2026-11-webinar UP

This year’s annual ATLAS Africa Student Webinar, in partnership with the Department of History, Heritage and Cultural Tourism at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, focuses on the topic, “Inclusive and accessible tourist guiding experiences”. This aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities, with a specific emphasis on sub-section 10.2 “Universal Inclusion”. This calls for the empowerment and promotion of the social, economic, and political inclusion of all people, regardless of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic status”.

The University of Pretoria Campus Tours (UPCT), is a postgraduate, work integrated learning, live project and experiential teaching model in which tourism honours students (4th years) run a real-time tourism business. Throughout the year, the students who operate UPCT learn transferable soft and hard skills, as well as all the aspects of operating a business including: finances, marketing, events planning, office management, logistics, administration, segmentation and target market identification. Thus, equipping and capacitating students to go out into the tourism industry as fully fledged and future-ready graduates, practitioners and professionals.

SHOW UP, STEP UP AND STAND OUT

This year’s annual ATLAS Africa Student Webinar, which is the seventh in the series, explores how UPCT has gone about making established tourist guiding practices and experiences more inclusive and accessible to those differently abled – physically, mentally and emotionally. The intention is to make everyone feel welcome and accommodated regardless of abilities when embarking on a campus tour at the University of Pretoria. In addition to addressing Sustainable Development Goal 10, this endeavour also looked to fostering closer relations with the Access, Disability and Inclusive Services (ADIS) entity at the University, while at the same time marketing a reconfigured campus touring experience to differently abled domestic and international tourists. This theme was adopted as part of this year UPCT’s strategic motto of “Taking initiative: Show up, step up, stand out!”