Efficient and professional management is an obvious prerequisite of successful tourism development. Of equal importance, however, is the quality of staff training, which is often relatively neglected during the early stages of tourism sector development.

Tourism basically being a service business, a developing destination must take the necessary steps to build a pool of efficiently trained manpower to fill various jobs which will be created subsequently.

A variety of jobs will have to be created to look after and manage various tourist services. Special attention, therefore, will have to be given to needs in manpower and personnel to be trained and rendered qualified for the various tourism professions.

Special care has to be taken to ensure that there will be no shortage of trained manpower in case there is expansion of facilities and services. In the case of a developing country, it will also be appropriate to study at this stage the volume of manpower required for activities complementary accommodation industry, in particular in the commercial sector.

In planning for human resources development, programmes should be established to screen and train prospective employees so that they could acquire both attitudinal as well as technical skills, characteristics contribute to an employee’s success in tourism position and include pride, flexibility, adaptability and judgement.

Technical skills required include facility and equipment operation and maintenance, financial management, food and beverage production and service, personnel management and administration and system analysis and design. In order to determine the need for various personnel required, a staff planning exercise may be done.

This involves a series of steps which include job analysis, preparing job descriptions, job specification and preparing staff forecast. This sequence of activities leads to a detailed of exactly what types of persons, with which specific qualifications and skills will be required at all major facilities within the tourist destination.

All this helps in determining the development of requisite education and training programmes within the country for local residents. This will also help in determining whether there is a need for trained personnel from other countries and also whether local people are to be sent for training elsewhere.

Administrative Structure:

Next comes the necessity of setting up an adequate administrative organisation to look after various aspects. If a tourism programme is to succeed, the responsibility of success must be assumed by some entity in the form of an organisation. This organisation should have a charter and resources appropriate to carry out various functions.

Many countries have established special department or agencies to manage and coordinate tourism programmes.

Depending upon the economic, social and political structure in the country, the tourism organisation may be a governmental department, a semi-government agency in the form of corporation supported by government but operating outside its organisational structure.

It may also be a private sector organisation with government support and recognition. Whatever form the tourism organisation takes, it needs