Part of a Professional body's responsibility is to promote the profession to the new generation so careers may be chosen early on in a student's life. The IPTGSA will be exhibiting at the Freestate Careers expo on Friday 4 August 2023 to promote the professional Tourist Guide. Please join IPTGSA to find out about a designated career path for the future. The expo will take place in the Main Hall of the Central University of Technology, Freestate from 08:00 to 16:00
Reportback on Careers expo by Sam Wenger
The University of the Free State hosts once a year a 1-day careers Expo at their campus in Bloemfontein. This year’s was last Friday, 4th August 2023.
The IPTGSA was invited for the first time to exhibit. Since the request to exhibit came from their side, there was no expense for us to get a stand. They gave us stand number 30, a booth of 2x2 m with one round table a chair, and a power point.
The IPTGSA Chair and Vicechair, Johan & Sam motored to Bloemfontein the day before with the paraphernalia we usually display on other occasions, e.g., Indaba.
We had accommodation to spend the night, sponsored generously by our committee member in the Cape, J.J. Pieterse. Many thanks, J.J., this was much appreciated.
The exhibition is marketed to high schools in the OFS, targeted mainly at the students in grades 8 & 11, but is also open to the general public. The exhibitors covered not only the tourism sector with several entities, but also e.g., the SA Defense Forse, SA National Parks, Museum of Natural History, OFS Tourism Department, and a few others.
The careers Expo was on Friday from 09h00 – 16h00.
Whole school classes were given some lectures in the lecture hall before they were given access to the exhibitions. Mostly, the pupils were under supervision by their school chaperones and teachers.
At no given time, was there a flood of children going through the exhibits. They had an assigned time slot for tracking/visiting exhibits of their interest. The whole thing was well structured and well organized. Not only children but also some older general public visitors came to the expo and it is there, where we made some very interesting contacts and where our exposure values are not to be underestimated.
Here follows a record of some visitors to our stand:
· Expo organizer: Bianca
· Guide couple from Potchefstroom – they will move to Betty’s Bay shortly
· Free State Economics Department
· Oude Kraal Farm Guest House
· Smal tour operator – Bloemfontein
· War Museum Bloemfontein
· Gariep Tourism
· Gladys Molefe – Free State Government
· Travel & Hospitality Media Agency “Ratoloka”
· Bush Junkies Tour Operator & Bloemfontein tourist guide Tony Horn
· National Museum Bloemfontein
· Expo official photographer
· Golden Gate Highlands National Park
· School classes throughout the day
· Registrar of Tourist Guides – OFS
To sum it all up, it has given IPTGSA exposure, fostered some new contacts in our industry, and may well be a small step towards starting careers for some young people in the tourism industry, maybe even sparking some to choose tourist guiding as a career to pursue.
Johan and Sam are in agreement that this “away from our home base activity” was a success and is to be repeated whenever the opportunity arises again.