It has been made clear that South African hospitality establishments need to be at the top of their game as the country is on the brink of a tourism boom, with international travel expected to return to pre-pandemic levels this year.

Tourism Update has contacted local hospitality establishments to find out how they train their staff to cope with the expected boom and the challenges they face in recruiting and training staff effectively.

Training hospitality staff

Lischen Gurovich, Group Human Resources Manager at City Lodge Hotels said that all training throughout City Lodge Hotels was planned and coordinated through a combination of efforts – from Operations Directors keeping their fingers on the pulse about new and upcoming trends within the industry, to a dedicated training department that specialised in coordinating these training interventions.

“Just as each guest is different, so too is each hotel that the guests visit, so a ‘one size fits all’ approach would be futile. Using the above, we at City Lodge Hotels tailor all our training as needed, with various approaches such as Train-the-Trainer, our eLearning platform, and outsourced training interventions,” Gurovich said.

While higher-level positions require individuals with tertiary education and experience, City Lodge Hotels offers many programmes available for employees at all levels to grow, obtain knowledge of various departments, and to ultimately better themselves.

“Training interventions such as our more structured Internal Development Programmes (IDPs) offer individuals the chance to train for the next position they see themselves in, while at the same time honing their skills in their current roles,” said Gurovich.

One of the ways that City Lodge Hotels ensures that it always has enough staff to cope with the current surge as well as any future surges, is to ensure that all its staff are always well trained and also versatile.

“Our IDP initiatives ensure that employees can work their department and can also help out in others where needed. A housekeeper or receptionist can very easily grab a tray and assist a busy restaurant, in the same way a waiter will be able to spring into action and assist the front desk should the need arise. All management at our establishments are also well versed in the different areas of the hotel,” said Gurovich.

For ANEW Hotels & Resorts, the majority of employees are trained independently with customised learning and development programmes that complement the overall company’s strategic goals, vision, and mission.

“That being said, we always appreciate and welcome employees with prior experience and we take pride in honouring and acknowledging their skills, experience, and qualifications. Our recruitment mantra is clear, we recruit for ‘culture fit’ rather than skills as we believe skills can be trained and developed our time,” said Johannes Du Plooy, ANEW Hotels & Resorts’ Group Training & Development Manager.

Du Plooy added that ANEW Hotels & Resorts believed in giving its employees a voice through its yearly Training Needs Analysis.

“During this process, our General Managers, Heads of Departments, and hotel teams are engaged to indicate not only their hotel-specific training needs and requirements but also an opportunity to identify personal career development requirements.”

All the needs, wants and requirements are considered during the compilation of the Annual ANEW Hotels & Resorts Training Calendar. Careful consideration takes place during the planning and development stages for its calendars as ANEW believes it is imperative to incorporate and to achieve both business objectives, strategies, and goals but also that it allows its employees personal development to take priority.  

“The Annual ANEW Hotels and Resorts Calendar offers a good mix of both Customer Service-Related Training courses, Leadership Development Opportunities, Sales and Marketing related content, and statutory and compliance-related training. 

“We apply a blended learning approach that entails face-to-face training sessions, workshops, self-directed e-learning, and virtual instructor-led development opportunities,” Du Plooy noted.

He admitted that employing the correct and adequate number of staff would always remain a challenge in the travel, tourism, and hospitality industry as it was very volatile to external factors. 

“At ANEW Hotels & Resorts we aim to multi-skill our employees to be able to apply their skills and knowledge in a variety of hospitality-related environments. We achieve this through a process of cross-training, cross-skilling, and development of our employees.”

Supatrade Academy

Ghost Mountain Inn in Northern KwaZulu Natal has a fully-fledged training department called the Supatrade Academy, which does most of the training that the hotel requires in-house.

“The in-house training done by the Supatrade Academy is Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). We usually do this to ensure that our teams at the hotel are fully equipped and trained to conduct their roles. Once the SOP is completed, we do a training needs analysis to see what training is needed and required,” said Bea Mtetwa, Ghost Mountain Inn Hotel Manager.

“At Ghost Mountain Inn, we have a pool of fully trained, flexible staff whom we call on when they are available. This is from the local community in our Siyakula training programme,” Mtetwa added.

Challenges

Due to the remote location of Ghost Mountain Inn, several talented job seekers did not want to relocate to the rural area of Mkuze, said Mtetwa.

Gurovich said that improvements in hospitality qualifications would better equip those who entered the industry for the first time.

“We find that those who are unsure of the industry often enter without a complete understanding of what their various roles would entail, or the hours that our industry expects.”

Du Plooy said that post the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of employees within the tourism and hospitality industry with tertiary qualifications was lower.

“In particular, tourism and hospitality management graduates do not stay for long in the hospitality industry or may at times decide not to work in the industry upon graduation due to low job satisfaction, poor working conditions, and lack of motivating factors resulting in high staff turnover and wastage of trained and experienced personnel.”

He believes that factors such as long working hours, low remuneration, lack of a specific career path, negative image of the industry, and lack of clarity on required formal qualification specifications for some aspects of the jobs, have all contributed to loss of interest in the industry.

“The hospitality industry requires not just a huge number of workers but also skilled workers to function effectively and, for this reason, the education system on the tertiary level should respond swiftly to the needs and expectations of different role players (employers and employees) within the hospitality industry.”

Du Plooy added that the improvement of hospitality students' entrepreneurial skills was vitally significant in safeguarding the future of tourism and development of the hospitality industry.  

“The realisation of this key strategic imperative requires hospitality training institutions to change their traditional teaching methods to enable hospitality students to find more creative ‘real world’ solutions to hospitality-related problems. 

“The training programmes should focus on clearly defined goals so that employees can recognise that the goals are closely related to their everyday tasks. A positive attitude towards training can only be realised if the content leads to greater satisfaction, improvement of performance and potentially increased wages.”

In response to this, the IIE School of Hospitality & Service Management said that its qualifications targeted specific skills and knowledge vital for success in hospitality.

“All our programmes comprise essential skills such as people management, human resources, marketing, financial acumen, technological proficiency, operations and risk management to ensure graduates are ready for employment,” said Nande Sulelo, Teaching and Learning Manager at The IIE School of Hospitality & Service Management.

“We have hundreds of opportunities to be filled with our placement partners and we need to meet this demand by producing high enough volumes of qualified hospitality graduates each year.

“Our institution is certainly preparing for this – compiling qualifications that are in high demand but also catering for the skills shortage within the sector. Our Higher Certificate qualifications specifically target these areas with high demand and limited supply such as event management and hospitality management,” Sulelo concluded.