Tourism support − Motivating our professionals and employees during this time of concern
Last Friday the Malta Tourism Society held its 18th Annual General Meeting in very peculiar and unusual circumstances.
Dr Julian Zarb is a researcher, local tourism planning consultant and a visiting senior lecturer at the University of Malta. His main area of research is community-based tourism and local tourism planning using the integrated approach.
N“Perhaps these months should have been a wake up call for entrepreneurs, authorities and decision-makers”
ormally, these events are an opportunity for members, associates and committees to “network” and debate together while also sharing a few lighter moments over a glass of wine or two! But last Friday the meeting was held online, that form we have all come to appreciate in the last six months as the only way to “keep in touch”. I have to say that even though I did miss the physical encounters and interaction, online meetings have their advantages and that is that our AGM went global – tourism has become an international theme among practitioners and academics.
During the meeting, I thanked the past committee and welcomed the new committee which included a couple of new members. After the formalities were over, we linked into a global panel from Spain, the UK and Malta. The topic we had proposed for discussion with our members was one that had been haunting us for the past six months. Since April, the news across the world has focussed on the impact of COVID-19 on tourism as an economic activity and on the entrepreneur. We seem to have forgotten another important stakeholder in all this – the professional and the employee. I was following BBC One News a few weeks ago and I listened to an interview with a person who, until September 2019, worked with Thomas Cook as part of their cabin crew. After the collapse of this iconic travel company (in a pre-COVID world, one has to add), this person worked for FlyBe. Last April, FlyBe also collapsed and the person found a job with Jet2 – now that person has been furloughed.
This was the real story of an employee who was committed to her chosen career. Without these people, the travel and tourism activity would be flat, devoid of hospitality and service and devoid of life. The discussion looked at this situation today and how we need to provide them with support. Universities in the UK are trimming down their course curricula and tourism is now being included in business courses rather than as study units and courses; from Spain we heard how important it is to “go back” and make human capital the centre of our tourism activity again; on the other hand, from Malta, the story is one where employees and professionals are experiencing stressful moments about their careers as well, but the emphasis is still on saving the industry and the employer rather than these key stakeholders. There are examples of consistent demotivation rather than care and mentoring for our employees and professionals.
Perhaps these months should have been a wake up call for entrepreneurs, authorities and decisionmakers to look at how we have turned tourism into a quest for job growth and employment, instead of one where we search for career progression, incentivising and acknowledging innovation and new knowledge and best practices from our professionals and employees. There seems to be a trend everywhere to treat tourism as the Cinderella of job opportunities rather than a vocational career for those who enjoy meeting people, practising hospitality, service and basically enjoying what they do every day!
The industry here cried out consistently over the past years, wanting to supplement their workforce with foreign employees (mainly because local employees, many of whom were trained, committed and experienced in this activity, had experienced bad working conditions and remuneration). Now, I have absolutely nothing against foreign employees in tourism. When I lived and worked in the UK in the 70s and 80s I actually had the opportunity of managing, many a time, a multicultural team and I have to say that this worked fantastically. There was even a time in Malta’s tourism history when foreign employees were needed to introduce best practices and skills for our managers and professionals, and indeed with increased mobility within the EU this has opened up new opportunities for all.
What I am rather concerned about are those people who are not trained in basic operational or technical tourism skills, who have no knowledge of the local culture, history and tourism activity and who work here simply as a short-term stop-gap. There is no commitment, there is no motivation, no communication skills and there is no interest in adding value to the visitor’s or client’s experience.
In conclusion, what we need is to adopt a policy for tourism support to our own, homegrown professionals and employees and those professionals and employees from other countries who have a strong “passion” and commitment for tourism, those who are eager to get on the career ladder and make a success of this activity and add value to the visitor experience. To do this, we must ensure that during these times of tourism shutdown we never forget the contribution of these important stakeholders – we must mentor them, provide opportunities for continuous professional development and upskilling. We must put our people first if we want a quality tourism activity that is sustainable and responsible.