Hospitality Training for Disadvantaged Youths

1. The English inhouse training and current operation of Le Tonle
2. Summary

Le Tonle training guesthouse and restaurant is a social enterprise project of the Cambodian Rural Development Team (CRDT), a non-profit NGO in Cambodia). Le Tonle Training Guesthouse and Restaurant aims to provide free theoretical and practical training to young disadvantaged Cambodians in the area of tourism and hospitality such as front office, housekeeping, cooking and hospitality. By providing these skills in the short term, vulnerable youths are able to obtain varied and worthwhile careers and are able to live by themselves independently and support their family by sending some of their earnings back home. In the long term, the training is providing an opportunity for youth to develop themselves further in tourism professions and giving them general knowledge, which will enable them to take careers as one of the country's human resources. This will help solve the human development program of Cambodia and lift the poverty rate in the future. According to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from 2018, thirty-five percent of Cambodians are living in poverty, especially in the countryside.

1. About Le Tonle

Le Tonle provides 100% scholarship for youth to learn from certified trainers and practice at the same time at Le Tonle guesthouse and restaurant.

Le Tonle is a social enterprise aims to:

• To contribute to poverty reduction and ecological conservation of Cambodia by introducing responsible, sustainable tourism and by training the local population to cater to tourists.
• To give theoretical and practical training to young disadvantage dCambodians in the different areas of tourism professions to enable them to obtain varied and worthwhile careers.
• To provide quality training in response to the requirements of tourism professionals in Cambodia.
• To integrate the values of responsible tourism in the training.

Our 8-month training program

The Tonle training program is recognized by the Ministry of Tourism of Cambodia under the National Committees of Tourism Professional as a vocational certificate. Trainees are trained by our experienced trainers, many of whom were our graduates from 2008. Most of the training periods are focused on practising and interacting with the tourism industry by supporting trainees to develop generic competencies such as computer skills and English proficiency.

Progress report

Brief about the operation in general

Since the last generation of training had been completed in Feb 2023. There were 7 trainees who were trained. Six of them are working in the tourism industry, five of them in the town of Kratie while one is working in Phnom Penh city. Two out of five are working at Le Tonle Training guesthouse and restaurant with other staff of Le Tonle. There are nine staff members working at Le Tonle at the moment. One gap that these young graduates have is their communication in English with international tourists. Therefore, Le Tonle conducted two hours a day on English Language improvement and young graduates as well as its existing team members. There were around 120 hours of English class provided.

At the same time, Le Tonle had recruited a volunteer to work on its social media. Pearith is our new volunteer. He is a third year student in information technology. Phearith is from Sambou district, Kratie province. He is currently being trained by our senior staff on preparing social marketing plans and executing them.

The operation of Le Tonle guesthouse and restaurant is not moving well. In the past three months Le Tonle occupancy rate had dropped from 60% to between 40%-50% while very few people were eating at Le Tonle restaurant. Le Tonle hired experts from Phnom Penh to improve the quality of its service. The review from experts on its menu was around 6/10. Improvement needs for the menu of Le Tonle. However, its guest room quality is 8/10 which is good.

Training

There were two inhouse training conducted to improve the quality of the service of Le Tonle for guests. Guest hospitality “Warmest welcoming” was conducted to everyone in the team. It was focusing on welcoming using Khmer traditional welcoming, assisting parking, friendly, providing informative information, assisting guests for their needs such as luggage, answering questions, map providing etc. Another training was for the kitchen team conducted by Le Tonle head chef Sreyma. Sreyma trained the kitchen team on gaps of good kitchen preparation and food preparation.

Le Tonle also conducted a pause and reflection once every 2 weeks to seek for good achievement, gaps and improvement of its service. Le Tonle hosted a chef training program in collaboration with the provincial department of tourism in which 12 chefs were trained.

Our challenges

• The rainy season this year was really wet and it rained a lot. 
• The volume of international tourist arrivals to Kratie recovered very little. 
• World crisis is affecting the income generation of Le Tonle from its guest room and restaurant (the war between Ukraine and Russia).
• The election in Cambodia and the preparation of the new government is taking time.
• The crisis of the real estate sector in Cambodia.

Overcoming the challenges

• Keep the operation small
• Focusing on local market middle class and high educated Cambodia and develop more Cambodian Menu
• Working on producing the business plan and policy for Le Tonle as business
• Keep improvement the service quality

• 20231002_GGREport_Taining_61.docx.pdf (PDF)