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Skills and training in the hotel sector:
The case of front office employment
in Northern Ireland
Tom Baum* and Frances Devine
Received (in revised form): 1st September, 2005
*International Tourism and Hospitality Management, The Scottish Hotel School, The University
of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Tel: +44 0141 548 3954; Fax: +44 0141 552 2870; E-mail: t.g.baum@strath.ac.uk
Tom Baum is a professor of International
Tourism and Hospitality Management and
Director of Postgraduate Courses at the
University of Strathclyde. Tom has worked, in a
teaching and consulting capacity, in a number
of countries in Asia, Australia, the Middle East,
Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. He has
acted as examiner and assessor in universi-
ties in Europe, China, Malaysia, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, Kenya and the Carib-
bean as well as in the UK and Ireland. Tom’s
research and publications interests have a
strong international focus. His prime research
has a strong human resource management
flavour, applied to hospitality and tourism.
Particular work focuses on hospitality/tourism
education and training, especially at a national
level. Other areas of interest include tourism
in peripheral areas and tourism transport.
Professor Baum has authored and edited seven
books in tourism as well as a large number of
scientific publications.
Frances Devine is a lecturer of Hospitality in
the School of Hospitality and Tourism Manage-
ment, University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern
Ireland. Frances has worked in industry as a
manager with the Compass Group in Northern
Ireland before joining the University of Ulster as
a hospitality lecturer concentrating on human
resources and organisational studies. She is
actively involved in researching new trends in
© 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. 1467-3584 $30.00
human resource management in the hospi-
tality and tourism sector, presently focusing on
cultural diversity.
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS: skills, career progression, hotels,
front office, Northern Ireland
Notwithstanding the globalisation of services and
the migration of some service providers (call
centres, financial processing) to regions of low cost
labour coupled with high levels of education
attainment, there are arguments that the skills,
which employees bring to the workplace in
executing common tasks, are context and culture
specific. This paper is concerned with the skills
set and training background of one set of service
workers, those in hotel front office, located within
Northern Ireland. This paper reports the findings
of a survey of front office workers working in
4- and 5-star hotels in Northern Ireland. This
survey identifies the skills and training profile of
this group of employees and measures attitudes
to key skills requirements within front office
work.
Tourism and Hospitality Research (2007) 7, 269–280.
doi:10.1057/palgrave.thr.6050046
INTRODUCTION
One of the features of an increasingly globalised
service economy is the apparent assumption
that, apart from economic variation reflecting
Vol. 7, 3/4, 269–280 Tourism and Hospitality Research 269
 Skills and training in the hotel sector
local conditions, those undertaking service
work, for example, call centres and financial
transaction processing centres in Europe, North
America and Asia will be required to utilise, in
the job, a similar range of skills and to under-
take common training programmes in order to
meet these skills demands. It is therefore widely
assumed that the demands of such work will
draw upon a common background in terms of
education, training and overall skills set. This
assumption is derived from notions that
common skills requirements are drawn from
the job itself, without reference to the economic,
social and cultural context within which the
work is located, a view perpetuated historically
by bodies such as the International Labour
Organisation (see, eg, ILO, 1979). It is arguable
that, in service work in particular, technical,
emotional and aesthetic contributions to work
are strongly influenced by the cultural and
economic context within which they are
located. Little work has been, however, under-
taken into the nature of work and skills that
are required for work in specific location envi-
ronments. This exploratory study based on the
context of Northern Ireland (NI) is a starting
point in the research of a number of parallel
cases being conducted by the authors and
colleagues in different parts of the world including
Brazil, Egypt, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Malaysia.
When completed, they will permit comparative
analysis of front office skills and work and allow
testing of the thesis that front office (or, indeed,
other areas of hospitality work) are common
across different cultures and contexts.
