Tourism in the SADC region and challenges facing the youth market: the Mozambican experience.

Abstract

This paper examines the challenges that face the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in promoting tourism between its member states. The paper argues that tourism should be used as a catalyst to increase the socio-economic well-being and improve the standards of living within communities in member states. However, challenges, specifically in relation to policies, poor infrastructure, inadequate information and signage, language differences and lack of awareness and marketing hinder the growth of cross border tourism in the region, therefore defeating the goals of Regional Tourism Organisation of Southern Africa (RETOSA). Cross border movement gained popularity through migration of labour to countries such as South Africa but not much research has been conducted. Little attention has been given to movement of youth tourism market in different SADC member states. This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative case study of youth tourism market in Mozambique. The findings present data generated from surveys conducted with 19 Tourism students from Eastern Cape Province, South Africa who detailed the experiences gained from a field study in Mozambique. The findings indicated that despite the adoption and implementation of strategies, policies and initiatives to enhance tourism development in the region, several challenges such as policies versus implementation or mismatch of the latter, continue to affect the youth tourism market.

Keywords

• cross border movement
• challenges
• socio-economic
• policies
• migration
• youth market