Skills And Training In The Hotel Sector

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Skills and training in the hotel sector: The case of front office employment in Northern Ireland Tom Baum* and Frances Devine Received (in revised form): 1st September, 2005 *International Tourism and Hospitality Management, The Scottish Hotel School, The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK Tel: +44 0141 548 3954; Fax: +44 0141 552 2870; E-mail: [email protected]

Tom Baum is a professor of International Tourism and Hospitality Management and Director of Postgraduate Courses at the University of Strathclyde. Tom has worked, in a teaching and consulting capacity, in a number of countries in Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. He has acted as examiner and assessor in universities in Europe, China, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya and the Caribbean as well as in the UK and Ireland. Tom’s research and publications interests have a strong international focus. His prime research has a strong human resource management flavour, applied to hospitality and tourism. Particular work focuses on hospitality/tourism education and training, especially at a national level. Other areas of interest include tourism in peripheral areas and tourism transport. Professor Baum has authored and edited seven books in tourism as well as a large number of scientific publications. Frances Devine is a lecturer of Hospitality in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Frances has worked in industry as a manager with the Compass Group in Northern Ireland before joining the University of Ulster as a hospitality lecturer concentrating on human resources and organisational studies. She is actively involved in researching new trends in

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human resource management in the hospitality and tourism sector, presently focusing on cultural diversity. ABSTRACT KEYWORDS: skills, career progression, hotels, front office, Northern Ireland

Notwithstanding the globalisation of services and the migration of some service providers (call centres, financial processing) to regions of low cost labour coupled with high levels of education attainment, there are arguments that the skills, which employees bring to the workplace in executing common tasks, are context and culture specific. This paper is concerned with the skills set and training background of one set of service workers, those in hotel front office, located within Northern Ireland. This paper reports the findings of a survey of front office workers working in 4- and 5-star hotels in Northern Ireland. This survey identifies the skills and training profile of this group of employees and measures attitudes to key skills requirements within front office work. Tourism and Hospitality Research (2007) 7, 269–280. doi:10.1057/palgrave.thr.6050046

INTRODUCTION One of the features of an increasingly globalised service economy is the apparent assumption that, apart from economic variation reflecting

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local conditions, those undertaking service work, for example, call centres and financial transaction processing centres in Europe, North America and Asia will be required to utilise, in the job, a similar range of skills and to undertake common training programmes in order to meet these skills demands. It is therefore widely assumed that the demands of such work will draw upon a common background in terms of education, training and overall skills set. This assumption is derived from notions that common skills requirements are drawn from the job itself, without reference to the economic, social and cultural context within which the work is located, a view perpetuated historically by bodies such as the International Labour Organisation (see, eg, ILO, 1979). It is arguable that, in service work in particular, technical, emotional and aesthetic contributions to work are strongly influenced by the cultural and economic context within which they are located. Little work has been, however, undertaken into the nature of work and skills that are required for work in specific location environments. This exploratory study based on the context of Northern Ireland (NI) is a starting point in the research of a number of parallel cases being conducted by the authors and colleagues in different parts of the world including Brazil, Egypt, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Malaysia. When completed, they will permit comparative analysis of front office skills and work and allow testing of the thesis that front office (or, indeed, other areas of hospitality work) are common across different cultures and contexts. This paper reports a study which seeks to explore the skills profiles, work background, educational attainment, attitudes and plans of front office employees at the luxury end of the market (4-star and 5-star) hotels is particularly interesting in that there are clear assumptions (hotel grading systems, for example) that the environment provided for customers is common across differing geographical contexts. From this we may infer that, likewise, the work undertaken is common and is undertaken by people who are substantially similar in their

