Best Practice - Welcome Bournemouth Host

Welcome Bournemouth Host visit coastaltourismacademy.co.uk

Health and wellbeing tourism

Visitor Experience

A bespoke industr y training course offering product knowledge and customer ser vice advice The NCTA created cost-effective (subsidised by the NCTA), timeefficient training to enhance industry staff’s customer service and therefore improve the visitor experience in Bournemouth.

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Welcome Bournemouth Host

WHAT WE DID

WHAT WE LEARNT

Feedback from the industry suggested that while the existing daylong Welcome Bournemouth Host successfully equipped staff with the product knowledge and customer service training they needed, it was too long. Welcome Bournemouth Host is a day-long Bournemouth specific training course, covering product knowledge of the resort together with customer service skills. It includes a Level 2 NVQ certificate in Principles of Customer Service, Hospitality, Leisure and Travel and Tourism.

The trade had made it clear that cost and time was a barrier to training. Fresh marketing was undertaken o encourage businesses to see the course as a natural progression from the Bournemouth Ambassador online course. Over 18 months nearly 90 delegates did the course and NCTA Evaluation showed that those businesses offering Welcome Bournemouth Host to their staff found it valuable. 80% agreed that their staff are now more knowledgeable and confident in responding to customers and 90% would recommend the course to other businesses.

To combat the length of the programme, the NCTA split content in two formats - online and face-to-face. The NCTA created Bournemouth Ambassador, a free online product knowledge course that takes less than an hour and includes a proportion of the Welcome Bournemouth Host material. Bournemouth Ambassador proved popular for its quiz-style format.

The NCTA then commissioned a consultant to develop a half day version of the Welcome Bournemouth Host face-to-face course, for those who had completed the Bournemouth Ambassador training.

The new course provided accelerated learning to meet the time pressures faced by tourism businesses while still offering the same knowledge and qualification.

Costs / Resources: Course development ÂŁ350.

However, take up has not been as strong as hoped, considering 1,600 staff have completed Bournemouth Ambassador. As a result a midway course between the basic customer care tips on Ambassador and the in-depth qualification orientated Welcome Bournemouth Host has since been developed. This is hosted online with video and quizzes free, and allows staff to undertake it in their own time.

CONCLUSION The blended learning offered by the NCTA’s Welcome Bournemouth Host is an effective way of delivering training in an accelerated form. Commiting to release workers from shifts in advance is the primary cause of the low takeup to date, but holding sessions in hotels generated good attendance from staff within that hotel. Some industry staff reported they prefer online modules that can be undertaken flexibly hence the development of Customer Care Specialist.