This month the Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) and ABTA, The Travel Association, Britain’s leading travel association, launched a health & safety training initiative for the Kenya hospitality sector.
KTB and ABTA will now collaborate on the long term initiative which aims to support tourism sector stakeholders to improve health and safety awareness management standards across Kenya’s hospitality industry.
The inaugural week-long health and safety management training programme began on 28th March 2014 at Utalii College Nairobi, Africa's leading Hospitality and Tourism training institution and brought together 12 trainees selected by the Kenyan Authorities from a cross section of the tourism sector in Kenya. These included representatives from Tourism Authorities, Hotel Associations, Tourism Training Schools, the University Hospitability Education Sector and those responsible for hotel quality, safety, operations and licensing.
The candidates participating in the programme were put through an intensive CIEH (Charted Institute of Environmental Health) certified training programme on safety and risk management and training skills course. The candidates will now use their training within all sectors of the tourism industry. Key elements of the training will also be incorporated within established training courses, which will be used widely throughout the hospitality sector.
Muriithi Ndegwa, Managing Director Kenya Tourism Board, said: ‘We are known to be a hospitable nation and we must complement this reputation with professional services in our tourism facilities, I am appealing to hoteliers to continually improve their services so as to meet international standards’.
Angela Hills, Destination Services Manager at ABTA, who led the programme in Nairobi commented: “The project was a great success with 12 really positive delegates who were engaged with the programme right from the start. They deserve a lot of credit for their hard work in the practical exercises and their CIEH examinations. We are now looking forward to working with the delegates and the KTB over the next five years to see how the delegates put into practice everything they have learnt as they share their training throughout the economically and socially important Kenyan tourism sector”.
Tourism is Kenya’s second largest industry and the new programme is part of a long-term strategy to develop the knowledge and skills of Kenya’s next generation of employees within the hospitality industry, in order to both improve and maintain high standards of service.
