A total of 40 hotel and restaurant owners and managers in the Central Region have participated in a three-day Training workshop at Cape Coast.

The Workshop which was organised by the Integrated Tourism Development Department (ITDD) of the Central Region Development Commission (CEDECOM) was to among others equip the participants with knowledge and skills to enable them deliver quality services.

The participants were taken through topics like “Guarding your investment-a case for maintenance and engineering”, “ Systems and Diagnosis of financial status of operations”,” Developing and conducting effective orientation for staff” and “operating policies towards improving customer service”.

Mrs Georgina Bentum, Assistant Head of ITDD, addressing the closing ceremony on Thursday, said her outfit decided to organize the workshop for the participants to enable them improve upon the services they provide to their clients due to the important roles they play in the society.

She said the workshop was also to enable the participants to re-orient themselves and formulate policies and programmes that would help them guard their investments and enable their businesses grow as well as attract more tourists to their facilities.

She said the expected outcomes of the workshop was to improve attitudes and behaviours towards maintenance, orientation of employees and using records to track all transactions of their operations.

Mrs Bentum appealed to the participants to make use of the workshop by holding in-service training workshops for their employees.

Mrs Egi Gaise, a Consultant with the “HELP SUPPORTS SERVICE” and a resource person for the event, urged hotel managers to invest in their employees whom she described as the “eyes” of their facilities by giving them the requisite training that would enable them deliver quality service to clients.

She underscored the important role hotels and restaurants play in the tourism industry and stressed that it was important for the owners of hotels to appreciate the value of their employees and see them as their business partners and investment and not just workers.

Mrs Gaise said many hotels in the country still operated without proper security and tracking systems leading to loss of valuables which are often blamed on the employees and stressed the need for effective supervision and monitoring of the facilities.

Mr Ben Jojo Aidoo, Chief Executive officer of Nokans Hotel in Cape Coast and a participant at the event, on behalf of his colleagues thanked CEDECOM for the training which he described as an eye opener.

He regretted that of late there has been low patronage of their facilities which he blamed on tourists and other guest having problems in acquiring visas and suggested that the government should consider scraping visa fees to enable many tourists to visit the country.

Mr Aidoo said countries like Gambia were now getting a lot of tourists visiting that country because tourists did not need a visa to go there and that Ghana should emulate Gambia’s example to boost the tourism industry.