Financial Times

Most parents in Sri Lanka still want their children to get into few accepted professions like medicine, engineering, accountancy or the legal profession while tourism is yet to gain recognition as an available lucrative profession, a top hotelier said recently.

“This I think is because tourism is not included as a vocational subject in the school curriculum and also because university degree programmes focusing on tourism related subjects are not widely available,” said Anura Lokuhetty, Chairman of the Sri Lanka chapter of HCIMA (Hotel & Catering International Management Association) at the recently held 14th AGM of the local body.

He said a major crisis in the industry was finding qualified and experienced personnel to run hotels.

“On one hand we have a major unemployment problem in the country. On the other hand the industry is finding it difficult to fill the vacancies available due to lack of qualified and experienced personnel available to be employed.

One of the key reasons for this problem is because our education system does not cater to the current demand for employment available with in the country,” he said adding that it is important for the government to include tourism as a vocational subject in schools.

It is also important for all vocational training institutes in the country to have training programmes in tourism and hotel related fields, he said noting that affiliating the Ceylon Hotel School to a recognized university would also help to uplift the professionalism of the degree and to make it more popular among Sri Lankans.

Excerpts of his speech:

Sri Lanka, one of the few countries severely affected by tsunami, recorded a negative growth with a drop in tourist arrivals by 3% in the previous year. According to available statistics, the most number of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka has been from India, UK and Germany in 2005. If you look at the statistics provided by the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, the loss of earnings by tourism was much more severe than the fall in tourist arrivals during this period. Yet, tourism managed to retain its position as the fourth largest foreign exchange earner.

Even though this still sounds optimistic, we are yet to achieve the number of average 14 room nights which we had in 1982 when tourism was at its peak with 8600 rooms and 407,000 tourist arrivals. In 2005 we have had 549,308 tourist arrivals with an average length of stay for the first time in the history coming below 9 nights per guest with 13,300 rooms.

If you compare with the 2004 figure there are about 1.5 million guest nights less than the previous year in graded hotels as per the 2005 Sri Lanka Tourism Report. The employment generated by the tourism sector both directly and indirectly has also decreased by 3.1% in 2005.

We cannot forget that we in Sri Lanka have suffered from terrorism for more than 2 decades. But we have had the patience and strength to bounce back and to move the industry forward.

The leaders in the industry continue to build new upmarket properties and to upgrade their existing properties to compete with other global destinations. Our industry must be saluted for their efforts despite the drawbacks faced since 1982. Focusing on what we can do to move the industry forward rather than lamenting on things which are beyond our control, I think is a very encouraging sign.

Income is another major issue that drives our industry professionals and competent staff overseas. Salaries, particularly in the hotel sector are low as the package is mostly padded up with the service charge.

Therefore any disaster that affects the arrival of tourists, obviously affects the service charge paid to employees and their total earning.

On the other hand, salaries cannot be further increased during times when the industry is struggling to survive. There is no other solution at times like this, but to educate and motivate the staff till the bad times are overcome. The history of tourism in Sri Lanka shows that the industry has always recovered as I mentioned before, after major calamities like the 1983 riots, southern insurgency in late eighties and more currently after the tsunami.

Overstaffing by poorly trained staff is also a problem that most of our hotels face. If we can adopt advanced technology together with proper and continuous training of staff, this problem of over staffing could be reduced. Then the industry will also be in a position to pay a higher salary to a well trained staff.

They will also be able to enjoy a better service charge. Therefore we have to make our staff understand the benefits they gain by working with less but well trained staff.

There are other issues related to tourism that I am passionate about as a patriotic Sri Lankan. Why is that we rely heavily on imported fruits and vegetables and fish than on our own traditional food stuff that are freely available? If we promote our own fruits, vegetables and fish, this will also help to develop our agriculture and fisheries industries as well.

We as professionals must have a feeling for our own traditional food items and food preparations. We must also make our kitchen staff aware that it is equally important to prepare rice and curry properly in addition to all western and other eastern dishes. Let’s try to take this thought forward from today onwards.

We as hoteliers should also give our support to the government or the relevant ministry to improve the cottage industry and to bring in quality control to improve the quality of goods available to the tourist.

Developing the cottage industry in tourist zones will bring in a fair amount of foreign exchange too, and will improve the quality of the goods sold to tourists.

We will be hosting the HCIMA International Conference from July 16 to 18 in Sri Lanka. Irrespective of the problems faced due to the uncertain situation prevailing in the country, we are determined go ahead with the plans.

The professionals with wide practical experience from all parts of the world will address this conference updating our top hoteliers on new global trends and challenges.