People, the new "location" for the hotel industry

In the earlier days, the hotel industry was defined by "location, location, location". He who has the best location wins. Today, with the hospitality industry facing surging manpower needs globally, "people" has become the new "location". He who has the best people wins.

Mr Richard Hartman, the newly-appointed CEO of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels, in London, three days into his new job spoke of the global manpower demand when he shared his vision to create "a financially strong company that is attractive to investors, customers and employees by getting the fundamentals right and optimising the profit".

Mr Hartman, a veteran hotelier who ran InterContinental Hotels in Asia Pacific from the Singapore head office for several years before being posted by InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) to London, said that manpower recruitment and development in the hotel industry was becoming a challenge across the globe.

"The UK is no different from Singapore. Pay scales are rising, there are not enough people to go round the industry and there are some jobs that are more difficult to fill than others.

Mr Michael Issenberg, Chairman of Accor Asia Pacific, who recently moved to Singapore to run the new head office at Raffles City, also raised the issue of people when he spoke of Accor's development plans for the region.

He said that "attracting and retaining good people in a tough labour market" would be the new challenge for all tourism players in the region.

"It's hard to find staff everywhere, not just in Singapore. We have near unemployment in Australia and New Zealand. In China and India, where there are literally millions of people, training is such a huge issue."

Companies must meet changing expectations

Mr Andrew Chan, the Singapore-based Managing Director Asia for travel recruitment specialist firm, TMS, said on any given day, his company was working on more than 200 search assignments in Singapore alone. "The service sector appears to be the hardest hit. While empty seats can be found across all levels, the toughest challenge is at entry level operational positions."

Mr Chan said Singapore faced challenge in manpower development as the youth of Singapore today represents the most educated generation in history and a job in the service-oriented industry may not appeal as much to them.

He noted that Singapore-based tourism companies are doing their best to recruit and retain talent with a variety of techniques but he said they have to be aware of changing expectations of employees.

"Whilst salaries have increased over the previous year, employees nowadays want more than just a paycheck. They demand a well-balanced working environment, job satisfaction, career expansion and a competitive compensation.

"Companies need to be realistic about offers and the type of individuals they want to attract. Are they looking for someone with immediate experience to step in and do the job, or can they afford to invest time in training someone with less experience?"

To this end, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA), the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), SPRING Singapore and the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), has jointly launched a TOurism TALent (TOTAL) Plan in October last year under which the Singapore Government committed S$360 million over three years to train 74,000 tourism industry workers.

As part of the TOTAL Plan, the STB has also embarked on a three-year tourism careers campaign to create awareness, enhance the attractiveness and showcase the exciting and rewarding opportunities of tourism careers, as well as motivate people to join this vibrant and growing industry.

These efforts have since seen some results. At the Career 2008 exhibition held earlier this year, some 30,000 visitors showed a keen interest in tourism jobs and courses and about 12,000 resumes and job applications were submitted to the exhibiting companies in the tourism sector.

"Be prepared to be interviewed"

"Companies need to be prepared to be interviewed by candidates and be able to answer why they are an employer of choice. They also need to be prepared to make employment decisions on the spot in this highly competitive employment market."

On attracting young talent in particular, Mr Chan said companies had to be aware of the needs of the new generation of employees.

"Generation Y candidates want work-life balance and flexible working conditions. They are much less likely to respond to traditional command-and-control type of management still popular in much of today's workforce. There is definitely a paradigm shift with the youth of today. The old paradigm of "Pay your dues, work hard and then you will be rewarded" has been replaced by "Reward me now and then I will work hard".

In the US, and in some markets in Asia, Mr Chan said some companies have started offering full flexibility to employees and they were seeing less attrition and higher productivity.

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