Kenya Tourism Board steps up safety standards

Tourists visiting Kenya are to set to benefit from improved health and safety standards in tourism facilities across the country as the tourism sector steps up training of travel trade.

The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), Britain’s leading travel association, is conducting a one-week training at Utalii College Nairobi, targeting hoteliers, travel agents and other players representing the tourism sector.

The Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) is the organizer of the training program. KTB, through a media release just received, says the exercise will support hoteliers and other stakeholders in the tourism sector to make changes and improvements to their health safety management standards and processes at their premises for the benefit of tourists and staff alike.

KTB Managing Director Muriithi Ndegwa disclosed that ABTA will collaborate on long-term training and development program to be imbedded into Kenya’s tourism sector courses to offer a sustainable approach to good service delivery in the hospitality industry.

The inaugural training session which ends on April 3 brings together selected trainees from a cross section of the tourism sector in Kenya including representatives from the Tourism Authorities, Hotel Associations, Tourism Training Schools, the University Hospitability Education Sector and those responsible for hotel quality, safety, operations and hotel licensing.

ABTA, it was learned, will fund the selected candidates to participate in an intensive CIEH (Charted Institute of Environmental Health) certified training program.

Muriithi Ndegwa said that the tourism sector has to embrace the global trends in the hospitality sector which he noted included proper service delivery to tourists, which has been addressed through the ABTA training: “We are known to be a hospitable nation and this we must compliment with proper services in our tourism facilities, I am appealing to hoteliers to continually improve their services so as to meet the international standards.”

Meanwhile Muriithi Ndegwa has also disclosed that KTB will continue training the travel trade in different tourism source countries on tourism products in the country so as to interest them to visit the country. To this effect he added: “We shall continue training travel agents, tourism products managers especially in the new and emerging markets to equip them with the knowledge on Kenya as a tourism destination and therefore enabling them sell Kenya better.”