So why would a hotel chain, which like so many other tourism businesses are battling in the post-pandemic environment; put such a high priority on education? In short they realise the critical value of developing skills in the business; positioning themselves as an employer of choice and hence becoming a magnet in attracting talent.

Yasmin Diamond,  Corporate Affairs EVP, commented, “With 6,000 IHG hotels in over 100 countries … Our IHG Academy programme has been invaluable in connecting our hotels with their communities, providing thousands of jobs … we’re committed to making a difference on an even larger scale … with the help of our incredible partners [and] a new digital format.”

New challenges require new solutions

The IHG Academy has been running since 2004. So what is new? The clue is in the word “digital.” They realise that new challenges, require new solutions and moving away from a legacy approach. Modern LMS (Learning Management Systems) or next-generation LXP (Learning Experience Platforms) use automation and personalization to make skills-building experiences engaging. Match the right course to the right person; allow the learner to take courses at a time that suits their lifestyle; and track progress with state-of-the-art data collection. Such platforms enable the creation of effective and valuable skills development programmes. Also, they do not cost nearly as much as you may fear, with prices having plummeted in recent years.

Why the emphasis on skills?

Recent years have shown a clear trend in skills-based learning becoming the future of talent development. Educational guru Donald Taylor, Chair at Learning Technologies Conference, runs an annual survey of priorities in the learning field. In the last two years “upskilling and reskilling”  have dominated the survey at #1, well ahead of all other elements. This correlates with a massive increase from 2019 in Google searches for “upskilling and reskilling.” LinkedIn CEO, Ryan Roslansky also states that his company has seen a 21% increase in companies asking for skills rather than qualifications and positions. This reveals that companies are increasingly unwilling to trust a CV, i.e. honing in on actual skills, rather than hoping that previous posts will act as a proxy for the skills they need.

Moreover, companies who have successfully created a culture of skills development are consistently outperforming their peers. Not only do they become better at recruitment, they also excel at developing existing staff. Your people understand your unique culture and how to work. Critically you already know key facts about them, both as to their technical and behavioural strengths. Such employers give themselves a massive head-start. Skills can be deployed cross-functionally, with staff satisfaction growing as they see their personal development optimised.

What about smaller businesses or SME’s who make up over 90% of travel’s ecosystem?

So should such initiatives be the preserve of giant enterprises, with matching resources? What about smaller businesses or SME’s who make up over 90% of travel’s ecosystem? How can they compete? After all, we are all fishing from the same talent pool. Won’t they lose out? The problem is worsened by the fact that even businesses considered “large” in travel sector terms have slimmed down over the pandemic. So, unfortunately, resources previously responsible for strategic forward planning of talent management, have likely been axed. In such circumstances, travel leaders risk weakness in one of the most critical battlegrounds in the future competitive environment. A reactive short-term approach likely will not cut the mustard for your business in the future. To make matters worse, stats show that post-covid, the over-50’s are the largest demographic dropping out of the workforce. So if your strategy is to rely on passing knowledge down informally from this grouping, you may well be further disadvantaged.    

In light of this, what can the vast majority of companies in the visitor economy do to compete?

Here are some simple rules to follow:

• Take advantage of the digital (or hybrid) learning mega-trend. LMS/LXP’s no longer cost the earth and they can springboard your efforts by acting as a delivery mechanism. 
• Share resources: Build-your-own can be a long, slow and expensive process. Off-the-shelf solutions are available and provide a framework. The sector is burgeoning and you can always tweak over time to meet your specific needs. By joining a network you’ll meet many other businesses facing similar problems, many of whom can chip in with a speciality you can benefit from. N.B. even IHG rely on partners to deliver their strategic objectives.
• Bottle your super-power: get to the bottom both to the skills your business has, any gaps and what will be needed to thrive in the future. Don’t let your unique skills fritter away. If your business has a super-power, make sure you capture that “grey-hair” knowledge for future generations of your employees; whilst also evolving to meet future challenges. General Motors is a classic case, as they reskill their staff from a petrol past to the electric future.

