You may well remember that we won a big government contract in last July. We were selected to design and deliver a range of training programmes.

The target audience for the training initiative is over 2700 staff from a range of organisations within the tourism sector, the majority being SME's.

We have already run over 20 training programmes and we are now entering phase 2 of the project, where we will be providing a schedule of training programmes from now through to the end of 2003.

Following a comprehensive training needs analysis (TNA) as part of the consultancy stage, using questionnaires and face to face interviews, the priority topics we are offering include;

• Recruitment
• Motivation (self and team)
• Team Dynamics
• Selling Skills
• Customer Service
• Written Communication Skills

Partipicants complete an Evaluation Questionnaire at the end of each course and so far the average rating is 85%. This is based on a range of criteria including quality and relevance of content, the competence of the facilitator and the value of the course in terms of practical skills learnt that can be taken away and implemented straight back in the workplace.

Whilst we all know that Evaluation Questionnaires are only the first stage of evaluation, they do give an initial indication of participants view on the quality of our work. We are also pleased to see, based on our performance so far, that demand for further courses is high.