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backgrounds, training and experience. This research is located in NI, an economy moving out of the problems associated with the ‘Troubles’ and facing the challenge of counterbalancing international perceptions with positive messages of a vibrant NI. A successful peace process with the creation of a power sharing government, will present an opportunity to broaden the appeal of the City of Derry and Belfast as cities of culture, political and historic interest with the potential for significant employment growth for the future. NI represents an environment within which traditional educational and training levels, delivered through established institutions, are well developed but there is also substantial evidence suggesting that the tourism and hospitality sector suffers from a range of problems relating to recruitment, retention, skills and image; all of which could potentially restrict its growth potential. The Northern Ireland Labour Force Survey (2004) report on key issues including: the level of work relevant qualifications is too low; while some 75 per cent of businesses provide or pay for employee training, much of that is simply to meet minimum statutory requirements such as health and safety, food hygiene; very high labour wastage; labour turnover is at twice the NI all-industry average; persistent hard-to-fill vacancies, experienced by around 17 per cent of businesses; significant skill shortages, especially in key occupations such as chefs and front office technical skills and languages. The nature of front office work in the hotel sector in a location such as NI is also subject to increasing demands in terms of workplace flexibility, changing the scope of work and the range of responsibilities undertaken. It is, therefore, an opportune time to analyse, in greater depth, the nature of hotel employment in NI to assess the impact of such changes. HOSPITALITY SKILLS AND HOTEL FRONT OFFICE WORK The hospitality sector has provided an increasingly fertile resource for research into employment and

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the study of employee characteristics within the sector (Mars and Nicod, 1984; Gabriel, 1988; Hoque, 1999; Adler and Adler, 2004; Baum, 2006). These studies demonstrate the significance of socio-cultural, organisational and economic context to the shaping of labour markets and the nature of employment. During the past decades, the hospitality sector has evolved and developed in organisational, product and market terms with significant consequences for the nature of work in hospitality organisations. Specifically, the changes in the hotel sector have in the main been due to the growth of multiple ownership, the globalisation and stronger branding of hotel chains (Go and Pine, 1995; Guerrier et al., 1998). Hotel operations during this period have also seen significant changes in the role and influence of technology with the growing use of more sophisticated communications and integrated administration packages from specialist providers. Burgess (2000), in a survey of hotel financial managers found that the influence of ‘high tech’ approaches to front office operating systems had also enhanced the role of ‘high touch’ in increased personal service and that these impacts had led to higher guest expectations. Because of the wide diversity of property types that sit within an umbrella definition of ‘hotel’, front office is an area of activity that varies greatly from hotel to hotel, influenced by the size, location and market focus of the specific property. Vallen and Vallen (2004) define front office in terms of its role as the main contact point for guests within the hotel, irrespective of hotel type. Generally, front office can be taken to include those areas of activity which centre on the reception desk and its allied areas where the main focus is on ‘and greeting’ guests, providing information during their stay and processing their departure, including payment. It can also involve the concierge or portering function, along with back office activities in some smaller properties such as reservations and accounts. This diverse nature of the front office work may encourage

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flexibility and mobility among employees. At the heart of labour mobility is the concept of human capital — the stock of an individual’s skills and knowledge — and is normally conceived as a problem from the perspective of causing operational difficulties (labour turnover) (Riley et al. (2002). The process of mobility not only depends on the skill differences but also on the willingness of employees to adapt and learn within a department such as front office in hotels. Baum and Odgers (2001) report a research study across eight European countries into the nature of work in hotel front office. They identify the central role of front office in the organisation of hotels, both in terms of the flow of management information and in relation to how the guest experiences the range of products and services on offer with the establishment. In this sense, Baum and Odgers follow Vallen and Vallen (2000) in ascribing the descriptor, ‘centre’ to this area of activity within the hotel. At the same time, the study points to the technical de-skilling of work in hotel front office, whereby ‘traditional’ administrative and operational tasks have largely disappeared or have been simplified. Priority is placed, by the hotels sector, on a range of generic skills, specifically interpersonal, communications, ICT and languages related. Importantly, Baum and Odgers report that hotels across their sample reported recruitment criteria for hotel front office based on these generic skills rather than specific vocational training or experience. Relatively little has been addressed in the literature to the specifics of hotel front office work beyond the Baum and Odgers study. A notable exception is the contribution of Bird et al. (2002) who addressed gendered work issues in relation to front office and noted, significantly, that female employees in this area of work are usually better qualified, have better opportunities for functional flexibility and are younger than their male counterparts. In terms of the work profile of hospitality workers in general, there is considerable debate about the level of skills required. Hospitality

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work is widely characterised in both the popular press and in academic literature as dominated by a low skills profile (Wood, 1997) or, as Shaw and Williams (1994) rather brutally and, probably, unfairly put it, ‘uneducated, unmotivated, untrained, unskilled and unproductive’ (p. 142). Bradley et al. (2000) apply this epithet to the wider service or new economy in questioning assumptions about a skills revolution in Britain, noting that ‘jobs commonly retain a low-skill character, especially in the fastest-growing sectors’ (p. 129). This thesis, however, does not go uncontested (Baum, 1996, 2002). Burns (1997), for example, questions the basis for categorising hospitality employment into ‘skilled’ and ‘unskilled’ categories, arguing the postmodernist case that this separation is something of a social construct. This construct is rooted in, firstly, manpower planning paradigms for the manufacturing sector and, secondly, in the traditional power of trade unions to control entry into the workplace through lengthy apprenticeships. Burns bases this argument on a useful consideration of the definition of skills in hospitality, noting that ……the different sectors that comprise tourism-asindustry take different approaches to their human resources, and that some of these differences……are due to whether or not the employees have a history of being ‘organised’ (either in terms of trade unions or staff associations with formalised communication procedures) (p. 240) Burns’s emphasis on ‘emotional demands’ as an additional dimension of hospitality skills has been developed in the work of Seymour (2000). Her work builds upon the seminal earlier work of Hochschild (1983) who introduced the concept of emotional work within the services economy. Hochschild argues that service employees are required to manage their emotions for the benefit of customers and are, in part, paid to do this. Likewise, Seymour considers the contribution of what she calls ‘emotional labour’ makes to work in fast food and traditional areas of service work and

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concludes that both areas demand considerable emotional elements in addition to overt technical skills.Warhurst et al. (2000) add the further dimension of aesthetic labour to the skills bundle that is required from hospitality workers, an area that has particular importance in the context of front office work. NORTHERN IRELAND AND ITS HOSPITALITY SECTOR NI has a relatively small regional economy. In terms of population size, it is the smallest of the United Kingdom (UK) standard regions. In 2004, the population was estimated at 1.71m, accounting for approximately 2.8 per cent of the UK total (www.dfpni.gov.uk). NI represents a compact geographical area of great natural beauty, stretching just 150 kilometres from the north to south and 190 kilometres from east to west, boasting attractive countryside, hills and coastal views, the most famous of which being the world-renowned beauty of the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim. The tourism and hospitality industry in NI consists of a amalgam of heterogeneous businesses. While there are large, multi-million pound accommodations and attractions, Clarke (2004) notes that the majority of tourism revenue goes to small, owner-managed enterprises spread throughout the province. The NI labour market is dynamic and changing, particularly in the hospitality sector. As a result of the reduction in political violence, from 1960s to mid-1990s, there has been sustained employment growth — total employment in the hotels and restaurants sector increased by over 80 per cent between 1991 and 2001 (Department for Employment and Learning, 2002). Recent research puts the total number of full-time equivalent tourist and hospitality workers at just under 43,000 (People 1st. 2006), and contributes some Ł291m to the economy, with an additional Ł121m from domestic tourism, and represents approximately 3 per cent of GDP (NITB, 2005). The industry is, however, faced with a number of challenges if it is to respond to the ever

