Development center of tourism human resources in collaboration with Bali Tourism Board (BTB) has conducted a workshop on service excellence at Inna Sindhu Beach Hotel, Sanur. The three days event started on Thursday, June 25th, was attended by some tens of participants, mostly managers and general managers of up to 3-star hotels.

Opening ceremony was attended by the Head of Development Center of Tourism Human Resources, Hamdan Rifai, representative from Bali Tourism Office Putu Sudiartha, Chairman of BTB Bagus Ngurah Wijaya, and a number of other invitees.

Hamdan Rifai in his opening speech said that competition among tourism destinations is not only related to infrastructure and instruments but more importantly to human resources. All destinations are now racing for improvement quality of their human resources for the sake of service excellence. Indonesia, especially Bali has to set its pace in the race of quality improvements. Indonesia has signed Mutual Recogition Arrangement (MRA) among ASEAN coutries which will be implemented starting from 2010, when mutually acceptable standard certification becomes essential.

“Improvement of competence in tourism industry at a certain standard with international certification will become a must, otherwise our tourism human resource will swept aside in our own home”, he said.

Deputy of BTB Chairman for human resources development, Noman Suwidjana, said that so far technical skill is the main weakness of Bali tourism human resources, whilst friendliness remains the strength. “We can not leave it as it is any longer. Sound technical competence is a must to achieve sound service excellence”, he said.

Workshop and coaching on service excelence which will be closed on Saturday, June 27th, presentes a number of resource persons with international reputation.