<

14/04/2011

Woudi Von Solms, a student for the M.Com degree in Business Management and her supervisor Professor Madele Tait arranged student participation for the action research project of Woudi, titled: Utilising geocaching to reduce obesity and increase tourism.

Woudi is doing action research on geocaching, which has developed in the USA in 2000. This concept is still fairly new in South Africa. Geocaching is a form of “treasure hunt”, but you need a GPS to do this. The Marketing 1 students of Second Avenue Campus visited The Boardwalk on 11, 13 and 14 April respectively. The students had to have a GPS and were then given clues by means of coordinates as to where to go and look for the caches (treasures).

The students were divided into groups of four and three caches (treasures) were hidden in The Boardwalk. According to the rules of geocaching, you can take a cache if you put something back in its place, otherwise you must put the cache back again after you have found it. You also get a specific period of time to do the geocaching and physically you get a lot of exercise.

Woudi hopes to make the tourism industry aware of geocaching as a marketing tool to increase tourism and also to reduce obesity in children and young adults.