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changing expectations of visitors and local people alike. The Northern Ireland Labour Force Survey (2004), report that the hotels and restaurant sector is characterised by a high proportion of female employees and also a high level of part-time work. Female labour accounts for 65 per cent of the workforce while parttime working accounts for 62 per cent. The workforce is predominantly young with 58 per cent aged below 40. The level of work relevant qualifications is too low — 29 per cent having no vocational qualifications. Staff in the industry describes their employment as temporary or casual at 11 per cent. The industry is also characterised by low wages. Average income earned in tourism is around two-thirds of the average for all NI industry (Department for Employment and Learning, 2002). Historically, the Province’s hotel sector has been somewhat backward in its approach to both service quality and customer care over the years (Douglas and Connor, 2003). Consumers have become more eager than ever to complain and transfer their allegiances to perceived providers of quality service (O’Neill and Palmer, 2001). In the past a lack of global service awareness had resulted in a gearing of the local tourism product towards the domestic marketplace where, the conservative nature of the NI population was disinclined to complain. This led to an unprofessional, inefficient service standards being accepted as the norm. With little competition to encourage innovative development the industry has generally taken a somewhat casual approach to consumer care and service (Douglas and Connor, 2003). This fact, coupled with the increasingly competitive nature of the business environment has forced many hospitality practitioners to upgrade the quality of their offerings but find they are hampered by the lack of skills in the workforce. The dilemma in front office work is the role of information technology versus the human dimension of the service encounter. Although the revolutionary potential offered by communication technologies is immense,

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the human dimension should not be replaced. Poon (1993) argues that new employees in hospitality: Must be trained to be loyal, flexible, tolerant, amiable and responsible…at every successful tourism establishment, it is the employees that stand out…technology cannot substitute for welcoming employees (p. 262). As front office staff is in a direct communicative and selling position, their skills need to be honed to deliver higher levels of service quality as a means of achieving competitive differentiation. In order to improve the satisfaction of guests, first of all, all staff in front office should understand guests, then be familiar with hotel product and be further proficient at marketing. In addition, employees should also exhibit skills of communication and emotion control. In summary, it is imperative that the hospitality industry in NI continues to improve its competitiveness and moves from a position which is based on low costs to one based on higher value-added, innovation, creativity and high workforce skills. The hospitality industry is confronted by a series of problems that need to be resolved fast, such as low work relevant qualifications and skills shortages among employees as well as an imbalance of specific training requirements. A key to resolve these problems is to survey the specific situation of employees and to find out what skills will be required in the future so as to take advantage of new opportunities and to enhance the development of NI’s tourism and hospitality industry. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The purpose of this research study was to develop a picture of the skills profiles, work background, educational attainment, attitudes and plans of one key group of service workers — that of hotel front office, located within NI. Gathering information about this important area of service and work in the hospitality industry provides first-hand data for improving training and career development. The research

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findings will not only enrich the knowledge of front office but also be useful for policy makers to gain some insights into human resources management. This study was based on a survey that was conducted on all 22 four- and five-star rated hotels in NI, accessed from the NITB database and located in the counties of Antrim, Derry, Down and Fermanagh, in the main cities of Belfast and Derry. Four- and five-star hotels were chosen as those properties most likely to be operating in the international market with work demands at this level of service, providing a good basis for comparison with other locations where similar research is being undertaken by the authors, for example Brazil, Egypt, Kenya and Malaysia. It is also the sector of the hotel industry where the widest range of skills (technical, technological, emotional, aesthetic) are likely to be required in the workplace. An invitation was sent to the General Managers of all hotels in the selected category, inviting participation in the study. Contact was made with the management to confirm the number of front office employees working at the premises — 150 front office employees were identified. A significant proportion of management was supportive and agreed to distribute the questionnaires to front office staff, requesting their participation on a voluntary basis. From the 150 questionnaires distributed, 64 were returned and usable which form the basis of this analysis of hotel front office work in NI. RESEARCH FINDINGS Respondents — who are the front office employees? Responses were mainly received from front office management and supervisory level at 41 per cent; senior staff members 23 per cent; junior and trainees 31 per cent. From the remaining 5 per cent, two candidates were ‘night porters’ and one termed themselves as a ‘shift leader’ (Table 1).

