NIHOTOUR to reward outstanding staff with travel packages
[By VICTOR NZE]
National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR) has unveiled recipients of its Most Outstanding Staff Members of the Year 2023 and the Best Campus of the Year 2023 awards.
The annual Best Campus and Outstanding Staff Members award system was introduced by the Director General of NIHOTOUR, Nura Sani Kangiwa in 2021.
The award system is a 12-calendar month performance evaluations matrix that straddles a preceding and a current year, hence this latest award is for May 2022 to June 2023. The winners will be publicly decorated at the Gala Night of NIHOTOUR Gastronomy Festival, June 17.
Lagos Campus emerged the Over-all Best NIHOTOUR Campus of the Year 2023.
Coordinator of NIHOTOUR Lagos Campus is Mrs. Chinyere Uche-Ibeabuchi. This is also as Mrs. Gemma Simon, the SERVICOM Unit Head in NIHOTOUR Abuja office, emerged as the Best Staff of the Year; while Mr. Haladu Habu Wakili, a staff in the Registry Unit in NIHOTOUR Abuja office, emerged as the Most Dedicated Staff of the Year 2023.
A statement signed by Mr. Joesef Karim, the Public Relations Officer for the institute further disclosed that in keeping with the rewards tradition introduced by Kangiwa, the announced winners will be gifted with all-expense paid travel packages.
Accordingly, Mrs. Chinyere Uche-Ibeabuchi, the Lagos Campus Head, and Mrs. Gemma Simon, the SERVICOM Unit Head, will both have a paid vacation to Tunisia; while Mr. Haladu Wakili and his wife, will be given a paid vacation to Senegal.
“NIHOTOUR as a Federal Government parastatal is primarily a public service provider and enabler for the development of Nigeria’s Hospitality and Tourism, communities, particularly personnel and businesses in the industry. We are here to serve the needs of the public and, to my mind, for us to do that most effectively we need to build internal processes that encourage staff excellence, improve our zonal operations and maintain sustainable reward systems that keeps all staff productive and motivated. That’s one of the reasons we must provide for NIHOTOUR staff foreign travels to leading tourist destinations for holidays and cognate experience,” Kangiwa explained to some of the Institute’s top level Management recently.
Continuing, Kangiwa said: “We need to improve on the country’s tourism industry development support services and administration. My years in the private sector has convinced me that, well-informed and cognately experienced civil servants are naturally more progressive in addressing sector-specific needs and quick to provide intervention services to personnel and businesses in the industry. To these end, among others, I will ensure more NIHOTOUR staff, at the three levels – top, middle and junior levels – are progressively exposed to emerging domestic and international best practises in other leading tourism destinations, through fully-funded trips, as one of the rewards for exemplary work in the Institute.
“Nigeria is arguably the most resourceful cultural tourism destination in Africa today! Nigeria’s diversity of tribes, are producing internationally-appealing eclectic traditional festivals, fashion trends, musical acts, culinary, and creative cultural arts. These are empirically evident to us all. Moreover, by the Establishment Act of NIHOTOUR, we are duty-bound to provide improved public services to workers in the industry, stakeholders and other government agencies. Our services should, eventually, crystallise Nigeria’s cultural tourism potential into becoming the most generative cultural tourism economy in the continent.”
On the same June 17, when the winners will be presented with their prizes, NIHOTOUR will also dole out multimillion Naira prizes to the top-three culinary schools which won the NIHOTOUR cooking competition held in May 2023 to herald the 3rd NIHOTOUR Gastronomy Festival.
NIHOTOUR was established by an Act of Parliament to train, certify and register personnel in Nigeria’s Hospitality, Travel and Tourism sectors. Over the years, NIHOTOUR has emerged as Nigeria’s leading Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Institute with 10 campuses across the country. NIHOTOUR is equally the Coordinator of Nigeria’s pacesetting Hospitality and Tourism Sectors Skills Council of Nigeria (HTSSCN).
The Institute started operations in 1988 following a tripartite Agreement involving the Federal Government of Nigeria, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
