FRONTLINERS of the tourism industry in Perak must have a good command of the English language to avoid any communication breakdowns with tourists.
State Tourism Committee chairman Datuk Hamidah Osman said aside from offering a welcoming smile, the industry’s frontliners, for example officers at the tourism information centre, must be able to converse in English to assist foreign visitors.
“Tourists will first look for tourism information centres to make enquiries.
“Hence, our officers must be able to provide them with the correct information and direct them to their desired destinations accordingly,” she said when opening the Perak Tourism Frontliners’ Course 2011 in Ipoh on Monday.
Attentive audience: Participants listening to a presentation during the Perak Tourism Frontliners’ Course 2011 in Ipoh. She added that slogans and taglines should also be written in English so that tourists could understand them.
It was reported by MetroPerak that the Perak branch of the Malaysian Chinese Tourism Association had received numerous complaints from tourists that staff at the Tourism Perak office were clueless about the attractions in the state.
Branch chairman Jimmy Goh had claimed that the staff manning the office were not well trained and did not know how to promote the state while tourists were often left to search for information elsewhere.
On another note, Hamidah said the state government would continue to boost its promotion of Visit Perak Year 2012 through television commercials in 42 different countries.
“The Royal Belum Rainforest Drum Festival and Pangkor International Poem and Folk Song Festival are among the programmes lined up for VPY 2012.
“We also want to highlight Perak’s natural heritage that is rich with flora and fauna as our unique selling point,” she said, adding that the state was targeting 3.5 million tourist arrivals next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment