In 2005, the Tourism Grading Council contracted Hospitality Professionals for a 3-year period to train new and existing grading assessors, as well as assessors for new categories (e.g. restaurants and Universal Access). This contract was renewed in May 2009. Services provided included development of a competency framework for graders, re-development of the programme on the basis of national and international benchmark research, selection of graders nationally, training and assessment as well as impact measurement on an annual basis. To date approximately 150 grading assessors have been trained.

The Northern Cape Department of Tourism, Environment and Conservation contracted ProServ South Africa to conduct a skills audit / training needs assessment across all three sub-sectors, namely, Tourism, Conservation and the Environment. Amplixs was used as the software to gather and analyse the results.

The project involved a detailed survey of the competences of approximately 19 different job categories within the three sub-sectors, a sample size of 600 employees and 30 product owners / managers. The training needs analysis was the first detailed survey of training needs within the tourism and environment sector conducted within a province in South Africa. The client was extremely pleased with the outcomes and quality of work done.

The survey has formed part of the desk top research used for the National Tourism Skills Audit currently being conducted by the National Business Initiative (NBI) on behalf of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.