No break for travel industry

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment - Aug 23 2009

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A spate of redundancy announcements has rocked the Irish travel industry over the summer months, traditionally the busiest period for holiday-makers at home and visitors from overseas.

Last week, Sunway Holidays announced plans to close three outlets in Dublin, with the loss of nine jobs. The move followed 95 job losses at Budget Travel, which announced that it was to close 14 of its 31 Irish outlets earlier this month. The high-profile staff protests that followed Thomas Cook’s move to halt Irish operations, with 77 redundancies, pointed to wider unrest in a sector hit hard by the fall in consumer spending.

The numbers employed in the travel business have fallen significantly in the last year, according to Simon Nugent, chief executive of the Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA).

‘‘The pattern this year has been about companies shedding staff, not recruiting,” said Nugent. ‘‘While the leisure travel side has dropped away a bit, the corporate travel side has dropped significantly. I would say pretty much all ITAA member firms have reduced their staff since last autumn.”

Falling employment According to the most recent available CSO figures, overseas visits to Ireland fell by 114,000, or 15 per cent, in June compared to the same month last year. Eamonn McKeon, chief executive of the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, said further job losses were inevitable.

‘‘We reckon that, overall, jobs in the travel and tourism industry fell by about 10 per cent last year from a peak of 310,000,” he said. ‘‘Our ‘guesstimate’ is that it will reach about 250,000 this year, based on what we hear from our members. I am not aware of any sector of the travel or tourism industry, with the possible exception of family-run B&Bs or farmhouses, which has not had to let people go. The numbers are down everywhere, from hotels and restaurants to cruising companies and car rental firms.

‘‘The Dublin Airport Authority has been talking about rationalisation, as have the airlines. Every sector either has let staff go or did not take on the additional summer staff they would normally have taken on.”

Valerie Sorohan, marketing manager of Jobs.ie, said there had been a noticeable drop in the number of travel and tourism positions advertised online this year.

‘‘Jobs.ie has five different categories of travel and tourism jobs: chef jobs, hotels, pubs, bars and clubs, restaurants and catering, and travel and tourism,” said Sorohan. ‘‘This year, the number of jobs posted has decreased across all five categories by 50 to 70 per cent year-on-year.”

Study and training

Nugent said the shortfall in available positions had prompted candidates in the sector to consider new training and study options. Overseen by the ITAA, the Travel Professionals Skillnet has introduced several new courses this year, including a DIT-accredited Travel Professionals Higher Certificate and shorter training programmes focused on specific aspects of the travel business.

‘‘The Skillnet has been extremely important, as it allows us to improve staff skills and help travel companies put their best foot forward,” said Nugent. ‘‘Consumers have become more demanding, and people working in our sector now need an encyclopaedic knowledge of routes and destinations, the legalities and complexities of travel, visas and passports and insurance issues.”

McKeon said upskilling was a viable route for candidates unable to secure work in the sector.

‘‘There are lots of terrific courses available from Fás, and more directly tourism-related ones from Fáilte Ireland,” he said. ‘‘Some are distance learning, some are six weeks, others six months. There is something there for every skill. In all jobs, even craft-based professions, there is always a further level you can go to.

‘‘Courses that teach supervisor’s skills are a relatively attractive option for people. It is hoped that they can come away with a better CV and, when normal times return, they should be more employable and able to command a higher salary.”

Related sectors

Sorohan urged candidates to consider looking for work in a new or related sector or profession.

‘‘In these sectors, customer service is of huge importance, and people can perhaps transfer their skills Individuals could look at customer service jobs, waiting staff positions or others,” she said.

Nugent said other consumerfocused sectors, such as retailing or marketing, could offer employment opportunities to individuals with a professional background in travel or tourism.

‘‘To work in a travel environment, you have to be an extremely good ‘people person’ with a broad range of knowledge,” he said. ‘‘Having worked in the travel sector is very good training for any customerfacing role.”

Nugent said many of the candidates who have lost their jobs as a result of the downturn in travel and tourism were relatively recent arrivals to the country.

‘‘In 2006 and 2007, our members found it more or less impossible to recruit the staff they needed here,” he said. ‘‘They found very talented travel agency staff abroad, and lots of people had good experiences employing them. There is certainly then some mobility in the sector.”

Sorohan said the number of candidates applying for positions posted on Jobs.ie had fallen.

‘‘This January, employers could have expected to receive 66 applications, but in June this year that went down slightly to 45,” she said. ‘‘That would suggest that non-Irish workers unable to find a job in these industries this year have moved to seek employment elsewhere.”

Protecting jobs

Nugent said employers in the sector were keen to protect as many jobs as possible.

‘‘Companies have negotiated reductions in salaries and different part-time or other working arrangements with their staff,” he said. ‘‘Staff are entirely aware of the realities of the sector and have been quite understanding.”

Staff unhappy with the redundancy terms offered by Thomas Cook, following the closure of its Irish branches, with 77 redundancies earlier this month, staged a high-profile sit-in at the company’s Grafton Street branch.

However, Nugent said most redundancies in the sector were proving less contentious.

‘‘We provide a legal advisory service for our members that covers employment law and personnel management and doing right by your staff,” he said. ‘‘It is a difficult area, but in most cases things tend not to become confrontational.”

Further redundancies
McKeon said that, with no end to the downturn in sight, employers in the travel and tourism sector could announce further redundancies.

‘‘Travel people tend to be optimistic and hope that a recovery will come,” he said. ‘‘The problem is that we are now entering the off-season, and companies will not have built up the strong cash flows this summer to get them through next winter.

‘‘Huge discounting has been great for the consumer, but has only kept things ticking over. The lack of availability of credit is really going to test the survival capacity of lots of good businesses this winter.”

Despite this, the number of hospitality positions advertised on Jobs.ie in the first six months of the year were up on the same period last year.

‘‘From January to June, there was actually an increase in jobs being posted across all the five travel and tourism sectors by an average of 44 per cent, which is promising,” Sorohan said. ‘‘It suggests that these areas were hit hardest by the recession last year, but this year there are signs that each of these areas are picking up.

‘‘At present, the hotels category has the most number of jobs listed, and chef positions are also quite popular.”

Government cuts

Last month’s Bord Snip Nua report recommended a €12 million cut to the government supported Tourism Marketing Fund and a €15 million slice off Fáilte Ireland’s budget.

McKeon cautioned the government against implementing either measure.

‘‘The only thing that will keep jobs within the tourism sector is if visitors keep coming, so governments need to keep their marketing budgets in foreign markets,” he said. ‘‘It is a viciously competitive world out there, and if Ireland disappears from websites, trade promotions, media advertisements and all of that, we will lose market share.”

McKeon said discussions were under way with the government to give tourism companies access to the Enterprise Stabilisation Fund, which was announced earlier this month.

‘‘Foreign tourism is an export business, although domestic tourism is not,” he said. ‘‘We would be anxious to have the scheme extended to the travel and tourism sector.”

Future recovery
Nugent said the travel industry would recover quickly, once the wider economy stabilised.

‘‘What is good for the economy at large is good for the travel sector,” he said. ‘‘If the overall economy gets righted, it will kick-start growth for travel companies.”

When it emerges from the recession, Nugent said the sector would be leaner and more technologically advanced.

‘‘Travel is a very dynamic sector, and has been long before the recent fast economic growth and then sudden economic decline,” he said. ‘‘Our members are transforming their business models all the time and investing in the online capacity of their staff. ‘‘That is the way the sector is going.”