CHAPTER 2
OVERALL RESULTS
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
This chapter presents an overview of the results of the study for the Caribbean Region as a
whole. Results of both the quantitative survey and the qualitative focus group sessions are presented.
PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES
As indicated in the Introduction, a total of 1,112 private and public sector organizations in 25
CTO Member Countries participated in the study. Table 2.1 gives a breakdown of respondents
by country. Trinidad & Tobago contributed the largest number of respondents with over 12%
coming from this country. This was followed by Suriname, with 6.5% and Belize with 6.3%. The
smallest number of responses was received from Aruba (2), Bonaire (11), United States Virgin
Islands (13) and British Virgin Islands (14). Because of the low response rates from these and
other countries, they have been combined for purposes of analysis as follows:
Dutch Caribbean:
Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten
Other Countries:
Antigua, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, United States Virgin Islands
Table 2.1.
PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES
Count
Percent
Anguilla
56
5.0%
Antigua
16
1.4%
Aruba
2
0.2%
Bahamas
28
2.5%
Barbados
54
4.9%
Belize
70
6.3%
Bonaire
11
1.0%
BVI
14
1.3%
Cayman Islands
55
4.9%
Cuba
46
4.1%
Curacao
39
3.5%
Dominica
41
3.7%
Grenada
56
5.0%
Guyana
49
4.4%
Haiti
50
4.5%
Jamaica
59
5.3%
Montserrat
22
2.0%
St. Eustatius
39
3.5%
St. Kitts & Nevis
66
5.9%
St. Lucia
51
4.6%
St. Maarten
17
1.5%
Suriname
72
6.5%
Trinidad & Tobago
136
12.2%
Turks & Caicos
50
4.5%
USVI
13
1.2%
1,112
100.0%
TOTAL
1
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
RESPONDENT PROFILE
Tables 2.2 and 2.3 present a profile of the 1,112 respondents by tourism sector and staffing
patterns. As shown in Table 2.2, almost 40% of the respondents came from the Accommodation
Sector, 16% from Food & Beverage and 13% from Transportation. The Events & Conferences
sector was the least represented in the survey with only 11 of the responding organizations coming from this sector. Because of the low response rate from this sector, it was not analyzed separately. The full list of participating establishments by country is presented in Appendix 1 at the
end of this report.
Table 2.2. TOURISM SECTORS
Count
Percent
Accommodation
431
38.8%
Food & Beverage
182
16.4%
Transportation
139
12.5%
Travel Trade
103
9.3%
Adventure Tourism
96
8.6%
Tourism Services
69
6.2%
Attractions
42
3.8%
Tourism Education & Training
24
2.2%
Events & Conferences
11
1.0%
Other
15
1.3%
1,112
100.0%
TOTAL
Table 2.3. STAFF PROFILE
Count
TOTAL STAFF
Percent
56,334
Staff by Category
Total number of Managerial Staff
Total number of Professional non-managerial Staff
Total number of Skilled/Semi-Skilled Staff
Total number of Unskilled Staff
9.4%
12.6%
51.0%
27.0%
Staff by Full-Time/Part-Time
Total number of Full-Time Permanent Staff
88.3%
Total number of Full-Time Temporary Staff
Total number of Part-Time Staff
5.9%
2
5.8%
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
Twenty-five percent of the responding organizations were less than five years old and 24%
were over 21 years old.
Survey respondents reported employing a total of 56,334 full-time and part-time workers, at
an average of 50.7 workers per establishment. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of the workers were
permanent full-time staff, 6% were temporary full-time, and 6% were part-time. Fifty-six percent
were male and 44% female. As might be expected, the majority of these workers were
skilled/semi-skilled and unskilled (78%). The ratio of managers to non-managers in this survey
was 1:9.7.
The age distribution of full-time employees was:
Under 25 years
17.9%
25-39 years
52.8%
40-54 years
23.5%
55 years and over
5.8%
This age distribution suggests a relatively young industry workforce, with over 70% under 40
years old. This is a good sign for the industry if it can retain these workers and give them clear
and realistic career paths.
RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF STAFF
The survey questionnaire asked respondents to indicate which of several educational sources
they mainly use to recruit their staff. As can be seen in Table 2.4, respondents reported recruiting
their management (28.6%) and professional (15.7%) staff mainly from university. Almost 40%
indicated obtaining their skilled/semi-skilled staff from secondary school, with just 17.4%
sourcing them from local tourism training institutions. Nineteen percent of the respondents
identified “other” sources of hiring for their skilled/semi-skilled staff. These other sources were
primarily competitors, relatives and friends. This finding suggests a high level of turnover and
movement of skilled/semi-skilled staff within the industry. It also confirms that a large number
of the establishments in the Caribbean tourism industry are family-owned and operated businesses.
Forty percent of the respondents get their unskilled workers almost equally from the primary
and secondary school levels.
Table 2.4. SOURCE OF STAFF
Managers
Professionals
Skilled/
Unskilled
Semi-Skilled
University
28.6%
15.7%
1.7%
0.4%
International Tourism Training Institutions
Regional Tourism Training Institutions
Local Tourism Training Institutions
6.8%
7.0%
2.3%
0.4%
3.7%
4.0%
2.9%
0.3%
8.4%
9.1%
17.4%
2.2%
Secondary School
12.1%
7.7%
39.7%
19.8%
Primary/Elementary School
1.7%
0.6%
9.4%
20.1%
Other
13.3%
11.8%
19.2%
14.2%
3
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
Respondents were asked to indicate the degree of difficulty in filling job vacancies for the
various staff categories. They reported experiencing moderate-to-extreme difficulty in filling
managerial (49.8%) and professional (44.9%) vacancies, but no great difficulty filling unskilled
vacancies. However, respondents were evenly divided on the ease or difficulty of filling
skilled/semi-skilled vacancies (Table 2.5).
Table 2.5. DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY IN FILLING JOB VACANCIES
Managers
Professionals
Skilled/
Unskilled
Semi-Skilled
Very Difficult
27.7%
18.6%
11.3%
Difficult
13.9%
17.0%
12.8%
3.3%
3.1%
Fairly Difficult
8.5%
9.3%
15.6%
5.5%
Not So Difficult
8.3%
7.1%
24.7%
15.1%
Not Difficult
13.4%
8.7%
15.7%
32.4%
Finally, respondents were asked to state approximately how many persons they expected to
hire in the next 3-5 years. Table 2.6 gives the breakdown for this question by staff category. Respondents expected to hire a total of 15,937 additional employees over the next 3-5 years. As
might be expected, the majority (51%) would be skilled/semi-skilled staff, with unskilled, professional and managerial staff following in that order.
Table 2.6. NEW HIRES 3-5 YRS
Count
Percent
Managers
1,680
11%
Professionals
3,052
19%
Skilled/Semi-Skilled
8,065
51%
Unskilled
3,140
20%
15,937
100%
TRAINING NEEDS
The main purpose of this study was to assess tourism training needs as reported by the industry itself. In order to do so, respondents were asked to indicate “all major training needs”
among the various categories of staff. The following sections detail the major current and future
training needs identified by responding organizations in the survey. These are given for both
general and technical training needs.
4
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
Table 2..7. CURRENT MAJOR TRAINING NEEDS
Managers
Professionals
Skilled/
Unskilled
Semi-Skilled
Leadership
41.3%
16.6%
16.2%
2.2%
Human Resource Management
38.9%
15.9%
8.7%
1.2%
Financial/Accounting
31.5%
15.6%
12.2%
1.6%
Marketing
42.4%
18.5%
15.6%
2.7%
Communication
31.1%
24.1%
42.4%
18.3%
Computer Literacy
33.1%
23.3%
32.3%
6.2%
Customer Relations
32.5%
27.9%
58.4%
29.0%
Foreign Languages
29.8%
19.0%
31.0%
9.2%
General Training Needs (Current)
Table 2.7 shows that the top four general training needs identified at the Managerial level
were, in descending order:
Marketing
42.4%
Leadership
41.3%
HR Management
38.9%
Computer Literacy
33.1%
However, customer relations, financial/accounting skills, communication and foreign
languages were also selected by more than 25% of responding organizations, indicating major
gaps in these areas.
