Tourism KZN's SMME online workshops open for registration

Image source: Gallo/Getty

Phindile Makwakwa, Acting CEO of TKZN, said tourism businesses are heavily dependent on providing services to both international and domestic travellers in order to sustain their businesses.

"The international travel ban imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus caused tourism businesses to shut down their operations.

"The National Department of Tourism has already set aside R200m aside to assist tourism businesses in distress and as KZN we also wanted to assist KZN

SMMEs remodel their businesses in order to operate in a Covid-19 environment.

"To capacitate and equip small tourism enterprises with information, knowledge and the tools necessary to function in a Covid-19 environment, TKZN is hosting online workshops to share vital information to get small tourism business back on track."

Makwakwa said TKZN has harnessed the support of subject matter specialists to provide free expert advice on a range of important aspects of small tourism business management.

The online workshops are aimed at KZN SMMEs in the tourism sector, focusing mainly on business recovery strategies both in operations and financial recovery.

The third online workshop which will be hosted on Wednesday, 17 June from 10am to 12pm and will explore Business Recovery Strategies: Best Practices.

The following are the subject experts who will share advice for SMMEs:

Dr Emmanuel Ngcobo – Workshop host and chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Government Finance, Audit & Risk Officers; president of the Noble Leaders International; Board Member of the Durban University of technology.

Panelist: Ms Thulisile Galelekile (GM: Marketing TKZN) – she holds a BCom Honours in Marketing from the University of Natal. Her love for imparting knowledge saw her begin her career as a lecturer before choosing more mainstream marketing employment opportunities. She has worked on large local and international brands such as Ithala Bank and Unilever’s Sunsilk. She has worked in a diverse range of industries, from FMCG to telecoms and financial services.

Galelekile is twice recipient of the Beyond Excellence Awards firstly from Nokia in 2008 and again from the Standard Bank Group in 2013. This was further solidified by her walking away with the Corporate Category: of the Business Women Association Business Achiever Regional Awards.

She has held board memberships in Business Women’s Association Durban Chapter, and is currently a non-executive board member of Eerste Flambeau Group.

Panelist: Mawande Nzama (Dinu Afrika) – he is the co-founder/creative strategist at Dinu Afrika. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Supply Chain Management and received corporate working experience at UKZN where he managed a community of over 200,000 online users across all social media platforms. Nzama has experience in the fields of Project Management, Business Development, Sales and Marketing.

Panelist: Vladimir Varnavskii – he is the founder and CEO at VResorts. Has held numerous positions including, Managing Director at Tink Labs - London/Hong Kong, Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Voronezh State University, and an MBA from INSEAD.

He is an entrepreneurial leader with more than 15 years of experience in scaling businesses and building high-performing international teams.

The following are the topics that will be discussed over the following weeks include:

24 June - The role of Digital Technologies towards Business Recovery

1 July - Tourism Recovery through Digital Marketing and Market Access

The invitations for the online workshops will be sent out to all SMME tourism businesses registered with Tourism KZN and will be published on the Authority’s Facebook Page.

All interested tourism business are encouraged to use the link to register by Tuesday,16 June 2020, by 7pm.

For any enquiries regarding the tourism webinars, email az.gro.uluz@aromas