The Gambia Tourism Authority (GTA) is the focal point for tourism development in the country, tasked with the challenges of competing for the increasingly limited international market.

Aware of this, the GTA is cognisant of the need to put its house in order. Capacity building has been key in this regard. Its director general, Mr Alieu Mboge, told the Daily Observer that “education in its various forms is the key to service quality”, confirming the plans of the authority to ensure capacity building for its staff.

“There is no room for half-hearted measures,” said the GTA boss, “the training needs of employers must be met if we should entertain any credible expectations that staff must give a good and even better account of themselves in the positions they occupy. With the appropriate skills, knowledge and attitude to deliver a high quality service to visitors, Gambian tourism will be in better stead to realize the gains that will never again prove illusory.”

In this week’s edition of Tourisphere, we bring you an indepth report on the GTA’s human resource development (HRD) program. You can equally read more about it in the latest edition of their quarterly magazine.

The Gambia Tourism Authority has realized that it cannot afford to relent in its endeavours to free the tourism industry from its all too tangling shackles of underdevelopment. Allied with other stakeholders in the industry, the Authority has since been set on a concrete path to recovery by the launching of an initiative to train and augment the minds running the industry.

Like other leisure destinations, tourism in The Gambia is blighted by problems related to service delivery. These have been identified as poor customer care services, communication and managerial challenges and also problems related to health and hygiene, first aid, fire prevention and safety. For the effectiveness of its induction programs, which were conducted recently, its strategy was to incorporate the customer care component with personnel management on the one hand, and integrate the health, hygiene and safety components on the other.

Customer care and management skills training
In service industries, the importance of customer care and management skills cannot be overemphasized. Echoing a popular corporate parlance, without the customer there is no business and in the absence of skills to manage both the material and human resources there will be no service provider.

Previous trainings done by the Authority exposed participants to modern management practice, concepts and themes so as to improve management performance on the job. Participants also came away equipped with basic managerial skill, which organizers of the program hope would go a long way to improve their standard of service delivery in the tourism industry.  The induction also gave administrators the chance to revisit their disposition in the work environment.

Other highlights of the induction include providing opportunities for exchange of experience and ideas, presenting and overview of the importance of customer handling services, effective customer handling techniques and effective communications skills, managing customer relationship and corporate social responsibility. Other areas related to these tourism components were viewed, such as the labour laws of The Gambia, health, hygiene and safety, team building, time management, team leadership, supervision and motivation.

Airport security/porters -
Customer care relations:
As the first port of call, where tourists will inevitably always develop their first impressions of the country and its people, the Banjul International Airport featured significantly in the GTA’s attempt to nip in the bud tendencies that may reinforce stereotypical views from guests and sharpen misguided notions by the people they first encounter upon disembarkation.

Coming against the backdrop of complaints of harassment by tourists, a training program for 30 airport staff, ranging from porters, customs officials, cleaners, security personnel, etc, has been organized with a view to cleaning their acts and replacing them with more responsible behaviours commanding the respect of the guests they encounter. Participants were reminded that harassing tourists is a great disservice to the country’s cause of projecting its tourism as exotic and problem-free. As the first people tourists encounter, airport workers, from security officers to porters, should give a good account of themselves, which by extension determines the image of the country in the eye of the average visitor.

Training the Tourism Security Unit (TSU)
The Tourism Security Unit was also not left out of the GTA’s scheme of things as is necessitated by a pressing need for improvement. The authority conducted periodic sensitizations and trainings for the unit in the areas of child rights, environmental education, ethical behaviour, what constitutes acceptable tourism behaviour and licensing. The operational capacity of the TSU was further enhanced by the provision of 11 scooters, 10 mobile phones, a serviceable vehicle to supplement the fleet of motorbikes and beach buggies, which were donated by UNICEF.

Integrating tourism into the school curriculum
The biggest danger to the development of tourism in The Gambia is bumsterism. Details of a recent survey paint a cheerless scenario of the threat being posed to the image of the country as tourists lament being at the receiving end of harassment and thievery by local beach boys known as bumsters.  According to the study, over 50% of visitors interviewed said they were not returning to The Gambia because of the behaviour of young Gambian men and women they encountered in the course of their holiday.

However, the Gambia Tourism Authority is working tirelessly to upend this disquieting situation as it streamlines plans for the integration of tourism into the mainstream school curriculum. This, according to leading lights of the GTA, could be the best possible way to strike at the heart of the menace, which has so far defied all other valiant attempts aimed at banishing it from the tourism sector.

The project has been piloted and launched since May 2007 and currently targets young people in the school system. According to the GTA, if education has demonstrated its powers to the mind of generations before, it can be trusted to transform thoughts and attitudes so that the intervening generation of young men and women would witness the long desired end to this scourge. The battle to win hearts and minds against the bumster syndrome could not be more decisive.