A significant breakthrough in the training in tourism issues by the Hotel Management School of Galicia, Spain (CSHG) has been the enabling of more women participation in the hotel industry in Sri Lanka.
Marcos Tilve Rodriguez, Consultant-Centro Superior de Hosteleria de Galicia (CSHG) speaking to the press last week said that their activities for the last three years helped lay the groundwork for more and more Sri Lankan female participation in the hotel industry.

A two day international seminar on “ Tourism and Hotel Management” – Design of training programmes to lay the foundations for sustainable tourism development , organized by CSHG in collaboration with the UNDP Art Gold Sri Lanka Programme and the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management was held in Colombo last week. The press briefing was held in-between the seminar.

Mr Rodriguez said that another achievement through their programmes in Sri Lanka is the Sri Lanka tourism promotion in Spain. He said that when they started the programmes in 2007 there was hardly any Spaniards arriving in Sri Lanka, but when he boarded the aircraft from Spain to come to Sri Lanka two weeks ago, there were 15 Spaniards on- board to visit Sri Lanka as tourists.

He said that they were motivated by the tsunami disaster, which devastated the tourism industry in the Southern part of Sri Lanka, to start their programme of training on tourist promotion. The project that ends tomorrow (May 31) has been in operation for the last three years. Around US $ 300,000 was spent and the funds were provided by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.

They have provided training of new professionals in the tourism and allied fields for the Provincial Tourism and Hotel Management Training Schools in Koggala and Bandarawela. They have also been working on different development aid actions in Sri Lanka (South and Uva Provinces)

Mr Rodriguez said that due to their project the Koggala School has increased the student capacity and also was able to organize different study courses in Koggala as well as in Bandarawela. They have also provided 25 computers, two laptop computers, several facsimile machines and printers. Further, three lecturers were trained in Spain under this project.

He said that though their project is over this month, there would be discussions to get into further similar projects, particularly in the North and East tourism development. He said that most probably they would come back to Sri Lanka by 2011.

He said that their organization is also involved in similar projects in other countries and said currently they are putting up a tourist training school in Miya, Egypt at a cost of around Euros 170,000. They have organized fruitful seminars and workshops in tourism promotion in South-East Asia in countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia.