JHTA president: Seek potential tourism workers in non-traditional hospitality areas
Published:Friday | November 17, 2023 | 12:12 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
JAMAICA HOTEL and Tourist Association [JHTA] President Robin Russell is suggesting that programmes like the Tourism Product Development Company’s [TPDCo] Team Jamaica Training Programme should be used to seek potential hospitality employees in sections of Jamaica that are not traditionally tourism-centred.
Addressing yesterday’s launch of the rebranded Team Jamaica programme at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in Rose Hall, St James, Russell said that such a move would help to maintain and lower Jamaica’s unemployment rate, which stands at 4.5 per cent as of April this year.
“With so many properties coming on stream and 4.5 per cent unemployment, it is important that we reach into the nooks and crannies of where workers can come from. Some of these places where these workers are coming from are not very familiar with what tourism is,” said Russell.
“You get somebody out of Spanish Town or somebody out of Jackson Bay in Clarendon that does not even know what a tourist is, and you carry them to Montego Bay and say ‘Let’s get to work’, but they are not grown up in hospitality, they didn’t see their parents or people around them doing it, and they were not taught it in school,” Russell added.
“This is where Team Jamaica will play an integral role, getting those persons in tourism, getting them to be functional, getting them to be as friendly and to have the information that they will need to speak to and transfer [knowledge] to all guests.”
SECTOR’S AIM
Last year August, the Government indicated its intention to study the job fallout in the tourism sector since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of forecasting the skills needed for the sector’s future.
According to the July 2020 Labour Force Survey, it was estimated that the number of employed persons in the hospitality sector dropped to 122,400, compared to 161,500 in July 2019, representing a 24.2 per cent decline in employment.
In January this year, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett revealed that some 45 million tourism employees worldwide had not returned to the sector despite the process of recovery from the pandemic.
Russell told yesterday’s launch that the Team Jamaica Training Programme has helped to shape local hospitality employees into an invaluable asset for Jamaica’s tourism sector, allowing the tourism product to stand out on the global stage.
The Team Jamaica programme was established by TPDCo in 1997 to equip trainees with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are needed to excel in the tourism sector. The programme includes topics such as customer service, cultural awareness, and sustainable tourism practices.
The programme covers three levels of training to include Level One – Team Member; Level Two – Supervisory; and Level Three – Management.
“There is one thing that distinguishes Jamaica from everywhere else, and that is our people. There is one thing that distinguishes a tourism worker, and that is Team Jamaica,” said Russell. “Team Jamaica has played an integral role in how we have developed tourism, in how we have sold ourselves as a people and as a country. After 20 years, after five years, after two years, even for my small hotel, you have to start looking inward and saying, ‘How do I do it better?’”