Mpumalanga Business 2019/20 edition

OVERVIEW
Tourism
The Mpumalanga Liberation Heritage Route
has been launched.
SECTOR INSIGHT
Training programmes are empowering
rural communities.
Kruger National Park is Mpumalanga’s most famous tourism
asset. Other notable landmarks include God’s Window and
the Blyde River Canyon but the province’s newest asset is
ancient.
A three-billion-year-old micro-fossil found in the Makhonjwa
Mountains near Barberton and the border with Swaziland is thought
to be the oldest sign of life on the planet. Now the Makhonjwa
Mountains, themselves somewhere between 3.2-billion and
3.6-billion years old, have been declared a World Heritage Site by
the United Nations Educational‚ Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO). The tourist offering near Barberton has been branded
the Genesis Route.
This brings to 10 the number of World Heritage Sites in South
Africa and opens up the possibility of a new type of niche tourism
for Mpumalanga. Funds for conservation of the area will be made
available from the World Heritage Fund.
Visitors to Graskop Gorge can now drop 50m into the gorge via a
glass elevator which was built by Enza Construction. The R25-million
Graskop Gorge Tourism Attraction Centre contains a 200-seater
restaurant, an overhanging veranda, a ticket office, curio shops and
an area for informal traders to sell their wares.
Although the province already caters for motor-rally enthusiasts,
cyclists, runners, walkers, fishers, horse-riders, tree-gliders, abseilers,
white-water rafters and rock climbers, there is still potential for more
investment in the ecotourism and
adventure tourism subsectors.
Another option for tourists was
recently added to the province’s
portfolio, the Mpumalanga
Liberation Heritage Route.
Twenty-five young women
from rural areas are receiving
training in hospitality as part
of the Hazyview Project, an
offshoot of the Travel and
Tourism Excellence Academy.
The programme is jointly
sponsored by Amadeus, a travel
technology company, Economic
Development Solutions and the
Thebe Tourism Group.
Hazyview is near the Kruger
National Park and the students
are expected to be employed
at a new hotel at Skukuza when
they graduate. The Good Work
Foundation (GWF) is running
the programme at its Hazyview
Digital Campus, in partnership
with the South Africa College of
Tourism.
The province has plans to
attract international tourists from
nearby and from far away. The
tourist authorities of Swaziland
and Mozambique have agreed to
explore the possibilities of joint
marketing through the TriLand
Brand Initiative.
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