Tourism goes for quality assurance
The Department of Tourism in the North West is determined to ensure quality across the industry within the province. In a bit to encourage industry role players to carry the initiative forward the department recently held a Tourism Quality Assurance Workshop in Rustenburg to rubberstamp the initiative and service excellence within establishments.
The overall purpose of the Workshop was to inculcate upon Tourism Products owners the importance of complying with principles of grading of establishments, provision of service excellence, and being compliant to provisions of Responsible Tourism and Universal Accessibility and further to access information on various funding programmes aimed at Tourism enterprises.
According to the Chief Director of Tourism Growth, Development and Transformation Sarah Manone, the main objective is that at the end of the Workshops the Tourism Product Owners and Managers will go back to their respective establishments and impart those quality assurance principles and ethos in their operations. “The Department is determined to ensure that product owners understand and are in the same band wagon with the department. We have thus far managed to create good relations and continue to plan and implement together. We are certain that the gesture will strengthen the relation and help in growing the industry to greater heights, with the main objective of ensuring economic development and making the North West a preferred tourism destination in the country and the world,” said Manone.
The department took advantage of its presence in the Rustenburg and Moses Kotane municipalities and went on a service excellence road show where they targeted hospitality establishments to share service excellence strategy and its objectives.
The message was one: the establishments should make service excellence their everyday gesture. Service Excellence is guided by the strategy that was developed by the National Department in guiding the provinces on the implementation of service in different establishment within tourism industry. The strategy seeks to serve as a guideline to service excellence and it targets different sectors such as banks, government departments, health sectors, fuel garages, hospitality industry and many other entities where services excellence has been recommended. The strategy also has an electronic tool that will be used by different sectors to measure their performance in term of how they are performing in striving for excellence.
The following topics were covered extensively during the course of the Workshop, Tourist arrivals, Tourism trends & statistics, Service Excellence & Visitor Services, Consumer Services & Complains Management, Tourism Grading Council Processes, Responsible tourism and Funding Empowerment/Programmes.
These workshops will further be conducted in various parts of the province targeting specifically in Villages Townships and Small Dorpies.
For enquiries:
Dineo Lolokwane (Spokesperson)
Cell; 072 542 8444
Tel; 018 388 2081
E-mail: dlolokwane@nwpg.gov.za
