MANAGING HOTELS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 14

MANAGING HOTELS

Lack Of Staff Training

(Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, Aug. 14. The licensed trade is criticised in the annual report of the Licensing Control Commission tabled in the House of Representatives today tor not having a staff training system. The report says that at a time when virtually every employer group is vigorously engaged in training schemes it is remarkable that the hotel trade is doing nothing systematically to prepare and train younger persons for appointment and promotion. It is the more singular, the report says, as New Zealand is alone among countries Which attach importance to the tourist trade in having no system of training. Training hotel staffs is not within the ambit of the commission. “but we are certainly entitled to comment and advise,” says the report. Management and most of the operational branches of hotel work call for a decent level of competence and skill, the report says. It is not to be supposed that desirable standards can be reached without the selection and training of staff. The very absence of any such scheme is doubtless the main cause of the difficulty many hotels have in making a financial success of the accommodation side of their business. Owners and licensees frequently complain to the commission that they cannot enlist or retain the “right sort of staff.” but. says the report, no young man or young woman would be advised to make a vocation of hotel management unless the trade itself shows by its training schemes what it conceives to be the status of the calling.