Finally, you may be worried as to whether your staff will buy into a skills development programme?

Be assured that your teams won’t take much convincing of the merits of investing in them. The Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) MBA found that 92% of employees say that in work professional development is either important or very important to them. LinkedIn echoes this urging employers to, “Support new career paths for your employees.”

Finally, great customer service lies in the DNA of so many travel & tourism companies and simultaneously is one of the skills most in demand on LinkedIn. So you may be tapping into your own goldmine!

Patrick Richards is a Director of LVG Learning www.lvglearning.com. If the above is of interest please feel free to reach out to us at info@lvglearning.com

“We don’t need no education…” so said rock band Pink Floyd back in 1979. Unfortunately for the travel industry this has too long been the case.

I remember an old boss haranguing me years ago for including a £15,000 training budget, to support £2 million of headcount, as a waste of money. Of course, over the last decade, in many respects, tourism has been the star pupil in the classroom of the global economy. As the WTTC reports, tourism accounted for one in ten jobs globally; one in six new jobs created; and according to the UNWTO from 2010-19, its growth in G20 economies of 32% outstripped overall growth by 300%.

These rosy headline figures mask deeper problems

Tourism consistently lags behind the rest of the economy in productivity. In 2015 the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) released stark figures on travel’s poor performance.

As stated in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA) on similar levels of employment, tourism produced only 55% of the value of the construction industry and a (truly awful) 28% of the manufacturing sector’s value. As a consequence the payment was on average one-third lower.

Tourism and hospitality are great at providing first jobs for young people

The ONS reported that 34% of jobs in the sector were occupied by under 25 years old; compared to 12% in the UK economy as a whole. However, we fail to build on this great start. Staff turnover in the sector is up to 30%. Young people fail to stay in an industry which too often doesn’t invest in them. Career paths are ill-defined, especially compared to more professionalized industries with benchmarked attainment standards.

The UNWTO found that 41% of travel companies don’t have a training budget

So by failing to invest in education, does the sector treat its people like cannon fodder? Given these realities of underperformance, no wonder politicians have failed to take us seriously, leaving us feeling undervalued against other industries.

And then came the pandemic…

The WTTC estimate that since March, 174 million jobs have been destroyed in a global sector, previously employing 330 million. So now the spell has been broken, tourism can no longer be seen as an unstoppable job-creating machine. Great people have left the sector permanently, taking crucial skills and experience with them.

Additionally, young people looking to build a career may well decide not to join a sector which neither provides job security nor (sufficient) long-term progression.

This is creating a significant problem for the future. Most pundits forecast the industry will return to 2019 levels by 2024/5. So jobs will come back, but in a different form.

How on earth will we attract talent into the industry when the rebound arrives? The problem may well be exacerbated, by the other major factor impacting travel’s productivity – technology. Until this year travel was also a laggard in IT. The pandemic has changed all this. Tech adoption has seen a dramatic acceleration, nowhere more than in the uptake of contactless.

But what of the other half of the equation i.e. the people to staff this technology revolution? 73% of World Economic Forum (WEF) delegates, sited machine learning as critical. Yet the OECD also reports that 40% of AI jobs globally remain vacant, as they cannot find the right skills.

Once again, tourism has not woken up!

The UNWTO finding that 45% of travel companies have no plans to adapt “robotization,” meaning jobs that are both highly skilled and durable remain unfilled. This is not the only area of future growth.

The millions of green jobs will be created in the transition to a carbon neutral economy and 85% of WEF delegates agreed that skillsets in Big Data were in the highest demand.

It might be gathered from the above that all future employment is destined to be tech-based. However this is not true either. Good old customer service skills remain in short supply. This deficit pre-dated the pandemic, with again tourism and hospitality being a poor-performer; the UK ONS finding that 61% of tourism employers struggled to find these skills, compared to 47% in the economy as a whole. The way the wind is blowing, this situation is likely to get much more acute.

