Hospitality Assured (HA), managed by the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), is a certification programme that recognises excellence in the service environment, which means meeting the expectations of a range of customers on a consistent and regular basis. The Hospitality Assured framework will therefore help a business with:
• Understanding customer’s expectations
• Planning the service delivery
• Communicating the nature and rationale of the service
• Ensuring adequate skills and resources are available
• Instigating a process of improvement which becomes part of operations and is self-perpetuating
The programme engages the services of a business advisor and a business assessor to work with tourism businesses and prepare them for certification. In this regard, the CTO conducts workshops to train both advisors and assessors across the region. The CTO recently conducted a workshop in St. Vincent in August 2013 and sixteen (16) persons from eight (8) Caribbean countries were trained as business advisors.
Mrs. Gilda Gumbs-Samuel, Executive Director of the Anguilla Hotel & Tourism Association, was one of the persons who attended the workshop and successfully attained designation as a certified Hospitality Assured business advisor. With this certification, Mrs. Gumbs-Samuel can provide the services of a business advisor to tourism businesses desirous of attaining the Hospitality Assured certification. As a business advisor, her role will be to offer impartial and objective guidance and support to businesses, to help them to meet the minimum requirements of the nine (9) steps within the Hospitality Assured programme. She will also help the business to recognize its own strengths, identify areas for improvementto work on and assist in preparing the Submission Document for external assessment.
Hospitality Assured is an industry standard that promotes and rewards the highest levels of business and service excellence for organisations in the hospitality industry. Hospitality Assured is championed by the Institute of Hospitality in the United Kingdom and supported by the British Hospitality Association (BHA) and the Caribbean Tourism Organization.
-Press Release
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
