.gif)
The Tanoa Hotel Rakiraki, owned by the Tanoa Hotel Group, will transform part of its hotel facility into a training school come January 2009.
The training facility will provide courses for chefs, food and beverage service staff, housekeeping personnel and eventually front office staff.
Tanoa Hotels chairman Yanktesh Permal Reddy said they were keen to work with the University of the South Pacific (USP), Training Productivity Authority of Fiji (TPAF) and the Fiji Institute of Technology (FIT) in the development of their own training programmes.
He said there would be immense advantages in exposing students to this hotel training environment.
He added the hotel would still fully operate in the way of a traditional hotel and continue to meet the accommodation and hospitality needs of visitors to the Ra region.
“We will have the training facility operating along side the 24 room Hotel and this will give the students who attend a real feel for what it is like to be involved in a fully operational hotel environment 24/7,” Reddy said.
Being approximately half way between both Suva and Nadi would see interest in this region substantially increase as a result of this initiative.
‘We are also keen to utilise the hotel’s surplus land to grow some of the hotel’s vegetables and herbs, thus showing those attending the school the value of having a basic understanding of agriculture and the value to the business of growing your own,” Reddy said.
“The Hotel will of course continue to purchase the majority of its products from the Ra region,” he added.
Reddy said the training facility would open late January, 2009 and would operate for some 44 weeks.
He said the majority of students would initially be from the Pacific region including students from Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
