Chambermaid effect hits tourism jobs

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Improving the quality of tourism-related jobs was a major focus during the first day of the ‘International Symposium on Tourism and Livelihood’ on Wednesday. It was Harold Goodwin, director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism (ICRT), who set the ball rolling while giving a global perspective on Tourism and Livelihood. Goodwin said tourism-related jobs were generally looked down upon. To elaborate the point, he spoke of the ‘chambermaid effect’. "A large proportion of a tourist’s time in a destination is spent in the room. And what the tourist carries away from a destination is the image of the chambermaid, the one who comes into the room quite often to do the cleaning and other sundry jobs,’’ Goodwin said. This, according to him, was not an encouraging view of employment in tourism. "The major focus, therefore, should be about how jobs could be made better, how it should be made more rewarding’’ Goodwin said.CGH Earth CEO Jose Dominic said that candidates trained for managerial positions in the hospitality industry were found to be deserting the industry for more socially-acceptable occupations in IT and financial services. Dominic, by way of example, said only five per cent of students who had passed out in his son’s hotel management batch had persisted in the hospitality industry. The disillusionment with tourism-related jobs has turned out to be a State Government concern, too. Tourism Secretary Dr V Venu, while offering the Indian perspective on Tourism and Livelihood, said that there were around 1,500 seats in the food craft institutes across the State. "The reality is, more than 800 went abegging,’’ the Secretary said and pointedly asked: "Why doesn’t our youth see this as an interesting career option?’’Tourism Director M Shivshankar, after making his routine inspections of tourism properties, has identified a disturbing trend. Malayalis are now being increasingly replaced by non-Malayalis. "Earlier, Shivshankar used to count the number of non-Malayalis in the properties. Recently, he found that counting the Malayalis was easier,’’ Dr Venu said. ATE Group CEO E M Najeeb said that employees could be retained even with relatively low-paid jobs. "I have employees who had been working with me right from the inception of the company. I think the issue is about giving our employees the dignity and also the space to work satisfactorily within the given environment,’’ Najeeb said.  Dominic, then, put a poser to the leaders of the industry: ‘’Can we think of a salary range of Rs 25,000-30,000 for entry-level professionals in the hospitality industry?’’Perhaps some solutions were provided by select entrepreneurial initiatives that were presented at the symposium. All of these private initiatives provided sustainable employment to mostly local people. They have even put in place minimum wages and even other perks like provident fund and insurance. The experiences narrated at the symposium were the following: Neeleshwar Hermitage Resort, Kasargod; Oyster Opera, Kasargod; Bamboo Village, Wayanad; Poomully Ayurveda Mana, Palakkad; Olappamanna Mana, Palakkad; Spice Village, Thekkady and Alleppey Tourism Development Cooperative Society.