Despite the protracted impact of COVID-19, tourism will continue to be one of South Africa’s leading sectors over the next few years, and a critically important job creator going forward.
Within this recovery, service excellence – which has always been the backbone of the industry – becomes more important than ever before.
Not only is it essential for the resilient bounce-back of the sector, it is one of the most effective tools tourism products owners can embrace to drive down costs and grow their markets, thereby ensuring long-term sustainability.
Thus, while Tourism Month this year looks and feels a little different from previous years, our overall commitment to creating excellent visitor experiences across all tourism and hospitality sectors must remain absolute as the sector re-opens.
The National Tourism Service Excellence Strategy – a joint initiative of the Department of Tourism and the Tourism Business Council – was devised to build a holistic service excellence culture up and down the tourism value chain.
This includes developing an integrated strategy to guide service excellence across the sector, as well as creating an enabling environment to develop a positive customer service culture.
A number of highly successful excellence initiates are already in place, including the popular Lilizela Tourism Awards, which recognise and reward tourism players who work passionately and with pride to deliver a world-class product and service.
Similarly, the Journey to Service Excellence (J2SE) programme was devised to grow South Africa’s overall global destination competitiveness.
This programme has already had a direct, pipeline impact: Last year, 20 Eastern Cape youths were trained in resource efficiency and cleaner product methodology and placed in tourism businesses for a period of six months. Those not already in formal tourism employment have been absorbed into work readiness programmes and will be assisted to form tourism enterprises that will continue in the resource efficiency space.
The overall objective of these and other initiatives – and our collective goal in the post-COVID-19 era – is to build a solution-oriented culture of customer service across all tourism and hospitality endeavours, by offering excellent service and creating memorable experiences which meet and exceed the expectations of visitors.
In 2020, this includes addressing the safety concerns of visitors – and exceeding their expectations in how we meet and proactively overcome these challenges.
While there is every indication that the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic may soon be behind us, heightened health and safety protocols must become a norm of the new normal.
And it must become inextricable linked to our local, provincial and national service excellence models.
