In our last segment, you heard Mexican Ambassador Carlos Quesnel address the bus insurance situation. Well, while that is unfolding at the border, on the official level, Belize and Mexico have committed to work together in advancing the tourism sector in Belize. Today the Mexican ambassador and representatives from the Belize Tourism Industry Association signed an MOU at the Mexican Institute. We were there to find out about this important collaboration.
H.E Carlos Quesnel - Mexican Ambassador to Belize
"For us this an important moment, we have been working on this instrument that we were talking about for at least a year and we finally are here with Mr. Guerrero and Mr. Burgos to sign today a memorandum of understanding between the Embassy of Mexico and the Belizean Tourism Association. We know that tourist bring benefit to both the people of Mexico and Belize and we are ready at the embassy to work together with BTIA in building and promoting the construction of the capabilities in the tourism sector."
Raineldo Guerrero - President, BTIA
"We recognize that many Belizeans go to Mexico for vacation and they have found a level of service over there that in a sense is incomparable to many destinations that we go. So who are the best people that we can learn from? From the Mexicans who are our neighbour and so through the cooperation program that we are about to sign, we hope that we can maximize."
John Burgos - Executive Director, BTIA
"The MOU is going to be focusing on 4 areas whereby we're going to bring - one of them is to bring professionals in different areas particularly in customer service frontline staff training, we're looking to have waiting staff training, we're looking to have bartending training and we're looking to have chef and cooking staff training. It's going to work in two ways, we're going to bring professionals that have expertize to come to Belize and they're going to do different visitations countrywide and we're going to have also looking to have two exchange programs. One of them is providing opportunity for students doing tourism programs at the junior college or university level that are able during the summer time or Christmas time or Easter time or where they have two weeks, four weeks, whatever the number of period of time that they have available - maybe the man go and partner at a hotel, at a restaurant based on whatever specific focus they want to pursue in the tourism industry. Also we're looking to have a trainers program, we want to identify people that have been working in the industry for a number of years and they have a certain level of expertise and knowledge. So what we want to do is be able to provide them with the opportunity to get proper certification that is going to legitimize and accredit the skills that they possess and of course they are going to be able to receive the right training to be able to deliver and provide the training when they return to Belize."
This is the first time Belize has partnered with Mexico in the tourism sector. The team still has to meet to finalize the details of the agreement.
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