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  1. QUESTION 

    Title:     Tourism Planning Environments (Discussion Paper)

    Paper Details    
    This should be 100% free from plagiarism and this is discussion paper. i attached all the related files for instructions and strcuture please follow those documents and use only Harvard style references.

 

Subject Tourism Pages 14 Style APA

Answer

Developing a Tourism Plan for Addressing Labor Shortage in Tourism Industry

The tourism sector in comparison with other sectors of the global economy is one of the fastest growing industry. Similarly, Deloitte report (2017) reveals, Australia’s tourism sector remains a significant shining light in the nation’s economy as evidenced by the record growth in visitor arrivals. According to the report, the rapid rate of the growth is attributed to the successful promotional campaigns with major investments in not only new products but also in air access. Deloitte Access Economics predicts that the number of international visitor trips is likely to rise by 6.3 percent per annum.   However, the success of the industry relies heavily on both the competencies and skills of employees (Bharwani, Bharwani, Talib, and Talib, 2017)   unfortunately, the sector is characterized by a high labor shortage and skill gap necessary for maintaining high levels of service delivery. This calls for the need to come up with the policy that would ensure adequate provision of high-quality service from skilled staff and maintain the competitiveness of the industry. This report gives a tourism plan proposal that would be used in addressing the labor and skills shortages within the sector.

  1. Position Statement

I work for Sydney Tourism Employment Agency which is an organization established in Sydney to help address the acute employment shortage and inadequate personnel in tourism and hospitality sector. The agency establishes practical solutions with the capacity to offer immediate, short-term and long-term solutions pertaining employment in the tourism and hospitality sector such as attracting and retaining individuals with necessary skills and requirements within the sector. The agency came into existence after an extensive consultation with government agencies, education providers, tourism boards as well as government representatives within Australia on the need for having innovative ways of training, recruiting and retaining multi-skilled workforce within the tourism sector for an improved profitability. The main role of the agency is to provide input necessary for the development of a variety of actions related to addressing labor shortages, labor skills as well as service standards required in the tourism industry. 

Sydney Tourism Agency has taken appropriate benchmark from countries such as New Zealand, Scotland, Alberta, and London which has helped the organization in coming up with different directions on a number of initiatives that the organization ought to undertake in its quest to promote excellence in service delivery in the tourism sector not only in Sydney but also in other tourist destinations within Australia such as Victoria. The specific objective of this agency is to ensure that Sydney is ready for both present and future tourism demands by devising mechanisms for not only attracting but also retaining skilled and experienced persons in the tourism industry.  This will be achieved through initiating strategies with the capacity to enhance the provision of sustainable employment in the tourism and hospitality industry by ensuring that learning institutions and all training facilities, deliver the skills needed to accommodate all the businesses and operations that take place in the tourism industry.

 

 

  1. Background Context

 

The tourism industry in Australia generated $ 116.6 billion by the end of June 2016 and channeled $ 47.5 billion to the Australian GDP (Grosbois 2016).  Presently, the tourism sector is growing almost three times as fast compared to the rest of the Australian economy. However, the industry is not without its fair share of challenges, according to Deloitte Access Economics Labor Force Report (2015), the tourism sector has over 38000 unfilled vacancies. Besides, according to Australia’s national tourism strategy, the industry predicts it will need over 123000 new workers including 60,000 skilled workers by the year 2020 (Chai, Eccleston, Hardy and Tinch, 2017)

A number of factors are believed to have led to skill gap. According to Jackson (2016), a number of universities produce graduates with limited practical skills who eventually fail to meet the industry’s needs, especially when placed in managerial positions.  Similarly, the scholar asserts that some students find training programs related to tourism to be confusing and difficult to understand therefore chose to opt out the courses leading to a reduction in the number of graduates.  What is more, there is little investment in both training and skills development institutions of learning related to tourism and hospitality. For instance, the research conducted by the Commonwealth revealed that there is little investment in both training and skills development regarding hospitality sector which is a major contributor to the inadequately skilled workforce available in the sector.  Nonetheless, According to Stacey (2015), skilled labor is integral in the delivery of quality tourism experiences. Another challenge related to skill development is the consistent decline in the number of traineeships coupled with high dropout rates.

Labor supply is equally a major challenge facing the industry. For a considerable length of time, there has been inadequate community awareness regarding the employment opportunities available in the tourism sector in various states of Australia leading to the inadequate labor supply (Baum, Kralj, Robinson, and Solnet, 2016). Nonetheless, a majority of people view working in tourism and hospitality sector as a part-time job.  This has made it be extremely difficult for the sector to have an adequate number of skilled laborers particularly the chefs and cooks. Similarly, the condition has made it extremely hard for the tourism operators in Sydney to balance between being internationally priced competitive and to offer quality services which consumers are willing to pay for (Baum, Kralj, Robinson, and Solnet, 2016).

