The never-ending recruitment exercise at Rwanda Office of Tourism and national Parks (ORTPN) reflects the urgent attention tourism sector needs. This is evidenced with consistent advertisements in local news papers for top management positions for the last four years. One wonders whether those who usually apply for even the re-advertised posts never qualify leave alone being short listed for interviews. Though ORTPN is faced with human resource challenges, its direct in-service administrators have on several occasions reported success of the entire sector. The attention-grabbing comments in Kigali and beyond borders in the tourism industry is “recovery/consistent increase in revenue generation.” However, it should be noted that a recovery, or revitalization in the tourism sector, is part of Rwanda’s general natural economic cycle. Revenue generation Last month, I saw exciting notable news piece in The New Times highlighting “tourism foreign earnings surpass that of coffee in Rwanda.” The articles also carried successes of the office of tourism and national parks registered last year. Apparently a lot of anticipated steady increase of foreign earnings from the very sector was mentioned in the news piece, where local and foreign organisations are expected to be very supportive. In that way, the tourism sector will be experiencing a period of services and income recuperation. But if we hypothetically realise it, it will eventually go beyond its current level with irreversible side effects. The fact is issues like tourism growth; revenue increments are sensitive and sometimes questionable when expressed in a theoretical way. That’s why they trigger different feelings among the people that pay attention to them. We hear the notion of evolution in the tourism industry over and over, and each time it’s expressed, there comes a public concern about how such progress happens. There’s nothing you or I can really do about this, since tourism evolution when properly set achieves massively regardless of who predicts it. This none personal control over the tourism evolution and know-how scrutiny of in-service administrators’ performance can be treated like a wake up call. That’s when many stakeholders can personally or as group make a difference in their tourism driven responsibilities, welfares or businesses. Stakeholders need to differentiate between what they think and do, by taking skilful creative action, which brings objective diverse results. Those who practice proven well thought-out tourism development and promotion strategies will attract more businesses than those who don’t, especially when times are tight or busy. The method to use is simple, they need to choose information and technical approach they can easily apply to their tourism activities or businesses. This will help them to keep away from the hypothetical forecasted future tourism achievements that are not easy to virtually determine. Also to help tourism stakeholders is practical experiences to make it easier for them to realize which way to go. Such experience will enable them to pick the well thought-out tools or mechanisms they need most right now to work for their tourism related activities or business. These major options include; expertise approach, which is the most essential tool someone needs to be a better tourism stakeholder and attract clients consistently. Feasible vision, that will help you zero in on your ideal prospects and stay organized and on track. Building thoughtful affiliation course of action, with others engaged in the sector to help you communicate your message and connect with your prospects. Using viable professional procedure to determine the high performance data to take your business to a reasonable level of performance and the rewards such success brings. Selling skills also matters in order to turn the profit making tourism prospects into actual money generating businesses or activities. Don’t let yourself be overtaken by talk of a tourism recovery. You can use such articulated resurgence as an opportunity to sharpen your tourism development and promotion skills. Now is the time to make smart choices about the uttered data on the tourism development scale that will make the biggest difference in your business. What mindset do you adopt when in-service tourism administrators talk about its improvement or recovery? Do you get overtaken by the message or do you see it as an opportunity? If ORTPN is interested in earning more money and getting more word-of-mouth business, the key is to help its clients consistently get breakthrough results. This is when you will learn a proven system for taking your clients to a higher level in service. It should also learn time-tested methods to create a tourism activity or business that attracts new clients and generates multiple streams of revenue and know how to independently do it in a short period. Professionalism It is tourism professionalism that will enable ORTPN to search and recruit the required good staff. However, if there is much less willingness of the leaders to accept the actually difficulties to select the right persons for particular vacancies, then the problem might continue. Human resource boosting should involve almost top and mid level managers. As soon as members start to think that their opinions are in one way or another neglected the organisation opts to stick more and more rigidly to its rules of procedure to avoid legal challenges to its decisions. Ends
