The Egyptian Tourism Federation (ETF) and Spanish Secretariat of State for Trade recently held a meeting aimed at strengthening friendship and cooperation ties.
José Lorenzo Garcia-Baltassar, Coordinator General of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation Office at the Spanish Embassy, met with ETF chairman, Ahmed El-Nahas; Hisham Zaazou, First Assistant to Minister of Tourism; Alaa Hafez, ETF Board Member and head of the ETF Human Resources Development and Training Committee; ETF Advisor Hussien Badran, responsible for Human Resources Development and Training for Study; and Ayman Altaranissi, ETF Director General.
Recognizing the importance tourism industry has on further developing the economy of any country, representatives discussed prospects of coordinating and joining forces to enhance services in Egypt’s tourism and the field’s social influence.
Training was a central topic and areas of improvement were discussed. To date, the ETF has taken several measures in order tackle the training issue:
A vast vocational project already under construction in 6th of October City, 60 licensed accredited trainers who rotate to train and upgrade existing employees currently working in hotels around the country; and the soon to be launched specialized center to train 2000 tourist bus drivers per year, in an attempt to elevate road safety for tourists.
On behalf of the International Cooperation Office, Garcia-Baltassar expressed that since tourism is an area in which Spain is very advanced, they want to assist Egypt’s Tourism industry in order to help combat poverty and unemployment in Egypt.
A proposed idea to curb such social issues is to set-up a training institute to combat ‘poor performance’ and ‘mismatch’ made between the output of tourism education and market needs – something which could partially be linked to insufficient training institutes compared with the growing demand for skilled labor force.
An enlightening meeting, discussions came to an end with the decision that several Spanish tourism experts are to visit Egypt this March to inspect some of existing mid-level institutes so that key issues faced in Egypt can be identified and addressed.
