FOR those in hospitality and whose employment has been impacted by the pandemic, the time is now to upskill and give yourself the best chance to re-enter the industry which has been transformed likely for good, says hospitality veteran and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT)’s associate professor Detlev Remy.
SIT, in conjunction with the Singapore government’s SGUnited Skills (SGUS) programme that is designed to help unemployed Singaporeans and permanent residents upskill and reskill themselves, has created a six-month course that is targeted at the hospitality industry.
Led by Remy (pictured left), the course aims to support the industry’s need to focus on future hospitality experience that will require new skills to tackle such tasks as revenue optimisation across departments, channel management, advanced f&b operations, customer acquisition with digital marketing, and data analytics.
To date, the programme has not attracted enough participants to start, and Remy has expressed his concerns.
“Of course, some people who have lost their jobs have to survive by working as delivery drivers and such and don’t yet see the need for upskilling or reskilling. It could also be a lack of education or awareness about the programme,” said Remy.
“People in our industry may think of leaving because it is severely impacted right now, but in the medium and long term, our industry is a stable one. This is for the simple reason that all of us will always want to travel, have to travel and will always look for accommodation,” he added.
Remy said the core areas in hospitality such as revenue management, data analytics, distribution management are highly specialised and takes “a long time” to learn from scratch. He said replacing the “lost talents” when the industry recovers and has an upswing will not be easy and quick. Those skill sets are not so easily replaced, he said.
Remy’s advice to hoteliers is to focus on training now. And the key areas to focus the training efforts should be digitalisation and include digital marketing and data analytics.
“The big players hire data scientists but from other industries. We don’t have data scientists of our own – it is definitely needed right now,” said Remy. “We need to have data scientists or analysts who are grounded in the industry and can understand the connections. We need people to have the ability to spot revenue opportunities, identify ancillary revenues and be able to upsell, cross sell,” added Remy.
The other area Remy feels is lacking is leadership. “True leadership in the new normal. We must bring back the passion, and you must be a role model to lead the team,” he said.
Remy singled out Heinrich Grafe (formerly of Conrad Centennial Singapore) as an example of a true leader with passion. He was always visible in public areas and built emotional bonds with the customers,” said Remy.
Although the course is now only meant for Singaporeans and permanent residents, Remy thinks if there is interest from the region and beyond, it might be an opportunity for the school to consider offering it to a wider audience.
“The industry should use this time now up to the upswing to focus on training. We’ve lost talent already that’s for sure, so we need to do more to prepare for the upswing. The demand for travel will come back stronger than maybe before and with different customer expectations so we need to be prepared for all this,” he said.
For more information on the programme, click here.
