Bristol is aiming to become a ‘city of excellence’ for customer service by training 3,000 workers in its tourism, hospitality, transport and retail sectors.
Already signed up to take part in the exercise are European Green Capital 2015, which has pledged to train all its volunteers, and transport firm First Bus, which is looking to train more than 900 drivers and other staff.
The scheme will be run through the WorldHost programme – a customer service training scheme that has been used to train more than 160,000 people across the UK, and 1m worldwide. 
Originally developed in Canada, it is widely recognised as the gold standard in training for any business that relies on day-to-day interaction with customers for success. It is run in the UK by training firm People 1st.
The scheme is being backed by Mayor of Bristol George Ferguson, who launched it at the Bristol Hotel with tourism, hospitality and transport business leaders.
He said: “The secret of customer service is to have happy staff, and how we can raise the experience of our staff is fundamental. I’m really delighted that Bristol – which is a great city – is aiming to be a WorldHost city.”
Destination Bristol chief executive John Hirst added: “Destination Bristol is delighted to be closely involved and supportive of WorldHost – this is a priority for Bristol in 2015.
“Customer service is an area which we know we can improve and WorldHost enables us to focus, and we will encourage all customer-facing teams to become involved and look forward to celebrating our success later in the year. We continually strive to offer the best experience to our visitors and WorldHost will help us to achieve that in 2015.”
The Bristol Hotel has already trained more than 30 of its frontline staff through the project and is due to become the first business in the city to gain WorldHost recognised business status.
The WorldHost bid is managed by BEST (Bristol Employment, Skills and Training). Businesses can find out more about the project and training by contacting project co-ordinator Nicola Padden at nicola.padden@bestfortourism.co.uk or 0117 946 2202.
