WHEN the novel coronavirus began to ravage the country’s tourism sector last March the Jamaica Centre for Tourism Innovation (JCTI), one of the State entities responsible for ensuring that there is a steady supply of skilled workers in the sector, found itself with a new task.
“Our goal was not only to provide certification. Our goal was also to hold our tourism community together,” says JCTI Director CarolRose Brown.
By April, the centre moved 90 per cent of its certification programmes online. Within five months it certified more than 5,000 people, about twice the number it typically does each year, adding new programmes specifically designed to provide industry workers with the skills needed in a world forever altered by COVID-19. In addition to its regular task of providing certification at the supervisory level, training future tutors, and working with high school students interested in the field of tourism, the JCTI expanded its offerings.
“We included a number of entry-level courses. For example, from HEART, we did a lot of entry level programmes for persons just wanting to do housekeeping or laundry attendant, that kind of thing,” says Brown.
They also rolled out a new programme, ServSafe, provided in collaboration with the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (AHLEI) and the National Restaurant Association, which focuses on safe handling of food at every step of the process — from the employee unloading supplies from a truck to the one serving the meal. More than 3,000 participants received ServSafe certification and the programme has been permanently added to JCTI’s list of courses. So too has been a course called tourism and the law, also introduced after COVID-19 hit.
“There were so many of these entry level courses that were normally not within the kind of things we did, but because of the nature of the pandemic and the fact that everybody was out of work, we decided it was very useful to include as many people as was possible in the process,” says Brown.
Fully recognising the importance of a steady supply of skilled employees to the sector’s continued success, the JCTI has over the years worked with the education ministry to introduce young people to tourism, preparing them for entry level jobs. Now they will go a step further.
“In addition to the certificate that the kids will receive from the AHLEI, it is going to be twinned with a community college-offered associate degree in customer service, [done] over the same two years,” says Brown.
“Successful graduates will come away with the AHLEI certificate, an associate degree in customer service, and NCTVET certification in both of those areas. We want to do this because we believe that these children are very, very well positioned to get entry level jobs. And we believe that in two years, these young people will be ready to become assistant, deputy supervisors.”
Going forward, the JCTI will also redouble its efforts to add data analytics in tourism and hospitality to its list of certifications offered to industry employees as well as students pursuing degrees in hospitality and tourism.
“When we started… we had an initial collaboration with Smith Travel Research (STR). We had some people who were certified but they couldn’t find jobs because nobody understood what big data was. But all of a sudden, data analytics is now a thing,” says Brown.
“So we are now restarting our relationship with STR to offer that certification in data analytics in tourism and hospitality, both to workers and also to students who are graduating with degrees in hospitality and tourism. That is what we mean by innovation: going to find the thing that is going to improve our workers and make the adjustment necessary to make these resources available to them.”