Tourism is set to become a lot more complex, with pre-existing trends only being accelerated by Covid. Consumers now want unforgettable experiences. Demand is also increasing for rural, less populated and thus less well-known destinations. Travel professionals are well placed to deliver these experiences, but only if they are able to grasp the opportunity to expand their knowledge.

In part 2, we’ll examine the opportunities for tourism to rise to these challenges.

Given that many are fighting for survival, can travel companies afford to put education high on their agenda? A recent survey by Skillsoft provides the answer. They found that poor basic product knowledge alone cost companies 8% of their revenue. Moreover enhancing this knowledge would result in a 40% improvement in customer satisfaction. The stakes are rising all the time.

Organisations need to adapt more quickly than ever

The home-working revolution will bring greater challenges than ensuring employees have decent home Wi-Fi. Companies will have to adapt rapidly to a less hierarchical structure, where networking, partnerships and innovation can be fostered and the demand for higher ethical standards can be protected by its employees. The future winners will be agile in their approach to all of the above.

So where should travel enterprises target in the future? A UNWTO survey identified four key areas:

• IT (68%)
• Customer service (53%)
• Data Analytics (38%)
• Leadership (23%)

Here, I would add one of my own, namely destination knowledge. Customers will continue to become ever more sophisticated in their choices and if travel professionals are to provide value then their overall knowledge must exceed their client’s. Regardless, it is clear that tourism needs to transition away from the legacy labour intensive approach, with investment in skills. The pay-back for this will be a more attractive industry for talent, greater loyalty, productivity and pay. It will also use talent across gender, race and from older workers capturing invaluable wisdom and experience.

E-learning affords people the freedom to fit education into their busy lives

So, you may ask, isn’t all this easier said than done? Here I suggest looking to recent success stories like zoom or Amazon for the lead. E-learning affords people the freedom to fit education into their busy lives, at a time and place that suits them. It also addresses the huge geographical and demographic challenges posed by educating populations in key emerging markets like India and China.

Consequently, Global Market Insights forecast that the already booming global e-learning sector will further double from $190 billion in 2020 to $375 billion in 2025. The industry has also successfully solved a number of its previous roadblocks to success, with new-generation Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) optimizing learning styles through the smart use of gamification, interactivity and data feedback.

Ultimately a responsibility also lies with each individual to manage their own career

A transition from the “world of education” to the “world of work” is a redundant concept. It is predicted that in future, the average person will make 5 to 6 career changes in their lifetime. Each of these will require re-skilling.

Learning will be a lifelong pursuit

So going forward, learning will be a lifelong pursuit. In growth markets where the tourism business kept growing relentlessly, the incentive to change may have been absent. This is no longer the case and all of us need to keep pace with a future of constant and rapid evolution.

The UNWTO survey also found a marked discrepancy between the value that employers put on “commitment to work” against workers and students, a square that surely needs to be circled. After all the ONS forecast that just a 1% rise in productivity would bring an extra £1.43 billion of revenue into the UK tourism industry. Now wouldn’t that be a nice message to realise in 2021?

DMO’s occupy a privileged position as being seen to represent their region both impartially and for its greater good. Furthermore, sitting on the intersection of the public and private sectors is surely an ideal position to lead a partnership based recovery, inclusive of all stakeholders.

However, as always this is easier said than done. One prominent and successful National Tourist Office recently surveyed the travel trade in their own country and found that 70% judged visibility and engagement levels “insufficient.” This begs the question, if this is the percentage in their own country, what are the levels in all of the international markets they wish to penetrate?

It’s already been established that much of the answer lies in the “M.” Destination “Marketing,” must become Destination “Management” with all the additional complexity and challenges that this suggests.

