Human Resource training a vital part of the hospitality industry

By Shezna Shums

The Government of Sri Lanka has identified tourism as a lucrative foreign exchange earning industry and accordingly it has become a necessity that whist the country concentrates on increasing the accommodation capacity, it is equally or even more important to develop the Human Resources.

Human Resource is required to meet up the manning key services areas to serve the tourist with better knowledge and awareness of the services to be rendered in view of running a smooth operation within a hotel.

Having professionally skilled service oriented staff in all areas of hotels can build confidence within the leisure industry to face future challenges in welcoming 2.5 million tourists in 2016.

The Sri Lanka Chapter of the Institute of Hospitality Roshan Perera says that “in keeping with the institute’s views of encouraging growth within the hospitality industry the institute has organised this two day event with a view towards making aware of improvements that can be brought about in the current professional standards in management through education in the hospitality industry.”

The theme running through this two day seminar is focused on aligning the Hotel Industry Professionals to meet the challenges in 2016.

This two day conference which will be held at Ramada Hotel on 23 and 24 May will give participants the opportunity to share knowledge and propose new ideas, to further develop and enhance the possibilities of attaining goals and targets to meet the challenges of broad basing the industry. It will also ensure those insights would be put into practical use towards achieving those goals in the near future. The Sri Lankan chapter held a similar conference three years ago which was successful towards addressing the many pressing issues of the time faced by the hotel and tourism sector then, which was in deeper crisis in comparison with the situation prevailing today.

Past Chairman of the Institute of Hospitality (IH) Anura Lokuhetty says that there are currently about 140,000 persons directly or indirectly involved in the leisure industry.

If the number of tourists visiting the country is 2.5 million there will be an estimated 500,000 persons directly or indirectly involved in the leisure industry, which is about one tenth of the population, these people will then have to be trained to work in the tourist sector.

“Tourism is a key development issue, and developing the HR skills is a massive requirement but is not a difficult task,” he confirmed.

Sri Lanka as a tourism destination has a lot to offer and has over 15 tourist products some of which are religious, agro, cultural, educational etc.

Furthermore the type of tourism has also changed and the people working in the tourist sector have to learn to attract these different markets.

IH is also planning on holding two seminars where important issues and challenges the industry will face will be spoken about, such as the changes in the leisure industry and meeting these new demands, architecture given that the room capacity is also increasing in the country as well as marketing as marketing is important to sell the product.

“Reaching a target of 2.5 million tourists by 2016 is not a difficult task,” emphasised Lokuhetty, who also added that this will create further job opportunities for Sri Lankans.

The Institute of Hospitality is a professional body consisting of a membership made up of individual managers and aspiring managers working and studying in the hospitality, leisure and tourism industry around the world.

The Sri Lanka Chapter of the Institute of Hospitality firmly believes that by encouraging small and medium industrialists to join the hospitality fray by investing in developing new properties around the country and will add to enhance the present notion of developing new properties around the country as well as improve the number of accommodation in the country.

Lokuhetty said that they have organised a conference titled ‘Aligning Hotel Industry Professionals to meet up the challenges in 2016’.

He further added that as the President of the Tourist Hotels’ Association of Sri Lanka they like to play a key role in developing the hospitality industry professional skills.

Accordingly they will be organising several such conferences in the near future with local and foreign experts who can share their knowledge to help the industry.

Given the background of the speakers Lokuhetty is confident that the participants will have to learn how to meet the future challenges of the tourism sector taking place globally.