Cultivating a tourism career not simply a job

There was a time when studying for Hotel Management, Catering and Tourism was considered a profession

You completed your three- and two-year courses and you were ready to start on the first rung of the career ladder that could see you in a senior management position within 10 years. This was how we achieved our ambitions. Today, working in the Hospitality and Tourism activity is seen as another mundane job; students who complete their Higher National Diploma or a BA in Tourism expect to be in senior management the moment they graduate. With no experience on how to manage people; no experience of working in the tourism and hotel activity and certainly no experience of taking decisions that involve the future of organisations, businesses and employees.

Hotels and restaurants today are to blame for this situation, primarily because of the abysmal conditions they have been offering employees without even offering them an opportunity to start a career. The result of this mis-management is that, today, hotels and catering outlets employ foreign and migrant individuals who know nothing of the principles, skills and characteristics of the tourism industry; they are simply a pair of hands who cannot communicate, cannot provide professional service but they can just about slam a plate in front of the customer with a sullen look! No wonder youngsters shy away from a career in the tourism and hotel and catering activity. What we need is to rethink our strategies and policies about Human Resource Management (HRM); employees are not objects, they are people and training and development should be offered by professional institutions and not simply as an “on-the-job” process.

Rethinking our HRM strategies means that the industry practitioners should work with universities and vocational colleges to provide programmes that can build the career and the vocational drive for the student. Again, this is not about numbers, it is not about how many students graduate but about the quality of those students. It is not about making the study units, modules and courses simple to follow but creating challenges and raising the entry requirements. If we want to create a quality, sustainable and responisble tourism activity after this pandemic starts to leave us, then we must invest now in people. We need to carry out a training needs analysis (TNA) for each sector of the tourism and hospitality sector. Are we offering the right courses to our students today? TNA is an ongoing exercise not one that is completed every so often. Students who graduate should be offered “trainee programmes” rather than psuedo titles by the industry. Working conditions must change, the tourism and hotel sector has always been the Cinderella of the job market (despite the fact that many governments all over the world look on this activity as one of the most lucrative in terms of GDP). Working conditions should include competitive salaries, CPD programmes and clear career paths and incentives.

Looking after our student welfare, creating professionals and committed employees will result in a better quality of hospitality and service which are the basis for a quality, sustainable tourism activity. Perhaps one day we will see the end of the amateur and sullen employee whose only greeting to a guest or client is “Yes” rather than the professional, committed employee who greets the same guest with “Good morning, How can I help you?” Which of the two employees do you prefer? Let us help make this happen by creating careers in tourism instead of the mundane jobs we have put together these past years.