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Table 1: Position of respondents Position of respondent (n=64)

%

Department manager Srupervisor Senior staff member Junior staff member Trainee Other

21.9 18.8 23.4 21.9 9.4 4.7

There is clear gender imbalance in the composition of the front office workforce as 87.5 per cent respondents were female and 12.5 per cent were male. Considering the predominant age group of the candidates, almost half fell within the age bracket of 22–25 years. Job scope was generally wide, with all staff being directly involved with reception work. All staff holds responsibility with respect to the cash desk 100 per cent, reservations and telephone enquiries 97 per cent, concierge 63 per cent, accounts 34 per cent; and sales and marketing 27 per cent. Other responsibilities included room service requests and night auditing at 9 per cent. All but five of the respondents work fulltime in the hotel front office, committing between 39 and 49 h per week to the job. Parttime hours range from 20 to 32 per week. Only two of the respondents were working in a temporary or internship. Split shifts were worked by 11 per cent of the respondents. This model of employment is, not surprising, not popular with employees. Respondents and their education/ training Table 2 points to a reasonable level of educational attainment among respondents relative to the perceived demands of the job, and is consistent with the findings of the Baum and Odgers (2001) study which noted that higher levels of education were not required to undertake work in front office. Within the sample, only 34 per cent of the respondents studied in the area of hotel front office prior to entering

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Table 2: Educational attainment Educational level (n=64)

%

Primary Secondary Vocational Certificate/diploma Bachelors degree

0 28.1 14.1 32.8 25

the sector. Although 66 per cent of the respondents did not study any formal full-time school, college or university programme in hotel or front office work before entering into their position, many of their educational attainments are transferable skills for front office work. Other areas studied by respondents at postsecondary level included business studies 16 per cent, accountancy 3 per cent, office administration 16 per cent, computing/information technology 8 per cent,; sports/leisure activities 3 per cent and other wide ranging educational areas 20 per cent — languages, professional cookery, hairdressing/beauty, media and travel consultancy. This trend towards nonspecialist training for front office also appears across a number of European countries. Baum and Odgers (2001: 93) note that hotels accept the reality of the marketplace and are willing to recruit staff without front office experience provided they have good general education and a willingness to learn. In terms of part-time and short courses undertaken since commencing work in the hotel sector, most of the respondents have not been able to avail of taking external courses in front office and tourism. For the majority 56 per cent of front office employees surveyed, the skills required for front office work were acquired exclusively on-the-job. This situation is not substantially different from that found in other European countries (Baum and Odgers, 2001). Respondents and their work/careers For 66 per cent of the respondents, their current employer was their first experience of hotel work. The balance had previously worked in

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hotels elsewhere in NI, 34 per cent. But only 17.2 per cent of employees surveyed plan to remain in their current job for between one to five years, 29.7 per cent want to remain in their current employment for less than one further year. This reflects potential instability in the hotel working environment. This finding is in agreement with Riley et al. (2002) in stating that: if an industry contains a wide range of enterprises of different size and a wide range of jobs therein, then inter-industry mobility will be encouraged because there are always vacancies for new entrants to take up (p. 99). Table 3 certainly suggests that plans are vague and may also be a result of the lack of commitment to the current establishment (due to poor wages) and or the choice of many other positions available within the hotel labour market in NI. This degree of instability in the work environment is in line with the generally high labour turnover in equivalent work areas in Western Europe (Baum and Odgers, 2001). Another possibility for labour turnover in this sector is the low wages. The respondents were asked to state their salary per hour, week or yearly. The average weekly wage was recorded at Ł210 per week. This is in line with findings from The Northern Ireland New Earnings Survey (2003) for the hotel and restaurant sector in NI, which displayed the lowest average gross weekly earnings in comparison to their Great Britain counterparts. Respondents and their future plans Respondents were asked about their career plans. Table 4 indicates that the majority 61 per cent see their future firmly within the hotel sector. This demonstrates a commitment to hospitality work. Promotion opportunities among the respondents were recognised as being relatively limited — with 32.8 per cent rating promotion opportunities as ‘poor’. This presents little motivation for a group of employees who are committed to remaining within the hotel sector, substantively within the same hotel thus, suggesting problems in the future.

