As Wales counts down to The Ryder Cup, local tourism and hospitality businesses looking to capitalise on this major sporting event recently (28 May) benefited from an exclusive workshop hosted by sector skills council People 1st, Visit Wales and Capital Region Tourism at the Celtic Manor Resort.
Specialists involved in the recent successful Vancouver Winter Olympics shared the lessons learnt from preparing for and hosting the Games in Canada and took Welsh businesses through their experiences. While acknowledging the differences between the events they reported that in Canada, they found that there was such a last minute demand for additional staff that up to 30 percent of businesses were not able to fill their vacancies in reasonable time for the Games. To overcome this, businesses broadened their search for workers to include youngsters who had taken time off to go travelling and older workers
The speakers at the workshop included Bruce Dewar, chief executive of 2010 Legacies Now, who has helped 4,000 organisations and communities put in place legacy programmes to benefit from the hosting of the Winter Olympics in Canada, and Arlene Keis, chief executive of go2, which played a key role in recruiting and training hundreds of staff to work at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Bruce and Arlene stressed the importance of workforce planning and assessment of the impact a major event, such as the 2012 Olympics, has on operations and staffing levels. From their experience, businesses near an Olympic venue experienced, on average, a 40 percent increase in sales, whilst food operations recruited 45 percent more staff, and tourist attractions nearly 50% more staff to cope with demand during the Games.
Phil Raynsford, strategic development director at People 1st, said: ‘This workshop provided a valuable insight into the challenge and excitement of running a major global event and the lasting economic impact it can have on local tourism and hospitality businesses. Events such as The Ryder Cup provides the Welsh hospitality and tourism sector with the opportunity to show it offers a world class welcome as well as the chance to market itself as a leading golfing destination on a world stage. Businesses need to be prepared to take maximum advantage of the opportunities both prior to, during and after The Ryder Cup. Lessons can be learnt from the recent experiences of businesses operating in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Games.”
Peter Cole, regional strategy director for Capital Region Tourism, the lead tourism body for south east Wales, said: “The capital region has a deserved reputation for successfully hosting large scale sporting events and today’s workshop underlines the importance of planning for beyond such events. The true measure of success is the impression of Wales taken away by visitors and whether they come back again. Key to that success is extending a distinctive, warm Welsh welcome to visitors to create excitement not just about the event but about Wales.
“The lessons for tourism and hospitality businesses about the importance of effective resource planning and staff training ahead of any event are fundamental and we can learn lessons from the Vancouver Olympic Games. The importance of customer service and sense of place training programmes such as ‘Welcome to the Ryder Cup 2010’ and the Croeso Cynnes Cymreig accreditation have been highlighted by the experiences in Canada.”
Visit Wales director of development, Steve Webb, said: “Wales stands to gain much from The Ryder Cup in the longer term. We have already strengthened our position as a world-class golfing destination, a status that is wholly deserved because of the quality of our product but made possible because of the awareness created by the ‘Ryder Cup Effect’. Visit Wales will continue to market Wales around the world as a destination of choice. It is essential that we all work together to ensure we provide our Ryder Cup visitors and television audiences with the incentives they need to return again and again to experience what makes a proper holiday.”
