While the importance of salary increases continued to dominate, the importance of career development on employee satisfaction remained high on the agenda, said Andrew Chan, ACI’s founder & CEO (pictured left).

This year’s results showed encouraging signs for staff working in the Asia Pacific travel and hospitality sector, with 69% of all respondents who participated in the survey indicating they had received a pay increase in the last 12 months, he added.

“The continued labour crunch and skills shortage across much of the region mean that those with specialist skills continue to drive higher salary demands and compensation packages.”

However, about 31% received no increase to salary in 2012/13, and the majority of respondents receiving a pay rise were seen in the 1%-5% range.

According to the 2012/13 survey the-average industry salary across Asia Pacific is US$65,331. Due to Indonesia’s surging economy the average salarh in Ithe country ndonesia grew by 118%. This is followed by India (113%) and the Philippines (51%). The actual highest average salary is from Macau (U$100,100), followed by Hong Kong (U$81,564) and Australia (U$79,371). Malaysia posted the survey’s lowest average salary (U$39,118).

“We saw an eventful 2012, which has left its influence on the job market and salaries across Asia Pacific coming into 2013. Whilst Asia’s economy progressed positively, the divided and modest results could be based on respondents who work for multi-national companies with headquarters in the more cautious economies of Europe and the US, and was thus not in the position to offer salary increases or only modest amounts,” Chan said.

The survey found that a high 66% of all respondents stated that career progression was either “extremely important” or “very important”. Only 7% said career progression was unimportant.

Interestingly, employees appear less satisfied with their current prospects than they did in previous years, with just 28% of those surveyed said they believed that their current employer offered “excellent” or “good” opportunities for career progression, and, more alarmingly, 35% felt career prospects with their present employer were “poor” or “zero”.

Chan said this could be an indication that a more competitive job market is making employees feel insecure about long-term prospects within their company, or companies may be moving away from internal recruitment policies.

Launched in late March, the survey this year attracted close on 900 respondents from 10 countries across the Asia Pacific region – Singapore (52%), Australia (14%), China (9%), Thailand (8%) and Philippines (6%).

• WIT will be conducting WITNext Summercamp for the second year to inspire and coach a new generation of talent to build a fulfilling career and make money in travel and tourism. The one-day event is on June 21 at SMU Admin Building, Singapore Management University, Attendance is free to job seekers, school leavers and anyone interested in travel and tourism jobs. Space is limited. Pre-register with  [email protected]