InterContinental Hotels Group, the world's biggest hotelier, which was part of the UK trade delegation that visited India with Prime Minister David Cameron, wants to partner the government to set up academies to train people for the hospitality industry.
Jan Smits, CEO (Asia, middle-east and Africa), IHG, told Business Standard: “We want to increase the number of graduates in this specialisation and also their quality. Getting skilled manpower will be the biggest challenge for the hospitality sector.”
IHG employs 3,400 persons working across its 13 hotels in nine cities, including Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. The hospitality company operates nine academies for such trainings in India already. It is yet to decide whether it will build its own academies or form a joint venture with the government to provide its services for such a facility.
Industry experts say that the hospitality sector is facing a shortage of 30 per cent in skilled work force. According to a Deloitte report, there are more than 400 projects involving 70,000 branded rooms under various stages of development over the next couple of years across India. With more hotel projects being announced and the room inventory expected to double in the next five years, the demand for trained manpower will rise dramatically. The group is planning to add another 47 hotels by 2017 and reach a figure of 150 hotels in India by 2020.
“We have our second largest pipeline in Asia-Pacific here after China,” added Smits. IHG would recruit 25,000-30,000 more employees to work in its 150 hotels.
The group operates four brands in India, including InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. The company has invested around $30 million in a joint venture with Duet Hospitality to set up 19 Holiday Inn properties. The firm is keen to invest more money in the Indian market to fuel the growth of its Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express brands. “We have seen various cycles in our 50-year stint in India and we have always been realistic of our targets and so far we have been on track,” said Smits.
Over 85 per cent of the hotels that the company will open over the next few years are focused on the mid-market. Around 15 per cent of the 125,000 branded hotel rooms in India are estimated to be in this segment. “When a hotel opens, it spurs infrastructure development and creates job opportunities. We will hire more than 10,000 people over the next few years,” said Smits.
He added that currently the supply of manpower is far less than the demand because many hotels have come up in the past few years in India. “We are trying to make our employees more efficient by improved technologies without compromising the quality of services,” Smits added.
