Gondwana starts in-house training programme

Gondwana has started an innovative, in-house training program. After a year of intensive planning the Gondwana Training Academy was launched on 2 February when participants gathered at the Gondwana Shebeen at the Windhoek Show Grounds for a welcoming evening.

As Gondwana’s Managing Director, Mannfred Goldbeck, put it, “Gondwana is different, it has been different for the last 19 years and will be different in the next 20 years to come. This Academy tour is the first of its kind in the hospitality industry. At enormous costs we are taking you, our promising leaders, on a three-week tour to prepare you for the Gondwana way.”
The Gondwana Training Academy is a mobile training program. Thirty employees were invited to join a bus trip from 3 to 27 February to experience the 14 lodges of the Gondwana Collection and see Namibia’s sights from the Fish River to the Zambezi. The tour also includes intensive training, conducted by Gondwana’s management and external experts. The focus, among other things, is on the Gondwana philosophy, the company structure and management, ethical values, customer service and leadership qualities. The program has been tailored to the needs of the Gondwana group of companies. Working as a team and in a group is the core of the training strategy. Handbooks were specifically developed for the program. Participants will become interns in the various departments of the Gondwana Collection until the end of this year. They have committed themselves to remain with Gondwana for 18 months after completing the mobile training program. Gondwana invested N$740,000 into the mobile Training Academy, an investment which is expected to produce competent lodge management in the long term. The mobile training program is regarded as the trial run for the future Training Academy in Stampriet which Gondwana plans to build according to the principle ‘Together we grow’.