Report OL193 Meeting the Tourist Challenge

70% of the millions of foreign visitors entering the UK each year pass through the South East. The outlook for the 1990s is for further growth as a result of the completion of the Channel Tunnel and the Single European Market. Hotels in Kent were eager to capitalise on the business opportunities presented by the projected increase in visitors. The result was an ambitious public / private sector project involving the Eurokent Hotels Organisation ( EKHO ), the South East England Tourist Board, Kent County Council and the Employment Department.

The project saw the creation of a training programme designed to improve levels of customer service by enabling hotel and restaurant staff to communicate with French visitors in their own language. The training initiative took the form of an Open Learning programme incorporating state-of-the-art computer-based training ( CBT ) technology produced by Mast Learning Systems. The system was piloted over 12 months at ten hotels and two Further Education Colleges.

At the end of the pilot scheme, the success of the project was evaluated. The aim was to demonstrate a link between a strategic approach to human resource development and the achievement of specific corporate objectives. These were: to increase hotel occupancy, to boost guests' use of hotel services, to improve the quality of customer care, to reduce training costs, to enable staff to work towards existing NVQs, and to enhance staff motivation. The success of the initiative was assessed through trainee and customer questionnaires and by an analysis of the business performance of participating hotels.

The report, by Hospitality and Leisure Manpower, dated March 1993, comprises an introduction, five main chapters, a conclusion and eight appendices, of which appendix 6 is a table giving a comparison of the costs of the Open Learning programme (based on 80 trainees) with a conventional tutor-led approach.

An Employment Department video entitled "How British Businesses are already benefiting from Open Learning" (VOL 14 part four) refers to this project, amongst others.

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This page last updated 21 January 1999.