Manning the Tourism and Leisure Industry

Abstract

The tourism and leisure industry is labour intensive. It has to be. It delivers a diverse range of products which people want but cannot always get at home, so the industry has to be responsive to a wide range of individual needs and preferences. Often, too, it has to help its clients to articulate what those preferences are. Personal service is therefore at a premium, and there is limited scope for replacing it by labour-saving devices. Social skills certainly matter. But the industry also calls for technical skills ranging from the complex technological requirements of modern transport systems and travel tour operations to the relatively undemanding technical content of some jobs such as room attendants in hotels or ushers in theatres and cinemas. Its recruitment and training practices must therefore be flexible enough to cope with the vagaries of a wide range of the labour market.