The Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) is continuing its mandate to provide relevant tourism industry related training for its members. In 2023, the association provided training opportunities for team members from over 100 of its member organisations and expects to exceed this number in 2024.
BHTA CEO Ryan Forde explained that providing education, training and development opportunities for BHTA members is an extremely important role of the Association. He said, “Over the years we have facilitated numerous training programmes for our members on an on-going basis and the response is always great.
“We see it as a platform to provide further opportunities for our member businesses and their team members as well as for the growth and development of young persons who will eventually become leaders and owners in the sector.
“In addition to these obvious benefits, this industry is extremely competitive. We are competing against the world and in order to remain at the top of our game we must ensure that we are up-to-date on new techniques and skills while improving and updating the way we do things.”
Forde added that it is for these reasons that the training offered is diverse and covers a wide range of topics: “We try to touch all areas of the industry, which can include from housekeeping to Information Technology to Management. In 2023 we focused on Customer Service for our Front of Office Teams and Tour Guides, Human Resources Management; Emotional Intelligence, Food Safety, Sanitation Standards & Compliance and Purchasing & Cost Control.
“This year we will be concentrating on Food and Beverage again, this time covering topics such as The Use of Local Foods, Menu Management and Food Presentation. We will also focus on Supervisory Management, Revenue Management, Customer Service Training (Housekeeping), Safety, Cyber Security & Compliance and Digital Marketing/IT for Social Media.”
The CEO added that these courses will be offered in conjunction with a number of organizations including the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), National Transformation Initiative (NTI), Springboard Caribbean, Barbados Police Service and Barbados Employers’ Confederation.
Forde said, “These and other areas such as App & Software Development, Large Scale Event Management, Asset Management and Niches such as Sports Tourism, various forms of Special Tourism, Film Tourism, Rural, Eco and Agri-Tourism are some of the areas that we wish to see our industry diversify towards.
“These are not all of the areas but just a glimpse of the direction which the BHTA, alongside our local partners from the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport, Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI), Intimate Hotels of Barbados (IHB), Barbados Entrepreneurship and Tourism Association (BETA) and Tourism Development Corporation (TDC) would be pleased to see our team members and owners trained and diversify their services and investment in, as we reshape, reimagine and reposition our tourism industry to be a full 360 of offerings.”
