Tourist Board Sensitises Hospitality Industry to Ghana 2008(Page 14) 14/01/08

Story:Michael Donkor

THE Ghana Tourist Board has embarked on a sensitisation training programme on catering and service delivery for stakeholders in the tourism industry.
Consequently, some managers and owners of hotels in the country have been taken through managerial and hospitality skills to enable them to deliver effective services to visitors who will be coming to the country to watch the Ghana 2008 fiesta.
The Public Relations Manager of the Board, Mr Ben Ohene-Ayeh, in an interview, said service delivery by some stakeholders in the hotel and catering industry was a problem because most of them used unskilled workers who acted as waiters and front officers at their hotels and catering centres.
Mr Ohene-Ayeh said it was in view of this that the Board decided to train stakeholders in the industry to enable them to deliver standard services to guests who would be coming to watch the African Cup of Nations tournament and beyond.
He said the Board was also training food vendors and all those who provided catering services in the regions, which would play host to the tournament.
Mr Ohene-Ayeh said all the regions, except the two upper regions, had been selected as the centres for the training programme.
He noted that ideally the Board should have provided licences to all caterers but because of lack of logistics it had limited the number.
He said at the end of the sensitisation programme, it was expected that the skills of these stakeholders would be enhanced to the level that would enable them to render quality services to the visiting football fans.
Mr Ohene-Ayeh said the programme, which had already started in the Volta Region, had been successful.