The Leading Hotels of the World have reached an agreement to partner with Lufthansa German Airlines, 'Lufthansa Miles & More', and Thai Airways, 'Royal Orchid Plus', frequent traveller programs. This allows the internationally renowned Victoria Falls Hotel to affiliate itself with both airlines, awarding airline miles upon booking a deluxe room to members of these programmes.

"Airline mileage programmes are one of the most powerful ways to build customer loyalty and, with over 7.5 million members, this is an excellent opportunity for The Victoria Falls Hotel to build upon the customer's loyalty while increasing our market share. Guests staying at our hotel will earn 500 miles per stay in a deluxe room", says Karl Snater, General Manager of Victoria Falls Hotel.

The Victoria Falls Hotel, jointly operated by African Sun and Meikles Africa Hotels, has a reputation of being one of the most famous and distinguished hotels on the African continent. Although over 100 years old, this elegant hotel is in delightfully pristine and perfect conditions for all to savour and enjoy when visiting the famous Victoria Falls.

Guests are able to redeem their miles upon check-in at the Front Office of the hotel when they produce their membership card.

For more information, contact The Victoria Falls Hotel on gm@tvfh.africansun.co.zw or pacro@africansunhotels.com

Click Here to Visit The Victoria Falls Hotel Page

Like any perfect home, The Grace in Rosebank is full of charm, warmth and passion. As one of South Africa's top boutique hotels, it has a reputation of offering sophisticated and timeless hospitality, with the highest levels of service, luxury and the personal touch one can only find in small establishments.

Recently, this grand dame of Rosebank was once again been proudly awarded her 5-star grading status from the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa (TGCSA). TGCSA complimented the hotel in their in-depth report as having maintained their 5-star levels of success across all hospitality areas offering a luxurious 'olde worlde' product. What impressed them the most was the team's special charisma, poise, friendliness, professionalism and proud outlook.

TGCSA provides the framework for grading establishments in South Africa, ensuring that a certain standard of quality is achieved across all sectors within the tourism industry and a five star grading from them always means 'great achievement'.

"Thank you to the entire team at The Grace for their ongoing commitment and dedication to service excellence, making this flag ship within the African Sun Hotel portfolio, one of the best known hotel addresses in Johannesburg. Well done everyone", said Ewan Cameron, Managing Director of African Sun Hotels

The Grace in Rosebank, a property within the African Sun Hotels portfolio, never disappoints and continues to present guests with 5-star treatment, an award-winning restaurant, private dining venues, direct access via an exclusive sky bridge to the Mall of Rosebank, Garden Terrace with a heated lap pool, a business centre and state-of-the-art conference centre at "54 Bath Avenue".

For more information, contact The Grace on Tel: +27 11 280 7200.

As we speak this month, I reflect on our environment, on what is taking place around us, and how it impacts our business. The key message is that the global economic forum has changed forever. It has become evident that prudency in all we do has come to the fore and is now a key business imperative more than it has ever been.

In order to preserve value for the business, for ourselves and attain sustainable growth, we will have to become mavericks at what we do and in all areas of operation while maintaining our values. Although I use the term maverick, very much tongue in cheek, I must emphasize that we must realize that we will have to do more with less.

Income streams from our existing and potential clients are largely rationalized thereby resulting in a ripple effect to the service industry. This means that our guests are more likely to be price sensitive and at the same time demanding better service standards and delivery from us. This expectation has a direct bearing on our staffing and the requisite levels and caliber of personnel handling our guests.

I recently presented a paper at the Institute of People Management of Zimbabwe (IPMZ) conference held in Victoria Falls and my talk touched on these key issues of what is expected of our people to enable them to deliver to internationally acceptable standards, yet at the same time managing head count as any efficient business should. The issue of multi-skilling with the right candidates is a real one which should be the backbone of any organization. In order to effectively deliver at all times, we need to identify talent, nurture it, and this will eventually ensure our competitiveness not only on the African platform but on a global scale as well.

This forces me to revisit our staff skills competitiveness globally. What comes to mind is that we have pockets of excellence, but in order to change the perception of current skills level for Africa, our current training and development model has to be revamped in order to fit and meet modern challenges. The framework of the past will not work, therefore I leave you with this food for thought, what part can you play in your organization to ensure that your team remains relevant for today's world and beyond?

Our hotels in West Africa continue to impress and last month, two of our group properties, Amber Tinapa and Nike Lake Resort successfully hosted teams for the just ended FIFA under 17 World Cup tournament. The tournament started on the 24th of October with the last match held on Sunday the 15th of November 2009. The teams hosted by the two hotels included home team Nigeria, Iran, Korea, Uruguay, Turkey, Netherlands, New Zealand, Gambia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Burkina Faso and the UAE.

    

The hotels did a great job of hosting the teams and the staff worked tirelessly to make sure everything was in order. One could see there was a lot of excitement from the hotel staff to be a part of the World Cup in their own special way! Some of the star-struck and football-lovers amongst us were lucky enough to go away with some football jerseys as souvenirs.

The teams made full use of the hotel facilities and New Zealand decided not to leave Nike Lake Resort for their training sessions and instead used the grounds at the hotel. Iran on the other hand enjoyed the hospitality so much that they stayed for 13 nights and the hotel staff branded them the “Home Team.”

    

All in all, we were very proud of our team as they did a splendid job looking after our guests and we are glad to have made relationships that will outlive memories of the tournament. Our list of high profile guests continues to grow. First we have Obama, then we have FIFA selecting our hotels in Southern and Western Africa for their events... who’s next?