Yeoh Siew Hoon wonders where all the staff to man all the hotels being built will come from.

As I walked from hall to hall at the Arabian Travel Market, and gaped and gawked at all the developments planned for the Middle East, one question burned in my mind – where are they going to find the staff to work in all these hotels being built?

And I am not only thinking about the Middle East. The hotel industry is probably undergoing the most unprecedented building boom in history – be it India, China, Macau, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Dubai, the USA, everyone, everywhere is building and everyone, everywhere will need staff to work in them.

The general feeling in the Middle East is there will be no lack of customers (their confidence in their market is astounding) – but there must be increasing concern about finding good and trained staff to work in them, and not only rank and file but middle to senior management executives.

The developments being planned for places like Abu Dhabi or Dubai are not exactly intimate, boutiquey-types needing a handful of staff – they are huge staff-churning monsters; and I am not even thinking about the costs to the environment with all the energy and water that will be needed to keep these places running.

(As an aside, I wonder how much energy is needed to keep the ski slope at Mall at the Emirates operating year-round? And how much energy will be needed to keep the Snow Dome (the world's largest free-standing transparent structure) planned at DubaiLand operating year-round?)

For its 300 rooms, the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi (which has to be seen to be believed) has a staff count of more than 1,000. The Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai has 1,700 staff for its 615 rooms.

How many staff will the latest development in Dubai, Bawadi, covering 10 km and featuring 35 themed hotels and more than 1,500 restaurants, need alone?

And think about it, for every new hotel they build, they have to build staff accommodation. Most hotels there have their own buildings to house staff.

In Dubai, where close to 90 percent of the workforce are foreigners, I guess the answer has always been to "bring ‘em in and pay ‘em'. The Philippines and India are so far the two main sources of labour but with India developing at full steam itself, that tap could be turned off especially for English-speaking, mid-level staff.

I was told that Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal are now the new sources of labour for hotels but will there be enough to go round with the competition heating up elsewhere?

Hoteliers in Dubai may find it easier to compete for labour, I suppose. It is a successful destination, its hotels pay attractive wages and general managers there are not restricted in where they hire from.

In Oman, the government has an "Omanisation" policy where 65% of staff have to be locals. In a small country of 2 million and where the hotel industry is new, finding good and trained staff to work in the new hotels being built could pose a challenge.

In my one week in the Middle East, all most people could talk about is the development. Ask them about staff and almost all agree there will be a problem but no one has yet thought about how to address it seriously.

I guess it's always sexier to build. You are dealing with brick and mortar. Training staff and retaining them is a slow, arduous process that takes time, patience and commitment.

Yet it is a process that cannot be ignored – hardware is nothing without the heartware.

And if no heart goes into that which makes the heartbeat of the hotel, then all we will be left with are grand buildings with giant chandeliers and cold, marble lobbies.

Come to think of it, that describes at least one hotel I saw in Abu Dhabi.


The SHY Report
A regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry by one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, Yeoh Siew Hoon.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her company's mission is "Content, Communication, Connection".

She is a writer, speaker, facilitator, trainer and events producer. She is also an author, having published "Around Asia In 1 Hr: Tales of Condoms, Chillies & Curries". Her motto is ‘free to do, and be'.

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