Welcoming Ways Training

Do you want to give your employees the tools they need to welcome persons with disabilities and then offer them top quality services? Kéroul is ready and willing to go the distance with you.

Accessibility is also a question of attitude!

Bellboy opening the door for a disabled lady For both disabled and elderly people, access to tourist and cultural activities depends a great deal on the attitude of personnel. Cordial employees trained to be sensitive to the special needs of disabled and elderly clients will make a world of difference in the quality of services provided.

Kéroul has been running its “Welcoming Ways” training programme since 1983. The programme is designed to make tourist and cultural activities accessible to persons with physical limitations and to help people working in these industries serve them with quality and style.

Not only does Kéroul’s three-hour training programme teach the basic principles of accessibility and hospitality, it also offers a unique specialization in the fields of tourism and cultural events. Kéroul is the only organization with this type of expertise.

In meeting the training needs of its clients, Kéroul draws on the expertise of a team of experience trainers. This team is composed of disabled women and men who are passionate about their work and whose chief concern is the quality of service offered to disabled clients.

Welcoming Ways is:

Accredited by Emploi-Québec (accreditation #0005072)
Recognized by the Conseil québécois des ressources humaines en tourisme (CQRHT)
Complies with the criteria Tourisme Québec has established for the tourist industry’s Programme Qualité
Eligible under the 1% law for job training
Certification of participation

Training content

An expanding market
Vocabulary
Perceptions and attitudes
Description of the clienteles
Hospitality and helping techniques
Practical exercises

To learn more about the Welcoming Ways training, please contact us at recherche@keroul.qc.ca

Here's some myths and realities for a better understanding of the themes that the training courses are covering :

Myths and realities

Myth : «We can’t welcome disabled persons because our establishment is not adapted.»

Reality : When we say “disabled” we often think wheelchair. Well, in reality, welcoming some disabled clients, such as those with auditory or visual impairments, require no extensive physical adaptations to the establishment but rather special attention to the services offered. By providing your personnel with good tools of communication, the Welcoming Ways course will equip you to offer the services and hospitality adapted to this clientele.

Myth: « It’s not a large market, we almost never get disabled people in our place.»

Reality:Persons with limited physical ability represent 15% of the population in industrialized countries. With the phenomenon of the ageing of the population, this proportion will grow in the near future. Deciding to offer services to people with limited physical ability means opening your business to more than one million Quebeckers, 4.2 million Canadians, and about 40 million Americans.

Myth: «Welcoming people with disabilities is sometimes complicated. You run into to all kinds of problems.»

Reality:Employee discomfort, false perceptions, ignorance of the special needs of the disabled and the elderly can have negative effects on the services offered to them. This is why Kéroul offers its Welcoming Ways training courses to give the tourist and cultural industries the benefits of its expertise.

Myth: «Training employees is very expensive and we don’t have much money to spend on this.»

Reality:Training personnel is an investment which pays off. Think of the economic spin-offs your establishment will gain from this new market share. Providing good hospitality to disabled and elderly persons will have a positive impact on your occupancy and client satisfaction rates. W hat is more, Welcoming Ways courses qualify as an admissible expense under the 1% job training legislation.

Our Clients

Initially offered to personnel working in the tourist trade and to students in the tourist and hotel industries, Kéroul’s training programme is perfectly adapted to needs in the business and cultural worlds as well as to those in the fields of health and transportation. Here are a few comments from clients we have served over recent years:

«Thanks to your training, we can boast of real progress in the quality of the service we provide to our physically disabled clients. And this is a vital asset in the highly competitive air transport market» Jean-Jacques Bourgeault - General Vice-President and Head of Operations, Air Canada.

«The course content was comprehensive and well structured. The guidance and tips we got from this course were really helpful and we can recommend your course to any service industry. The most frequent comment was that the course managed to demystify the needs of disabled people and raise the comfort level in those paid to welcome and serve them.» Nicole Raymond, Assistant Director, Human Resources, Château Frontenac.

«I would like to thank you sincerely for the half-day of training you gave us. This session was not only educational by also invigorating and amusing. I would also like to congratulate you for the quality of your work. We were delighted. Thank you again and long live Kéroul!» Élizabeth-Anne Doyle, Assistant, Reception and Box Office, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

«I took the Kéroul course during my studies at Collège Mérici. Now that I’ve been working in the tourist industry for five years, I know for sure that the notions I learned are really helpful. What I liked most was the contact with the trainers. It was an eye-opener on the daily life of disabled people.» Catherine Lévesque, Hostess, graduate of Collège Mérici