Tokozile Xasa's speech at The National Tourism Careers Expo 2014 media launch

The NTCE theme links up well with the World Tourism Month theme: "Tourism and Community Development," on the basis that the NTCE is about youth development and further to that the National Department of Tourism theme for this month is: "Tourism Transforming Lives," which sums up what the event is all about.

Deputy Minister of Tourism, Tokozile Xasa said in her speech, "...it is important for us to note that this is the sixth annual version of the NTCE since it started in 2008 in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Province. It therefore would be reasonable to expect that NTCE in the Eastern Cape ends on a high note.

I wish to congratulate the NTCE partners for successfully hosting the 2012 and 2013 expo. To date, more than 70,000 South African learners and graduates have attended the expo since its inception in 2008.Knowing that the preparations to host the event this year are at an advanced stage, this media event is meant to launch the publicity campaign that should not only serve to drive maximum attendance and participation, but also to create awareness around the NTCE country wide".

Direct and indirect jobs

Tourism generated 9.5% of South Africa's gross domestic product in 2013, and accounted for more than 1.4 million direct and indirect jobs in the country. Despite our positive contribution, South Africa has the third-highest unemployment rate in the world for people between the ages of 15 to 24, as revealed by the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Risk Report for 2014.

The Deputy Minister invited the media to partner upto publicise the NTCE to ensure that they reach the youths in all the urban and rural areas of our country, and share with them the diverse employment opportunities that tourism offers.

NTCE 2014 is brought to you by the Department of Tourism in partnership with the Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality and Sports Sector Education and Training Authority (CATHSSETA) and the Eastern Cape Province. This year's event will take place from 2 to 4 October, 2014, at the East London International Convention Centre.

Our primary target markets are learners and students from grade 9 to 12, especially those doing tourism and hospitality as subjects at high schools, FET College and university students. This target group also includes unemployed tourism graduates, educators and lecturers in high schools, colleges and universities.

Tourism as a career and profession of choice

Through the NTCE, we seek to promote tourism as a career and profession of choice, whilst simultaneously promoting the industry as an employer of choice. The strategic importance of the NTCE to the National Department of Tourism and its partners is to create a future pool of human capital that will support the current and future tourism growth in our country, as we know that tourism is a labour intensive industry. This is against the negative perceptions revealed by an out-of-school youth survey in 2008 about tourism being a sector with menial jobs, long working hours, no professional growth paths, etc. The NTCE also exposes young people to job and entrepreneurial opportunities that exist in the sector.

The NTCE has in the past six annual events provided unemployed graduates with short-term employment exposure for their much-needed experiential learning in the events sub sector in tourism. At least 120 unemployed graduate volunteers are employed annually to assist during the event. This adds up to the business opportunities that are created for the host city to small and medium entrepreneurs as suppliers of services required for the event ranging from transport, accommodation, meals and other related services.

The NTCE partners invested more than R2 million rands each year assisting learners from remote rural areas to be transported, accommodated and provided with meals as they are brought to get exposure to the tourism industry at the NTCE in the Eastern Cape for the past two years. This is without talking about the indirect impact on other business and employment opportunities that have been positively impacted upon by the inflow of NTCE participants during the preparatory period and actual hosting of the event. The two provinces that hosted the NTCE have naturally been exposed to other provinces in the country in terms of the tourism products they offer. All this are obvious by - products of the event whilst a formal impact assessment study is still to be conducted after this year's event.

"At this point, I would to share with you what South Africans can expect as part of the highlights at this year's NTCE: