Shortfall of trained staff in hotel industry feared
HERALD REPORTER
PANJIM, APRIL 15
The hospitality industry in India will need 100,000 trained personnel over the next three years but the hotel management institutions in the country will not be able to meet the demand, the Hotel and Restaurant Association (Western Region) said here.
Addressing a press conference in a city hotel, Sunil Kothari, who is the chairman of the HRA Diamond Jubilee Celebration Committee, said that there were nearly 100,000 hotel rooms being developed across tourism centres in India, which would need to hire the same number of trained professionals soon.
“The average ratio is one trained person per hotel room. And there are nearly 100,000 hotels rooms being constructed all over the country,” Kothari said.
However, Kothari lamented the current rate at which both government owned and other private hotel management institutions were churning out manpower was not enough to meet the demand.
“In the next three years, only 25,000 trained persons are expected to pass out of all the hotel management institutions in India which simply does not meet our demands,” Kothari said, adding that the hospitality industry had liased with the central government and had devised very short courses ranging from six to eight weeks to fill up the shortfall of trained manpower.
The western association of the HRA, which comprises states like Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, etc completes 60 years of existence this year.
The HRA has been headed in the past by Ajit Kerkar, D R D Tata etc has 1100 members in the western region with leading five star hotels like Taj, Oberoi, ITC Leela as its members.