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The nature of front office work The survey was designed to collect responses to a series of statements about front work from the employees surveyed. All the respondents were asked to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with each statement by circling the appropriate number on a five-point Likert-type scale of 1–5, where 1 equates to

Table 3: Plans to remain in current job How long plan to remain in current job? (n=64)

%

Less than 6 months Six months to one year Between one and five years No plans at this stage

7.8 21.9 17.2 53.1

Table 4: Next career move Career move (n=64)

%

Promotion in my current job Move elsewhere in this hotel Move to another hotel Move out of the hotel sector Other

37.6 9.4 14 23.4 15.6

‘Strongly Disagree’ and 5 to ‘Strongly Agree’. Table 5 indicates the mean response to each statement. Table 5 provides a somewhat mixed picture of perceptions of work in hotel front office among respondents. They were strongly in agreement with the statement relating to the challenge and demands of front office work closely followed by the enjoyment of meeting and greeting customers. By contrast the respondents chiefly disagreed with the statement ‘I was familiar with most of the tasks in front office before starting work’ ranking it at the lowest level and the respondents did not agree with the statement that front office work is ‘common sense’. It comes as no surprise that these respondents found the work of front office as both demanding and challenging, requiring professional skills to carry out the tasks of the job as many of the respondents 66 per cent had not studied in the area of hotel front office prior to entering the sector. This secures the belief from the Northern Ireland Labour Force Survey (2004) stating that a continuing proportion of the workforce requires employability skills — employers reported a gap between the skills of the current workforce and those needed to meet their business objectives. From this assessment, it was perhaps

Table 5: Working in hotel front office

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Statement about hotel front office work

Mean response on five-point scale

Number (n=64)

Front office work is a challenging and demanding area of work I enjoy meeting and greeting customers within my job I enjoy the organisational parts of my job I enjoy the use of technology within my job Front office work is all about personality My area of work is well respected by my family and friends Front office is my preferred field for work and career progression Most work in front office is common sense A specialist course (in hospitality) is useful for front office work I would like the opportunity to work in other areas of the hotel industry I was familiar with most of the tasks in front office before I started work in this area

4.61 4.52 4.28 4.19 4.05 3.91 3.75 3.58 3.48 3.37 3.00

64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64

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surprising to find that college training in the front office areas was not rated as a major need by respondents. Other areas found to be in a relative strong agreement with the respondents was their enjoyment of the organisational and technology-related dimensions of the job with a slightly weaker agreement on the importance of personality in undertaking hotel front office work. Skills and front office work The questions relating to the skills requirements for work in hotel front office asked respondents to rate a range of skills in terms of whether they were of ‘Very Low Importance’ (1) through to ‘Very Important’ (5) on a fivepoint Likert-type scale. Table 6 presents the mean rating for each identified skills area. The NI respondents were reluctant to consider any area as ‘unimportant’. ‘Legal issues’ is recorded as having the lowest importance at 3.69. Thus one may assume that NI employees have high demands and expectations of their skills requirements for their front office job.The skills seen as most important are identified as soft or generic skills; particularly oral communication, customer care, interpersonal skills, team work and the application of ethical standards. By contrast, technical (use of technology), health and safety, and applied business-related skills including leadership qualities, marketing and accounting rate lower. Language skills and front office work The ability to use foreign languages has benefits for the work undertaken by front office staff in hotels serving international visitors. Only 28 per cent of the respondents, however, had a second language along side their mother tongue, although they were quite aware of the importance of foreign languages. French and Spanish were the most widely used second language albeit at a low level. This poor level of language skill is inline with most other Western European countries, where mono- or bilingualism is the norm

