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Sunday, 25 August 2013

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Tourism industry needs to focus on training

There are substantial investments being made in the tourism sector and an ambitious far reaching plan is necessary to move forward.

“As Sri Lanka has invested heavily to develop the tourism industry we need to assess these investments carefully to ensure that quality service delivery is in place. As the success of the industry depends largely on repeat clientele it is essential to have 40 to 50 percent repeat business, Chairman of Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management, Chandra Mohotti told Sunday Observer Business.

“The tourism industry could not be sustained if this ‘repeat clientele’ is not achieved and the success of the industry depends on this factor. When a country is positioned as a tourism destination, promotion by word of mouth is definitely a better methods and needs to achieve 40 to 50 percent acceptance,” he said.

The hospitality industry is all about value for money. It is here that the quality of training becomes paramount. We need to focus more on training manpower at different levels as the hotel projects now being implemented will need more human capital when completed.

“The high-end international traveller is mindful of the level of professionalism and service delivery he gets, we should then make it our prime objective to delight the customer,” he said.

Mohotti said that the hotel projects that are underway have invested heavily on buildings and related structures, but not on training human resources.

“We need to emphasis on efficiency, courtesy and professionalism and the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management is geared to produce 10 percent of the required number. There is however a lacuna in the training aspect as more than 10 percent of the current capacity is necessary for the country to fuel tourism growth. We also need more training institutions,” he said.

“The key attributes in the hospitality industry are courtesy, friendliness and expertise. Hence we need to pay more attention to these areas. The cultural attributes which carried us so far are no longer sufficient as the market has changed and these assumptions are no more valid,” he said adding that we need to understand and meet the deficiencies to reach the ambitious targets set by the government.

The tourism industry recorded 512,281 arrivals in the first half of 2013 an increase of 13.1 percent compared to the corresponding period of the past year. The main contributors were, North America 11.7 percent, Latin America 12.3 percent, Western Europe 21 percent, Africa 13.4 percent, East Asia 22.7 percent and Australasia 15.9 percent.

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