Durban — Tourism KwaZulu-Natal (TKZN) is looking to develop an interest among young people to participate in the tourism sector.

The organisation aims to encourage a large number of youngsters to participate in the tourism economy as enterprises.

This was revealed by TKZN acting CEO Nhlanhla Khumalo during the Youth in Tourism Seminar held at Amble Inn at Ixopo on Monday.

Ten emerging youth entrepreneurs presented their businesses and the challenges they were facing to a panel from TKZN, the Small Enterprise Development Agency, Small Enterprise Funding Agency, EDTEA, Ithala, National Empowerment Fund and the Youth Development Agency.

Khumalo explained that with June being Youth Month, TKZN celebrated the seminar under the theme “Accelerating youth economic emancipation for a sustainable future”.

He said that the purpose of the seminar was to share valuable information with young entrepreneurs with regard to the variety of opportunities available for them in the tourism industry.

“We have brought in different funding institutions to support the SMMEs with financial support.

“There are funding opportunities and we have three funding agencies that provide financial support programmes for SMMEs that we are working with so that the youth in tourism will be able to understand the requirements in terms of how to access financial support,” said Khumalo.

He said that the seminars were normally targeting enterprises that were owned by young people within the KZN province and those that were within the tourism space.

“They could fall within three sub-sectors of the tourism industry, which is the accommodation sub-sector, hospitality sub-sector and also travel services sub-sector of the tourism industry.

“Last year, we had an invitation that was publicised in different platforms, inviting SMME individuals who own small tourism enterprises to apply for enrolment into our enterprise development programme,” said Khumalo.

He said that last year the programme ended up with 144 small tourism enterprises within it. He said that a budget of R4 million was set aside to provide support to small enterprises.

Siphesihle Gazu from Ithala Bank said that they always encouraged collaboration between role players in order to make life easier for SMMEs.

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