Added: 12/21/2005 |
How to find the right job in tourismTourism industry is growing, that is why tourism and travel related employment opportunities are increasing. There are full time or part time jobs available and these may include occupations and careers in the following areas: tour drivers, guides, porters, chefs, hotel receptionists, waiters, travel agents and consultants, hospitality occupations, ski and snowboard instructors and patrol, managers, maids, tourism operations and much more.
A prospective employer will be primarily seeking a friendly, likeable, approachable person. Local knowledge is important, but not as important as a genuine enthusiasm to learn more about the area and convey its attractions to visitors. An acute ability to identify market trends and develop novel marketing concepts will be appreciated for sales & marketing positions.
Tourism employment can be defined as direct employment resulting from visitor expenditure in tourist services, indirect employment in the tourist sector and induced employment, resulting from the effects of the tourism multiplier.
There is a great number of the international tourism research literature. According to some items different employment categories have been created on the basis of different definitions of tourism. First of all, let us give the most commonly used definition: "Tourism is the temporary movement of persons to destinations outside their normal home and workplace for leisure, business and other purposes, the activities undertaken during the stay and the facilities created to cater for the needs of tourists." (WTO, 1989). Though the definition given by the WTTC seems to be more appropriate: "The Travel and Tourism industry is defined by the economic activities (personal, investment, government, business and net export) associated with travel as measured by the wide variety of current and capital expenditures made by or for the benefit of a traveller before, during and after a trip" (WTTC, 1995).
It is generally known that the costs of a new job in tourism are significantly less than in other industries, though some researches offer a contrasting conclusion. Obviously, the characteristics of employment and the effects of tourism development vary according to the type of tourist activity, some types of tourism being more labour-intensive than others. Accommodation facilities and the hospitality sector in general employ a substantial proportion of the tourism labour force, but they also require relatively large capital investments. Variety of the size of companies, the types of skills needed, the economic development of the destination area, etc. also has great impact on the financial resources required to generate employment.
Due to the lack of a widely accepted categorisation of job in tourism, together with the complexity of factors to be taken into consideration, the main contributing factors to the overall cost of creation of job in tourism are not clearly defined. The set of factors determining the costs of tourism employment generation and incorporating them into a model that is able to present their respective role and their interrelationships is very important task set to researchers.
The analysis of the characteristics of job in tourism is also a significant point in the latest bodies of researches. It is assumed that these characteristics vary in the different subsectors with the size of the company, the type of ownership (private or public), the age of the company, etc. The recent researches were devoted to the following main fields listed below:
market entry constraints for new companies in tourism,
the nature and volume of investment,
geographical distribution of new jobs,
average age of new companies,
the differences in the number and type (full-time vs. part-time, seasonal vs. annual) of jobs created,
average wages and salaries,
on-the-job training needs and costs,
employee turnover,
recruitment sources and procedures,
qualification and skills requirements for employees, employment criteria,
social status of jobs in tourism,
main difficulties in human resource management.
There is now universally accepted catalogue for jobs in tourism, which involves both directly and indirectly affected subsectors.
So, what are the ways of creating new job in tourism. In recruiting new employees, recommendations of friends and business partners were considered as far the most important source. The main reasons for choosing new employees through personal contacts are opportunity to collect reliable information on the skills and characteristics of potential candidates, perceived credibility of this information. In addition, personal recommendations offer a certain degree of guarantee concerning the future performance of the new colleagues. And on top of that previous experiences proved this method of recruitment to be the most appropriate.
The second employment channel is advertising in newspapers and magazines. This method is deemed as fast and relatively cheap, simple, but efficient, reaching the highest number of potential candidates. What is more, newspaper advertisements also provided the companies with the possibility to summarise qualifications, skills and characteristics required for filling a position, thus they have to deal only with suitable candidates.
The fact is that very few people use employment agencies, although this method is considered to be traditionally utilised, and relatively fast and simple.
Job in tourism provide a wealth of useful skills and knowledge. Customer service frequently plays a role in tourism jobs, and local knowledge amassed from one position will help with the many future steps.
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