Welcome to the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa. This website serves as but one of the marketing opportunities offered to participating star graded properties, reaching and used by key decision makers and stakeholders in tourism, government and business.

The past year saw the introduction of the new grading system which addressed many of the anomalies and inconsistencies with the old system. The new system utilises state of the art software developed in the United Kingdom for that country’s official grading system as well as a new back office system that will increase the efficiency of our administrative processes.

All our assessors have undergone re-training and testing in the new system and have been accredited to carryout assessments on behalf of the TGCSA. The introduction of the new system was preceded by extensive consultations with industry stakeholders. We received hundreds of constructive comments which were taken into consideration in the finalisation of the new minimum requirements and criteria.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all stakeholders who participated in this consultation process. The TGCSA Awards Committee, a Sub Committee of the board of South African Tourism, is monitoring international developments closely to ensure that what we are doing here in South Africa is closely aligned to developments offshore, in particular in our major source markets such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

We need to remain relevant to consumers who rely upon the integrity of our grading system when making their choice of where to stay. The online booking space with provision for guest feedback is one development that we are monitoring closely although it is not without its challenges. Europe is also slowly moving towards the unification of the various grading systems and we will keep abreast of this initiative to ensure that we are in step.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff of the TGCSA led by Ms. Thembi Kunene, the SAT Exco and the board of SAT for the support that the Awards Committee has received.

I would also like to thank the members of the Awards Committee for their contribution to the introduction of the new grading system and the support given to the executive management team.

Please feel free to contact us in our "Contact Us" section if you have any suggestions which will help us improve our service to the traveling public.

Thank you for supporting the TGCSA.
Peter Bacon
Chairman - TGCSA