Presently, the labor requirement for tourism workforce in Australia fall in four main categories, that is, hard skilled, digital skilled, soft skilled as well as general business skilled personnel. The hard skills are concerned with knowledge on areas such as airline piloting, beauty therapy and sommelier techniques among others are not easily transferable but are specific to the industry (Ghosh 2017). Unfortunately, there is little investment in formal training and educational programs leading to workforce shortage. Additionally, soft skills refer to personal attributes which enable people to interact effectively and harmoniously with others (Wesley et al., 2017). They include language skills such as the ability to master correct pronunciations, willingness to care for others as well as well as personal grooming characteristics.  Even though the soft skills are highly sought after by a majority of employers in the tourism industry, the soft skills still receive less emphasis in a majority of training and educational facilities compared to hard skills and digital skills (Jones, Alford and Wolfenden, 2015). Nevertheless, soft skills are considered ‘must have’ skills regardless of the position one holds in an organization.

Business skills, on the other hand, refers to the abilities related to time management, accounting and networking together with planning as well as managerial skills including the ability to adequately market business products and offer adequate customer care (Riley 2014). As Riley observes, the business-related skills are often the most challenging and persons with the skills often obtain the most rewarding positions such as the managerial position and travel agency executives among others within an organization. Similarly, Murray et. al., (2017) observes that, there is a high demand for skilled and qualified managers from a number of organizations within the tourism industry. 

Digital skills are also becoming more widespread in the tourism sector mostly as a result of growing digitization in the sector. According to (Jones, Alford and Wolfenden, 2015), digital skills refers to an individual’s ability to utilize information technologies and the internet in finding, evaluating, sharing and creating content. The emergence of the new online platforms, as well as the digital technologies, have reshaped the tourism and hospitality industry a great deal. For instance, the internet has become the main source of business travel planning with over 50 percent of the consumers being able to access social media on daily basis (Xiang, Magnini, and Fesenmaier, 2015). This has created a huge demand for a workforce with e-marketing skills, animation designing capabilities as well as skills in information technology in order to enable the sector to engage in online presence and to remain viable in a highly competitive world.  As Xiang, Magnini, and Fesenmaier indicates, being active on social media is important for an organization since it not only enables the employer to create a new brand with the capacity to attract new talent but also allows for the promotion of business for the organization.   However, the digital skills gap is equally widespread in many countries including the technologically advanced countries such as the United States. This calls for the need to find new innovative solutions of ensuring that an efficient labor supply is made available to the sector.

 

 

 

 

Table 1 Category of skills for the tourism industry workforce

Hard Kills

Soft Skills

Digital Sills

Business Skills

·         Airline Pilot: Aviation skills

·         Beauty Therapy: Skills for performing different types of beauty treatments

·         Chef: for technical cooking skills

·         Sommelier skills: for wine tasting and mixing s

  1. Statement of the Need

 

The initiative to address labor shortage and skill gap within the tourism sector will be a significant move. This is because, it will have the capacity to adequately address the numerous challenges facing the industry and which limits its capacity to attract and maintain qualified workforce by offering techniques for attracting and managing the general workforce. According to Ladkin and Kichuk, (2017), the capacity of a tourism industry to attract, grow and maintain a skillful workforce heavily depends on not only managing the workforce but also availing career pathways as well as ensuring appropriate working conditions.  The policies in the proposed plan will aim at promoting the general attractiveness of the tourism sector to both existing and potential employees with the sole purpose of curbing future labor shortage and skill gap.  As indicated earlier, there are vacancies within the Australian tourism industry that remains unfilled making the sector face a lot of difficulties in ensuring profitability.

Some of the factors attributed to the inadequate number of skilled workers in the sector that the plan will effectively address include the challenges arising from lack of satisfying work conditions. This has been compounded by the high amount of wages currently offered by other industries such as mining as a result of the growing demand for the natural resources in Australia. Similarly, Ferguson, Megehee, and Woodside (2017) observe, as opposed to other countries, the tipping culture which is known to supplement wages is lacking in Australia making the tourism industry to become less attractive and consequently deterred potential employees from joining the industry. The plan aims at addressing this challenge by collaborating with both education and training providers as well as regional tourism board in coming out with informative ways of promoting tourism as a career of choice.  This will result in an increase in the supply of labor to the industry both within Sydney and Australia at large.

 

 

HOW TOURISM WILL BE MADE CAREER OF CHOICE

 

ACTION

RESPECTIVE AGENCY

Promoting tourism business awareness

Regional Tourism boards

Partnering employers with learning institutions for work placement programs.