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Table 6: Importance of skills in front office work Importance of skills

Mean response on 5 point scale

Communication (oral) 4.89 Customer care 4.88 Interpersonal 4.86 Team work 4.86 Use of FO equipment 4.59 Professional and ethical 4.47 standards Communication (written) 4.38 Use of technology 4.27 Health and safety 4.13 Leadership qualities 4.08 Marketing 3.72 Accounting 3.70 Legal issues 3.69

Number (n=64) 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64 64

(Baum and Odgers, 2001). Indeed, a common hotel sector response in English-speaking countries (Ireland, UK) is that foreign languages, while desirable in recruiting front office staff, are not a priority because most guests have functional English. The findings with respect to languages point to the fact that only one respondent to the survey was not a native English speaker and, indeed, all but this one were either British or Irish.This finding is very much at variance with trends in front office elsewhere in the British Isles, particularly in larger cities such as Dublin, Glasgow and London where an increasingly cosmopolitan presence is evident among front office workers (Baum and Odgers, 2001). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The outcomes of this study highlight the argument that, in service work in particular, communication, emotional and aesthetic contributions to work are strongly influenced by the cultural and economic context within which they are located. NI in recent years has achieved economic growth, falling unemployment and

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higher economic activity rates. In contrast, productivity and competitiveness of many of the hospitality businesses, however, lags behind the rest of the UK and indeed other nations in the Western world. NI has a number of challenges to face in the skills arena — dealing with the impact of new skills and flexibility demanded by increasing globalisation and working with the reality of a national and increasingly international labour market. If NI businesses are to compete successfully in an international context they must address the negative impact of skill deficiencies in light of the economic, political, cultural and social factors that shape the workforce. This study points to a number of conclusions and recommendations for hotel front office work in NI. In particular, the findings of this study show that this work area is dominated by young, female employees, with a combination of general and vocational education and with fairly extensive experience of hotel work. The underpinning level of educational attainment of hotel front office workers in NI, prior to commencing work in the sector suggests a requirement to have better employability skills to meet the demands and challenges of the job. In particular, due to the importance placed on communication and the more generic skills requirements for the job, it gives recognition to the need for a specialist front office training qualification with more focus given to the level of language skills offered. As an integral part of any organisation’s attempt to achieve competitiveness is to invest significantly in the skills of their workforce, this study showed that most of the respondents have not been able to avail of taking external courses in front office or tourism and thus, the skills required for front office work were acquired exclusively in-house. This reinforces the notion that training is often viewed as a cost rather than a benefit and must be kept at the lowest possible level. The study also points to the fact that front office work offers unstable prospects in terms of career developments due to relatively limited promotional prospects and low wages. Better human

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resource techniques could be adopted, for example a more competitive system and effective measures, such as providing a supportive environment to staff together with a flexible salary package, should be established as soon as possible in order to attract and keep better talent. This study suggests that front office work is undertaken by a wide range of employees with diverse backgrounds. There is little evidence that the work area attracts people with a clear career focus on the front office area or that there is long-term commitment to front office work among those currently in employment in the area. These findings are consistent with parallel findings elsewhere within developed economies but contrast with a far stronger career focus found in the hotels of developing countries. Unlike other areas of hotel work in NI, front office remains dominated by recruits from the domestic labour market, pointing possibly to the ‘soft skills’ (languages and communications, emotional, aesthetic, marketrelated) that employers believe may not be offered by those drawn from external labour markets. This analysis is of considerable interest when set alongside the growing literature on hospitality employment internationally, typified by the work of Hoque (1999) in the UK and Adler and Adler (2004).This latter work, located in Hawaii, points to clear stratification of employment within hospitality on a variety of grounds including gender, ethnicity and vocational motivation. The study of front office in NI, in part, confirms aspects of the Adler and Adler study but also points to far greater labour market parochialism and stability than is to be found in ‘idyllic’ resort locations. In conclusion, an employee skills set is a vital operational tool because service determines the success of the hospitality industry. When hospitality establishments compete for business, it is the service levels that staff provides, that will set it apart from the competition, encouraging repeat business and increasing profitability. This paper, however, suggests that there is evidence to support the contention that hotel work,

