The hospitality industry now has the opportunity to benefit from the third window application period of Green Tourism Incentive Programme (GTIP).
The opening of the window application period from 1 September to 30 November 2018 is for the addition of support for water efficiency measures in the industry, the Department of Tourism said. Last year, the department launched a programme in collaboration with the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and the National Cleaner Production Centre of South Africa (NCPC-SA) in an effort to encourage small and micro tourism enterprises to move towards cleaner and more energy-efficient operations. The department said while the uptake in the programme during the first two application windows was positive, the department recognised the need to expand the programme focus to also include water efficiency to mitigate the impact of persistent drought conditions in some parts of the country on the tourism sector.The programme funding limits to qualifying small and micro tourism enterprises remain mostly unchanged but were adjusted to include water efficiency as follows:
- 90% of the cost for a new resource-efficiency (energy and water) audit or the full cost for reviewing an existing resource-efficiency audit
- grant funding to qualifying small and micro enterprises on a sliding scale from 30% to 90% (capped at R1 million) towards the installation of recommended water and energy efficiency measures.
