SA Tourism announces schools competition winners

SOUTH African Tourism has announced that Prestige Secondary School in Gauteng is the winning school of the 2004 Tourism Month schools competition. Prestige Secondary School took first prize with its idea to develop and market a ‘traditional life style’ experience to tourists. Two learners, Lesedi Gare and Zanele Nxumalo, under the supervision of their teacher Mrs EM Schalkwyk, developed the project. As part of the prize, the learners and their teacher will be flown to Frankfurt in November to represent SA at the annual learner Global Travel & Tourism Partnership conference. The competition had 54 entries and is opened to all schools that offer tourism as a subject. The competition, now in its sixth year, requires learners to develop their own community projects describing how they would be marketed or sold, as well as evaluating the infrastructure and facilities. “The key objective of the competition is to generate interest among learners so that they see that it is possible to have a career in the tourism sector. We also wanted to show them that they could develop community tourism projects that could be marketed and sold,” said Cheryl Carolus, ceo of SA Tourism. (Lucy Siebert)