Grads hope for on-the-job training
Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jun 06/01) - If all goes according to plan for tourism grads like Arlene Uuorela and Kyle Bussell, working in the low-paying field will be a stepping stone.
They hope to one day run their own tour companies.
The two are among seven graduates of a course on how to work in the field. Tourism officials recruited students, all from Yellowknife high schools, who completed the hundred hours of instruction during spare time.
Regardless of the program's outcome, a hotel manager said he wishes that course organizers would have at least called him.
The Explorer's Harry Symington said he will train anyone with the right attitude to work in his hotel without a formal course.
"Why didn't the government talk to the hotels? We would have taken (students) in for on-the-job training," Symington said.
"They should let people in the industry participate."
At the same time, however, he's grateful that government is at least trying to help his industry, because "people are just not interested in training for the jobs."
As a result, "it embarrasses me" that the NWT "is on the bottom of the heap" when it comes to quality customer service, Symington said.
High customer-service standards are expected by the fastest-growing group of visitors to the North. Last winter about 14,000 visitors from Japan travelled to Yellowknife.
Recruiting for the hospitality industry is a challenge anywhere, but especially in the North, where higher wages in the oil patch and diamond mines lure away workers.
Those working in tourism fields earn about $8 an hour, compared with wages ranging from $16 to $30 an hour in Northern work camps.
That gap is a constant headache for Symington.
"I can't compete," he says of $10 an hour he's willing to pay in Yellowknife, compared with the $8 paid for similar jobs in Vancouver hotels.
On the wage gap, Colleen Proctor of the NWT's Education Department says, "It depends on your interest. Not everyone is suited to work on the cold, dangerous rigs."
The tourism course has been offered in Yellowknife before, but to all unemployed people instead of high school students. It was tourism officials from the Yukon who suggested going into high schools, said Proctor.
The same course in Inuvik recently produced 10 graduates.
Kyle Bussell's part-time job at the visitors centre gave him the travel bug. Before getting down to business he'll take a year off to travel overseas.
Arlene Uuorela has no job yet, but was prompted to think about owning her own business by a course guest speaker.
"There's room for entrepreneurs, for someone with ideas," she said.
She pointed out that one in every three Canadians works in tourism-related services industries at some point in their lives, making the industry Canada's largest first-time employer.
NWT is finally being noticed on world maps, and the grads are in the right place and time, Penny Ballantyne told the them at the small graduation ceremony recently held in the visitors centre.
Instructor Wenda Dahl said the course "provides a solid foundation for lifelong learning. These skills are highly transferable."
The idea is to build a base of people trained in the basics of customer service, especially when it comes to first impressions and catering to expectations of the growing numbers of Japanese tourists.
"We are all more than able to make a positive and professional first impression," Uuorela told fellow graduates in a speech.
The course got a boost from a $10,000 territorial government grant plus another $10,000 from the federal government. It included training in first aid, food and workplace safety. It was free for the students.
Dahl said 1.3 million Canadians now work in tourism, and the industry is expected to create another 306,000 jobs over the next four years.
