by Monica Poling
Last updated: 10:05 PM ET, Sat February 25, 2017
As foreign hotel developments surge in the Caribbean, a growing number of local hoteliers are faced with the prospect of losing talented, long-standing employees. The employees are being approached by the newer, international properties with the promise of better money and benefits.
"I don't like what I am seeing, in some instances where a new property is being built in the Caribbean and there are not enough skilled workers to man the operations, we just seem to be stealing each other's staff," said Karolin Troubetzkoy, president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) in an interview with the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
Troubetzkoy, who is also an hotelier, said the practice could ultimately lead to a lower customer satisfaction rate across the region.
For his part, St. Lucia's prime minister, also the nation's former tourism minister has said, "It is a free market and labour is free to move wherever it wants to be able to move."
However, he also added that it was bad planning on the part of new hotels to not implement their own training programs in advance of opening.
At issue is that many of the locally owned hotels and brand spend significant time and money on employee training programs, only to have those employees lured away by international properties. Attracted by the higher wages, the employees leave, but then often find themselves in career situations that offer no further advancement.
The CHTA president has said that personnel development is at the forefront of the association's agenda for the year, and the CHTA will be amping up training programs region-wide.
Sandals Resorts International, a Caribbean-owned and operated company, has said it does not condone employee poaching, a practice it calls "unethical and fragmenting." But, says the resort company, it is also a reminder that hoteliers should invest in high-quality training programs for their employees, which "can go a long way in helping guard against such activities."
Sandals offers training and certification programs for employees at all levels, including scholarship programs for secondary education up to doctorate degrees. In Saint Lucia alone, Sandals has provided training for more than a thousand employees in the past few years, at no cost to the employee.
"It is clear that some of the larger, foreign brands simply do not have the capacity to train, nor do they care to invest in training, which has led to the concern expressed by the CHTA about them enticing workers away from established organisations that have invested in building the tourism sector over many years," said Sandals Resorts International in a statement. "Many of these workers may find themselves in an environment that does not offer opportunities for further development - like Sandals provides with the SCU - which means that their personal growth may be stunted unless they take money out of their own pockets to invest in training and development.
"We must find a way of training everybody and having more skilled workers available, not just in customer service but in culinary arts, and the technical side such as in IT technology maintenance, there are lots of job opportunities in the tourism sector, " said Troubetzkoy to the CMC.
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