The Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) and the Department of Tourism have embarked on an exciting public-private partnership to promote, develop and sustain greater levels of Service Excellence not only throughout the Tourism Value Chain, but also in terms of greater public awareness.
The Tourism Service Excellence Initiative (TSEI) is ultimately aimed at raising and maintaining service excellence standards to increase the sector’s contribution to economic growth in South Africa and maintain global competitiveness of the industry.
“This means it will influence our reputation for 2010 and beyond. The project team has been extremely busy behind the scenes preparing for the active roll-out of Phase 1 of the Project. This is due to kick off with the arrival of international researchers in August 2009,” said the organisation last week.
Research to be conducted will identify the barriers and enablers to behavior change in service excellence amongst the relevant industry target audiences, but will also be conducted with the public to test expectations and understanding of service excellence concepts.
“We plan to visit all nine provinces with the Research Team in order for in-depth research to cover the whole of South Africa’s different offerings. The full schedule will be released within the next two weeks and we urge you to participate in order for your input to be obtained and meaningful results acquired.”
All sectors of the industry will be targeted for participation in the research in all nine provinces. Those considered essential to the Research program will be contacted directly and asked to participate.
The industry can contribute in a variety of ways, including:
· Participation in Research when approached and assistance with project facilitation
· Resource Contribution – Financial and Logistical in terms of sponsorships
· Participation in actual implementation of Intervention Programmes, including monitoring and evaluation and Consumer Feedback
· Gain buy-in of your employees and management structures.
“In 2010 we as a nation must ensure that our Service Culture is not only at par with the any other leading travel destinations in the world, but that it is redefining of the meaning and feeling of a world class travel experience. “
