Hospitality Multimedia South Africa

Inter Hotel Challenge (IHC) winners were announced last night, 28 November, at a gala event held at the Southern Sun Cape Sun. Sponsored by Heineken Beverages, the annual competition aims to identify and nurture the best hospitality talent in South Africa.

This December, guests of the V&A Waterfront's five-star Table Bay hotel will receive an African festive flair, celebrating local creativity.

The Mhondoro Safari Lodge & Villa in Limpopo has successfully opened an organic food production at its Platbank farm near the Welgevonden Game Reserve. The farm produces a wide variety of vegetables that include spinach, beetroot, pumpkins, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and onions, as well as herbs and salad greens, while the farming of free-range chickens produces free-range eggs in abundance. With the closure of the lodge due to the coronavirus lockdown regulations, all the farm's produce is being donated to the local community, including to the Bushveld Mission Children's Home outside Vaalwater, which provides shelter to 60 orphaned, abandoned, abused and starving children the aged from newborn to 18 years old and is staffed by 15 volunteers....

Hostex 2020 was a hospitality industry expo that took place in early March at Sandton Convention Centre. It gathered over 5000 visitors to connect with more than 200 producers, manufacturers and distributors of hospitality-related products and services.

South African designers shined at the #REDExperiment 2.0 awards ceremony hosted by the Radisson RED Hotel V&A Waterfront, Cape Town last week. The design competition started accepting entries from early February and entrants were given a chance to design the hotel's new staff uniform - a T-shirt, a cap and a long-sleeve jacket. The winning designers for each of the three categories were awarded R10,000 and their designs will go into production this month....

The country's best restaurants were honoured at the 2019 Eat Out Mercedes-Benz Restaurant Awards, which was held at GrandWest in Cape Town on the 17 November 2019. The Western Cape's restaurants cleaned up - taking most of the top honours including the number one spot, which went to La Colombe.

To celebrate the 50 years since it first opened, the Premier Hotel The Winkler in White River hosted a black tie formal dinner. Guests included original owner Erwin Winkler, along with subsequent owners, former general managers, local dignitaries and staff members who have been with the hotel for over 40 years.

The Distell Inter Hotel Challenge launch took place over a period from 10 March to 13 April at five venues, which include Sun International Maslow Time Square, Southern Sun Elangeni & Maharani, The Royal Portfolio La Residence, Lanzerac Hotel & Spa and The Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa.

In an effort to encourage the food industry to be more sustainable and creative in using seafood, the regional Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa (Fedhasa Cape), in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature's Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (WWF-Sassi) challenged 25 chefs to a cook-off. The cook-off was held at the Cape Town Hotel School in Granger Bay.

The inaugural Womxn in Food - FOOD XX Awards and Symposium took place at Jetty 5 at the V&A Waterfront on the 12 February 2019.

First Group's La Vita Health Spa at the Palace in Durban treated the three winners of the 2018 Hillcrest Aids Centre Gogo of the Year competition to a day of pampering. As the winners, the Gogos were given a brunch at the hotel's Pesto restaurant, which was followed by body treatments at the La Vita Spa, cosmetic gift hampers, and a travel set from Vaczone.

The One&Only Cape Town recently hosted the eighth annual Reaching for Young Stars project. The One&Only Reaching for Young Stars aims to provide hospitality students with a platform to gain knowledge and expertise from established executive chefs, cooks, bakers, winemakers, wine stewards, and sommeliers.

The students were invited to the skills exchange development programme in August and the orientation in September where they experienced talks, demonstrations, and lectures from top executive chefs, sommeliers, bakers, food authors and hospitality industry experts who have already found success in South Africa and around the world. They met the partners and judges, and interfaced with the farmers and producers who supplied the food ingredients rigorously selected for their adherence to the best local quality can offer....