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TRAINING PROGRAMS TAKE AIM AT TOURISM SERVICES
BY RÉHAB EL-BAKRY
With over 11 million visitors in 2007 – a 22-percent increase over the previous year – Egypt would seem to have found the right formula for positioning itself as a tourist destination. But clearly it could be doing much better.
Egypt ranked 66 out of the 130 countries surveyed in the Travel and Tourism Competitive Report 2008, an annual assessment of the travel and tourism (T&T) sector by the World Economic Forum (WEF), falling behind other countries in the region including Qatar, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ranked 37th, 39th and 40th respectively. The report highlighted Egypt’s natural advantages, including having six UNESCO world heritage sites and countless cultural treasures, but stated that the country’s tourism infrastructure is underdeveloped. It also highlighted the sub-par performance of Egypt’s tourism workforce. “An upgrading of the quality of the country’s human resources available to work in the sector, ranked 82nd, would also improve the country’s overall T&T competitiveness,” it stated.
The substandard quality of services offered to tourists by the industry is one of the main factors discouraging travelers from returning to Egypt for a second visit. Spain has a 90-percent return rate while Egypt’s rate is a dismal 20 percent, a report issued by the Ministry of Tourism in 2006 noted. “I think there has long been a realization that if Egypt wanted to continue to be competitive as a tourism destination, and if it were to truly live up to its [potential], then much effort was going to have to be exerted in order to upgrade the quality of the services offered,” says Ahmed El-Nahas, chairman of the Egyptian Tourism Federation (ETF).
Training is at the forefront of the government’s strategy to develop the sector, according to Minister of Tourism Zoheir Garana, who says his ministry has been working with the ETF and industry players to develop programs to upgrade the quality of the tourism sector at all levels. The new initiatives – the largest and most comprehensive of their type to date – focus on delivering consistent, efficient and high-quality services.
In March, the Ministry of Tourism and the ETF officially launched two new training programs – one aimed at improving the skills of all workers in the tourism industry, the other specifically for middle and upper management. The parallel tracks are provided as eCornell online education courses through New York’s Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. “This is the first time that training programs are open for all people at all levels of the industry [as well as] for individuals who want to improve their capabilities and qualifications,” Garana said.
The first eCornell program comprises 50 online hospitality courses covering the essentials of tourism marketing and management. The courses are available year-round to individuals already working in the tourism industry who possess practical English skills. Students interact with their instructors in New York via an online forum and e-mail, and are encouraged to discuss coursework with their colleagues through an online forum. Upon completion of certain sets of courses, the individuals receive a certificate from Cornell University.
The second program, designed for middle and upper management, comprises eight compulsory e-learning courses that are completed using the Internet, says Garana. “After [an individual] successfully completes these eight courses, he or she qualifies for a special managerial course that is held in El Gouna twice a year for two weeks.”
The eight-course track is designed to give employees the requisite skills to manage the various functions within the industry in order to maximize profits and improve service quality. Upon completing the coursework, individuals receive an evaluation by their online instructor. Those who pass the course move on to an intensive two-week course organized and delivered by Cornell instructors. If successfully completed, employees receive management accreditation from Cornell University, recognized as one of the top institutions in tourism management.
To encourage companies and individuals to enroll in the eCornell programs, Garana has negotiated a special rate with the university. Egyptians who register through the ETF pay $250 per course, as opposed to the normal rate, which ranges from $500 to $1,700 per course. For individuals who complete the eight courses required to attend the management certification course in El Gouna, the ETF will refund 40 percent of the course fees paid by the individual or the employer.
The new e-learning initiative complements the ETF’s existing program to train fresh graduates for jobs in the tourism sector. “The [fresh graduate] program was designed to take young people straight out of school and place them with one of the hotel chains for a period of six months during which they receive training on a variety of services in the industry,” explains Ayman Altaranissi, director general of the ETF. “They are then guaranteed a job by the chain with which they were placed, pending that they meet the standards set by the hotel.”