This paper reports a study which seeks to
explore the skills profiles, work background,
educational attainment, attitudes and plans of
front office employees at the luxury end of the
market (4-star and 5-star) hotels is particularly
interesting in that there are clear assumptions
(hotel grading systems, for example) that the
environment provided for customers is common
across differing geographical contexts. From
this we may infer that, likewise, the work
undertaken is common and is undertaken by
people who are substantially similar in their
270 Tourism and Hospitality Research Vol. 7, 3/4, 269–280
backgrounds, training and experience. This
research is located in NI, an economy moving
out of the problems associated with the ‘Trou-
bles’ and facing the challenge of counterbal-
ancing international perceptions with positive
messages of a vibrant NI. A successful peace
process with the creation of a power sharing
government, will present an opportunity to
broaden the appeal of the City of Derry and
Belfast as cities of culture, political and historic
interest with the potential for significant
employment growth for the future. NI repre-
sents an environment within which traditional
educational and training levels, delivered
through established institutions, are well devel-
oped but there is also substantial evidence
suggesting that the tourism and hospitality
sector suffers from a range of problems relating
to recruitment, retention, skills and image; all
of which could potentially restrict its growth
potential. The Northern Ireland Labour Force
Survey (2004) report on key issues including:
the level of work relevant qualifications is too
low; while some 75 per cent of businesses
provide or pay for employee training, much of
that is simply to meet minimum statutory
requirements such as health and safety, food
hygiene; very high labour wastage; labour turn-
over is at twice the NI all-industry average;
persistent hard-to-fill vacancies, experienced by
around 17 per cent of businesses; significant
skill shortages, especially in key occupations
such as chefs and front office technical skills
and languages. The nature of front office work
in the hotel sector in a location such as NI is
also subject to increasing demands in terms of
workplace flexibility, changing the scope of
work and the range of responsibilities under-
taken. It is, therefore, an opportune time to
analyse, in greater depth, the nature of hotel
employment in NI to assess the impact of such
changes.
HOSPITALITY SKILLS AND HOTEL
FRONT OFFICE WORK
The hospitality sector has provided an increasingly
fertile resource for research into employment and
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the study of employee characteristics within the
sector (Mars and Nicod, 1984; Gabriel, 1988;
Hoque, 1999; Adler and Adler, 2004; Baum,
2006). These studies demonstrate the signifi-
cance of socio-cultural, organisational and
economic context to the shaping of labour
markets and the nature of employment. During
the past decades, the hospitality sector has
evolved and developed in organisational,
product and market terms with significant
consequences for the nature of work in hospi-
tality organisations. Specifically, the changes in
the hotel sector have in the main been due to
the growth of multiple ownership, the globali-
sation and stronger branding of hotel chains
(Go and Pine, 1995; Guerrier et al., 1998).
Hotel operations during this period have
also seen significant changes in the role and
influence of technology with the growing use
of more sophisticated communications and
integrated administration packages from
specialist providers. Burgess (2000), in a survey
of hotel financial managers found that the
influence of ‘high tech’ approaches to front
office operating systems had also enhanced the
role of ‘high touch’ in increased personal service
and that these impacts had led to higher guest
expectations.
Because of the wide diversity of property
types that sit within an umbrella definition of
‘hotel’, front office is an area of activity that
varies greatly from hotel to hotel, influenced
by the size, location and market focus of the
specific property. Vallen and Vallen (2004)
define front office in terms of its role as the
main contact point for guests within the hotel,
irrespective of hotel type. Generally, front office
can be taken to include those areas of activity
which centre on the reception desk and its
allied areas where the main focus is on ‘and
greeting’ guests, providing information during
their stay and processing their departure,
including payment. It can also involve the
concierge or portering function, along with
back office activities in some smaller properties
such as reservations and accounts. This diverse
nature of the front office work may encourage
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Baum and Devine
flexibility and mobility among employees. At
the heart of labour mobility is the concept of
human capital — the stock of an individual’s
skills and knowledge — and is normally
conceived as a problem from the perspective
of causing operational difficulties (labour turn-
over) (Riley et al. (2002). The process of
mobility not only depends on the skill differ-
ences but also on the willingness of employees
to adapt and learn within a department such
as front office in hotels.
