Seventy persons in Anguilla, drawn mainly from the hospitality services, have undergone what has been described as two very necessary training courses.
The training, at the Anguilla Community College, on Thursday and Friday, December 13 and 14, was for operational staff, supervisors and managers respectively. The short courses were provided by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) through the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association, and were funded by Tourism Cares, a non-profit philanthropic arm of the travel and tourism industry.
The separate training classes in Excellent Customer Service and Leadership were facilitated by Joem and Annamarie Qual, a husband and wife couple, from Springboard Caribbean, an organization considered the best in the region for training in hospitality services.
“We are both Directors of Springboard Caribbean and we provide training around the Caribbean,” Mr. Qual told The Anguillian newspaper. “We are the educational partners of the Caribbean Tourism and Hotel Association. Our main office is in St. Lucia and we spend a lot of time travelling through the Caribbean providing training.
“We provide management and leadership training as well as compliance training such as food safety, hazard and risk management. What we are doing in Anguilla is a management and leadership course as well as an operational course which is customer services.
“The courses we are running in Anguilla are sponsored by grant assistance through the Caribbean Hurricane Recovery Fund and that fund is managed by Tourism Cares … in collaboration with the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association.”
Mr. Qual continued: “This training is mainly targeted at newly-reopened hotels since the devastation by Hurricane Irma – or hotels about to open. It is designed to provide motivational training, ensure managers have the skills to help motivate and re-energize their teams, following the hurricane, and re-energize the skills of operational staff – a lot of whom may have actually been out of work for a period of time.”
Mr. Qual along with his wife visited various tourism properties in Anguilla. “We are impressed with the island’s hotel product and its people,” he commented.
Before coming to Anguilla the facilitators were in St. Martin/St. Maarten where they conducted similar training. In February 2019 they will train a number of hospitality workers in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Mrs. Gilda Gumbs-Samuel, Executive Director of the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association, coordinated the training. She was pleased that the CHTA had come up with the initiative of raising funds to assist the islands that were impacted by Hurricane Irma. To quote her: “Anguilla was one of those islands and although the funds were exhausted the CHTA continued to work to assist us. Four islands were selected to benefit from the training. The Leadership training was aimed at ensuring we have leaders who are properly trained to manage our staff for our tourism industry. It was very encouraging that for the Customers Care workshop we had 38 people and for the Leadership training we had 32. It means that in two days we would have trained 70 members of our hospitality industry.”
