COMMENT
18
A win-win deal from NHI
Viability director Guy Wilkinson explains why the Oman National Hospitality Institute’s new
branch in India will benefit both Indian hotel employees and Gulf hospitality employers
COLUMNIST
he National Hospitality Institute (NHI), with its live training restaurant and five working hotel guest rooms in the
Wadi Kabir district of Muscat, is
already well-known for its dedication
to the cause of workforce localisation
in Oman’s hotel sector, where official
Omanisation quotas are way ahead of
the equivalent in other Gulf countries.
However, the NHI’s latest initiative is focussed on helping Gulf hotel
recruiters source better-qualified staff
from India. The NHI has set up a dedicated branch in New Delhi’s busy
T
district known as South Extension
1, with Omani-designed classrooms
featuring multi-media equipment.
Officially opened for business this
summer, the school is offering Indian
working hoteliers a special course
called Hospitality Plus that will essentially make them more employable by
luxury hotels in the GCC.
“We’ve been listening to comments
from Gulf hoteliers who complain
that it has become increasingly difficult to find the right staff from India,”
explains NHI Principal Robert
MacLean. “As India’s economy has
strengthened over the past few years,
the number of new hotel openings in
the Gulf has also increased, meaning
that although there is a much greater
demand for staff, there are fewer
qualified and experienced ‘five-star
workers’ available from India and
more workers of four-star standards
coming out of the hotels and management schools there.”
COURSE DETAILS
Hospitality Plus is a special course
devised specifically to empower
already qualified or experienced
hospitality personnel to work in the
Gulf. Costing students just over US
$800, the 10-hours-a-week, 12-week
course earns graduates internationally-recognised qualifications from
the UK’s City & Guilds and British
Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Such qualifications not
only make them more employable in
the Gulf, but also in Europe and other
western countries.
Course topics include basic Arabic
and English language skills, a Middle
Eastern cultural orientation, as well
as basic food hygiene, telephone skills,
customer service, up-selling, grooming, time keeping, etiquette, conflict
handling and work ethics. The NHI’s
target is to turn around 250 to 300 students during 2010.
MULTIPLE BENEFITS
The new course has many advantages
for would-be employers in the Gulf.
For a start, it costs them nothing,
since there are no recruitment charges
and the students are encouraged to
view the course fees as a worthwhile
Even when Omanisation eventually reaches its peak level
of about 75% in the hotel sector, there will still be a need
for foreign expatriates to make up the difference
NHI principal Robert MacLean.
November 2009 • Hotelierr M
Middle
iddle East
investment in their careers. “The fees
are affordable compared to equivalent courses in India and the ultimate
perspective is that Indian hotel staff
can double their salaries if they get a
job in the Gulf,” comments MacLean.
The NHI has also cunningly overcome two other important areas of
concern for Gulf recruiters, by offering
both monitored psychometric testing
and face to-face interviews via web
cam in the institute’s Delhi premises.
“It sounds crazy, but in the past,
potential employers could not always
be sure who they were interviewing
over the phone, or who had actually
filled in the online psychometric test,”
says MacLean.
With high levels of interest from
hotels in the Gulf already registered,
MacLean sees no contradiction in
this new focus on importing workers,
when the NHI has historically been
celebrated for its role in substituting
them with local nationals.
“Even when Omanisation reaches
its peak level of about 75% in the hotel
sector, there will still be a need for foreign expatriates to make up the difference,” he says, pointing out that the
school is already very international:
the 50-odd students on his American Hotel and Lodging Associationbacked Hospitality Management
Diploma course, for example, hail
from no less than 14 countries.
The NHI is a beacon for the Gulf
in hotel vocational training and education, and it looks like it will soon
build up a similar name for excellence
in the Indian market. Not only that,
but Indian hotel employees and Gulf
hotel employers stand to reap benefits
by supporting their efforts — a winwin scenario for all concerned. HME
Guy Wilkinson is a director of Viability, a hospitality
and property consulting firm in Dubai.
For more information, email: guy@viability.ae
www.hoteliermiddleeast.com