Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett has established a high-level committee to spearhead the development of a new tourism institute to assist the ministry’s efforts to strengthen Jamaica’s human capital.

“The members of this high-level committee have been tasked with developing strategies and finalising plans for the establishment of the institution by 2018. We intend to have this committee morph into the board of management for the soon-to-be-established Jamaica Centre for Tourism and Innovation,” said Minister Bartlett.

“This centre is novel to the region. It is entirely new, and will go beyond merely academics. While academics will be an important component, we will be focusing primarily on training and boosting competence to increase the capacity of persons to deliver at a high level in the industry, so that supervisory staff who do not have academic qualification can transition through the centre and be fully equipped to occupy high-level positions in the sector,” Bartlett explained.

The committee, which met for the first time on Monday, includes Minister of Labour and Social Security Shahine Robinson; Minister of Education, Youth and Information Senator Ruel Reid; and Donald Hawkins, Professor Emeritus of Management and Tourism Studies, George Washington University, who is also leading a team working on a business plan to serve as the official guide for the initiative.

Other members are former Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Prof Alvin Wint; Senior Programme Officer and Senior Lecturer at the UWI, Dr Carolyn Hayle; Dr Phillip Brown, Principal of the Sandals Corporate University; Head of the Department of Government at the UWI, Dr Lloyd Waller; Head of the Hugh Lawson Shearer Trade Union Education Institute, Danny Roberts; President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), Omar Robinson; Executive Director of the JHTA, Camille Needham; and Coordinator of the Hotel School and Artisan Villages, Carol Rose Brown.

The institute will offer a practical curriculum that will complement the current hospitality programmes at the country’s tertiary institutions.

This is primarily because the institution will operate as both a functional hotel and world-class training institution. It is intended to support development in areas such as Culinary Management, Spa Management and Hospitality Management.

Bartlett stated that graduates from tertiary institutions across the region would also be able to transition through the centre to attain global certification.

“In essence it will operate like the Norman Manley Law School which provides the requisite accreditation for lawyers across the region, as the centre will provide TedQual certification,” he said.

TedQual is the accreditation of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and is carried out by the UNWTO.TedQual Themis Foundation. According to the UNWTO, TedQual is a certification of a voluntary nature which seeks to facilitate the continual improvement of tourism education, training and research programmes through the definition of a set of minimum standards of quality for tourism education.

Bartlett said that the main goal of the centre will be to accelerate the transformation of tourism enterprises by engaging institutions and people everywhere to stimulate new ideas and by harnessing science and technology to transfer knowledge into practice within the sector.