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Nqobile Tshili, Business Correspondent
THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) has directed tourism and hospitality industry players to capacitate their workers with professional skills as he condemned sub-standard services by some.

Chief executive, Mr Karikoga Kaseke, said industry players should abide by professional standards and warned those who do not do so will be barred from working in the hospitality sector. He said the country was positioning itself for tourism economic boom and players in the sector should improve the quality of their services. Mr Kaseke said due to economic challenges facing the country most players have turned to unqualified staff to cut costs thereby offering sub-standard services.

“We are now in a hurry to make sure that we modernise the facilities and even the people who are manning these facilities, who are employed in these facilities. They need to be retooled with skills to make them perform better,” he said in an interview in Bulawayo on Friday.

“They are not doing so well, we need a training programme to ensure that we are up to scratch because we might shoot ourselves in the foot when we bring tourists and are not happy (with the services) and might not return. The best customer is the one we already have who gives us repeat business.”

Dr Kaseke said the ZTA has taken it upon itself to train some of the employees in the industry so that they can improve their professional conduct.

“It is our responsibility to make sure that the industry is trained. We train the industry and when we realise this need, we hired a person who is head of our industry training who started last Monday. Because of the need to ensure that the training is done in a manner that the skills that are deployed in the hotels have proper skills,” said Mr Kaseke.

“We are going to have trade testing, everyone who is going to serve anyone in the hotel starting from the waiter or the waitress if that person does not have a certificate of competence from ZTA s/he will not work in a hotel.”

He said tourists have started trooping into the country and the ZTA will no longer be lenient with shoddy services as they did before.

“It’s a wakeup call and we have said let us get ourselves ready for the boom that we are anticipating. It’s going to be volcanic in nature,” he said. —@nqotshili