tr	Claude Narain General Manager Academy & External Relations

Being fully aware of the challenges with which it is confronted with the expansion of its activities both in Mauritius and in the region; Hotels Constance has opted to invest in training.

The Academy launched its activities on 1st July 1998 in a building designed specially to provide a calm and serious environment conducive to learning.  The Academy is duly registered with the Mauritius Qualifications Authority (MQA) and the course fees are reimbursable under the “Levy Grant System”.

The Academy exercises great circumspection with regard to the recruitment of its teaching staff.  National trainers are all registered with the MQA and they are drawn from two sources:

They are all highly qualified people, experienced in their respective field of competence and schooled through interactive pedagogy. On the other hand, the Academy has entered into contractual agreements with organizations and trainers abroad as well as in Mauritius. Thus it has at its disposal a pool of professionals capable of conducting courses and seminars on a great variety of themes.

The Academy’s Objectives

The Academy’s primary objective is to promote and implement the training policy in accordance with development strategy of the Hotels Constance.  It has the responsibility, in collaboration with the management team of each hotel, to elaborate and manage the Hotels Constance Employee Training Programme.  It proposes relevant training curricula based on training needs analysis.  It implements the programme, conducts the courses and carries out the follow-up activities on site.

The Academy is a value-added institution which adapts high-level theoretical teaching content to the day-to-day reality of business. Prompted by a clearly-defined resolve to always relate fundamental human values with a genuine concern for effectiveness and results on site, the Academy’s arrowed mission is to train young recruits as well as managers for tomorrow’s hospitality industry.

Here, what you will be asked to share with others will compel and help you better discover and explore your own potential, your personal approach to develop your aptitudes in line with your personality, and help you succeed in your endeavour.  If the environment and the learning tempo are regulated, it is for the simulation of effort, to help you adopt and practice new approaches, new methods, and new behaviours.  The team’s overall purpose is focused on inter-personal as well as on personal development geared towards effectiveness.  The objective is to build up your confidence, not just through role models, but by empowering you to construct your own model of thinking and behaviour from those models which are presented to you by trainers.

Knowledge grounded in action 

The Academy endeavours, through dedicating an important part of its training programme, to impart to its students a solid foundation which will allow them to acquire techniques which are essential for operational and managerial functions in business.

This know-how is neither stilted nor frozen but it is constantly evolving.  This necessity to adapt to the ever-changing reality of business requires exposure to the hard facts of the terrain.

These constant shuttling back and forth between a highly specialized training and the concrete reality of the professional world equips students to develop a critical and a synthetical mindset, allowing them to constantly update their knowledge in order to be always attuned to the business world.

Through daily contact with a team as well as customers in a business sector where the keyword is service, the student must learn self enrichment through participation and active listening, and be prepared to constantly being challenged.

Tomorrow’s leader must become a total man, active and receptive, dynamic and ready to listen to others, rational and creative, in short, a normal man or woman.  The Academy’s training is more than a traditional training, it is a real support and a mentoring to move nimbly between two worlds, the student world and the market-place.  One must relearn to live with others, side by side, for others and not against others anymore.

Tolerance, humility, sharing, courtesy, are not empty words at the Academy, they are values practiced daily.  Little by little, during the training, each one rediscovers that he or she in an extraordinary person, capable of achieving things undreamt of.  Little by little the fear of failure disappears.  Little by little fear of others is dispelled.  Little by little, self confidence returns.  And every student has, should he or she so desire, all the means to carry out his or her own experiments during the stay at the Academy.  Gradually everyone discovers his own potential.  One discovers a sense of commitment and dedication, one rediscovers passion, one rediscovers a spirit of excellence.  Everything is permissible at the Constance Academy on condition that we respect one another and ourselves.

Today’s student, and this is a very heavy responsibility, will be tomorrow’s leader.  We must, therefore, help him lay down his own foundation but, at the same time, give him the opportunity to look ahead in the future.  That is why the Academy’s motto is: DARE.

Our method is simply to train tomorrow’s self fulfilled people.

CN