De­spite en­cour­ag­ing num­bers in the tourism sec­tor in Ja­maica, the Pres­i­dent of the Ja­maican Tourism and Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion, Robin Rus­sell, is aware the in­dus­try has been bat­tling a long-stand­ing prob­lem.

There is a dwin­dling num­ber of avail­able work­ers in the sec­tor.

“The first thing is we have to re­alise that we’re in a busi­ness of hos­pi­tal­i­ty and hos­pi­tal­i­ty takes peo­ple and the right peo­ple. Peo­ple that want to serve and peo­ple who want to bring peo­ple close to them. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that prob­lem that you just men­tioned, is not just a Caribbean prob­lem, but a world­wide prob­lem,” Rus­sell told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view in Mon­tego Bay last week dur­ing cov­er­age of the Ja­maica Prod­uct Ex­change (JAPEX) ex­po.

He ad­mit­ted that be­cause this short­age was in­deed glob­al, sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries were los­ing many of their work­ers to in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chis­es.

“Our source mar­kets when they end up hav­ing that prob­lem, they reached out to na­tions that do speak Eng­lish. Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go, as Eng­lish speak­ing na­tions are tar­get­ed by cruise ships ... Over­seas pro­grammes that tra­di­tion­al­ly would pay more than a Ja­maican re­sort or a Trinida­di­an re­sort,” said Rus­sell.

Re­cent­ly, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Al­pha Lorde, lament­ed this trend, which he stat­ed had been oc­cur­ring even be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, Lorde added that the pan­dem­ic had made it even more dif­fi­cult as many tourism em­ploy­ees left the in­dus­try out­right as a re­sult of ma­jor shut­downs im­ple­ment­ed to curb the spread of the virus.

This left many ho­tels, restau­rants and oth­er busi­ness­es with­in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go, un­der­staffed.

Lorde stat­ed then, “The hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try is prob­a­bly one of the hard­est if not the hard­est hit in­dus­try glob­al­ly. So a lot of peo­ple saw the in­dus­try and de­cid­ed, you know what, I need some­thing that is a lit­tle more re­silient. So we have a lot pro­fes­sion­als out there who de­cid­ed to change in­dus­tries and you can’t re­place them fast enough and if you re­place them fast enough, and even if you re­place them, you re­place them with more in­ex­pe­ri­enced per­sons. So in To­ba­go hote­liers have a chal­lenge.”

Rus­sell, how­ev­er, ex­plained Ja­maica’s ap­proach to the is­sue.

“There are two fix­es to the prob­lem. The sim­ple fix is we adopt that method where we go to mar­kets and we try to im­port peo­ple to fill that gap, which I don’t agree with. Or the hard fix is to re-train and re-ed­u­cate, reach­ing out to those youths who are not work­ing and try­ing to get them back in­to the sec­tor. That is what we are do­ing in Ja­maica. We’re start­ing from high school. We’re go­ing in­to the in­ner city to find those kids or those young peo­ple who have been dis­en­fran­chised from, you know, maybe not fin­ish­ing school, and we’re try­ing to reach them, re-tool them, re-ed­u­cate them, put them in­to our tra­di­tion­al econ­o­my. Tourism of­fers those op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

Rus­sell ad­mit­ted this is a hard sell to some, as work in the sec­tor had de­vel­oped a low-class stig­ma, but he felt with the right ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme this could be ad­dressed.

“Tourism jobs have al­ways been known as low-skilled and low paid, but that’s not the case again.

“We have very skilled work­ers from chefs, we are re-cer­ti­fy­ing peo­ple through JC­TI (Ja­maica Cen­tre of Tourism In­no­va­tion) and through HEART (Hu­man Em­ploy­ment and Re­source Train­ing Trust/Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency) where per­sons are now be­ing trained and cer­ti­fied that they feel good about them­selves and they know their worth. It is no longer just pol­i­cy to get new em­ploy­ees in­to tourism and be a bar­tender and that’s that,” he said, “So we’re work­ing hard to change the per­cep­tion of tourism, and al­so the tourism work­ers them­selves. We’re mak­ing them feel bet­ter about what they do as a hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­er, and it’s been work­ing.”

Ja­maica has seen ma­jor suc­cess in the re­duc­tion of the un­em­ploy­ment rate of the coun­try with the coun­try record­ing a record low of 4.5 per cent in April.

Rus­sell be­lieves that the up­com­ing in­vest­ment in the Ja­maican tourism sec­tor, which in­cludes the ad­di­tion of a fur­ther 8,000 rooms over the next two to five years, could fur­ther ex­ac­er­bate em­ploy­ment con­cerns.

“Ja­maica is now at five per cent or 4 per cent un­em­ploy­ment rate which is un­prece­dent­ed. This means that when you add 2,000 rooms you are adding 2,000 or 3,000 more jobs in­to the econ­o­my, which will take up em­ploy­ment again. So, we just have to work hard­er. We just have to be more in­no­v­a­tive, and we re­al­ly have to, again, bring those peo­ple that are out­side of our sec­tor in­to our sec­tor. We have the peo­ple here in Ja­maica and the coun­try does have the ca­pac­i­ty to bring 2,000 work­ers in. We’re work­ing hard to make sure that hap­pens,” said Rus­sell.

In Au­gust 2020, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI) vol­un­tar­i­ly wound up its op­er­a­tions, leav­ing the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty & Tourism In­sti­tute (THTI) at Blenheim, Mount St George as the on­ly ac­cred­it­ed hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­sti­tu­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Last year, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Roy­al Caribbean Group, which led to the cruise lin­er in­ter­view­ing close to 2,000 lo­cals and hir­ing 200 work­ers from Trinidad in ear­ly 2023.

The suc­cess­ful work­ers were set to be trained by the cruise lin­er, and the Gov­ern­ment had hailed the deal as a po­ten­tial boost to the econ­o­my via re­mit­tances, while al­so pro­vid­ing jobs for those who were with­out work fol­low­ing the pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, in re­cent months both Tourism Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourism Agency have stepped up their ef­forts to pro­mote tourism in par­tic­u­lar via shop­ping the is­lands as a des­ti­na­tion to var­i­ous mar­kets across the Caribbean, Amer­i­c­as and Eu­rope.

JAPEX has served as a ma­jor tourism ad­vert for Ja­maica as var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing trav­el agen­cies, air­lines and hote­liers at­tend the con­fer­ence.

The event, which was host­ed in Mon­tego Bay last week, was held with phys­i­cal vis­i­tors for the first time since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The event was held vir­tu­al­ly in 2020 and 2022.

“Last year we had it. It was suc­cess­ful but it didn’t have the same vibe and the same con­nec­tiv­i­ty that we’re hav­ing this year. No. We’re su­per ex­cit­ed. We’re see­ing buy­ers and sup­pli­ers con­nect­ing, which is what JAPEX is all about. So we’re re­al­ly en­cour­aged to see the par­tic­i­pa­tion of both. And we are tru­ly in­spired by what we’re see­ing,” said Rus­sell.