Central Region hotel managers boost skills
Forty hotel and restaurant owners and managers in the Central Region have participated in a three-day training workshop in Cape Coast to equip them with the requisite knowledge to effectively manage their facilities.
The workshop, which was organised by the Integrated Tourism Development Department (ITDD) of the Central Region Development Commission (CEDECOM) was to equip the participants with knowledge and skills to enable them to deliver quality services and also ensure effective running of activities in their various establishments .
The participants were taken through topics like; “Guarding your Investment – A Case for Maintenance and Engineering, Systems and Diagnosis of Financial Status of Operations, Developing and Conducting Effective Orientation for Staff, and Operating Policies Towards Improving Customer Service”.
Mrs Georgina Bentum, Assistant Head of ITDD, addressing the closing ceremony on Thursday, said her outfit recognized the important role hotels and restaurants played in the tourism industry and it was for this reason that the Commission decided to organize the workshop for the participants to enable them to improve upon the services they provided to their clients.
She said the workshop was also to enable the participants to re-orient themselves and formulate policies and programmes that would help them guard their investments and enable their businesses to grow and attract more tourists to their facilities.
The expected outcomes of the workshop was to improve attitudes and behaviours towards maintenance, orientation of employees and using records to track all transactions of their operations as well as introduce new procedures on enhancing current procedures and positive impacts on operational results, she said.
Mrs Bentum advised the participants to make maximum use of the training by also holding in-service training for their employees to make a positive impact on their operations.
Mrs Egi Gaise, a consultant and a resource person, tasked hotel managers to invest in their employees who she described as the “eyes” of their facilities by giving them the requisite training that would enable them to deliver quality service to their clients.
She underscored the important role hotels and restaurants played in the tourism industry and stressed that it was important for the owners of hotels to appreciate the value of their employees and see them as their business partners and not just workers.
Mrs Gaise noted with concern that many hotels in the country operated without proper tracking systems thereby resulting in the loss of huge sums of money which managers often blamed it on the employees and stressed the need for effective supervision and monitoring of the facilities.
She, therefore, urged the managers to endeavour to study and analyse their businesses properly to give them the relevant facts that would enable them to make informed decisions on their businesses.
Mr Ben Jojo Aidoo, Chief Executive Officer of Nokans Hotel in Cape Coast, on behalf of his colleagues, thanked CEDECOM for the training which he described as an eye opener as they were given technical knowledge about the hotel and restaurant business.
He said Gambia for instance had a lot of tourists visiting that country because tourists did not need visas to go there and that Ghana should emulate Gambia to boost the tourism industry.
He said participants would put what they had learnt into good use and urged CEDECOM to make the training workshop an annual programme.
Source: GNA