Registered training and educational

 providers

Initiating measures for fostering tourism employment and career prospects

State Tourism organizations

 

Failure to showcase or map the various employment and career paths available within the sector has also been identified as one of the major contributors to the skill gap (Chai, Eccleston, Hardy and Tinch, 2017). According to the scholars, this has made most of the employees especially the youth to believe that the only way to progress in a career is to leave the industry. The proposed policy will, therefore, aim at providing the regional tourism boards and other stakeholders in the industry with guidelines with the capacity to initiate public awareness programs that would provide the workforce with respect, sense of belonging and adequate knowledge regarding the career paths available within the sector to enable promote workforce retention.

The implementation of the plan to the completion will require government intervention in order to succeed. For instance, each territorial state in Australia has its government tourism agency, also known as State Tourism Organizations (STOs) (Lennon, Smith, Cockerell and Trew, 2006). According to the scholars, the mandate of STOs is to work in collaboration with the industry in supporting various development agendas and enhancing marketing of the various tourism destinations within the state so as to promote awareness and attract more visitors. In collaboration with the STOs, therefore, the employment agency will be able to find platforms for the promotion of tourism as a career of choice.

 The plan will benefit the tourism sector and the community at large in a variety of ways, first, it will enable the sector to provide a conducive working environment and wages which will not only attract new employees but also inspire them to view the sector as a long-term career prospect.  This will promote the success of the sector by enabling it to retain a multi-skilled workforce which in turn will heighten quality tourism experiences and attract more visitors.  Additionally, the policy will open opportunities for developing internal labor market within tourism and hospitality sector so as to allow for skill and career development of its workforce. This will not only allow for the retention of the high-performing workforce but also attract potential workers. Similarly, for a considerable length of time, there has been lack of management expertise among tourism business owners (Jaafar and Rasoolimanesh, 2015). According to the scholars, such a condition has facilitated a poor culture in the industry in regard to investing in staff development programs and training.  Moreover, many tourism operators often have the perception that business development tools which include training programs and Australia Tourism Awards are difficult to access. The proposed plan will take initiative to improve professionalism among tourism operators by advocating for performance management systems as well as career mapping in addition to giving strategies on developing and retaining staff. This will enable the manager to focus on offering business services of superior quality that meets the need and expectations of visitors.

Other benefits that would result from the implementation of the plan include employee satisfaction and improved productivity. For example, skilled workforce will maintain quality standards that would help in building the reputation of various tourist destinations. Eventually, this will translate into high visitor turn up and subsequently promote the business. Similarly, an improved business capacity will help a great deal in managing the seasonal nature of the sector. That is, the resources of the business will be well spread even during off-peak periods to foster the capacity of the sector to retain its skilled workforce.

  1. Scope of the Proposed Plan

Some of the approaches that will be adopted to ensure the plan succeeds include training and skilling the workforce. This will target the cooks, baristas, service staff and supervisors as well as kitchen hands. As Boella, (2017), observes, the tourism and hospitality sector continues to lack chefs and cooks and other service staff personnel. Besides, accommodation sector is still in need of adequate customer service, motel operators, and marketing personnel.  The plan will, therefore, work to ensure that courses are not only made accessible but also relevant to the needs of the businesses and the industry. In collaboration with STOs and various educational facilities within Sydney, the plan will ensure that the given courses equip the learners with practical experiences relevant to the business. Language skills will also be incorporated in the training sessions since a majority of visitors come from non-English speaking regions. This will help in meeting the growing demand from international consumers.

In regard to promoting tourism as a career of choice, the plan through collaboration with STOs and relevant learning institutions will organize a variety of forums, networks and television programs to highlight the various careers and career paths within the tourism and hospitality sector. According to Tuclea and Nistoreanu (2011), movies and television series have the capacity to influence a great deal since they emphasize a number of details regarding the tourist destinations and the services offered. Similarly, Rajaguru (2014), indicate that television and motion picture may alter a reality of a place to make it even more interesting, therefore attracting more visitors. In addition to television programs and films, the employment agency intends to take part in road shows which will be organized after consulting with the local governments and regional tourism boards. During the road shows, education and training providers will have the opportunity to inform the public on a variety of career opportunity available in the tourism sector.

Other actions tailored towards growing workforce in the region include initiating a pilot program that would place students both at secondary and tertiary level are placed in workplaces through regional work placement programs. This will be facilitated by registered training and educational providers through partnering with the employers as well as the institutions of higher learning. The pilot program will provide the students with a deeper insight and necessary skills regarding what the job actually entails prior to graduation so as to become more competent. The full implementation of the plan, however, is not without a share of challenges and downturns.  Some of this includes lack of adequate data regarding the analysis of tourism workforce trends. This makes it specifically difficult to develop a plan that would adequately address all the issues pertaining staff recruitment and training. Similarly, a number of approaches to be employed in the implementation process of the plan is financially intensive. For instance, creating films and television programs as well as organizing workshops and road shows demands for heavy financial investments. 

