As the cruise tourism industry gets ready to embrace another busy season, a two year project for those who work in the field has been sharpening up their skills. Over the past two years, Programme For Belize has been involved in a Best Practice Project for hotel industry and tour operators in the San Ignacio area. But today PFB expanded its scope by joining forces with the Belize Tourism Industry Association.
As a result, for one day, 57 cruise tourism suppliers, tour guides and operators from the Belize city area gathered at the Bliss Centre to learn about ways to improve their services.
Yashin Dujon - National Technical Liaison, PFB
“Well the project at BTIA is directed to small and medium enterprises that are doing product development for the cruise tourism industry. The PFB perspective is focused on best management practices for the tourism sector in general. So what we did was get both projects together, co-fund this workshop and see whether or not – well obviously it has been successful, we got a big turnout today - so we will be doing it again.”
“We did get a lot of interest from the tour guides and operators in the cruise sector that were interested din doing this and they kept on asking us why is it only being done for overnight stays, the hotels and the tour operators in San Ignacio which was the original scope of the project. Through our office we have been able to apply to our funding agencies to support us in expanding this for other sectors of the industry here in Belize.”
PFB says because the turnout was excellent it plans to hold similar sessions in the future.
