OVERVIEW
Tourism The Mpumalanga Liberation Heritage Route has been launched.
SECTOR INSIGHT Training programmes are empowering rural communities.
K
ruger 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 MPUMALANGA BUSINESS 2019/20
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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.