So what does this entail in practice? The following six points should be addressed:

1. Set a clear sighted strategy

In 2021 having a clear strategy is more important than ever. March 2020 pressed the reset button on tourist flows back to zero. Now there is the opportunity to plan a rebuild with a holistic strategy, one that is appropriate for the challenges of today and also recognises tourism’s problems that were all too apparent pre-pandemic. Copenhagen is gaining significant traction here, with a clearly defined character around all things sustainable.

But the impulses of the marketeers to lead, should also be held in check. Succeeding as a “Connector” will require more than marketing. Wider skillsets will be required to build a broad coalition of stakeholders to take forward as one community, rather than letting a minority of “power-brokers” call all the shots.

Moreover, passed an initial push, long term objectives may well be more complex than simply attracting more visitors to the city, region, or country. So what are the new KPI’s and how will these be achieved? Now is a good time for a smart rethink of routes to market. For example whilst a DMO night go it alone domestically, its highly likely that strategic collaboration will be required at a regional, national or even continental level to attract international travelers, all dependent on the source market involved.

2. Do “more with less”

Regardless of the funding model, the vast majority of DMO’s are being squeezed for cash. So how can money be spent wisely? Again partnerships are a compelling model. Funds pooled between cooperative entities with common goals can go further and be a win-win.

Further adaptation is also needed to the digital world. DMO’s need to figure out how digital assets can be used in conjunction with face to face meetings to achieve their aims. As a side benefit less time spent on airplanes will also benefit the carbon footprint, which is no bad thing.

3. Demonstrating the Return on Investment

All this will mean being smarter in demonstrating return on investment, and this needs data. Many initiatives still lack concrete data to support outcomes, especially in the off-line world. DMO leaders should up their efforts to find better data-driven solutions to support their decision making.

4. … And deliver a more nuanced message

It’s accepted that “bums on seats” might not a good strategy in a Post-Covid world. Tourism will therefore become more complex. This means personalising messaging to niche groups; as well as publicising experience based events and more rural destinations. All this to support their coalition of stakeholders.

How can this be done with purpose and authenticity? Better education is clearly a more sustainable way of achieving this long term goals, rather than one shot marketing communication that is here today and gone tomorrow.

5. … And adapt to a digital environment

New technology in the e-learning space can be invaluable for this purpose. Such tools have the capability to cultivate the education needed, build a community, as well as provide the all-important data to justify the ROI. They also facilitate the dynamism to respond to the fast moving realities of the digital-age.

However a key problem is overcoming the “fear factor” of making such investments. DMO leaders need to gain the skillsets in making smart, well informed choices. These must reinforce the strategy, not act as a substitute. Often a pragmatic approach is best, adopting a variety of well-priced tools to piece together a “jigsaw” approach, as opposed to a single “big bang” solution.

6. … And don’t forget the travel trade

As travel becomes more complex, both due to the hardening of borders as well as a long term shift to unique experiences and personalisation; then the travel trade becomes ever more central to a strategy. There is evidence that consumers (especially high paying ones) are more committed than ever to using the services of travel professionals. So DMO’s must develop strategies to engage with tourism professionals, improving their knowledge and using data to support results.

Do you have thoughts on the above to contribute? We’d be pleased to speak further at LVG Learning.

WTTC CEO Julia Simpson, commented;

“If we cannot fill these vacancies, it could threaten the survival of Travel & Tourism businesses up and down the UK. Companies’ dependent on tourism have been hanging on for the upside, this is just another blow that many may not survive”.

The UK is not alone, with similar trends are being seen across other European countries. One inevitable consequence are equivalent rises in pay. Already by June 2021 City AM were reporting of wage rises in the sector of up to 14% simply to retain staff. The problem is that we are in competition with other sectors, who are also responding. Only in December, London department store Harrods averted a threatened strike by awarding its staff a 25% pay rise.

So how can your business respond?

