Namibia Tourism Board – Improving Service Skills

Facilitation of training trainers in customer-service skills

The Namibia Tourism Board is a statutory body created through an Act of Parliament, Act No 21 of 2000. Its main mandates are:

• To market and promote tourism by encouraging tourists to travel to and within Namibia;
• To promote the development of the tourism industry and environmentally sustainable tourism by actively supporting the long-term conservation, maintenance and development of the natural resource base in Namibia;
• To regulate the tourism industry in Namibia by putting measures in place to ensure that services rendered and facilities provided to tourists comply with the prescribed standards;
• To promote adequate training of persons engaged or to be engaged in the tourism industry.

To fulfil the fourth mandate, the NTB continuously initiates training programmes aimed at improving skills in the hospitality and tourism sector.

As part of the drive to improve skills, the Namibia Tourism Board, assisted by the Commonwealth Secretariat, facilitated a training programme in Trainers for Customer Services Skills from 24 January to 5 February 2013. The Commonwealth Secretariat contracted two senior lecturers from the School of Sport and Service Management based at the Centre for Tourism Policy Studies of the University of Brighton to travel to Namibia to conduct the training. The two-day training of 60 candidates took place in Swakopmund, Oshakati and Windhoek.

This project is part of the Tourism Human Resources Strategy for Namibia as developed in 2011 with the assistance of the Commonwealth Secretariat. The intention is to link this programme to an annual customer-service award scheme initiated to recognise and reward those entities that are practising best-customer services skills, and to generate a culture of customer-service delivery among industry stakeholders.

Workshop participants

Namibia as a tourist destination is constantly competing with other destinations around the world and thus needs be competitive at all times. While Namibia is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, this alone is not sufficient motivation for people to continue coming to Namibia if they are not rewarded with value for money. This includes being treated with care, courtesy and respect at all times in a professional manner. In short, Namibia as a destination must maximise its tourist potential in terms of its beautiful scenery, solitude and adventure potential, as well as provide a top-rate professional customer service.

In the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP4), the Namibian Government identified tourism as a sector with a burgeoning economic potential. This potential can be realised fully only if we as citizens realise the importance of giving quality service to our tourists, whether as immigration officers, police officers, taxi drivers, petrol attendants or any other service providers. Namibia will be put on the tourist map as first option only if those who come here are presented with high-quality service delivery.

Trained people are expected to continue training others by approaching organisations and offering this training. These individuals must therefore take ownership of the skills acquired during the train-the-trainers exercise and share them with others. To acquire the list of trained trainers, we recommend that industry members contact John Siloiso at the NTB: Tel 061 290 6038 or e-mail: jsiloiso@namibiatourism.com.na  

This NTB advetorial appeared in the Travel News Namibia 2013 Winter edition.