Measuring the competitiveness of South Africa as a tourist destination

Berendien Lubbe is Head of the Division: Tourism Management at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She specialises in air transport and tourism and corporate travel management. She is a National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated scientist in South Africa and has published her work in accredited international journals and also presented at numerous international conferences. Felicite Fairer-Wessels is an associate professor in the Division: Tourism Management at the University of Pretoria. She specialises in ecotourism and attractions and events. She holds degrees in information sciences and has published on the role of information in various tourism contexts. Anneli Douglas is a senior lecturer in the Division: Tourism Management at the University of Pretoria. She specialises in business and corporate travel and ICTs. She holds a Ph.D. in Tourism Management and has lectured at Tertiary institutions since 2005. Her research has been published in internationally accredited journals, and she has delivered papers at international academic conferences. Elizabeth Kruger is a Ph.D. graduate of the Division Tourism Management at the University of Pretoria, lecturing at under and post graduate levels. Areas of research interest include sports tourism and destination marketing. Her doctoral study focused on the issue of environmentally responsible behaviour of sport event spectators.Oral Presentatio

Increasing Student Employability through University/Industry Collaboration: A study in South Africa, the UK and Finland

Due to its high youth unemployment the study focused on South Africa but covered selected universities in the UK and Finland for the purposes of comparison and benchmarking. The purpose of the study was to determine the perceptions of industry, lecturers and students on the competencies gained at university and the benefits of university enterprise collaboration (UEC) to students. Data was collected through mixed methods: a structured survey and semi-structured interviews. UEC is shown to increase student employability and work-readiness but several challenges to implementing such collaboration exist, particularly in South Africa. Based on the results the paper proposes that technology can be used to overcome the gaps in achieving effective UEC and thereby increasing the employability of students in South Africa

Regional competitiveness: an emerging domestic market segment perspective

Regional competitiveness and domestic tourism is increasingly important for a sustainable tourism economy at national level. The development of a competitive provincial index for the South African emerging domestic market is under scrutiny/investigation. Provincial competitiveness is a province’s ability to optimize its attractiveness for domestic tourists by offering quality, innovative and attractive tourism services to gain domestic market share, while ensuring that available resources supporting tourism are used efficiently and in a sustainable way. Competitiveness at provincial level will ultimately result in national competitiveness as issues of supply are addressed (at local level). Factors and indicators relevant to selected regions/provinces/destinations are empirically identified through focus groups and a sample of 1065 emerging tourists in eight provinces of South Africa. A Tourism and Travel Market Indicators Index consisting of nine validated factors are proposed that can be used to compare the competitiveness of regions based on factors most relevant to the domestic market