Lilizela Awards open for traders in tourism

SOUTH African Tourism is calling on all businesses contributing to the South African growing tourism industry to enter the prestigious Lilizela Tourism Awards.

The Lilizela Tourism Awards honour and celebrate those who make a remarkable impact on tourism in South Africa.

The CEO of South African Tourism, Thulani Nzima says the nine awards focus on service excellence, entrepreneurship and sustainable development. The winners will be announced at a ceremony to be held in September.

“This year, in the service excellence section, in addition to accommodation, awards will also be given in the categories visitor experience of the year and tourist guide of the year. The Emerging Tourism Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Eteya) will be awarded to recognise black-owned entrepreneurship, SMMEs that have achieved notable success since starting up,” he says.

“The three categories of awards for sustainable development are the sustainable tourism or Imvelo Awards, the Universal Accessibility Award and the BBB-EE Award. The Minister’s Award will recognise people, events and organisations that shift the industry closer to South African Tourism’s 2020 vision of increasing arrivals, creating jobs and contributing to GDP.

“These awards recognise and reward tourism players and businesses that work passionately and with pride to deliver a world-class product and service and whose delivery grows South Africa’s global destination competitiveness,” he says.

“The Lilizela Tourism Awards recognise and celebrate tourism excellence, reward the people who deliver excellence in tourism, encourage key players and establishments to strive for excellence, contribute towards South Africa’s global destination competitiveness, motivate the tourism industry to keep on striving for excellence and give the public a voice that counts,” said Nzima.