South Africa is on a mission to be one of the top 20 destinations in the world by 2020. The government’s master plan is to develop responsible tourism.
South Africa’s plan is to focus only on the number of people or foreigners who visit their country and to research the amount of money they spend, stated Tokozile Xasa, the Tourism Deputy Minister. Responsible tourism was defined as an approach in tourism management which is centralized on maximizing economic, environmental and social benefits and minimizing expenditures regarding destinations by creating better places for everyone to live in and, of course, better places to visit.
The topic was discussed at the International Responsible Tourism Conference in London. Xasa, one of the participants of the conference, said that responsible tourism is all about focusing on sustainability of the solutions.
Xasa also said that the world is beginning to realize that the “responsible tourism” approach is the best one because of the factor of sustainability. In addition to these, the approach is more people oriented. People are constantly searching for authentic experiences. Tourists want to travel to South Africa because of that very reason.
The place is raw and rich in culture. He also said that tourism is one of all the six sectors that South Africa was able to identify as part of the new growth path that they want to follow. They were able to breakdown areas in tourism so they are sure that by 2020 the country will become one of the top 20 destinations in the world. In addition to this, a big part of the goal is to be able to create more that 225,000 sustainable jobs by then.
South Africa is proud to say that they are starting to attract a big amount of tourists from various markets. A large population of the tourists come from Africa and Asia.
Although there is recession going on all over the world, there are still a lot of opportunities because emerging markets were opened to them during the soccer world cup. The tourism sector of Africa was exposed to a lot of countries that they never regarded as potential markets. Europe and South America remains the country’s major source of long haul tourists.