The application window for the COVID-19 Tourism Relief Fund will close on 31 May 2020.
The Tourism Relief Fund provides a once-off capped grant of R50 000 per entity to subsidise expenses towards fixed costs, operational costs and other pressure cost items.
To date, more than 6 000 completed applications for grant assistance have been received from across the country. A large bulk of the applications were from businesses that provide accommodation services (2 495), followed by hospitality at 1 825, travel related services 1 780 and other at 662.
The relief fund was put together by the Tourism Department to cushion the blow of the COVID-19 pandemic on small, medium and micro enterprise businesses in the tourism sector.
However, Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane says her department received feedback from applicants who experienced a number of challenges when they attempted to apply for the fund through the department’s online system.
“Some had difficulties uploading documents onto the system, some requested many times to submit documents they had already submitted and some were unable to access the system.
“To remedy some of these challenges we encourage those that still have outstanding documents to submit before the closing date. The department will accept email submissions,” said the Minister in a briefing on COVID-19 relief measures for the tourism sector on Saturday.
Kubayi-Ngubane said her department is racing against the clock to contact applicants considered eligible to submit outstanding documents before the end of deadline.
“I am told that so far, the calls the team has made to some of the SMMEs have yielded positive results and these SMMEs will be receiving the much needed relief,” said the Minister.
Tourism recovery plan
According to the Tourism Department, almost 600 000 jobs are at risk if the sector does not come into operation by September 2020.
In a bid to mitigate this, Kubayi-Ngubane said her department is in talks with the sector to develop the necessary protocols and guidelines to reopen the economy for more players a under level 3 of lockdown and map out the post-COVID-19 sector.
Based on the COVID-19 epidemic expected trajectory, the Tourism Department says the first phase of the recovery for the sector will be driven by domestic tourism, followed by regional tourism and international tourism next year.
“Although we will be gradually opening up the sector in the coming months, depending on how the virus is spreading, we expect that the sector will only fully recover towards the end of this year,” said the Minister. – SAnews.gov.za
