TGCSA offers quality assurance and capacity building workshops

7 Feb 2022

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The Tourism Grading Council of South Africa (TGCSA) – a business unit of South African Tourism – is running quality assurance and capacity-building workshops.

TGCSA is mandated to promote the star grading of establishments to ensure that South Africa remains a destination of choice that achieves the highest level of quality assurance, promotes optimal value for money and gives ‘customer expectation’ the focus it requires.

The workshops also present the South Africa welcome and trade-capacitation programmes, ensuring that all relevant stakeholders on the various tourism value chain touch points understand the value of the visitor and enhance their experience by promoting service excellence within their businesses.

The workshops are a continuation from 2021 and target all graded and non-graded tourism accommodation establishments. The workshops kicked off in KwaZulu Natal, Gauteng and Free State last year and Mpumalanga in January 2022.

The programme includes the following presentations from various business units within South African Tourism:

How to grade – the importance of grading, the process and benefits.
Universal Accessibility Awareness – encouraging more establishment to be universally accessible.
Illegal advertising – process of how to submit complaints for graded and non-graded properties.
Speed marketing – marketing access opportunities provided through the Speed Marketing Sessions.
Domestic campaign – educating products on how to participate on the Sho’t Left campaigns that provide marketing value to all tourism products.
Welcome training and capacity-building programme – enhancing the tourist experience at accommodation establishments.

Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo, Acting Chief Quality Assurance Officer at TGCSA said: “We introduced these workshops with the aim of supporting the tourism industry during this recovery period. A need to educate, inspire, motivate and convince all tourism establishments to be graded was identified, to support our journey to rebuild Team South Africa.

“Being associated with a well-known quality assurance body such as the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa, has an impact on how customers view your business. Star rating assures consumers of the quality of our product and the expectation of a quality-assured experience.”