BY ABDUL RAUF BEIG | NT
PANAJI: The tourism sector has turned out to be a major employment and revenue generating industry in the state over the years, but a large number of young Goans trained in the hospitality sector prefer to migrate overseas for regular employment, secure future and higher salaries despite the industry thriving here due to higher tourist inflow.
The main reason for the outward migration of the Goan youth is job security as most hotel managements prefer to engage people only during the season and Goans would rather prefer a job security along with high salaries, which they get while working in the hospitality sector abroad (Gulf, Europe, Australia and New Zealand) and on cruise liners, where they are preferred over others.
According to the industry officials, Goans take up jobs to gain experience and then resign to go overseas and as such there was a shortfall in supply of trained manpower in the state and the industry was now importing trained people from different parts of the country by tying up with hotel management institutes.
“We have no option but to import staff from elsewhere to man the jobs,” said a top executive of a hotel adding that seasonal employment helps the managements to save a lot of funds. Besides, there were people from other states who were ready to take up seasonal jobs. He said that such employees return to their homes during off-season and take up other seasonal activities like agriculture in their states.
Besides, a number of hotels particularly in the five-star category have tie-ups with hotel management institutes wherein the students undergo compulsory six-month training at such hotels where the hotel managements have to just pay them stipends and no regular salaries, which allow them to cut costs.
According to the president of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa, Mr Gaurish Dhond, there were very few Goans holding top positions in the local hotel industry. He said that given the shortage of trained and experienced top executives, the industry managements had to import top executive from elsewhere.
The director of Tourism, Mr Swapnil Naik said that his trips abroad to promote Goa as a tourist destination has brought him in contact with a large number of Goans working abroad in the hotel industry where they were preferred because of their skills. He said that in many hotels in Australia Goans accounted for 4-5 per cent of hotel employees.
Mr Naik further said that with the government making efforts to turn Goa into a round-the-year tourist destination, the trend of seasonal employment could be stopped and that employers would prefer to have regular employees in days ahead. The state also has a proposal to take the tourism into hinterland which could make tourism more vibrant, he added.
Till about two years ago, Goa was mainly a winter and summer season tourist destination with tourists coming here during these two seasons and there was a lull during the monsoon season, when the occupancy in the hotels used to go down as low as 10 per cent, said a senior manager of a hotel. This trend has been changing over the last two years and in the years ahead Goa could be a true round-the-year tourist destination, he added. The senior hotel manager further said that the seasonal inflow of tourists prompted many hotel managements to retain only the essential staff and lay-off others.
The state was now also receiving high-end tourists during monsoon which might change the employment scenario over the years. Since the industry managements found Goans well suited to man the jobs, they recruited the locals but given the constraints they faced they also had to give them break, a decision that did not go well with the local youth who decided to look for greener pastures that fetched them better salaries and security and hence, they started migrating.