SA Department of Tourism Invites Applications for Green Tourism Incentive Programme

The Department of Tourism invites eligible star graded tourism enterprises to apply for the Green Tourism Incentive Programme (GTIP). The GTIP is a resource efficiency grant funding mechanism that encourages privately owned tourism enterprises to adopt responsible tourism practices. The programme assists enterprises to reduce the cost of investing in energy and water efficient operations, which will lower their cost of operations, and facilitate increased competitiveness and operational sustainability in the tourism sector in the long term.

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

The GTIP’s focus is on sustainable energy and water efficiency solutions and broadly offers the following to qualifying tourism enterprises:

• full cost for a new resource-efficiency audit or the review of an existing resource efficiency audit; and
• grant funding to qualifying small and micro enterprises on a sliding scale from 50% to 90% of the total cost of implementing an approved water and energy resource efficiency intervention, capped at R1 million.

To apply for grant funding, all applicants should meet the following criteria:

• be an existing or a new privately-owned tourism-specific establishment (accommodation, facilities and attractions) that provide services to tourists as its direct clients;
• provide evidence of official and valid star grading by the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa (TGCSA) in the case of accommodation and conference venues; and
• submit a completed application form for funding, together with all required supporting documentation as stipulated in the programme guidelines and application process.

GTIP applicants should submit their application forms and supporting documents directly to the IDC, who will assess the applications. More information, application forms and guidelines are available on the IDC website.