Hospitality sector may add 94,000 new recruits !!

WITH the hospitality industry set to add 53,000 new rooms across 40 properties over the next five years, around 94,000 fresh heads are required to manage these new hotels. Apart from the major metros, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, big demand for hospitality manpower is likely to come from tier II cities like Pune, Jaipur, Goa, Hyderabad, and Cochin.

As per latest research by hospitality consultancy HVS International, around 53% of the fresh room inventory is entering the luxury and first-class segment across ten key markets in the country. To manage the additional inventory, the hospitality industry will need to increase its current stock of hotel professionals by over three times from 45,000-level to over 1,38,300 over the next five years.

The Pune market will add over 4,600 rooms between 2005-06 and 2011-12, and the city will see 900% growth in hospitality manpower in the same period. Hyderabad will see its stock of hotel-related human resources grow by over 500% from current levels of around 2,500 to over 15,000 in the next five years.

The Nizam city will add over 7,400 rooms in that period, the bulk of which will be in five-star and five-star deluxe category. Tech city Bangalore will add over 7,700 rooms over the next five years, over 50% of which will be in luxury and first-class category. This is slated to increase its stock of human resources in the hospitality sector from 3,300-level to over 17,000 in the next five years, a jump of more than 400%

Another market that will register almost 300% growth in its hotel manpower stock is Cochin, growing from current figure of around 600 to beyond the 2400 mark by 2012. The port city will add over 1,000 rooms in that period, 60% of which will be in the mid-market and budget segments. Chennai will have over 11,400 hotel professionals by 2012, growing its current stock by 214%. The southern metro is set to add over 4,400 rooms over the next five years to its current inventory, with close to 60% in five-star and five-star deluxe categories.

The pink city of Jaipur, which adds over 2,700 rooms over the next five years, will need to hire over 4,700 heads to manage the extra inventory. Sun and sandy state of Goa will add another 2,600 rooms and an additional 4,500 heads in the next five years. Delhi and NCR will see its stock of hospitality-related pool grow by 155% to cross the 31,000 mark in the same period while in case of Mumbai, the figure would be touching the 30,000 mark from the current 13,000.

Delhi/NCR and Mumbai would see the biggest growth in room inventory over the next five years, adding between them over 20,000. The Eastern metro of Kolkata will see its pool of hospitality professionals grow to more than 6,700 from the current 2,300 level over the next five years, as it adds another 2,400 rooms to its inventory, the bulk of which will be in mid-market and budget segments.

According to Mr Saurabh Gupta, head of hospitality executive search, HVS International, the industry will start feeling the impact of manpower shortage from 2008 onwards when bulk of additional supply starts flowing in. Over 40,000 new rooms are set to enter the market between 2008 and 2010. The average employee-to-room ratio in India is 1.8, across all markets, with the only exception being three-star hotel category where the ratio drops to 1.5 per room. Incidentally, Indian hotels remain overstaffed by 20-25% compared to international standards, where the average is 1.6 person per room.