Front Desk Employees During Training
Basseterre, St.Kitts – Nevis
October 20, 2009
Front desk skills for hotel employees are presently being enhanced in a workshop funded by the Organizations of American States, in collaboration with the St. Kitts Tourism Authority.
The Front Desk Representative Skills Workshop is taking place at the Frigate Bay Beach Resort, where participants are training in a certification program of the American Hotel and Login Association, on front desk operations.
The workshop started on Monday with 11 participants from various hotels and guest houses in St. Kitts, and will run until Friday.
Norvelette Morton, Human Resource & Project Manager, at the St. Kitts Tourism Authority, said the front desk skills workshop is a part of the OAS Capacity Building: Tourism Training and Certification Project.
“The workshop is expected to enhance skills in the area of front desk duties to help lift the standard of service in the hotel sector,” Morton said.
Morton went on to reveal that Shirlene Nibbs is the facilitator of the workshop. Nibbs has more than 25 years of experience on training tourism workers, and is the managing director of Nibbs And Associates, of Antigua.
Participants will be trained on telecommunications practices, check-ins procedures, dealing with VIPs, grooming, resolving complaints, emergencies, proper lost and found procedures and other components of front desk duties.
Starret Greene, OAS director for St. Kitts/Nevis, pointed out that the front desk skills workshop was the first of four other workshops to be implemented in the coming months.
The OAS director said the other workshops will provide certifications in customer service, food and beverage supervision, and rooms’ management.
“We have come to recognize that training in the tourism industry is essential not only to grow tourism in the Federation, but to make tourism more competitive,” Greene said. “We believe that when our people are trained they will be the best anywhere, and they can do anything”¦ and so in that context the OAS is focusing on preparing these workers, and many of them are young people, because we believe that they need the support and the skills.”
Greene stressed that it was important that front-line workers in the tourism industry work with the right attitude and the right behavior.
“This is important because the people who they come into contact with every single day are people from various backgrounds, cultures, creed and color and even race,” Greene said. “And, you have to know how to deal with these people.”