Foreign hotels seek to import labour to fill shortage gap

With many foreign hotels under construction in the country, hoteliers are urging the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka to allow the import of trained and skilled staff, an official in the hospitality industry said.

Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, Managing Director for Sri Lanka, Manik Suriyaaratchi told the Business Times that a top foreign hotel under construction has plans to import around 250 Filipinos to fill the gaps in trained and skilled staff shortage in the hotel industry in Sri Lanka.

She said, "The tourism and hotel industry and its stakeholders need to shake their heads and understand that lack of professional training and hands on experience among local staff in the hotel industry gives a bad image to the brand name."

Almost every hotel in Sri Lanka doesn't invest and uplift the standards of the staff to retain them from leaving the industry to go abroad or to a hotel that pays more. The investment on training the staff to become skilled individuals has to be continuous, she noted.

"The hotel industry is doing very well, a lot of infrastructure development is happening around the country, but how and where are we to find trained staff," she stressed while adding that Sri Lanka is following the traditional approach where the world is moving in a digital context. The governing bodies and industry experts should take this major crisis very seriously and update all curriculum, procedure manuals and department manuals to international standards. Also the staff needs cross country exposure, exploring and experiencing the hospitality in countries like Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.

She said her institute within six months of training in Sri Lanka analysed that decision-makers don't really appreciate continuous training and improvement of staff knowledge. While the cost factor, fear of upskilling and anticipation that staff will leave to another hotel or abroad are reasons for not providing continuous training, the budget allocated for training staff is very low in general in most hotels in Sri Lanka.

Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, Managing Director for Dubai, Judy Hou during her visit last year in July mentioned that the aim of the academy in Sri Lanka is to elevate the hospitality industry and give back the support by training people who have the desire and passion on the industry. There are people in the hospitality industry who have never got the proper training, she had noted.