  1. Proposed Process

The planning process basically entails ensuring engaging in activities that will promote not only tourism business awareness but also to organize work placement programs to allow potential employees to gain necessary skills required in the industry. Similarly, initiating measures of harnessing tourism employment and career prospects will also be integral processes that the plan will invest in as a way of increasing workforce retention level. The plan will be implemented by a special Implementation Group (IG) that will be led by Sydney Tourism Employment Agency in collaboration with stakeholders such as regional tourism boards, state tourism organizations, employee and employer groups as well as registered training and education providers. 

            The IG will be solely responsible for the annual reviewing of the effectiveness of proposed acts so as to ensure every aspect the plan remains relevant and impacts positively in influencing tourism workforce. Additionally, delivery of an annual report card that outlines the whole process will be a key element that would be employed in ensuring effective monitoring process so as to achieve the key objectives contained in the plan. All stakeholders within the sector will be equally given access to the report card as a way of ensuring effective reviewing. The success or lack of success by the plan will be determined by assessing all the key areas outlined in the plan so as to establish the area that may not be working according to the expectation and adjusting accordingly.

 

kills

·         Language Skill: includes skills in foreign language as well as literacy on numeracy skills

·         Customer service skills: Skills on customer relations practices

·         Personal presentation: skills on the promotion of personal hygiene

·         Accounts clerks: for accounting and management of accounting software

·         Passenger check-in staff: skills on airline software systems.

·         Systems administrator:  skills for the administrative software

·         Marketing Executive:  knowledge and skills in social media communications and marketing skills

·         Networking skills

·         Financial management skills

·         Managerial skills

·         Decision making and problem solving skills

·         Planning and organizing skills

References

Bharwani, S., Bharwani, S., Talib, P. and Talib, P., 2017. Competencies of hotel general managers: a conceptual framework. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(1), pp.393-418.

Boella, M.J., 2017. Human resource management in the hotel and catering industry. Taylor & Francis.

Chai, A., Eccleston, R., Hardy, A. and Tinch, D., 2017. Productivity of tourism. Improving service sector productivity: the economic imperative, p.101.

 Deloitte Access Economics (2015). Australian Tourism Labour Force Report: 2015-2020.Australian Trade Commission.

Ferguson, G., Megehee, C.M. and Woodside, A.G., 2017. Culture, religiosity, and economic configural models explaining tipping-behavior prevalence across nations. Tourism Management, 62, pp.218-233.

Grosbois, D., 2016. Corporate social responsibility reporting in the cruise tourism industry: A performance evaluation using a new institutional theory based model. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 24(2), pp.245-269.

Ghosh, D., 2017. Employability Enhancement and the Role of Soft Skills Training. In Business Infrastructure for Sustainability in Developing Economies (pp. 264-271). IGI Global.

Jackson, D., 2016. Modelling graduate skill transfer from university to the workplace. Journal of Education and Work, 29(2), pp.199-231.

Jones, R., Alford, P. and Wolfenden, S., 2015. Entrepreneurial marketing in the digital age: A study of the SME tourism industry.

Jaafar, M. and Rasoolimanesh, S.M., 2015. Tourism growth and entrepreneurship: Empirical analysis of development of rural highlands. Tourism Management Perspectives, 14, pp.17-24.

Ladkin, A. and Kichuk, A., 2017. Career Progression in Hospitality and Tourism Settings.

Lennon, J., Smith, H., Cockerell, N. and Trew, J. eds., 2006. Benchmarking national tourism organisations and agencies. Routledge.

Murray, W.C., Murray, W.C., Elliot, S., Elliot, S., Simmonds, K., Simmonds, K., Madeley, D., Madeley, D., Taller, M. and Taller, M., 2017. Human resource challenges in Canada’s hospitality and tourism industry: Finding innovative solutions. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 9(4), pp.391-401.

Riley, M., 2014. Human resource management in the hospitality and tourism industry. Routledge.

Rajaguru, R., 2014. Motion picture-induced visual, vocal and celebrity effects on tourism motivation: Stimulus organism response model. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 19(4), pp.375-388.

Stacey, J., 2015. Supporting quality jobs in tourism.

Tuclea, C. and Nistoreanu, P., 2011. How film and television programs can promote tourism and increase the competitiveness of tourist destinations. Cactus Tourism Journal, 2(2), pp.25-30.

Wesley, S.C., Wesley, S.C., Jackson, V.P., Jackson, V.P., Lee, M. and Lee, M., 2017. The perceived importance of core soft skills between retailing and tourism management students, faculty and businesses. Employee Relations, 39(1), pp.79-99.

Xiang, Z., Magnini, V.P. and Fesenmaier, D.R., 2015. Information technology and consumer behavior in travel and tourism: Insights from travel planning using the internet. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 22, pp.244-249.

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