Over 2 million staff would be needed to service the regional hospitality sector by 2020 in the wake of the massive expansion across the region with investments running into billions of dollars, according to a survey by Hozpitality.com.

Hozpitality.com, which is positioned as the region’s first niche hospitality focused career and networking portal revealed the results of its study recently.

“We see that the regional hospitality sector is on a long-term innings and despite the current economic uncertainty which may cause a medium-term slowdown, the outlook is robust as governments in the region, particularly in the Gulf states led by the UAE are keen to diversify income sources and tourism and hospitality are major components in this strategy,” said Raj Bhatt, director, Hozpitality.com.

The regional hospitality sector is facing a dire challenge in sourcing the right kind of manpower with increasing need to expand recruitment hunting grounds in the wake of dwindling staff flow from traditional markets like India and South East Asia, according to the portal.

The demand upswing in the home markets has also narrowed the gap between the remuneration levels with the difference in salaries offered in the Gulf countries not significantly higher than what they get in their country, he added.

“For instance in South East Asia, more than 40 hotels are coming on stream in Thailand and in Singapore two integrated resorts opening in the next two years are expected to generate some 20,000 jobs.'

'There are also reports that Macau will need some 60,000 to 80,000 trained manpower while Dubai would need to recruit in the range of 50,000 in the next few years.'

'The prospects are daunting if you look at the region where investments and hospitality sector is soaring with Dubai alone accounting for over $60 billion worth of projects  and some additional 70,000 rooms coming on stream in the next few years,” he explained.

He said that in similar vein, India, which is another top destination for hospitality recruitments is also drying up as a manpower source because of the country’s strong economic growth creating more job opportunities with higher remuneration.

“In India, about 70 hotels are likely to be commissioned in the next three years. An estimate also says that the Commonwealth Games 2010 will create job opportunities for 50,000 skilled professionals,” he added.

On the brighter side of the current scenario is the expansion of hospitality recruitment markets with many African countries like Kenya and Tanzania emerging as a potential sources for skilled manpower. There are a lot of Kenyans coming into the market and many hotels are recruiting Kenyans for different positions.

Kenya has many international hotels and resorts much like Tanzania  where tourism is strong, but seasonal. The candidates who come from these markets know hospitality well and speak many languages like Italian, German, French, Spanish, English, Japanese etc.

“We have been travelling to Kenya for many 5-star hotels for pre-opening recruitments and have always been successful in getting good hospitality staff,” said Bhatt.

“We have even received inquiries from the US agencies keen to bring in Americans to work in the UAE hospitality industry with recession hitting the workforce there and for them the Middle East looks like an attractive proposition in this context,” he added.

The other new emerging market is Brazil. Brazilians are also coming to Dubai for certain positions within the hospitality industry are doing well.
Most of the hospitality companies need multicultural staff and are looking for different markets for recruitment like Argentina, Peru, South Africa, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Scotland, UK, Europe, Australia, Latvia etc., for certain positions within the hospitality industry.

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