Welcome World: Tourism Training
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Welcome World is a highly interactive role-playing simulation style game that benefits learners with a great depth of experience on how to interact positively and effectively with tourists. It aims to build South Africans’ confidence in dealing with tourists, by:
- dealing with a wide range of tricky customer situations in a safe environment
- lifting tourism service provider interaction skills to another level
- expanding knowledge and the ability to provide great service to tourists
- building self-confident national ambassadors
Why Welcome World?
Fun & easy to use
During training, participants go through a roller coaster experience of many different tourist situations and interactions. The mechanics of the game is easily grasped and participants find themselves caught up in the struggles and dilemmas, joys and frustrations of a group of needy tourists. With Welcome World, participants will rise to the challenge and quickly learn how to come up with highly creative solutions to tourists’ problems.
Building Tourism Knowledge
The tourism information sessions that participants are exposed to are devised such that participants are challenged to discuss and work out a range of tourism issues and the modules include:
- Tourist personality types
- Signposting
- Who is a tourist
- What does South Africa offer
- Reading people
- Dealing with tricky situations
What does it achieve?
Tourism providers and staff will leave with the following outcomes
- Provides training in tourism service
- Removes the fear of interacting with strangers
- Builds confident national ambassadors
- Helps participants to think on their feet
- Grows awareness of different cultures
- Teaches people how to react calmly to problematic circumstances
- Stimulates strong group participation to discuss and solve problems and plan to implement best practice solutions within their own contexts
What is Welcome World?
How does it work?
Each team is given a chance to throw the dice. The team throwing the dice has to select a tourist character and moves the character to a destination based on a dice number. The dice thrower also selects a tourism category and reads out the card to the whole group. Each of the other teams chooses one of their players to act out the required role. The dice thrower team plays the tourist and the chosen players from each of the other teams respond in turn in a short role play. All teams rate the performance of each role player in turn from 1 to 6 and reveal their chosen scores at the same time. The team who chose the most popular score/s move their coloured tokens two spaces forward. Any team that scores more than one point above/below the most popular scores moves their token back on space. If all teams choose a different score, nobody moves! If either of the dice lands on a six at any time, then a Quiz card must be drawn before proceeding. All players listen as the quiz and answer options are read out. Players choose one of their Number/Score cards to show their response. The correct answer is checked on the master list in the Facilitator’s guide and each team getting the right answer moves their coloured token one space forward. All learners write the answer into the Quiz section of their books.
What method does it use?
Training format Training takes place in the form of a board game where you will be challenged to assist and guide a range of different tourist characteristics at different destinations in South Africa. At each destination the tourists will encounter various problems and issues, which need to be solved by the participants. The situations are divided into different categories: eating, staying, travelling, experiencing and discovering. After brief discussions of the problem, each team must select a team member to interact ‘live’ with the tourist in a role-play to offer support and solutions.
Processing the learning After role play, participants have the chance to discuss and suggest how each of the role payers could have improved his or her attempt to respond to the tourist. Participants are encouraged to write down the outcomes of the role-plays
Applying the learning Participants have the chance to work with theoretical tourists at different venues around the country. As these tourists are confronted by a wide range of tricky situations, participants soon discover that the role-plays bring up situations/issues that they may never have recognised as impacting on their own situations and neighbourhoods.
How long does it take?
Welcome World is a facilitated programme, which is based on a series of 2-hour training modules. These can be customised to suit an organisation’s training requirements and delivered as a compact training programme over a single day or as a series of training modules over a set number of days.
What training materials are supplied & what is needed to run the programme?
The training materials that are supplied include:
- a re-usable Welcome World Facilitator’s kit
- Welcome World Workbooks (per learner)
The ideal training room requires:
- a large informal open space
- a centre table with team tables clustered around it
- chairs for each participant
Who is it for?
Welcome World is for all tourism providers and their staff. Past participants have suggested that training should be offered to:
Foreign exchange tellers * Post Office Staff * Street Vendors * Hotel Front Desk Staff * Public Services Staff
School Pupils * Metacabs/Taxi/Bus Drivers * Parking Attendants * Shop Assistants * Tour Operators & Staff
Leisure Parks Staff * Taxi Operators * Garage Forecourt Attendants * Restaurant Staff * Metro Police
Accommodation Owners/Staff * and many more
Welcome World Course Content
Modules
Welcome World is made up of two main components: Game Pays and Breakaway sessions.
Game Play:
- Game Play sets up tourist situations that are commonly experienced by tourism service providers
- Role Plays put learners directly in interactive situations with tourists
- Discussions elaborate on problems and challenges
- Teamwork helps to devise appropriate solutions, improve interactions and share experiences
- Breakaway information sessions develop tourism knowledge and customer service skills
- Challenges create an atmosphere that is highly charged and extremely conducive to learning
Breakaways:
- Module 1 – How to identify Tourist Personality Types
- Understanding tourists’ needs based on their personality types - Module 2 – How important is Signposting
- Building an awareness of tourism-related opportunities (including features and benefits) in your area - Module 3 – Who is a Tourist
- Looking at different types of tourists
- Identifying what tourists are looking for, or what kind of experiences they want - Module 4 – What does South Africa offer
- Investigating why South Africa is such a sort-after tourist destination - Module 5 – How to read people
- Discovering how to read tourists’ body language - Module 6 – How to deal with tricky situations
- Experiencing how to deal with angry tourists
- Experiencing how to deal with language
