HBI Staff | Hyderabad 
According to MINT , Hospitality companies are either upskilling existing talent or hiring from other industries as they seek to overcome a manpower crunch amid a post-covid boom in hotel demand.
Battered by the pandemic, most hospitality companies had laid off thousands of employees. During this time, an estimated 25% of the workforce permanently left the global hospitality industry. This has triggered a talent crisis in the industry at a time when it’s facing a renewed surge in demand.
Marriott International, for instance, is working with state governments across India to scout for new talent and train them, while Lemon Tree Hotels is looking to hire from alternate industries. It is looking at expanding its talented workforce by working with local governments.
Ranju Alex, area vice president for Asia Pacific at Marriott, said while India doesn’t have any shortage of labour, it has a scarcity of skilled labour. To change that, Marriott is partnering with local governments, especially in locations like the Northeast and other parts of India, to add fresh talent and train them for six months before bringing them onboard on a full-time basis. The company is looking to build a pipeline to create about 10,000 incremental jobs for its upcoming hotels.
Royal Orchid Hotels, for instance, runs a hotel management college where it teaches multi-skilling. After opening about 15 hotels during the pandemic, the company began to promote a lot of its team members to these new properties, which helped develop people internally and promoted them to heads-of-departments. This helped increase job satisfaction, said Chander Baljee, chairman and managing director of Royal Orchid Hotels.
Similarly, Indian Hotels Company Ltd, the operator of Taj Hotels, has opened 16 skilling centres and aims to skill 100,000 people in the hospitality industry by 2030. Today, the company needs 28,000 employees, which may further increase to 35,000.
Source : MINT
