'Managing hospitality industry' operation launched

It has been mentioned before: besides bar staff, waiters and self-employed cooks, the hospitality sector has a considerable shortage of executives in positions such as Food & Beverage manager, Front office manager and Rooms Division manager. Jacqueline van der Zwan, director of ROC Mondriaan's International Hotel and Management School (IHMS), and Hague-based hospitality entrepreneur René Boogaart put their heads together because they wanted to do something about it for the region of The Hague. As an outcome, an abbreviated hospitality training course will start at their initiative at the end of this year, especially for lateral entrants and re-entrants with management potential.

"Even before the arrival of COVID19, the shortage of hospitality staff was increasing significantly," says Van der Zwan. "It is important to respond better to this as a sector and training courses. It has to be smarter, faster and more flexible. In addition, parties must work together to find suitable solutions that will also make the sector more interesting for the future. As a training institute, we have to move along with this to the rhythm of practice."

Especially in the hospitality industry, there is a strong emphasis on young employees, and the same naturally applies to secondary vocational education, says Van der Zwan. "Despite the 'lifelong learning' adage, we see this reflected far too little in secondary vocational education. The reality is that companies cannot spare anyone and there is almost no time for people to go to training. Partly because of this, untapped labour potential is often overlooked."

To get more professionals into the industry, Van der Zwan sees very good opportunities for lateral entrants and re-entrants. "There are many over-30s, including women returning to work, who are ready for a managerial position with an accompanying salary. Sometimes they have not come out sufficiently well elsewhere or, for whatever reason, they want to change course at a slightly later age. In the past, you were considered too old at this age. Now, this target group is actually very attractive to the sector."

To win these hospitality-skilled mediors for the hospitality sector, a unique training programme has been developed by the IHMS together with the business community: suitable candidates are hired as employees by the member companies and trained jointly by the school and the companies. There is immediate income and the candidates are prepared for both the level-4 Hotel Entrepreneur/Manager diploma and a managerial role in the hotel or restaurant business in a greatly shortened course.

What makes this group different from young people is that 30-somethings know better what they want and make a focused choice. The new course takes this into account. "The young people on our course often consider mbo as a prelude to further education. 70 per cent go on to hbo. They also change sectors over time. The situation is different for people over 30. They know much better what they choose and often stay longer with an employer. Because they have the necessary life experience and have partly already developed competences relevant to hospitality - such as empathy, organisational skills and hospitality - the training duration for the level-4 programme can be considerably shortened. While students on the IHMS Hospitality Entrepreneur/Manager course normally do an internship abroad, this is not necessary for the 30-plus students. This creates the possibility of graduating as a manager in hosptitality within two years."

The intention is to start training at the end of this year. There is still some work to be done for that. Van der Zwan: "René Boogaart of BIG Horeca is involved with his restaurants, so that people in the Haaglanden region can gain practical experience. We are also looking for two more hotels that want to take part in the pilot of the course. Around Christmas, we want to start accelerated training of good people who can enter at a higher level later in life. We hope this initiative will be successful and that it will be interesting to start offering this nationwide as well."