Sri Lankan hoteliers need to offer cross training opportunists for their staff to develop new skills, improve their understanding of different departments and the entire hotel set up, Tourism Industry Skills Council Chairman T. Packeer said. He said, hoteliers should take the current situation and time to introduce cross training programs for its employees and trainee students who work as temporary staff at theses hotels, speaking at a public seminar held in Colombo on the theme, ‘4/21 incident and its’ impact on HR in tourism and hospitality sector’ organized by the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (SLITHM) and the Ceylon Hotel School Graduates Association
In addition, he said students should be trained to improve their English language proficiency as there is a need to break the language barrier.
“I think this is an ideal opportunity to train the future human resources and help them learn English which is a link language. This will help us to have a better human resource in this field. Even if these students are trained to serve within the country or outside the country, the language barrier has to be broken.” he said. In terms of tourism education, he stressed the need to benchmark the SLITHM curriculum as the curriculum for the entire country. Chairman, SLITHM, Dilip De Silva speaking at the event said that over 1,400 students who worked as temporary staff in hotels around the country lost their jobs following the 4/21 incident as these were the first to be asked to leave following the drop in the number of tourist arrivals. In addition, he said that about 2,000 apprentice trainees each from the state-run National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority (NAITA) and Vocational Training Authority (VTA) have also been laid off.
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