Call for professional development of HR in leisure sector at Hospitality Forum

The Sri Lankan hospitality and leisure sector needs professional human resource development qualifications, agreed industry experts who expressed their views at the inaugural Hospitality Forum held by The Imperial Institute of Hospitality and Leisure (IIHL) in collaboration with The Institute of Hospitality – Sri Lanka Chapter, recently.

Held with an objective of encouraging industry professionals to brainstorm relevant issues of importance and exchange opinions, the first session of the Hospitality Forum was titled ‘Developing Human Resources for the Hospitality Industry’. The keynote address at the forum was delivered by Srilal Miththapala, FIH , who was able to highlight many important areas of relevance to the industry.

Miththapala, a highly respected industry personality, stressed that as the world’s fastest growing industry, the hospitality and tourism industry contributes 9% of the world’s GDP – it is estimated that by 2012, one-sixth of the world’s population will be travelling as tourists.

In Sri Lanka, at the forefront as a key Asian tourist destination, it is widely believed that the next four to five years will require trained industry sector workforce of around 400,000 personnel.

According to estimates, Miththapala pointed out that around 80% of the workforce will consist of ‘front line employees’ who directly interact with the customer through a consistent level of service delivery. A mere 20% of the workforce will form administrative and financial services traditionally known as the back office operations.

Employees of the leisure sector should ideally be trained in a wide range of relevant soft skills from good hygiene to polite and discreet service, commitment and positive behavioural skills to hard skills such as management and customer centric approach.  They are also expected to be well versed in other aspects that form the industry’s core services such as cuisine and beverage management.

Expressing his views at the Forum, Wasula Wijegunawardena, Director HR of the Galle Face Hotel Group, said that Sri Lanka needs to focus on developing professionalism in the industry as a priority. He stressed on the need to revamp the curriculum of traditional hotel school modules.

Thilak Sellaiah – Director of Browns Group Hotels emphasised on the need to attract talented young men and women from established schools at the entry level , thereby harnessing a high level of human capital in the industry. In his contribution to the Forum, Janaka Kumarasinghe, HRD Consultant, held the view that a lack of soft skills was a problem faced by almost all sectors of the economy.

Eraj Abeywardena, Director of Studies at IIHL, reiterated that the monitoring and regulation of hospitality industry training institutes in Sri Lanka is important towards maintaining a high level of consistent quality and preventing a decline in standards. Joining the Forum to express his views as an industry expert, Nayantha Panditha, Director of HR, Hayleys Leisure, said that the need to inculcate high standards in service delivery formed an essential component in training. In summing up a very relevant topic for the industry, Miththapala brought out the importance of initiating a focused programme of training with a personal touch that will professionally empower the industry employees.

He was of the view that the traditional Sri Lankan smile can be effectively used to add value to the level of service delivered to the customer.

He commended the work undertaken by IIHL in collaboration with the Institute of Hospitality towards ushering in a new level of professional education for the leisure sector personnel.

Encouraging the IIHL to act as a catalyst for a higher level of professionalism and education in the leisure sector, he and other experts were of the view that much needs to be done to fully develop the human potential towards achieving world-class service delivery levels in the Sri Lankan hospitality and leisure sector.