DDA training to improve tourist arrival
The fourth in the series of five training sessions on positive visitor interactions to visitor satisfaction ended here on Wednesday, June 22nd.
30 employees from Dominica Air and Sea Port Authority, Forestry and the Hotel Industry completed the training.
The sessions were held in the months of January, April and June 2016, and were hosted by the Discover Dominica Authority, (DDA), with facilitators from the Caribbean Tourism Organization, (CTO).
The aim of the DDA is to get as many people as possible exposed to this type of training so they can improve their skills in a practical way when they return to work.
The facilitator for this training, Bonita Morgan, says the session on service excellence and what is required of frontline personnel was a refresher for participants.
Morgan stated that the Caribbean must step up its game in the international tourism industry.
“What we may think of as being good service in somebody’s eyes who is visiting for the first time maybe just mediocre service. We have to look at things through the eyes of the customer and our customer is many times a regional and international traveller who has been many places in the world and had very diverse experiences. We have been telling them in the sessions that tourism business is about creating positive memories and experiences for the visitor because we want them to come back and even if they don’t come back they share their positive experiences and memories with friends and family and encourage them to come to our part of the world.
We really have to be on top of our game in terms of delivering excellent service. We have to know what that means and we have to know what is our role in being able to deliver that excellent service…”
Morgan believes that people in the private and public sector need to make the connection between tourist arrivals and the roles they play to help the country to grow and flourish for their benefit.
“If people understand the connection between the visitor coming in to our part of the world spending money and having those ‘wow’ experiences… then as we said they will spread the word that this is a place to come and to do business or to come for recreation and so on. We have to make our people make our connections in their minds between how important this industry is to the country and by extension how important it is to them and the quality of life they are experiencing in the country.
Right now Dominica like many of our other islands this tourism business is like our bread and butter industry right now. It is helping to keep us afloat and keeping us creating jobs and opportunities for people to be able to feed themselves and their families.” Morgan stated.
Morgan says although she would have preferred an extra day to execute this training, she understands the staff limitations of certain establishments.
Other facilitators for the training were Sharon Banfield-Bovell and Carrie Baron.
The Caribbean Tourism Organization does training for a number of target groups; tourism education for teachers, workshops for frontline personnel and service quality workshops for middle-management as well as taxi driver training.
