Tourism businesses encouraged to apply for transformation, incentive funding

©Kirill Kedrinski via 123RF

Tourism Transformation Fund

All majority black-owned tourism enterprises interested in accessing funding to establish a new tourism business or expand an existing tourism business, are encouraged to apply for the TTF.

The fund is a dedicated capital investment mechanism to drive transformation in the tourism sector in a more direct and impactful manner. It aims to assist small and micro black-owned tourism enterprises to expand and grow with the goal to create a new generation of black-owned, youth, women and community-based tourism industrialists.

The TTF was developed in collaboration with the National Empowerment Fund (NEF) and all applications and approvals are managed by the NEF. The fund provides a combination of grant funding, debt financing and equity contributions to facilitate capital investment in the tourism sector by prospective black investors.

The grant funding portion is used to reduce the approved loan finance and/or equity contribution by the NEF for tourism projects. This component is capped at 30% of the total funding required or R5m per applicant.

Applicants should submit their application forms and supporting documents directly to the NEF, who will assess applications for commercial viability and TTF eligibility.

Green Tourism Incentive Programme

The GTIP is a resource efficiency incentive with the objective to encourage private sector tourism enterprises to move towards the sustainable management of water and energy resources whilst adhering to responsible tourism practices. Through grant funding, the programme assists private sector tourism enterprises in reducing the cost of investing in more energy and water efficient operations, while increasing their competitiveness and profitability in the long term.

To date, 308 enterprises have so far applied for funding through this initiative.

The GTIP broadly offers the following to qualifying tourism enterprises:

• 90% of the cost for a new resource-efficiency audit or the full cost for reviewing an existing resource efficiency audit by the National Cleaner Production Centre of South Africa; and

• Grant funding to qualifying small and micro enterprises on a sliding scale from 30% to 90% of the total cost of implementing qualifying resource efficiency interventions, which is capped at R1m.

This programme is managed by the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) on behalf of the Department and all applications and approvals are managed by the IDC.

The Department thanks the 208 enterprises that applied for the TTF and 308 that applied for the GTIP and encourage other qualifying enterprises to make use of these mechanisms as we grow tourism together.