Trainees receive a stipend of LE 150 a month and hotels take them on in the hope of finding new staff. But the two-year-old program has had teething problems, Altaranissi admits. He says many graduates end up quitting the industry altogether due to what he describes as overly ambitious expectations. “What happens is people come for the training and after they receive the certifications, they [decide they] don’t want to work [in the industry]... The fact is, they don’t want to work as a waiter or a cook. So they graduate from college and we start training them, and then they just don’t want to do the job. They want to graduate and become managers.”
Thierry Perrot, area general manager for the InterContinental Hotel Group and general manager of the InterContinental CityStars Cairo, says there is a perception that the travel and tourism industry requires long hours with little pay. This discourages young people from joining the industry, especially if they do not see a clear career development path that provides opportunities to improve their skills and receive competitive pay packages. “Every company must realize that if we want good people, we must take care of our people,” he says. “Our company, for example, is keen that the package for the employee always includes benefits, but also training as well as the respect and [investment in] the qualifications for the employee to be happy.”
Perrot, among the first batch of graduates of the first eCornell management training session in Egypt, says the focus on training will help secure a steady flow of high-caliber employees able to support Egypt’s growing tourism industry. The Ministry of Tourism intends to increase the number of hotel rooms by 135,000 annually to accommodate an additional one million more tourists expected to arrive each year. “All this needs people that simply don’t exist in the market at the moment,” he says. “And hotel groups and other companies in the industry can no longer afford not to offer great service to visitors because the competition is too much on the international level, the regional level and even within the country. No one will accept the ma’lesh [no worries] attitude any more.”
But securing professional management and staff is a daunting task, Perrot admits. “You have a group of people inside a company like ours and to put in perspective what the future will be, we are looking at opening 120 hotels in our group in the next few years in the Middle East. That means 120 hotel managers, 120 department heads multiplied by 10, and thousands of employees. Where are we going to find these employees today? They don’t exist. You have to make them. You have to train a lot of people in order for them to exist and to take care of our guests.”
“It’s the same logic in Egypt,” he says. “The ministry’s target is huge and a skilled workforce doesn’t exist in this industry. So I would say that we need to deliver first the right skills and this means how to cook, how to serve, how to welcome the guests and how to clean a room.”
The growth in the number of hotels throughout the Middle East means people working in the sector are more likely to change employers – both locally and regionally. But Perrot argues it would be a mistake for hotels to resign to saying, “why train our people if we will lose them anyway?” By investing in their staff’s personal and professional development hotels stand a better chance of retaining them.
For its part, the InterContinental Hotel Group in Egypt is creating its own training center that will be designed to replicate the different areas of one of its hotels. This 2,000-square-meter center will be designed to allow new employees, as well as those who need refresher courses, to receive hands-on training in a setting identical to the hotel. “So, for example, we are creating mock-up rooms so that people in housekeeping can train in a setting that is identical to the real one. We are training cooks, waiters and support staff such as carpenters and electricians, and all the other individuals who provide support services.”
Altaranissi is pleased to see tourism companies taking the initiative to train their employees. But he also thinks these employees should also be willing to invest in themselves. Training should not stop once a person finds a job.
One of the more successful ETF programs, launched in 2006, provides on-the-job training for people already in the tourism industry. The program, which has trained more that 16,500 people over the past 18 months, employs industry veterans as instructors and evaluators. “Everyone from front desk to housekeeping to waiters and cooks receives training on the job,” Altaranissi explains. “Then we follow up with their managers to assess how their [output] has improved. We also have our own trainer evaluate them anonymously to [benchmark] the improvement in the quality of their work.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Tourism is in negotiations with the ministries of education and higher education to revamp the curriculum of university tourism programs. The hope is that people graduating from these programs will have the appropriate skill set to join the hospitality industry directly. But ETF’s El Nahas admits it could be a while before a new curriculum is in place. “These types of changes take time and there is some negotiation on it, but for now we are working to address the needs of the market immediately until this process is completed.”
Altaranissi puts it simply: “[There is no] magic wand that we can use to train people on all the different skills overnight... It’s going to take time, but we are on the right path.”
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