SA hospitality counters unemployment crisis with targeted skills training

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The high level of graduate unemployment illustrates this. According to Statistics South Africa, 31% of South African graduates younger than 25 didn’t have work in the first quarter of this year, compared to 19.5% in the fourth quarter of 2018.

The digital revolution may exacerbate this situation, South Africa’s tourism minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said on World Tourism Day in September. "We have already witnessed certain job profiles in hospitality, such as front desk jobs in other parts of the world, becoming obsolete as machines are taking over. It is only a matter of time before this trend takes root in our country, but we still believe that the tourism sector will remain labour intensive."

Developing training programme success

Tourism stakeholders are taking note of these and other skills related challenges. Some companies have embraced the opportunity to ensure that they have sufficient suitable skills to take them into the future. One such organisation is BON Hotels, which has developed a training programme that has been reaping the desired results.

"Good hotel managers who know the business inside out are hard to come by. We, therefore, made it our mission to groom our future managers from within. Becoming a great general manager doesn’t happen overnight,” says Pieter van Eck, BON Hotel operations director, adding that going back to basics plays a prominent role.

"We sometimes forget to get the basics right. I believe the hotel sector has neglected certain areas that require particular skills and this has paved the way for mediocrity," he says"Besides all service-related aspects of hotel-management, we at BON Hotels also focus on financial and revenue management and. human resources skills."

Former BON Hotels trainee, Dylan Albertus, who is currently working at BON Hotel’s Bloemfontein Central hotel, agrees: "I got a lot of practical experience during this programme as opposed to purely learning from the books," says the 23-year-old, noting the skills he obtained as a BON Hotel trainee are useful across the hospitality sector, not just in the world of hotels. “For me there are so many job opportunities out there, not just working in a hotel. Think cruise liners for instance."

Van Eck agrees that growing the number of skilled hospitality managers doesn’t just benefit BON Hotels, but also South Africa’s overall tourism sector. "There is a strong intention from the government to increase jobs in the hospitality industry by ensuring that tourism numbers increase. This will require us to produce more skilled professionals to accommodate these visitors, give them an experience of a lifetime, and give an ongoing impulse to the sector."