- lack of qualified and/or experienced personnel at the managerial level
- lack of dedicated training institutions (for the industry)
- lack of coordination between public and private sectors in the area of training
- unwillingness of some private operators to invest in training their personnel but would rather poach trained persons from other hotels
We also came up with proposals to resolve the identified problems. Among these was the urgency to establish training institutions in the tertiary level to arrest the problems of quality personnel in the management level category and to assess and strengthen existing training institutions(named).
Short term measures were spelt out.
This was 23 years ago.
Excerpt of a speech delivered by a hospitality professional during the conference
After vehemently making a case for professional training for all levels, (late)Mr K.D. Annan said:
“One can say with certainty that the future of tourism is being jeopardized by increasing lack of qualified personnel. Even those with some threshold level of training in basic skills do not seem to have a career path because of lack of appropriate courses/curriculum to develop them for the industry”.
The above took place 23 years ago.
Tulip News, Edition No. 3 2003
Golden Tulip Accra, 1st Teaching Hotel in Ghana
This was a front page headline of ‘The House Journal of Golden Tulip, Accra’. 15 years ago
Excerpts on a news article, TCDI, 19 May 2003
Jake Launches Tourism Capacity Initiative
A $4.8 m project, Tourism Capacity Development Initiative was launched in Accra. Its aim was to strengthen the capacity of stakeholders in the tourism sector as a means to attract tourists to Ghana.
The Minister of Tourism and Modernization of the Capital City, (late)Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, who launched the project, said although the 15-year National Tourism Development Plan has chalked up a number of successes, there is the need for a redirection in the tourism sector to enable the sector to meet new trends in the global tourism sector.
He announced that the government had set new targets for the tourism sector to make it the leading economic sector by the year 2007.
(Late)Obetsebi-Lamptey, therefore, cautioned the management of TCDI against re-inventing the wheel and to avoid over-ambitious tasks that will not make the project sustainable.
The Mission Director of the USAID, Ms Sharon Cromer, said ‘the objective of the project is to provide technical assistance and training to improve the capacity, quality and performance of the tourism industry.‘
She said the TCDI project, was scheduled to last for 16 months.
Reference from https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Jake-Launches-Tourism-Capacity-Initiative-36625
This was 15 years ago.
Implementation of the Technical Cooperation for Tourism Development Project Through Strengthening of Public-Private Partnership(PPP) -August 2008
There had been several meetings by 5 different work groups, sub-task forces and open PPP forums organized by a secretariat, I think every quarter, where all were present and group chairpersons made presentations.
In reference to the above meeting in August 2008:
- Hotels were selected for experiential learning
- A legislative instrument was thought to be required for proposed training manuals to be made operational.
- A work group was in discussion with National Accreditation Board on the issue of development of standards for tourism and hospitality training institutions
- A task force was working on tourism training certifications
The work group on human resource development outlined the objectives of the group as follows:
Completion of training modules for core competencies; front office, housekeeping, food and beverage service, food production and tour guiding; June 2008
Conducting a trainer of trainers program by September 2008 and evaluating the test before rolling out the main program early 2009
The Trainer of trainers program will be tested with the support of selected institutions and hotels using the reviewed curriculum at different certificate levels
A special task force was constituted to undertake specific projects in preparation of the test run.
This was 10 years ago.
Note: Highlights and italics my emphasis.
Where are we today? Has anything gone wrong? What went wrong? How can we rise above good intentions and bring about sustainable and progressive growth in this industry?
