at the Sun City Resort.
The Deputy Minister of Tourism, Elizabeth Thabethe, and Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Tourism in the North West, Desbo Mohono, hosted media to the launch of the NTCE on Thursday morning in Taung, North West province.
The NTCE is a collaboration of the Department of Tourism, the Culture Arts, Tourism, Hospitality and Sport Education Training Authority (CATHSSETA), and the North West Department of Tourism as the host province for the next three years (2018-2020), as it rotates among provinces who bid for the rights to host the event over a period of three years.
Congratulating the North West for winning the bid to host the event, Thabethe said the province had the resources to support the sector in skills development.
“The NTCE has grown to be a brand and a key event in South Africa’s tourism calendar, and has gone a long way in profiling and creating awareness of tourism as a vibrant career of choice. We celebrate with the North West for being afforded an opportunity to showcase this important event,” said Thabethe.
“We launch the NTCE at the start of an important month in the calendar of the tourism industry, as we celebrate both Tourism and Heritage Month in our country. This year’s NTCE will be the most spectacular the country has ever seen, and this is a promise we intend to keep,” said Mohono.
The expo provides a chance for tourism curricula experts and industry skills specialists to share information with tourism educators and learners, on a variety of career choices and opportunities the sector offers.
Thus far, 21 exhibitors have confirmed to partake in this year’s NTCE, and is expected to draw in 4 500 learners from across the North West province, and an additional 1 500 from other provinces nationwide, making it the largest ever learner career excursion in the country, according to the Department of Tourism.
The NTCE is designed to bridge the information gap between the industry, government, learners and educators under the theme ‘Tourism alive with opportunities’, and aims to drive the goals set in South Africa’s National Tourism Sector Strategy of creating 300 000 tourism job opportunities by 2026.
The expo is a key among the deliverables of the National Tourism Sector Strategy, as it responds to the Broad Based Benefits pillar that focuses on transformation, rural tourism development, enterprise development and investment – none of which is mutually exclusive. Improvements are required in all of these three pillar areas to strengthen the realisation of Broad Based Benefits from tourism.
In closing, Chairperson of CATHSSETA, Dr. Victor Ramathesele, expressed his organisation’s vested interest in ensuring the strategic support intent of the NTCE to create a future pool of human capital that will support the current and future tourism growth in South Africa.
“As a labour-intensive industry, we understand that this human capital needs to have access to skills development to ensure that they are adequately skilled to support the sector,” concluded Ramathesele.
