South Africa’s hospitality industry will be hard-hit by the Aids pandemic, says the deputy director of the health department’s national programme to combat the disease, Ria Schoeman.
The department had commissioned a study of the sector to determine how best the impact could be managed, she said in a statement on Monday.
”The study involves sampling more than 5 000 employees working in hotels, bed and breakfasts, guesthouses, game lodges, resorts, restaurants, fast food outlets, pubs and catering companies,” Schoeman said.
This would be done to determine their current knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and behaviour towards HIV and Aids.
”(It) also includes an assessment of how hospitality organisations are currently dealing with the pandemic, and the current and projected future impact of HIV and Aids on individual organisations and the sector as a whole.”
The hospitality industry was particularly vulnerable due to the high proportion of ”barely profitable” small, medium and micro enterprises within the sector.
The study should ”produce some insightful findings on how HIV and Aids should be managed”.
”We believe that the hospitality industry is an industry that will be significantly affected by the HIV/Aids pandemic. The fact that (it) is predominantly made up of small, medium and micro enterprises, that most of these are barely profitable, and that they provide much-needed employment in rural areas in particular, where the pandemic is often widespread, imply that this industry should experience a large negative impact due to the disease,” Schoeman said.
The firms Grant Thornton Kessel Feinstein, and Prodigy Business Services, had been commissioned to undertake the study. A representative for the group on Monday told Sapa the study had ”just started”, and was expected to be completed ”by the end of the year”. – Sapa