by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 1:50 PM ET, Tue November 8, 2022
Jamaica Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett announced a new global initiative to expand and retain the travel and tourism workforce at the World for Travel event in Nimes, called PROJECT TEEM (Travel Employment Expansion Mandate).
The group, spearheaded by Jacob Media's Resilience Council and comprising the Global Travel and Tourism Crisis Management Center, the Energy and Environment Alliance, the Global Travel and Tourism Partnership, and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance.
The new initiative's main goal is to increase the annual growth rate of the global travel and tourism workforce to more than 30 percent. It will also focus on mentoring and employment programs and address key issues like wages, working conditions, empowerment and more.
According to Bartlett, the global travel industry has lost over 44 million workers, which have not returned to the industry after the pandemic ended. A lot of these lost workers belong to categories like hospitality, cruising and aviation.
"The tourism industry needs to recover its attractiveness to workers and should undergo a deep and thorough analysis as to the factors which gave rise to this situation. Tourism, pre-pandemic, has not been the best employer and many view our sector as low paying, low-skilled and seasonal, offering little job security and social security," stated Bartlett. "Hence, the need for a new charter to reimagine the labor market relations, the re-architecture of the social contract between the workers and the employers of the industry."
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