KSU’s tourism efforts commended

Prince Sultan bin Salman, president of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, has commended the efforts of King Saud University in Riyadh in producing qualified manpower required for the sector by conducting a number of relevant courses.
He thanked the university’s rector and the general supervisor of Prince Sultan bin Salman Chair for the development of national cadres in tourism and antiquities and the members of the Scientific Committee and researchers on the activation of the chair and for the fruitful efforts they exerted to develop outstanding scientific research in the Kingdom.
A recent report issued by the chair shed light on SCTA president’s contributions to support and develop human resource capabilities and qualifications in the tourism sector. “Prince Sultan’s keenness has been manifested in all SCTA strategies and work plans that prioritize human resources requirements,” the report said.
The SCTA highlighted the chair's recent practical achievements, including its participation with three research projects in several regional and international conferences and the issuance of two books: "An Introduction to hospitality and tourism studies" and "Traditional rural houses in Unaizah."
In this respect, the SCTA's efforts were backed by the initiative of King Saud University for founding a scientific chair under the auspices of SCTA, which stands high among all scientific chairs supported by the university, in addition to launching 12 tour guidance and hotel management courses joined by 262 tourism and archaeology students and tourism and heritage enthusiasts.
The report detailed the main educational programs of these courses as follows: opera hotel room booking program, 'Amadeus' flights booking program, 'Micros' restaurants program, program of development of hotel departments supervision skills, tour guides qualification program, program of interactive and effective communication in hospitality and tourism industry, program of historical manuscripts and documents preservation methods, program of developing technologically modern display methods, program of graduation projects skills and program of modern strategies of archaeological excavation.
The chair plays a key role in training and qualifying specialists and experts in tourism, archaeology and museumology sectors and works on improving professional performance of teaching staffs and developing educational syllabi, relying on benefiting from experience of international experts in research fields and educational syllabi development.
Meanwhile, Prince Sultan received the Best Governmental Institution Award in the Arab region for social networking and digital media, which was given by the Amman-based 3rd Arab Media Forum for effective usage of social networks and digital media.
This came on the sidelines of the 30th meeting of the SCTA's board of directors chaired by Prince Sultan at SCTA headquarters in Riyadh recently.
The award was a big honor for SCTA as it came in appreciation of its achievements in the use of social networking for promoting its activities and events, depending on the most widely known and frequently visited websites; Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, together with several effective digital solutions, such as events' live broadcast on the web and different Internet interactive applications.
SCTA's efforts in this respect aimed at communicating with the public and getting them acquainted with tourism services information and all recent tourism programs.
Previously, the SCTA won several awards in the same field, most notably the award for website in the field of informatics, which was awarded by the Dubai-based institute of the Middle East Award for Distinction.
SCTA's Sales and Contracts gate garnered the Best Website Award given by the World Web headquartered in the USA.