Emotional confidence levels and success of tourism development for poverty reduction: The South African Kwam eMakana home-stay project

Poverty reduction is a central component of South African government local economic development (LED) programmes. The Grahamstown Kwame Makana pilot project for promotion of tourism home-stays aims to assist disadvantaged women to become self-reliant entrepreneurs. However the project has only met with partial success. This paper uses an emotional intelligence (EI) methodology to assess the empowerment and confidence levels of the women. The major findings are: a) the home-stays are lacking entrepreneurial steering, reflected by absence of marketing strategies and a heavy reliance on one distribution channel; b) a majority (74.3%) scored low on self and social awareness, self-management and social skills. The paper argues that disadvantaged groups with low emotional confidence levels will struggle to capitalize on opportunities for economic advancement. It concludes that in order to achieve LED, and hence poverty reduction, through tourism home-stays there is a need to focus on building confidence and empowerment of the women.

► We examine the impacts of emotional confidence levels in disadvantaged women. ► Low confidence is associated with not capitalizing on business growth. ► Building individual capability promotes economic empowerment. ► Uplifting the women operators’ confidence levels should be part of LED.