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specifically in front office, is constructed by a combination of economic, political, cultural and other factors in the local economy. It also points to a work area that has not necessarily changed in response to developments within this wider contextual framework and this poses challenges to all stakeholders with an interest in this area of work — notably employers, educational providers and those seeking careers in hotel front office work. The second of these, the education sector, has not really responded to the needs of the work environment in the hotel front office with programmes designed specifically to meet its skills needs. Indeed, bespoke courses, which previously existed for this area of work in locations such as NI, are now relatively unusual, replaced by generic supervisory and management skills programmes that do not focus on the specific needs of hotel front office. At a regional level, this paper points to the need for further and more detailed analysis of the NI tourism labour market and for comparative studies into similar service work elsewhere. This paper also points to some of the challenges that tourism in NI faces with respect to its human resources and the need to invest in more specific training and support to include better selling and marketing skills as well as proficiency in languages in order for the tourism sector to compete internationally. REFERENCES Adler, P. A. and Adler, P. (2004) ‘Paradise Laborers. Hotel Work in the Global Economy’, Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Baum,T. (1996) ‘Unskilled Work and the Hospitality Industry: Myth or reality?’ International Journal of Hospitality Management, 15, 3. Baum, T. (2002) ‘Skills and Training for the Hospitality Sector: A review of issues’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 54, 3, 343–363. Baum, T. (2006) ‘Reflections on the Nature of Skills in the Experience Economy: Challenging traditional skills models in hospitality’, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 13, 2, 124–135.

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Baum, T. and Odgers, P. (2001) ‘Benchmarking Best Practice in Hotel Front Office: The Western European experience’, Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality and Tourism, 2, 3/4, 93–109. Bird, E., Lynch, P. and Ingram, A. (2002) ‘Gender and Employment Flexibility within Hotel Front Office’, The Service Industries Journal, 22, 3, 99–116. Bradley, H., Erickson, M., Stephenson, C. and Williams, S. (2000) ‘Myths at Work’, Polity Press, Cambridge, p. 129. Burgess, C. (2000) ‘The Hotel Financial Manager — Challenges for the Future’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 12, 1. Burns, P. M. (1997) ‘Hard-Skills, Soft-Skills: Undervaluing hospitality’s ‘service with a smile’’, Progress in Tourism and Hospitality Research, 3, 239–248. Clarke, A (2004) ‘Tourism — Northern Ireland’s Undervalued Asset’, Economic Outlook and Business Review, 19, 3, September, pp. 26–27. Department for Employment and Learning. (2002) ‘Skills and Training Needs in Northern Ireland Tourism and Hospitality Industry’, DEL, Belfast. Douglas, L. and Connor, R. (2003) ‘Attitudes to Service Quality — The Expectation Gap’, Nutrition & Food Science, 33, 4, 165–172. Gabriel, Y. (1988) ‘Working Lives in Catering’, Routledge, London. Go, F. H. and Pine, R. (1995) ‘Globalisation Strategy in the Hotel Industry’, Routledge, New York. Guerrier,Y., Baum, T., Jones, P. and Roper, A. (1998) ‘In the World of Hospitality … Anything They Can Do, We Can Do Better’, JHIC/CHME, London. Hochschild, A. R. (1983) ‘The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of human feeling’, University of California Press, Berkley. Hoque, K. (1999) ‘Human Resource Management in the Hotel Industry: Strategy, Innovation and Performance’, Routledge, London. International Labour Organization (ILO). (1979) ‘Tasks to Jobs — Developing a Modular System of Training for Hotel Occupations’, ILO, Geneva. Mars, G. and Nicod, M. (1984) ‘The World of Waiters’, Allen and Unwin, London.

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