THTI urges hospitality certification as Tobago readies for tourism boom

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

As To­ba­go pre­pares for an in­flux of vis­i­tors when the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal opens, all eyes are on the culi­nary and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tors to el­e­vate their stan­dards. With the de­mands on the ser­vice providers ex­pect­ed to in­crease, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has iden­ti­fied cus­tomer ser­vice as cru­cial to en­sur­ing vis­i­tors have a pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence.

So­nia Phillip, act­ing CEO, To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (THTI), be­lieves that man­date can on­ly be achieved by in­dus­try stake­hold­ers en­cour­ag­ing ser­vice providers to get cer­ti­fied.

Fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the “ho­tel school” in Trinidad sev­er­al years ago, THTI, which is fund­ed by the THA, said its role has be­come even more im­por­tant.

With a co­hort of over 60 stu­dents an­nu­al­ly, THTI con­tin­ues to train the next gen­er­a­tion to com­ple­ment all the at­trac­tions To­ba­go has to of­fer.

Phillip, who left a ca­reer in fi­nance to pur­sue culi­nary arts, said a “sweet-hand” in the kitchen is not enough, adding there is a sci­ence in scal­ing a recipe and cost­ing a menu.

“Hav­ing a ‘sweet-hand’ is enough for home cook­ing. When you start to scale, and you start to get in­to the are­na of hav­ing to cook for 200, 300, 400 per­sons, the sci­ence of the culi­nary field be­comes so im­por­tant. The sweet-hand can start you, but you have to get that for­mal train­ing.”

Phillip, who grew up in Bar­ba­dos, said one of the biggest chal­lenges the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try faces is be­low-par cus­tomer ser­vice.

She at­trib­uted this to a mind­set preva­lent through­out the Caribbean, equat­ing ser­vice to servi­tude.

She said THTI stu­dents must un­der­go train­ing so they can be­come true am­bas­sadors to the is­land.

Phillip said the in­sti­tute is in con­stant dis­cus­sions with the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) and in­di­vid­ual ho­tels, get­ting feed­back from man­age­ment about cus­tomer re­quests and pro­vid­ing work­ers for events.

She said a di­rect line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is es­sen­tial so THTI can work in syn­er­gy with the ho­tels for the ben­e­fit of the in­dus­try.

Phillip de­scribed THTI as a hub for in­no­va­tion, as she not­ed part­ner­ships with Na­tion­al Flour Mills and most re­cent­ly, Trini­tario, for a co­coa lab which will be opened on cam­pus in Sep­tem­ber.

She added that de­spite there be­ing no bar­ri­ers for en­try in­to the sec­tor, it is a pro­fes­sion that re­quires mul­ti-task­ing while work­ing de­mand­ing hours.

Phillip said THTI pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence, which will au­gur well for the lo­cal in­dus­try.

Stu­dent Coun­cil pres­i­dent Leigh Ann Al­fred told Guardian Me­dia she is look­ing for­ward to grad­u­at­ing and en­ter­ing the field.

“When I grad­u­ate, I know for a fact I will find a work­place in To­ba­go and even in the re­gion,” she said.

With sev­er­al stu­dents from Trinidad and the Caribbean, Phillip said THTI is build­ing out its dor­mi­to­ries to ac­com­mo­date stu­dents.

In the in­ter­im, the Mt St George/Hope com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fits con­sid­er­ably with stu­dents rent­ing apart­ments and al­so work­ing in near­by busi­ness­es.