The owners are horrified: hotels in Phuket began to be managed by green salagas

The owners of hotels in Phuket are horrified by the situation that has developed on the popular resort island of Thailand: due to a lack of qualified personnel in the hotel sector, “green” and inexperienced employees, who are called “salagas” in Russia, have begun to manage hotels. Their lack of skills is causing hotel owners to panic and fear for the future.

As The Thaiger noted, citing some managers, many qualified and experienced employees left the sector during the coronavirus pandemic. Now the hotels have the required number of staff, but they are half the age and have a modest experience not of managers, but of ordinary hotel employees. Michael Zitek, CEO of the popular 5-star Angsana Laguna Phuket, spoke out at a vocational training event last week.

“Before the coronavirus, say in 2017-2019, our executives and middle managers were in their 40s and already had 20 years of experience. At the moment, our managers are probably about 20 years old,” he said, adding that the lack of hospitality skills in Phuket is “terrible.”

At the same time, other hoteliers shared their feedback with the Hunter Education Group, the Australian vocational training group that organized the event. Experts listed 3 main problems in the industry:

1. shortage of employees with a level of service standards that meet customer expectations;
2. shortage of employees from the region;
3. outflow of junior personnel to other areas.

Specialists noted that the presence of employees from the region is important, because it is unlikely that personnel will move from large cities. They also noted that junior staff have moved on to other areas of work because they do not see working in the hospitality industry as a “promising career opportunity.” The co-founder of another group that also hosted a training event gave some tips on how to get your employees involved in additional training. Stephen Healy, co-founder of the Nurture Higher Education Group, suggested conducting regular training sessions to help hotels track their skills.

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