Small hotels refocus to achieve service and business excellence

Basseterre, St. Kitts, May 31, 2013 (SKNIS): Achieving Service and Business Excellence for Small Hotels was the theme of this year’s National Workshop for Owners and Operators of Small Hotels in St. Kitts and Nevis held at the Ocean Terrace Inn (OTI).

The goal of the May 30-31 workshop was to focus on the link between delivering excellent service in a consistent manner and how businesses will profit from it.

Facilitator of the workshop Shirleen Nibbs stated that the key component of the goal is that hotels deliver on their pledge of excellent service.

“It is very easy for us to have creative’s that clearly highlight our promise to our customers,” Ms. Nibbs noted addressing the participants. “But it is a very different thing for them to experience in a consistent manner what it is you have put out there in your collateral pieces as your promise. So the workshop will look at the promise in relation to what training and development you do with your human resources in order to deliver service to the highest international standards.”

OAS Representative Starret Greene stated that the workshop will also focus on quality, competitiveness and it will convince the participants that “training and standards converted into a brand will become [their] new lifeline,” while referring to the survival of their business.

Caroline James, acting CEO of the St. Kitts Tourism Authority, explained that the two day exercise was a “deliberate effort to learn about issues relevant to the growth and development of the small property or hotel sector.”

“As a tourism dependent country we must constantly seek to benefit from enriching and engaging experiences like this one which helps us to maximize the benefits to be gained from tourism.”

She added that the Federation benefits in this regard from the improved contribution of the tourism sector to the gross domestic product of the country.

The workshop was coordinated by the Organisation of American States, the Ministry of Tourism, The St. Kitts Tourism Authority, the Nevis Ministry of Tourism and The St. Kitts and Nevis Hotel and Tourism Association.