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Trainer takes customer service skills to South Atlantic island!
St Helena students
July 2008
One of the world’s most isolated English-speaking islands is taking its first steps towards becoming a tourism destination through customer service training for local people.
The tourist board of St Helena, which has a population of just 4,000 people and can only be accessed by boat, called in Tourism South East Training and Skills to deliver a special week of Welcome to Excellence courses on the remote South Atlantic island.
Tourism South East Training Manager Gill Heighington took the ten-day round trip on board Britain’s last working Royal Mail Ship to Jamestown, the capital and island’s only town, to run an intensive five days’ training.
One of the last 14 British Overseas Territories, the island is hoping that tourism will provide some form of economic self-sufficiency. An airport is due to be built on St Helena by the end of 2012, offering the potential for a small visitor economy, helping tackle high unemployment amongst islanders (known as 'Saints').
St Helena Tourism and The Adult and Vocational Education Service of St Helena (AVES) appointed Tourism South East to deliver a series of tailored Welcome to Excellence customer service courses to 24 staff from hotels, restaurants and shops. Gill also ran ‘train the trainer’ courses for eight managers so they can teach more people core service skills and knowledge as they gear up to receive visitors.
Gill said: “It was the most unusual assignment I have ever undertaken, but it was a memorable experience. I travelled on the RMS St Helena with about one hundred other passengers and lots of cargo, five days out and five days back.
"St Helena is a beautiful and very peaceful island but the people know they desperately need some form of economic development. We worked on adapting the courses to take into account local facilities and their culture, and to develop true Welcome to St Helena training. People were genuinely keen to learn, which was vital as the training was very intensive. I hope that we have played a part in helping secure the island’s future."
The Welcome to St Helena training comprised the following courses from the Welcome to Excellence suite of courses: Welcome Host, Welcome Host Plus, Welcome International, Welcome Management and Green Advantage.
Pam Young Director of Tourism St Helena said: "We were all impressed with the content of the course and how well it was delivered. The local trainers are very enthusiastic about further delivering of the training and we’ll also be looking at using some of the ideas that came out of the Green Advantage course in our talks for boosting local products.
"Tourism South East Training and Skills weren’t at all daunted by this unusual contract and have been really committed to helping us move forward. We’re at the start of an exciting journey, but we feel that developing Welcome to St Helena training, based on internationally-recognised standards, is a firm foundation. If we give visitors a great welcome to our island and ensure their experience is memorable, then they will spread the word."
Welcome to Excellence is the UK’s most popular customer service training, with more than 300,000 participants since it was launched in 1993. Businesses throughout the hospitality, tourism and leisure sector have invested in training for their staff in the eight different courses, ranging from introductory customer service to specialist courses for dealing with international visitors; guests with disabilities; and management courses.
Tourism South East Training and Skills is increasingly delivering tailored courses for organisations as varied as local authorities, major retail chains, independent hotels and visitor attractions, and other businesses with large numbers of frontline customer-facing staff as they seek to improve customer service performance.
More information visit tourismtrainingsoutheast.com or from Tourism South East Training and Skills on 023 8062 5533.
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