Transforming tourism in South Africa: Towards a youth empowerment model

Abstract

Tourism is important for its growing potential to create jobs and new businesses, generate foreign currency and contribute to the GDP of the country. The aim of this article is to unpack how tourism could be transformative in creating jobs for the youth and to develop a model for youth empowerment. The capacity of tourism to create jobs for the less and unskilled as well as parttimers as opposed to full timers is being recognized. The problem of youth unemployment is untenable and calls for a paradigm shift in the manner in which the issue should be addressed. Based on extant literature and primarily a desktop review, this article was compiled. This article posits a model whose aim is to craft an overarching pathway towards the empowerment of blacks and the transformation of the tourism sector through education and training, professional development and support to entrepreneurship development through a multi-sector collaboration in South Africa. The model suggests the creation of a collaborative structure, the national youth empowerment forum (with decentralized offices) to champion its implementation. The model suggests pathways for being ‘employees’ and pathways for ‘entrepreneurs’ based on individual aspirations. This model is a tool upon which deliberative policies which aim at uplifting the educational status and employability chances of the youth can be developed and importantly to traverse a path towards total empowerment and transformation.

Keywords: Tourism, youth, empowerment, tourism transformation, South Africa