Chandigarh, April 1 (IANS) The global economic crisis has burnt holes in the pockets of the hospitality industry too, but growing competition and a desperate need to maintain quality mean that jobs cannot be pruned.
'Global meltdown has decreased our overall monthly business by nearly 20 percent. We have lost many of our corporate clients as they are also adopting cost-cutting measures,' said R.P. Singla, general manager of Mountview, a five-star hotel here.
'Despite all the business losses, we cannot downsize our manpower or compromise on quality of our services. It is an ongoing process and we have to hire the best talent on regular basis to survive in the industry. So, there could be no scarcity of jobs,' he said.
Manmohan Kohli, owner of Aroma Hotel, one of the oldest in the city, said: 'This is one industry where we constantly need quality students from good institutes. Therefore, there would be no dearth of job opportunities in this field due to recession.'
'Moreover, we see that the recession has hit the business of only five-star hotels and others are somewhat safe from its repercussions,' Kohli, who is also president of the Hotels Association of Chandigarh, told IANS.
Ajay Arora, general manager of sales and marketing at East Bourne, a resort in Shimla in the middle of a pine forest, said: 'There is no question of downsizing our staff. In fact, we have a busy schedule ahead as we are almost booked for the next three months. Due to the recession, many people are cancelling their foreign trips and moving towards Himachal Pradesh for vacations.'
'In fact, we have experienced an increase in the rush of domestic travellers in the last few months. Here we are always in search of trained professionals or students. So, the jobs are booming for the deserving candidates.'
Even the students in various institutes training for the hospitality industry and their teachers are unperturbed and are indeed quite upbeat.
'As such there has been no impact on job opportunities in the hospitality sector for our students. There was a marginal blow after the Mumbai terror attacks last year, but gradually things have again come on right track,' T.K. Razdan, principal of the Chandigarh Institute of Hotel Management, told IANS.
'This year again we have had excellent placements of our students in leading hotels and organisations all across the country. This year, many new corporates visited our campus (for the) first time and that reinforced the fact that jobs in hospitality are fairly safe from meltdown.'
(Alkesh Sharma can be contacted at alkesh.s@ians.in)
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