The Hotel School of Mauritius has difficulty in delivering the goods and the hospitality business is getting impatient. The Association of Hotels and Restaurants of Mauritius (Ahrim) has taken the initiative of sending their training partner a letter to see how the school could be restructured. ?We wanted to see how the school could be made more productive?, confirms Ahrim chairman, Jean-Michel Pitot. But there has been no reply so far and the professionals of the sector seem ready to throw in the towel.

Hospitality industry is increasingly being considered as the main pillar of the economy over the coming years. Hotel groups are investing massively in huge hotels and Integrated Resorts Scheme (IRS) projects and the government has started to initiate action to allow the industry to develop. The revision of air access policy to attract more tourists is already proving fruitful.

However, if the country wants to attract the two million tourists it targets, it should be stressed that the tourist industry is based on the services it can deliver. And this service depends on the people and what sort of training they will have.

The problem involves both quantity and quality. ?The Hotel School does not have the capacity to supply all the needs of the industry?, confirms the human resource manager of Constance Hotel group, Marc Marivelle. To face the growing demand of hotels in the coming years, the Hotel School would need to train some 8,000 students every year. Today, it hardly manages to train 2,000 of them.

And the problem becomes even worse, as ?a certain number of these young professionals prefer to go and try their luck abroad in countries like Seychelles, Ireland or Dubai?, comments one of the biggest hotel groups of the country. Competition also comes from liners that give the young people a chance to get a unique experience while offering far better wages than in Mauritius.

A project of expansion of the school dates from a few years but the project has remained in the drawer since then. The main reason was that the Hotel School was having difficulty unfreezing funds.

But capacity is far from being the sole problem of the Hotel School. Actually the main problem is that it fails to deliver the right profile of employees to hotels in desperate search of labour. ?After studying at the Hotel School, we realise that these students are not ready to start a professional career. I suppose the programme should focus more on practice and less theory to make sure these students are ready to start as professionals as soon as they get into a job,? Marc Marivelle points out.

In fact, the problem appears even more serious. The Hotel School is supposed to train staff for the middle management. However, the hotels need operative staff ? barmen, waiters, cooks and so on ? and students coming from the Hotel School with their certificates are not ready to start at the bottom of the ladder, argue business sources. Yet, they are not prepared and mature enough to face jobs in the middle management.

The whole orientation of the hotel school should thus be reviewed to avoid such a mismatch, according to professionals of the sector. The country targets upmarket tourists and the staff in hotels must be trained accordingly. It has to support the industry. The industry is being transformed and the demand will be more and more for specialised employees. Barmen, waiters and housekeepers are no longer enough; the hotel industry now also needs entertainers, trainers, spa therapists and other such skilled workforce (see inset).

The industry has always been involved in the Hotel School. Seven members of the Industrial Vocational Training Board (IVTB) come from the private sector. The school would actually have a lot to lose if the industry decided to retire from its running. The industry not only brings a contribution to the school budget but it also welcomes trainers in its hotel premises. A letter is circulating in some hotels at the moment ? said to be coming from some board members involved in the hotel industry ? inviting all of them to ?resign unanimously? from the board. If they carry out their threats, the Hotel School might soon be in a pickle! Unfortunately, officials of the IVTB and the Hotel School were not available for comments yesterday.

INITIATIVES

Hotels cater for their own training

■ To face the lacks of the Hotel School, almost all major hotel groups have now implemented their own training academy. These schools have not been set up only to cater for what the Hotel School has not done. Although this might be one of the reasons for their existence, these academies are meant to polish up what their employees have learnt during their studies and ensure continuous training.