Laeticia Jacobs is a Director: Strategy Development at the Department of Tourism. She has almost 20-year experience in the tourism industry, ranging from being tourism research analyst to tourism product developer. She also managed number of tourism infrastructure projects and maintenance programmes at national level. She has obtained her Bachelors’ and Master’s degree at the University of Stellenbosch, and her PhD in Tourism Management at the University of Pretoria. Her PhD research topic investigated the aspect of Astro-Tourism as the key niche to drive rural routedevelopment. Dr Jacobs is therefore regarding as the defacto astro-tourism expert and pivotal to the development and implementation of the National Astro-Tourism Strategy in South Africa. Dr Jacobs has further co-authored several academic articles on Astro-Tourism, destination branding, transformation and skills shortages in the tourism sector respectively.