BHTA formulating plan to attract youth to tourism

The Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) is working on a plan to attract more young people to the industry.
Chief executive officer Ryan Forde said the association wanted to establish a growth path policy that would spark renewed interest among those already in the industry as well as others who aspired to work in the sector.
“We have the discussion or the argument or the disagreement that we are losing a lot of our team members within the industry and at the BHTA, the secretariat has proposed to the board to see how we can create a careers platform alongside the University of the West Indies and other stakeholders. We want to create opportunities to retain, retrain and refresh our team members to grow within our industry . . . . We can’t keep complaining that we are losing them, we need to give different opportunities for them to grow,” he said at the association’s annual general meeting at Sandals Royal Barbados on Wednesday.
Forde said this was vital as people gravitate towards employment where there was a clear path of upward mobility.
“So, for example, the banking or the information technology sectors, they have a lot of management training programmes. So a lot of interest is there because young students know that when they finish their programmes, they would have an avenue to go from one step to another – entry-level, supervisor, manager – in a quicker period. In tourism, we also have that but not as many companies do it in a set and structured way like how it is done in the banking or information technology sectors,” the BHTA CEO noted.
“So we are trying to see how we can formulate that to be more consistent and spread across other tourism entities . . . . We are trying to see how we can formulate a growth path for young students. This is not something that is already established. We are now working it through at the secretariat as well as the board level to see how we can work it with our membership and the educational institutions in Barbados.”
During her speech, BHTA chairman Renée Coppin said the industry was facing serious human resource deficits. She said the association was engaging education stakeholders to build partnerships and offer training opportunities for workers.
(SZB)