The top four training needs identified at the Professional level were:
Customer Relations
27.9%
Communication
24.1%
Computer Literacy
23.3%
Foreign Languages
19%
The top four training needs identified at the Skilled/semi-skilled level were:
Customer Relations
58.4%
Communication
42.4%
Computer Literacy
32.3%
Foreign Languages
31%
The number of respondents identifying these needs suggests that they represent critical skills
gaps in the industry.
The top two training needs identified at the Unskilled level were:
Customer Relations
29%
Communication
18.3%
In general, respondents did not pay as much attention to skills deficiencies among the unskilled and professionals as they did for the skilled/semi-skilled and the managerial.
5
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
The general training needs identified across staff categories were, in descending order:
♦ Customer relations
♦ Communication
♦ Computer literacy
♦ Foreign languages
♦ Marketing
♦ Leadership
♦ Human resource management
♦ Financial/accounting skills.
The main foreign languages identified were:
Spanish
32.8%
French
25%
German
16%
English
14.1%
These needs represent a combination of interpersonal skills, managerial competencies and
technological skills. The first two needs are interpersonal skills that are central to service in the
tourism industry. Respondents appear to be saying that these are their most critical needs at this
time. Respondents are also indicating a recognition of the growing importance of computer
technology in the tourism industry as well as the ability to communicate in foreign languages.
Several general and technical management competencies were also identified, including
marketing, leadership, human resource management and financial/accounting skills. Supervisory and management skills were clearly identified by the industry as being deficient in this
study. This finding is consistent with similar studies that have been recently conducted in various countries of the Region.
General Training Needs (Future)
Respondents were asked to identify their major training needs over the next 3-5 years for
each category of staff. This was an open-ended question requiring respondents to write in their
future training needs by staff category. As in the case of current training needs, respondents
identified a need for their managers to acquire marketing (22.7%), leadership (18.5%), human resource management (17.5%) and computer literacy (15.1%) skills. The top future training need
identified for professionals was customer relations (13.5%). For skilled/semi-skilled workers, the
future needs were customer relations (35.8%), communication (20.9%) and computer literacy
(15.9%). And for unskilled workers, customer relations (19.6%) was the main future training
need identified. Table 2.8 highlights these findings, which are similar to the findings on current
training needs.
6
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
Table 2.8. TRAINING NEEDS NEXT 3-5 YEARS
Managers
Professionals
Skilled/
Unskilled
Semi-Skilled
Leadership
18.5%
6.0%
4.2%
0.8%
Human Resource Management
17.5%
5.1%
2.6%
0.7%
Financial/Accounting
13.3%
5.9%
3.8%
0.8%
Marketing
22.7%
9.8%
6.4%
1.0%
Communication
11.6%
11.9%
20.9%
10.6%
Computer Literacy
15.1%
9.4%
15.9%
2.9%
Customer Relations
11.2%
13.5%
35.8%
19.6%
Foreign Languages
9.6%
6.6%
10.9%
3.7%
Technical Training Needs (Current)
The question asking respondents to indicate their major training needs required them to list
the technical needs specific to their operations. Respondents appeared reluctant to specify their
technical needs. However, a sufficient number of responses were received to provide a ranking
of current and future technical training needs. These are provided below.
Table 2.9 lists the current technical training needs identified by responding organizations in
this study. The table indicates that, by far the major technical training need is for culinary training (31.1%). This is followed far behind by tour guiding (14.2%) and a range of maintenancerelated skills that have all been grouped together (10.6%). This grouping includes hotel, equipment and grounds maintenance.
Table 2.9. CURRENT TECHNICAL TRAINING NEEDS
Percent
Culinary
31.1%
Tour Guiding
14.2%
Maintenance
10.6%
Ticketing
9.5%
Food & Beverage Service Skills
7.0%
House Keeping
4.4%
Customer Service
4.4%
Water Sports
4.0%
Safety & Security
2.2%
Computer Skills Training
1.9%
Other Training Needs
10.6%
TOTAL
7
100.0%
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
Technical Training Needs (Future)
The results for future technical training needs were slightly different from those for current
technical needs. As Table 2.10 indicates, culinary skills still remained at the top of the list. However, this was followed by food & beverage service skills, such as bartending and waiting; tour
guiding and housekeeping.
