DID YOU KNOW: Guests form their first impressions of a new hospitality venue or tourism experience within the first 30 seconds. And if it is a less-than-favourable experience, that impression often remains – even when it is followed by more positive interactions.
For this reason, ECPTA will continue to prioritise the uptraining of selected staff to ensure our visitors are met with the customer service they expect – and deserve.
Last year, our internal training efforts concentrated on upskilling frontline staff and petrol attendants. This year, the focus shifts to enhanced training of all hospitality staff within select ECPTA nature reserves.
A specialist service provider has been appointed to provide focused training programmes that will:
• Equip and prepare staff for excellent first-contact interaction; and
• Improve overall communication with guests;
Appropriately, the new training regime will kick off during Tourism Month, September 2020.
All training will be provided in both English and isiXhosa, and will be delivered electronically, to ensure all staff can access it remotely, and revisit it if required.
Leveraging the power of technology, and tapping into a new era of digitisation, staff will be able to create individual profiles which will allow them to take full advantage of the training resources being provided.
The training system being utilised will also allow the service provider to monitor the exact time and level of engagement of each individual staff member. This will ensure active participation in the training programmes, to ensure the maximum benefit.
Interaction will be encouraged, and attendees will be given the opportunity, and encouraged, to ask questions, make comments and fully engage with the materials being presented.
In addition to being aligned to its service excellence priorities, ECPTA’s new training focus is an important part of the organisation’s efforts to embrace the impact of heightened digitisation.
New research by TripAdvisor shows that tourists and hospitality consumers become more electronically adroit, with more than half of all travellers reading online reviews before committing to a booking.
“Customer care, therefore, is more important than ever,” says Fabrizio Orlando, TripAdvisor’s senior manager for Industry Relations. “The majority of customers tend to leave online reviews about the businesses they’ve dealt with. If one of your customers has a negative customer experience, you can guarantee they are going to write about it online.”
