Engaging beyond the day-to-day Business planning for Southern Sun Book-A-Guesthouse members

Eight member guesthouses in Orlando West, Soweto, who are enrolled in the Southern Sun Book-A-Guesthouse enterprise development programme opened their doors to 29 Southern Sun managers from around the country recently.

The Southern Sun managers are attending a management development course at the Gordon Institute for Business Science (GIBS).
Book-A-Guesthouse is Southern Sun's national flagship enterprise development programme that concentrates on the empowerment of women within the tourism industry in South Africa by providing business development support and market access to them.

There are presently 63 independently owned and operated bed & breakfast and guesthouse establishments in the programme, located in four provinces in South Africa (Gauteng; Limpopo; KZN and Western Cape).

The eight Soweto-based guesthouses were selected to participate in a management simulation programme which was one of the GIBS development programme assignments. The 29 managers spent the night at the selected guesthouses and had dinner at Nambiktha's on Vilakazi Street, Soweto. The next day it was down to business, as they worked with guesthouse owners to develop strategies and business improvement plans based on revenue, occupancy and markets applicable to their unique circumstances.

All eight guesthouses now have strategies with recommendations for improving their bottom line performance that will be collated into a book for all to share.

Most of the managers hadn’t visited Soweto before or engaged at this level with small business owners. “The B&B’s got us looking at business in a different way, a way of finding and celebrating uniqueness and ensuring that strategies are focused completely on guest satisfaction.” Linda Reddy of Garden Court Milpark said of her experience.

The process was facilitated by Brett Will of GIBS, Karen Borain of Southern Sun and Rebone Sesoko of the Southern Sun Book-A-Guesthouse programme. The learnings were enormous for both the guesthouse owners and Southern Sun’s managers, and for many, it was something of a life-changing experience.

As the enterprise development programme continues to grow with purpose, it is creating clusters in different areas around the country to increase capacity and thereby enable the nodes to accommodate not only individual travellers but also large group bookings.

For more information go to www.facebook.com/bookaguesthouse or to make a reservation, visit www.bookaguesthouse.co.za.