To quote former Harvard University President Derek Bok, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” So in this piece, I concentrate on how leaders can find a return on investment from skills development. Yes, tourism businesses are cash strapped post the pandemic. Nevertheless upskilling drives positive outcomes in two key areas:

1. People engagement, both to retain & motivate existing staff, plus to attract fresh talent
2. If salaries are increasing, how can you achieve enhanced productivity to pay for them?

With every sector competing for limited talent, the travel & hospitality sector is being left behind. What is more this looks set to be a long term trend. Inequalities in income that have been growing since the 1980’s, may now go into reverse, as demonstrated by the UK government’s “levelling-up” agenda.

Furthermore, another shift is underway, where practical and caring skills, which have been undervalued for years, are now being re-calibrated positively against a surfeit of “knowledge based” qualifications. Embedding personal and professional development into a company’s DNA will be critical to addressing the challenges highlighted above.

And what a problem this is proving to be. A PWC report from January 2022 found that 80% of CEO’s saw successful upskilling as their greatest business challenge. So if a strong case exists for making an investment, how do you make sure it is worth the time and money? The UK Commission for Employment & Skills (UKCES) found that British employers invested a total of £42 billion in training, an equivalent of £1,500 per employee.

Unfortunately it also found that precious few organisations had successfully maximised the return on this investment. Business people will always want to generate the maximum possible benefit for a minimum cost.

So here are 7 tips to bear in mind in formulating a successful skills programme:

1. Set clear objectives: what does your business need in terms of knowledge, skills and behaviours? Give careful thought to current shortfalls and what “good outcomes may look like” in the future. Seek outside opinions to double check your assumptions. 2. Secure employee buy-in: there is nothing worse than your staff dragging their feet to a training session, wondering why they need to attend. Experts believe that in the economy of the future, retooling will be required every 6 months. Awaken their sense of responsibility that your investment will positively benefit their future careers. Moreover strive to maintain ongoing engagement. Building strong resilient careers, also builds a strong, healthy business.
2. Capture institutional expertise: we all know of the “grey hairs” in our business who have accumulated decades of knowledge… but this all remains in their head. Look for ways to leverage and broadcast this expertise.
3. Create the right environment: whether in person or on-line, make sure your people are able to focus on the learning and not be distracted by outside pressures of work or their daily lives.
4. Utilise best-in-class technology: High-value

sectors like telecoms & pharmaceuticals increasingly leverage “ed-tech”, where the gold standard is “LXP” systems (Learning experience platforms). These are engineered to optimise user engagement through course structure and techniques like gamification, They also gather invaluable trainee data for driving smart decision-making. Moreover,

1. costs are reducing all the time, putting them within the reach of cash-strapped tourism companies.
2. Take advantage of funding: In the UK the government will finance up to 90% of apprenticeship training costs https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apprenticeship-funding . Such courses have the real value of equal recognition (in UCAS points) to academic qualifications.
3. Measure and evaluate: A simple measure is to monitor that the learning has been applied in the workplace. This facilitates productivity improvements to be measured using your in-house KPI’s. Travel has grown accustomed to A/B testing for marketing and similar discipline can be applied to skills development. Once mastering the basics, these can be developed into more sophisticated financial models covering a range of costs and benefits. A good example is here https://academy.treasurers.org/resources/how-to-calculate-roi-on-team-training . However don’t forget to scope key elements such as savings in recruitment costs which will be the result of a strong retention policy.

To learn more, please join us for the latest webinar, “Skills Development, expense or revenue generator? Is educating your team a smart investment and if so how?” on Thursday 24th February at 10.00 hours GMT / 11.00 hours CET.

Register here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3416438765380/WN__tmZZqs6QZGISNct9pU1CA

The team at LVG Learning & Networking, bring together a panel of experts both from inside the travel sector and from the broader economy to discuss real-world solutions.

So if upskilling is an investment your business businesses can’t afford to do without, then we look forward to you company in helping build viable, skilled jobs that will underpin the long term health of our sector.

• Patrick Richards