Table 2.10. FUTURE TECHNICAL TRAINING NEEDS
Percent
Culinary
38.5%
Food & Beverage Service Skills
8.4%
Tour Guiding
7.7%
Housekeeping
7.7%
Ticketing
7.0%
Maintenance
6.3%
Water Sports
5.6%
Customer Service
4.9%
Other Training Needs
14.0%
TOTAL
100.0%
The study revealed that, overwhelmingly, culinary skills remain the main training need in
the tourism industry in the Region. This finding indicates the important role played by the food
& beverage component of the region’s tourism industry and the continuing need for specialist
training in this area.
TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY
The survey asked respondents a series of questions designed to find out about training and
developing practices in the tourism industry. Table 2.11 shows that the majority of organizations
train their staff “as required”. The table also shows that as many as 16% of the responding organizations do not train their managerial staff at all. These findings do not augur well for the
development of the industry’s human resources. They suggest that most organizations in the
industry do not plan their training but, if they train at all, they train on an “ad hoc” basis. These
findings do, however, help us to understand some of the other findings of the study; for example,
the fact that almost two-thirds (64.9%) of the organizations responding were unwilling or unable
to provide training expenditure information for 1996 and over half (59.4%) did not do so for 1997.
Due to the small number of organizations responding to the training expenditure questions, only
data for 1997 are presented in this and subsequent analyses.
8
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
Table 2.11. FREQUENCY OF TRAINING
Managers
Professionals
Skilled/
Unskilled
Semi-Skilled
3+ Times Per Year
6.4%
4.1%
7.6%
4.7%
2 Times Per Year
8.9%
6.4%
9.4%
3.9%
Once Per Year
11.3%
7.6%
12.4%
5.5%
Less Than Once Per Year
5.4%
4.0%
7.4%
4.2%
Not At All
16.0%
8.8%
12.0%
13.3%
As Required
39.7%
42.4%
42.1%
48.8%
Of the 450 organizations supplying training expenditure information for 1997, 33.6% indicated spending less than US$1,000 for the period January-December 1997. Another 32.1% indicated spending US$1,000-4,999 for the same period. That is, two-thirds of the organizations responding to this question spent less than US$5,000 on all training of staff in 1997. The majority of
this money was spent on training of skilled/semi-skilled staff.
Only a third of the respondents (33.8%) reported having a full-time trainer on staff. These
trainers mainly conduct customer relations (25.2%) and technical skills (24.0%) training.
Responding organizations mainly use on-the-job training to train all levels of staff, especially
their skilled/semi-skilled employees (64.9%). Training strategies used for the different categories
of staff were:
Management
On-the-job training (34.3%)
External Trainers (18.5%)
Local Tourism Training Institutions (11.2%)
Professional
On-the-job training (24.8%)
External Trainers (15.2%)
In-House Classroom Training (11.6%)
Skilled/Semi-skilled
On-the-job training (64.9%)
In-House Classroom Training (21.7%)
External Trainers (20.7%)
Local Tourism Training Institutions (16.7%)
Unskilled
On-the-job training (41.5%)
It should be noted that local and regional tourism training institutions did not feature prominently as preferred training providers among respondents.
Respondents rated in-house training (using in-house trainers) as the most important and effective training strategy for meeting their staff’s training needs. This was followed by in-house
9
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
training (using external trainers), and local, regional and international tourism training institutions, in that order.
Finally, respondents were asked to state the greatest training challenge facing their organization at this time. Twenty-four percent of the respondents identified human resource issues like
quality of staff, staff motivation, work ethic and attitude, as their greatest challenge. This was
followed by inability to satisfy their training needs (22.6%) and lack of funding for training
(13.5%).
QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
A major part of the Needs Assessment exercise was the use of focus groups to corroborate
and supplement the findings of the quantitative survey with qualitative validation. Focus group
sessions were held with key tourism stakeholders in 16 of the 25 CTO Member Countries taking
part in the study. Focus group members were drawn from representative organizations, associations and individuals operating in the different tourism sectors.
A total of 19 focus group sessions were conducted with 235 persons in the 16 countries visited, with an average of 12 persons per session. Table 2.12 gives a breakdown of the focus group
sessions.
