World-level tourism training center to open in Almaty

The center for training tourism experts will be launched in Almaty, Tengrinews reports citing Almaty Akim (Mayor) of Almaty Akhmetzhan Yessimov at the first Eurasian Ski Resorts Conference. According to the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization Taleb Rifai, the center will be supported by the organization and will have world-level tourism training experts. Almaty will also host Kazakhstan office of the World Tourism Organization, Yessimov said. The Organization’s experts will help the country improve statistics in tourism. “We have to focus on training local personnel in tourism, to make it a separate international-level business. With your support we will set up the training center in one of our colleges,” the Mayor said. The school will become a regional center, Rifai said. “We view it as a specialized school in hotel business that will have our support and follow our standards. The school will be similar to the universities in Swiss Leysin and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. We plan to link this center to the existing ones to exchange experts and professors,” he said. A business-plan for the training center will be ready by the end of 2013.