Golden Beach Hotels to support faculty for Hospitality management

Spread, Tuesday Feb. 12/08

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho

Golden Beach Hotels (GBH), a hospitality industry in the country, together with the University of Cape Coast (UCC) and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) will introduce a faculty in hospitality management at the UCC from September this year.
The course will be a one-year certificate programme; diploma and degree courses have already been developed by the university.
This was made known by the Chief Executive Officer of GBH, Mr Yaw Kwarteng, when he paid a courtesy call on the Managing Director of Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), Mr Ibrahim Awal yesterday.
The visit was to offer an opportunity to GBH which manages three hotels in the country: the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, Elmina and Busia Beach Resorts, and the GCGL, the leading media house in the country, an opportunity to establish a relationship that would be of mutual benefit to both companies and the country as a whole.
Mr Kwarteng said the UMES will be providing visiting lecturers as well as training lecturers for the programme and added that GCGL could be brought on board to publicise on the need for people to be aware of the hospitality industry, which had a huge potential in the country.
He said there was the need for a hospitality programme at the university level since that sector lacked quality personnel and that often left tourists and visitors dissatisfied.
Mr Kwarteng said although GBH had for sometime now been trying on its own to boost the hospitality industry, it had not had the needed impact therefore with a pragmatic approach and collaboration of other sectors such as the media, the right impact could be made for the country to benefit from more resources in the hospitality industry.
Mr Awal, who was at the meeting with the General Manager of G-Pack, a subsidiary of GCGL, Mr Charles Antwi, and the Advertising Manager of GCGL, Mr Frank Oduro, commended the GBH for its effort in ensuring that the hospitality industry was given the needed push to maximise returns for the country.
He, however, called on the company to employ more tactical approaches such as inculcating the benefits of tourism in the younger generations so as to ensure that they would grow with that idea.
He commended the Junior Graphic, another of the company’s publications, to Mr Kwarteng and suggested that programmes targeted at children could be channelled through it for the desired impact.
He assured Mr Kwarteng, who was accompanied by the Chief Marketing Officer of the GBH, Ms Jeanne Donkoh, of the GCGL’s readiness to assist the GBH to project hospitality in the country.
Mr Awal took Mr Kwarteng and Ms Donkoh round the newsroom and some of the facilities of the GCGL including the G-Pack section where commercial printing is done. He said GCGL had the capacity to produce all the advertising needs of the GBH.
He said GCGL had a 70 per cent market impact in terms of the media and said a partnership to that effect would be to the mutual benefit of all.