From guesthouses to growth engines - inside Nedbank’s Women in Tourism programme

Through the Women in Tourism Entrepreneurship Training Programme, Nedbank backed 225 founders across all nine provinces with practical training, market access and finance—now translating into real bookings, jobs and upgrades on the ground.

Dr Nirmala Reddy, acting Executive head of Nedbank’s Group Transformation Unit and her team emphasise co-creation with entrepreneurs, sector partners and specialist service providers—designing programmes around real needs, from digital marketing to sustainability, rather than imposing off-the-shelf solutions. They also stress that impact is about depth, not just numbers: building businesses that can grow, hire, secure funding and then bring others along.

“We started the programme just at the end of the [COVID-19] pandemic,  the idea was to t rejuvenate and resuscitate the industry. We made a point of wanting to reach businesses in outlying areas,” she explained.

Four entrepreneurs shared how participation in the programme changed their outlook and improved their businesses.

When Omphile Matane started Monakaladi Gardens and The Backyard Homestead in Mahikeng, she saw it as a “small business” serving local weddings, meetings and accommodation. The programme helped her see the scale of what she’d built—and what it could become.

Asked how the Nedbank Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) programme shifted her perspective, she didn’t hesitate: “Oh, it changed my outlook in that I started seeing the potential to scale up, the potential to grow,” she said.

That mindset shift has already translated into concrete decisions. Instead of adding another events hall, she reworked her plans to invest in a proper restaurant area and additional rooms—using the hotel where the training was held as inspiration for how to redesign her own property. The programme’s aftercare also linked her to an accounting firm to support her VAT registration and monthly financials, so she can focus on strategy rather than paperwork.

The lesson she carries forward is that tourism entrepreneurs in smaller towns can’t afford to think small: structure, financial discipline and a clear growth plan are as important on a dusty provincial road as they are on a city beachfront.

In Rustenburg, Millicent Shai’s Thaba Legae Guest House has grown from five rooms to 22 en-suite units, four events halls and 14 staff members on a 10-hectare property. But the growth has come with real complexity: lumpy government payments, mining clients with strict standards and the constant need to reinvest in infrastructure and security.

Shai describes the Women in Tourism Entrepreneurship Training Programme as tough but transformative: “You know, the programme was very intense, but it gave me the tools to be a good manager, and showed me how to lead with confidence and compassion,” she said.

Those tools helped her formalise how she runs Thaba Legae—clarifying roles, valuing staff and pairing operational decisions with financial realities. Longstanding support from Nedbank, including an overdraft that has grown with the business, helped her smooth cash flow when government clients pay slowly, so salaries and suppliers are still covered.

Her advice to women entering the next cohort is simple: arrive ready to be stretched. “They must approach the programme with an open mind, open slate, be prepared to learn and ask questions,” she advises future participants.

For Cape Town–born entrepreneur Sheleen Cloete, Likamva Hospitality Services is as much about people as it is about rooms. Her business recruits, trains and places hospitality staff—often people with no prior industry experience—across hotels and venues, while also building her own hotel in Springbok in the Northern Cape.

Sheleen deliberately looks for raw potential rather than polished CVs. “I like to employ people who don’t have hospitality experience… so that we can train them and then place them with the clients - like growing your own timber,” she explained.

The programme helped her plug a very different gap: advanced marketing and growth planning. She credits the Nedbank training with giving her the confidence and skills to put together a detailed marketing plan—around 70 pages—which she used in a successful application to the National Empowerment Fund to finance her Springbok hotel. “The programme made a huge impact, from a marketing point of view,” Cloete said.

For her, the key lesson is that technical hospitality skills and financial tools are only half the story; entrepreneurs also need confidence in areas like marketing if they want to unlock bigger funding and create more jobs.

From Rustenburg, Zimasa Travel founder Dorothy Tyobeka runs a travel management company serving mining houses, and government. The business handles everything from conferences and domestic travel to complex multi-country itineraries that can be worth up to R2 million for a single trip.

Because Zimasa Travel must deliver services long before it gets paid, access to the right type of finance has been critical—and often difficult, as lenders don’t always understand service-based tourism models. Dorothy eventually opted for an overdraft facility as a more workable instrument for funding large contracts, even as she continues to push for funding approaches that better match tourism’s realities.

At the same time, she has leaned into education—both through programmes like Nedbank’s Women in Tourism Entrepreneurship Training programme, and through formal study—to stay ahead of industry change. “I think what I would also advocate for smaller businesses is let’s take education seriously… we can’t keep on doing business the same way we’ve been doing it,” Tyobeka said.

Thirsty for knowledge and keen to improve her skill set, she is currently completing a master’s degree in entrepreneurship and closely watching how AI and digital tools will disrupt travel—seeing continuous learning as the best defence against future shocks.

What’s next for the programme

For Nedbank, the Women in Tourism Entrepreneurship Training Programme is part of a broader transformation agenda: backing women-owned businesses with training, mentorship and access to finance.

Reddy says Nedbank backs that “long-term view” with multi-year journeys, follow-up needs assessments and long-running partnerships, rather than treating enterprise development as a once-off workshop.

“It’s really about meaningful difference, co-creating with the entrepreneurs to bring about change,” she said.

From Omphile’s decision to expand her property, to Millicent’s strengthened leadership at a rural four-star lodge, Sheleen’s 70-page funding-ready marketing plan and Dorothy’s insistence on education in the age of AI, the stories are different—but the pattern is the same. Structured support, patient finance and targeted skills can turn resilient women in tourism into growth engines for their communities, one booking at a time. DM