Tourism network for black SMMEs
28 May 2004
The Dreamcatcher Tourism Business Network, launched at Tourism Indaba 2004 this month, aims to boost transformation in South Africa's tourism industry by providing support to small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Dreamcatcher marketing director Randball Christians said the Cape Town-based company wanted tourism to become "a truly marketable product of the nation".
The network aims to spur the industry to endorse small businesses providing tourism services, and to spread "tangible tourism benefits" to communities and previously marginalised entrepreneurs through empowerment and job creation programmes.
Dreamcatcher members will receive assistance from the start-up to the profit-making phase.
Members also stand to benefit from Dreamcatcher's established international marketing and distribution links, giving SMMEs the selling power to compete with bigger operators through the company's satellite support offices in the UK, US, Canada and the Benelux countries.
Dreamcatcher is not a tour operator but an independent travel route planner, is a special tourist service which has helped to redesign the way South Africa is travelled.
The 13-year-old company assists independent travellers, tour operators, agents, media and special interest groups from around the world by designing itineraries which offer the visitor the opportunity to discover what the country is really like.
Dreamcatcher offers tourists specially considered travel routes to rural communities, and develops what it terms "safe community destinations" by creating basic tourist infrastructure and providing training for black entrepreneurs within communities.
One woman's dream changes tourism
"From home stays to meeting sangomas, to art and music tours and even Xhosa lessons, Dreamcatcher is creating its own routes in the South African tourism industry",
Cape Argus wrote in a November 2003 feature on Dreamcatcher CEO Anthea Rossouw.
"Back in 1991, the Cape-based company tackled its first project, Melkhoutfontein in Stilbaai. In five years, the community, which started out with no electricity, water and roads, developed a fully functional infrastructure."
For the first eight years of her campaign, Rossouw faceda a constant uphill battle. "Nobody believed in community-based tourism", she told Cape Argus. "We had finance problems because we were not established. We were in constant competition with mainstream tourism."
Since then, however, Dreamcatcher has penetrated four international markets and received awards and recognition in America and Canada.
"Community-based travel is the largest untapped market for both domestic and international visitors in South Africa", SA Tourism CEO Cheryl Carolus said at Indaba 2004.
"It offers unrivalled potential for tourism growth, while providing small businesses with jobs, income, hope, and the opportunity for true empowerment."
SouthAfrica.info reporter
