FIFTY-FIVE students from the University of Technology’s (UTech’s) School of Hospitality and Tourism Management housekeeping module toured the laundry and housekeeping facilities at Sandals Ochi Beach Resort last Friday where they were allowed to do practical demonstrations.

Sandals Ochi Beach Resort’s hotel manager Kevin Clarke, who welcomed the students to the facility, said he hoped that they would find the experience meaningful. He also gave a general overview of the property and its operations.

The UTech team, headed by lecturer Nicole Hay-Walters, visited a number of hotel rooms and also received a practical demonstration of bedmaking, which will assist in their graded exercise at school where they will be judged based on speed, accuracy, neatness, and course mitring.

Students also got hands-on training, practising techniques learnt alongside the housekeeping talent at the resort. They also toured the resort’s central laundry, and got an inside view of how the massive facility carries out its operations, the machines used and their efficiency.

“We were very pleased with operations at Sandals Ochi Beach Resort and the experiences received,” Hay-Walters said. “For many of the students, it was their first time touring a resort of this size and prestige, and they really soaked up all the information available.”

Sandals said the UTech tour was a part of the hotel chain’s effort to provide practical experience for students at local tertiary level institutions.

It said several hospitality and tourism lecturers from tertiary institutions across Jamaica have been part of a special hands-on engagement programme, where they worked alongside heads of departments at Sandals Ochi Beach Resort.

The programme, aimed at sensitising the lecturers to actual day-to-day hotel operations, is part of Sandals Resorts International’s commitment to developing talent in the hospitality industry through the official implementation of its LEAP (Leadership, Excellence and Purpose) initiative.

The weekend of activities saw the lecturers, drawn from UTech, University of the West Indies and Northern Caribbean University, shadowing the managers of various departments, which provided insight into departmental operations and facilitated opportunities and airing of challenges in transitioning from academia to areas of employment.

The lecturers were granted all-access passes to offstage areas within Sandals’ operations, working together with various resort managers in executing their duties.

During the course of the last few months scores of high schools and hotel training institutions have also visited the Sandals and Beaches hotels in the Ocho Rios region where they have received innovative tours aimed at exposing the students to the finer points of the industry and the Sandals standards.