From July 22nd to July 27th,, the Ministry of Tourism, through the National Directorate of Human Resources (NDHR) and the National Directorate for Development of Tourism Products and Activities (NDTPA), in cooperation with the Sekolah Tinggi Pariwisata (STP) from Bali, organized a training session on hospitality and hotel management, in the Díli Convention Center.
According to the Minister of Tourism, Francisco Kalbuadi Lay, “the areas of hospitality and hotel management are essential to the tourism sector as they reflect the image of Timor-Leste with the public, and result from good service in the hotels and restaurants”.
With this in view, the Ministry of Tourism intends to monitor and to improve customer service systems at hotels and restaurants, so that they may follow a standard.
Moreover, Francisco Kalbuady Lay promised to assign scholarships to the hotel and restaurant managers, and to undertake feasibility studies in Indonesia and Australia, so that they may increase their knowledge and experience.
The Director of Sekolah Tinggi Pariwisata, Dewa Byomantara, thanked the Government of Timor-Leste, through the Ministry of Tourism, for the opportunity to train and qualify the Timorese people.
Dewa acknowledged that Timor-Leste has a huge tourism potential to be explored, but it requires an adequate preparation and competitive human resources of international level.
The subjects that were lectured during the training sessions focused on the methods to sell tourism products, how to prepare attractive designs, how to develop tourist locations and how to transform a non-touristic site into a touristic one.
53 people attended the training session, 8 of them belonging to the restaurant area and 45 from the hotel business.