Barbados feels a lot like home for two Haitian tourism workers at the Accra Beach Hotel & Spa.
Steeve Delva, 33, and Ronald BonneAnnée, 31, are taking part in a month-long Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) tourism exchange project, while some of their colleagues have been assigned to The Crane Resort and Residences and the Barbados Hotel & Tourism Association secretariat.
Delva, a front-desk manager at the 95-room Le Plaza Hotel in Port-au-Prince for the last four years, and BonneAnnée, a stock manager at the 39-room Kinam hotel for the past three, are enjoying the opportunity to work and experience life in?Barbados.
The duo told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that they had already identified a number of best practices in the Barbados hotel industry which they would definitely be implementing when they return home.
“I came with many expectations. I realize the experience will be very good for me and my professional life,” said Delva,
He said while he realized that the Le Plaza Hotel was on the right path in terms of development, he noticed the organization of the front desk operations here was different and the pace at which staff worked was faster than in Haiti.
“The way we are operating is not too different from here but we [need] some more procedures to improve the way we work there,” he said.
“I would like to start a revolution in the tourism industry in order to bring tourists back to Haiti. Now we don’t have tourists; we have businesspeople who come to Haiti to do business. December is a low season because our clientele . . . is on business; but I will give my little participation in that huge change,” added Delva in almost perfect English.
He said one of the main reasons they did not get more tourists in his homeland of ten million was negative publicity.
According to the front-office manager, many of the tourists he came across in Barbados were friendlier than those who came to Haiti.
Delva said “Haiti usually gets bad advertising regarding robbery and floods and stuff that happened over the years. So I feel like the guests feel safer here.”
However, his message to Barbadians was, “Don’t believe what you hear. We are poor and have many problems but coming to Haiti is a way to help the economy. And life there is not bad in all of Haiti. There are places to visit.”
Delva’s colleague BonneAnnée, who is attached to Accra Beach Hotel & Spa, said that he was “very glad” for the experience and the service here was “very nice”.
“Here I see a lot of separate departments but in [Haiti] one person can multitask,” he said, adding that was one of the ideas he would be taking back.
“When I go back to my hotel I will speak to my boss to explain what we learned at Accra to put in practice with the Kinam Hotel because I see the way we operate at Accra is very good and I would like us to operate the same at the Kinam Hotel,” he added.
One of the downsides to the operation here in Barbados, said the French-speaking nationals, was the fact that staff were not versed in other languages.
“We must have a person who speaks different languages in the guest area,” said BonneAnnée.
“In the [front desk] operations it is the main point . . . I think it would be better if there are at least one or two people here who speak different languages in order to make the customers feel more comfortable,” added Delva.
The duo said while they were able to understand most of the English language, the challenge for them was to speak it fluently. However, they quickly pointed out that was not stopping them from learning what they needed to know in order to improve their operations back home.
When they return to Haiti, they will put forward suggestions to improve their tourism product as well as train staff in some of the areas they would have learned here.