Trinidad and To­ba­go’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty and bev­er­age sec­tor is re­ceiv­ing a high-lev­el skills boost as glob­al­ly recog­nised wine cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cours­es ar­rive in the coun­try, led by one of the world’s top ex­perts.

Through an ini­tia­tive by Bry­dens T&T, Mas­ter of Wine Michael Pal­ij de­liv­ered Wine and Spir­it Ed­u­ca­tion Trust cours­es at Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant step in strength­en­ing in­dus­try train­ing lo­cal­ly. Pal­ij is among just over 400 Mas­ters of Wine world­wide, plac­ing him in one of the most ex­clu­sive groups in the glob­al wine trade.

Over four days, 36 in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als took part in the Lev­el 1 and Lev­el 2 pro­grammes, en­gag­ing in struc­tured tast­ings, tech­ni­cal train­ing, and for­mal as­sess­ments aimed at in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Par­tic­i­pants came from across the re­gion’s bev­er­age and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tors, in­clud­ing dis­trib­u­tors and ho­tel and restau­rant staff, re­flect­ing a grow­ing push to pro­fes­sion­alise ser­vice stan­dards in the Caribbean.

“Trained staff are more like­ly to re­main loy­al and are al­so em­pow­ered to sell more and bet­ter wine through oc­ca­sion-dri­ven rec­om­men­da­tions. If your es­tab­lish­ment has house wine sales above 50 per cent then you should be en­cour­ag­ing cus­tomers to be­come more ad­ven­tur­ous,” Pal­ij said.

The cours­es form part of the Wine and Spir­it Ed­u­ca­tion Trust sys­tem, which op­er­ates in more than 70 coun­tries and is wide­ly re­gard­ed as the bench­mark for wine and spir­its ed­u­ca­tion.

The ses­sions al­so re­flect a broad­er in­dus­try shift as lo­cal op­er­a­tors in­vest in staff train­ing to im­prove com­pet­i­tive­ness, in­crease rev­enue per cus­tomer, and el­e­vate the over­all guest ex­pe­ri­ence.

With de­mand for pre­mi­um ex­pe­ri­ences ris­ing, ini­tia­tives like this are po­si­tion­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor to bet­ter com­pete on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage.