The Hour

A campaign to improve the skills of Britain’s hospitality industry ready for the visitors to the 2012 Olympic Games has begun. People 1st – the sector skills council for the hospitality, leisure, tourism and travel industries – is bringing its campaign to train 200,000 hospitality and tourism staff to Scotland.
 
WorldHost, a training programme which has already been used successfully at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, aims to train 200,000 people. Four hundred licensed trainers will be needed to do the training, and Scotland’s first train the facilitator session took place this week in Livingston, West Lothian.
 
Linda Roberts, master trainer of the WorldHost programme said: “The UK doesn’t have the best customer service record and so we need to raise customer service standards if we are to make the most of the revenue that could be generated from visitors during the Olympics.
 
“WorldHost is designed to set the standard of customer service training in Scotland. Not only for the Olympics – where Scotland is expected to benefit from the increased visitors to the UK – but also to help Scotland prepare to host future international events.
 
“We’ve had a great response from those in Scotland wanting to become licensed WorldHost trainers. In fact, because demand is so great, we’ve already scheduled another training session in May since this course was oversubscribed.”
 
Almost two million people are employed in the UK in the hospitality, tourism, leisure and travel industries.

WorldHost was developed by British Columbia tourism authorities and has a 20-year history. It was used for training nearly 40,000 staff and volunteers in time for the very successful 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

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