Quality customer care is vital for the survival of any tourism business.
It's against this background that the Namibia Wildlife Resort and the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) signed a cooperation agreement to improve the quality of service delivery and customer care services.
The agreement was signed in Windhoek.
At the signing, the Vice-Chancellor of NUST pointed out that improving service delivery for the tourism sector will go a long way in helping the sector recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, Dr. Erold Naomab says this should be done in a manner that suits and addresses the changes of the 21st century.
"One of these changing needs of the 21st-century traveler is the appreciation of excellence in customer service during their experience in Namibia. Ensuring that guests have a memorable experience at key destinations in Namibia depends on the interaction from the start of the journey until the guest departs. Considering this, NWR and NUST responded to the need to enhance the skills of employees of NWR in order to improve excellence in customer care service and culinary arts."
The agreement includes professional development for staff at both institutions, curriculum development, and the hosting of NUST students for internships at NWR facilities.
"Service efficiency, responsiveness, empathy, and assurance are key ingredients for customer satisfaction and service provision; hence, training to address the key challenges of service delivery is critical, such as the need to standardize our service and the need to benchmark across the resort so that when tourists come here they experience the same feel," said Professor Efigenia Semente, who is the Executive Dean at the Faculty of Commerce, Human Science, and Education at NUST.
Under the agreement currently in place, NUST has trained 75 staff members from NWR in customer care service and 55 in chef skills and culinary arts.
75 others from NWR and the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism have registered for customer care training.
"The number indicated as having gone through the training already is a big number—75 already trained and 55 and 75 to be trained if my math does not fail me, that is around 205 individuals already trained. We have a total staff profile of 634 staff, and if you say 200 have already been trained out of that staff, it's a significant number, which is very good, and we have done something for our people, and that really makes me very happy," Dr. Mathias Ngwangwama, NWR Managing Director, said.
The training, which started in March, is being conducted at various NWR facilities.