Table 2.12. BREAKDOWN OF FOCUS GROUP SESSIONS CONDUCTED
No.
Country
No. of Meetings
Conducted
No. of Persons
Attending
1.
Bahamas
1
16
2.
Barbados
1
12
3.
Belize
1
7
4.
British Virgin Islands
1
13
5.
Cayman Islands
1
12
6.
Cuba
1
13
7.
Dominica
1
9
8.
Grenada
2
31
9.
Guyana
1
11
10.
Haiti
1
16
11.
Jamaica
1
11
12.
St. Lucia
1
17
13.
St. Maarten (Dutch Side)
1
10
14.
Suriname
1
13
15.
Trinidad & Tobago
3
30
16.
Turks & Caicos Islands
1
14
19
235
Total
A content analysis was conducted on the focus group data to identify the common themes
and key issues running though the sessions and to determine the training needs as perceived by
the tourism stakeholders. Based on the content analysis, the following technical and general
training needs were identified:
10
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
∗
∗
∗
∗
∗
∗
Chef Training/Culinary Skills Training
Food & Beverage Service Skills (e.g., bartending, waiting)
Attitude/Behaviour/Customer Relations
Management & Supervisory Training
Tour Guiding
Safety & Security
OTHER FOCUS GROUP FINDINGS
The interpersonal interaction afforded by the focus group sessions provided an opportunity
for participants to air their views on Caribbean tourism in general. Further analysis of the focus
group interactions revealed a range of issues that can help shape a better understanding of the
survey results detailed in this report. These findings are given below.
Low Priority Given to Training
Generally, focus group participants indicated that training in the tourism industry in the
Caribbean holds a low priority in most organizations. Some organizations are reluctant to provide too much training, since they fear that after being trained, their employees will move on to
the competition and thus, they would have lost their investment. Consequently, many organizations have no formal training programmes or training budgets, opting instead to train their staff
on an ad hoc basis. These focus group findings validate the survey results that the competition is
a main source of staff and that most training is done on an “as required” basis.
Cost of Training
Related to the finding above, many organizations believe that the cost of training in the Caribbean is too high, especially given the fact that most operations in the region are small businesses. With the high turnover of staff in the industry, business operators are reluctant to spend
much on training. This is consistent with the survey finding that funding was identified as the
third major training challenge facing organizations at this time.
Lack of Government/Private Sector Assistance
Focus group members generally felt that there was insufficient government and private sector assistance for tourism training. They felt that both government and the private sector should
be more involved in providing tourism education and training opportunities.
Lack of Government/Private Sector Cooperation
Coupled with the finding above, members believed that there was not enough cooperation
between government and the private sector in the administration, implementation and funding
of tourism training and the regulation and certification of training institutions. Focus group
members felt more work was needed in this area.
Uncoordinated Tourism Activity
A major finding of the focus group meetings was the apparent lack of co-ordination of tourism activities taking place in the Region. Several needs assessment studies and training activities
11
CHAPTER 2 - OVERALL RESULTS
Tourism Training for the New Millennium
were being conducted in the Caribbean by different local, regional, and international agencies.
However, there appeared to be no mechanism for coordinating all of these activities or for learning from each of them. This resulted in duplication of effort and inefficient use of limited human
and financial resources. This was viewed as unfortunate as it was generally felt that the Region
could not afford to operate inefficiently.
CONCLUSION
This overview of the results of the needs assessment study suggests several potential areas of
emphasis for tourism education and training. With respect to technical skills, the greatest deficiency was found in culinary skills. This was followed by tour guiding and maintenance skills.
There appears to be a strong need for interpersonal skills training, such as customer relations
and communication, at all levels of the industry. There is also need for computer literacy and
foreign language training for all levels of staff and management and supervisory training for
management staff. The identification of computer literacy as a training need is a good sign as it
suggests that the tourism industry may be beginning to realize the growing importance of technology to the present and future of the industry.
At the managerial level, there appears to be a specific skills deficiency in marketing. This
may be a reflection of the recognition by many small operators of the need to better market their
businesses locally, regionally and globally in the light of increasing competition.
These overall results are broken down by tourism sector and country in the following chapters of this report.
12