Vikelwa Nomnga

The purpose of this study was to examine hotel guest comment cards (GCCs) and customer satisfaction management schemes in hotels of East London. The findings indicate that hotel employees do not need additional training in order to motivate their guests to complete GCCs. Therefore, GCCs provide information relevant to the individual hotel in the chain and they are used as a tool for benchmarking and maintaining consistency across hotels. This study can be of great use to hotel managers in providing a direction on how to conduct and modify the existing practice of measuring customer satisfaction in hotels. Findings further indicate that in most hotels GCCs can be found in a folder on a room table and are not distributed randomly. Guests can complete GCCs during their stay at the hotel. It can be concluded that the efficiency of customer satisfaction measurement with GCCs depends on the measurement methodology. It is clear that guests should be additionally motivated and that GCCs sho...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies used to empower rural women in the hospitality industry through Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs). It focuses on the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. The paper focuses mainly on the Morgans Bay Bed and Breakfast, one of the vibrant SMMEs that employ many rural women. This paper adopts an interpretive paradigm that utilises a qualitative research approach to examine how Small and Medium Enterprises in the hospitality industry empower rural women. Purposive sampling was used to identify fifteen participants working at Morgans Bay Bed and Breakfast in the Eastern Cape province. The participants who responded to the semi-structured interview questions had detailed information on the hospitality industry. The findings of the study highlight various challenges experienced by the owners of Morgans Bay Bed and Breakfast in their effort to empower rural women. The challenges include low levels of education among rural women...

At the height of political turmoil and the so-called economic downgrade to ‘junk’ status by rating agencies in South Africa, the tourism and hospitality industry, through women entrepreneurship, seems to be an alternative exit the government can use to foster economic growth and curb unemployment. The paper adopts an extensive documentary review analysis to determine the challenges and opportunities for women entrepreneurs in the tourism industry in South Africa. The paper observes that women entrepreneurs in the Eastern Cape Province face a myriad of challenges emanating from low levels of education, lack of financial resources, poor information dissemination, gender inequity, limited support from stakeholders, limited technical skills and reluctance to shift from status quo. The paper concludes that, to unlock the potential of tourism and hospitality industry, women entrepreneurs need to embrace education and get trained on how to use modern technologies-which is fundamental in co...