Thursday, August 25, 2011

Darap’s village tourism stakeholders begin training at Mayfair

GANGTOK, 23 Aug: Darap in West Sikkim has been adopted by Mayfair Hotels & Resorts through the Sikkim Hotel & Restaurant Association [SHRA] for promotion of village tourism in the area. The hotel is assisting Darap in capacity building, human resource development, promotion and marketing, logistic support and in creating a sustainable business development model for the village.
In this regard, a week-long capacity building training on different aspects of tourism for the stakeholders from Darap got underway at Mayfair today. The practical and on-job training is scheduled to cover 50 participants in batches of six persons every week in all fields and services.
Addressing a press conference today, the president of Darap Eco-Tourism Committee, Sushil Tamang, mentioned that everyone wants to take up village tourism in the state but were not well vessel on the benefits, disadvantage, opportunities, gap and other prospects.
He further mentioned that for the promotion of village tourism in a sustainable manner everyone has to be serious in addressing the challenges of village tourism. He highlighted that human resource development, capacity building, infrastructure developments as the main challenges facing village tourism development.
Mr Tamang mentioned that to fulfill the basic minimum requirements and establishing standard procedures in services and pricing are challenges facing home-stay tourism at all over the state.
“We are also going through a learning process, and in such time we receiving support from a corporate house through SHRA is a big help for the promotion of village tourism in the area,” he said.
He informed that the inflow of tourists in the village was 1894 in April to June and one family can now earn around Rs 80,000 in a season.
He expressed his gratitude towards SHRA and Mayfair for helping the villagers. He also expressed gratitude to Mayfair proprietor, Dilip Ray.
The SHRA president, Bhanu Pratap Rasaily, mentioned that the SHRA has taken many initiatives to promote village tourism in all parts of the state. He also mentioned that Darap has tremendous potential to do well in village tourism.
 “We are trying to support the vision of the Chief Minister by promoting the rural areas through eco-tourism and involving everyone of the village in this pursuit,” he said.
The SHRA general secretary, Vivek Pradhan, mentioned that in the hospitality industry, human resource development is important constituent as it has direct contact with the customers.
He informed that in this training the trainees will get a chance to learn different skills with practical and on-job training on how to deal with customers, how to cook and present meals and all basic trainings of hospitality business.
He mentioned that it was a big exposure for the Darap tourism stakeholders to be trained by such big corporate house to upgrade and polish their skills.
Darap is located 16 km from Geyzing and around 15 minutes drive from Pelling and surrounded by various tourism spots and places of historical and scenic significance. It was informed that tourists can experience Sikkim village life in this Limboo village with many experiences including ploughing fields, milking cows, angling, food cooked using firewood, local brew, treks, village and jungle walks among others.


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