St. John's, Antigua (February 17, 2009) - As a follow-up to the Small Hotel Business Operations and Food & Beverage (F&B) Management Workshop held earlier in February, the Ministry of Tourism continues to focus on providing training opportunities for tourism and hospitality industry workers, with a training programme which started on February 16 and will run until February 20.
The second in the series of training programmes as part of the OAS sponsored Capacity Building: Tourism Training and Certification project, targets Supervisors, prospective Supervisors and Line Staff in the F&B department/sector.
The project is designed to improve the human resource capacity of the tourism sector and to provide opportunity for internationally recognised certification. Manager of Tourism Education, Training and Awareness, Cynthia Simon said "it is our aim to continue to use training to ensure quality and consistency in products and services through increased awareness and knowledge and the development of employees' skills. It is anticipated that this will reap dividend for businesses, employees and the country."
37 participants representing ten establishments will benefit from the training programme. The number of participants also include hospitality industry workers who took the initiative to register for the programme on their own.
The first two days of the programme will focus on restaurant service skills while days three and four will target F&B supervisors and prospective supervisors including those whose applications were approved for them to write the Certified Hospitality Department Training (CHDT) Exam on Day 5 of the programme. Successful F&B Supervisors will earn the CHDT designation from the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (AH&LEI).
CHDT is a competency based certification programme that recognises front line department trainers. Through a testing process, employees earn a designation which acknowledges competence in the duties they perform.
Feature Facilitator/Trainer, Debbie Thomas, is a Professor at the School of Service Arts based in California. She is an International Food and Beverage Consultant and Master Hospitality Trainer.
