Tourism school to come on stream in 2020 – Bartlett

Western Bureau:

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says a tourism graduate school to facilitate the training of top-level managers will become operational in 2020. He said hotels operating in Montego Bay will serve as the laboratory.

According to Bartlett, talks are well advanced with The University of the West Indies to receive the first batch of students, who will be studying tourism management through research and development. He said that the students will graduate technically equipped to secure top-level jobs anywhere in Jamaica and the rest of the world.

“We are partnering with The University of the West Indies. I had a meeting on June 27 with the principal of the Mona campus in advancing the discussions for starting the graduate school of tourism in Montego Bay in 2020,” said Bartlett during his recent address at the 58th annual general meeting of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA).

The JHTA is earmarked to play a pivotal role in curriculum development for the school, according to Bartlett, who is confident that the various components will come together to ensure success.

“We are going to come to the JHTA to ask them to work with us in the curriculum development,” said Bartlett. “We will be looking at what are the areas of research that are going to require ­creating that worker cadre that we need for the future as we discuss the future of work. What impact [is] ICT (information communication technology) going to have on the workforce in the future?”

Bartlett said that with the advancement of technology in the tourism sector, Jamaica will have to double its efforts to equip all tourism workers with the technical skills that will prevent them from losing their jobs as the sector continues to evolve.

“We are going to have to train the new workers of ­tourism to manage IT and to be able to understand ­commands that are given, and also to be able to develop software to instruct and to give guidance,” said Bartlett.