New website boosts guesthouse business

The Southern Sun Book-A-Guesthouse enterprise development programme has launched its new interactive website, which provides for online booking requests at all 65 registered properties across the country.

With the new www.bookaguesthouse.co.za website, Southern Sun and the programme’s supporting partners are motivating current guesthouse owners and urging aspiring entrepreneurs to keep focused on business.

“Our new website enables travel agents, tour operators and the public to view our member guesthouses, get information about services and facilities offered by each property, learn about the individual owners and interact directly with them to make bookings and submit enquiries,” says Rebone Sesoko, Southern Sun Book-A-Guesthouse project manager.

The website also showcases information about the Guesthouse of the Year, the annual conference and the various business and skills development programmes provided to benefit members. These include food and beverage training, guesthouse management training and housekeeping training; all of which have theoretical and practical elements.

“We are delighted to be able to provide an online platform for our members to showcase their properties and their stories, to further enhance the programme’s offering to them, and to enable the broader public to have access to an online booking enquiry facility,” says Mati Nyazema, Southern Sun custodian of the Book-A-Guesthouse programme and executive director of the Sandton Convention Centre.

The programme, which provides enterprise development assistance to entrepreneurs in the South African tourism industry, has grown from five Soweto-based properties in 2005 to 65 guesthouses nationally today. As the programme continues to grow with purpose, it is creating clusters in different areas around the country to increase capacity and enable nodes to accommodate both individual travellers and large group bookings.

Book-A-Guesthouse has also taken the opportunity to formally launch its Facebook page to encourage interest and dialogue (www.facebook.com/bookaguesthouse).

For more information go to www.bookaguesthouse.co.za.