Training Needs Assessment for the Hospitality Industry in Belize

Vincent Palacio

Introduction

About the Tourism Training Unit

The Tourism Training Unit is mandated to develop and carry out a range of planning, research and training tasks. In this regard some activity areas of the unit are as follows:

1. Assessment of training needs throughout the country at entry, staff and management training levels;
2. Development and implementation of training programs within the district to address the identified needs, using District Tourism Trainers;
3. Coordination and evaluation of on-going training throughout the country;
4. Coordination with product development efforts to ensure quality tourism products and services;
5. Liaison among the various departments of the public sector, non-governmental organizations and others involved in tourism training, strengthening BTIA’s institutional linkages;
6. Development of national and district level standards and certifications for tourism skills, in coordination with other organizations involved in tourism development;
7. Increasing the profile of tourism in the country by providing sustainable, quality training in all districts.

In order to facilitate activity one (1), as stated above, a needs assessment was conducted to assess the training needs of the tourism industry in Belize. The main purpose of the analysis was to determine the best initial offering of courses for the Tourism Training Unit. This was accomplished by analyzing the current and future training needs of all sectors of the tourism industry. The assessment is based on a survey of 652 responding entities in the tourism industry.

Objectives of the Report

The objectives of the assessment were to:

• Inform the Tourism Training Unit of the current and projected priority training needs of the tourism industry in Belize.
• Guide the Unit as to what courses to prepare and provide to the industry.
• Provide direction and focus to existing tourism training institutions countrywide as to what courses should be offered.
• Provide rationale for cost-effective training in a concerted and organized manner.
• Allow industry owners to develop a plan of action for tourism training in their establishment.

Results

Overview

652 tourism establishments countrywide completed the needs assessment questionnaires. These establishments were either given a questionnaire at one of the presentations that the Unit made to the different tourism organizations, via email, fax or by individual visits from 15 interviewers who were hired to administer the survey. The questionnaires were divided into three sections. The first section looks at the institution, the second looks at the training needs and the third looks at the staff of the respondents. Sections one and two were mandatory but the third section was optional.

Besides the six districts, Placencia, Caye Caulker and San Pedro were included as separate destinations. Table 1 shows a breakdown of the number of questionnaires that were completed at the nine destinations throughout the country.

The Establishments

For the purposes of this assessment nine tourism types were used as a breakdown of the different sectors of the industry. Representatives from the Accommodation and Food and Beverage sectors completed almost 65% of the questionnaires with only .3% response from Tourism Education and Training centers. Table 2 shows the number of respondents from the all nine sectors.

In an effort to determine the age of tourism establishments in Belize and to see if there is correlation between the age of an operation and the training needs of that establishment the third question ask about the age of the establishment. Fifty-two percent of the responding organizations were five years or less and about 8% were over 21 years old. Table 3 shows the number of years that the establishments have been in existence. Please note that establishments under a year old are labeled as one year and all other responses are rounded up or down if over or below six months.

The respondents reported employing a total of 3,612 full-time and part-time workers. Table 4 shows the staff profile of the organizations interviewed. This profile includes the employment status and the sex breakdown of the respondents.

Table 7 shows preference for the different types of training. This table shows that almost 98% of the respondents stated that it is important to conduct on-the-job training. When asked about the percent of budget that is allocated to training, 63% indicated that they do not budget for training, 28% said they use 1-5% of their budget for training and 9% budgeted 5-10% for training.

Training needs

The main purpose of this assessment was to determine tourism training needs as reported by the industry itself In order to do so, respondents were asked to indicate “all major training needs” among the various categories of staff. This section detail the major training needs identified by the responding organizations.

Tables 8, 9, 10, and 11 show the training needs identified at the Managerial, Professional, Skilled/semi-skilled and Unskilled levels. The first six courses at each level will be developed and offered over the first year of the project. At the Managerial level the courses are Customer Relations, Marketing, Leadership skills, Financial/Accounting, Communications and Human Resources Management. At the Professional level the courses are Customer Relations, Communications, Financial Accounting, a Foreign Language, Computer Skills and Marketing. At the Skilled/semi- skilled level the courses that will be developed are Customer Relations, Communications, Culinary Skills, Computer Literacy, Foreign Language and Financial Accounting. And at the Unskilled level the courses that will be developed are Customer Relations, Communications, House Keeping, Foreign Language, Waitering, and Culinary Skills. Across all four levels there were some common trends, the need for training in Customer Relations and Communications.

Other Analysis

When looking at the type of training that is currently being undertaken by the various sectors of tourism operation, “On the job training” is used the most across all sectors. In the accommodation sector, 90% use on the job training, 18% use in-house classroom training, 7% use external trainers, 14% use local tourism training institutions, 3% use regional tourism training institutions, and 3% uses international tourism training institutions. This trend was similar across the different sectors of tourism operations. Table 12 shows the breakdown.

When a cross tabulation was run to determine the preferred training time by the type of tourism operations there was no difference across the nine sectors in their preference for daytime training during the week with training during the evening hours following closely. Training on the weekends seems to be the least attraction of the three options. Table 13 provides the detail.

Table 14 provides a detailed breakdown of the training needs across the tune sectors of tourism. This information will guide the Unit to target its marketing efforts to the right sector. For example, the table shows that 249 people from the accommodation sector would like training in Customer Relations and from this number, 77 are from the managerial level, 45 from the professional level, 70 from the semi-skilled level and 57 from the unskilled. This breakdown can be shown for all the training needs across every sector.

Table 15 shows the training needs of the nine destinations. This information will be provided to the District Tourism Trainers who will use this to know whom to approach for training.

Conclusion

The results of the needs assessment study suggest several potential areas of emphasis for tourism training. The nine most desired programs that the industry is calling for are customer relations, marketing, leadership, financia/accounting, communications, human resources management, management, computer literacy and foreign language. These programs ranked the highest across the nine sectors of tourism and across the four levels of employment.

Most responses came from the Stann Creek District (17.6% of the total amount) and the least from Corozal (7.1%). The accommodation sector of tourism had the most responses (41.1%) and the Tourism Education and Training Institutions had the least (.3%). Of the establishments that participated in the survey 86% currently conduct on the job training and 99% stated that this type of training is important. The least used type of training is the sending of employees to international training institutions (3%). During the daytime is the preferred time for training with the weekends being least preferred.

© Vincent Palacio, 2003.

HTML last revised 9th May 2003.

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