Baum and Odgers (2001) report a research
study across eight European countries into the
nature of work in hotel front office. They iden-
tify the central role of front office in the organ-
isation of hotels, both in terms of the flow of
management information and in relation to
how the guest experiences the range of prod-
ucts and services on offer with the establish-
ment. In this sense, Baum and Odgers follow
Vallen and Vallen (2000) in ascribing the
descriptor, ‘centre’ to this area of activity within
the hotel. At the same time, the study points
to the technical de-skilling of work in hotel
front office, whereby ‘traditional’ administrative
and operational tasks have largely disappeared
or have been simplified. Priority is placed, by
the hotels sector, on a range of generic skills,
specifically interpersonal, communications,
ICT and languages related. Importantly, Baum
and Odgers report that hotels across their
sample reported recruitment criteria for hotel
front office based on these generic skills rather
than specific vocational training or experience.
Relatively little has been addressed in the liter-
ature to the specifics of hotel front office work
beyond the Baum and Odgers study. A notable
exception is the contribution of Bird et al.
(2002) who addressed gendered work issues in
relation to front office and noted, significantly,
that female employees in this area of work are
usually better qualified, have better opportuni-
ties for functional flexibility and are younger
than their male counterparts.
In terms of the work profile of hospitality
workers in general, there is considerable debate
about the level of skills required. Hospitality
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 Skills and training in the hotel sector
work is widely characterised in both the
popular press and in academic literature as
dominated by a low skills profile (Wood, 1997)
or, as Shaw and Williams (1994) rather brutally
and, probably, unfairly put it, ‘uneducated,
unmotivated, untrained, unskilled and unpro-
ductive’ (p. 142). Bradley et al. (2000) apply this
epithet to the wider service or new economy
in questioning assumptions about a skills revo-
lution in Britain, noting that ‘jobs commonly
retain a low-skill character, especially in the
fastest-growing sectors’ (p. 129).
This thesis, however, does not go uncon-
tested (Baum, 1996, 2002). Burns (1997), for
example, questions the basis for categorising
hospitality employment into ‘skilled’ and
‘unskilled’ categories, arguing the postmod-
ernist case that this separation is something of
a social construct. This construct is rooted in,
firstly, manpower planning paradigms for the
manufacturing sector and, secondly, in the
traditional power of trade unions to control
entry into the workplace through lengthy
apprenticeships. Burns bases this argument on
a useful consideration of the definition of skills
in hospitality, noting that
……the different sectors that comprise tourism-as-
industry take different approaches to their human
resources, and that some of these differences……are
due to whether or not the employees have a history
of being ‘organised’ (either in terms of trade unions
or staff associations with formalised communica-
tion procedures) (p. 240)
Burns’s emphasis on ‘emotional demands’ as an
additional dimension of hospitality skills has
been developed in the work of Seymour (2000).
Her work builds upon the seminal earlier work
of Hochschild (1983) who introduced the
concept of emotional work within the services
economy. Hochschild argues that service
employees are required to manage their
emotions for the benefit of customers and are,
in part, paid to do this. Likewise, Seymour
considers the contribution of what she calls
‘emotional labour’ makes to work in fast food
and traditional areas of service work and
272 Tourism and Hospitality Research Vol. 7, 3/4, 269–280
concludes that both areas demand considerable
emotional elements in addition to overt tech-
nical skills.Warhurst et al. (2000) add the further
dimension of aesthetic labour to the skills
bundle that is required from hospitality workers,
an area that has particular importance in the
context of front office work.
NORTHERN IRELAND AND ITS
HOSPITALITY SECTOR
NI has a relatively small regional economy. In
terms of population size, it is the smallest of
the United Kingdom (UK) standard regions.
In 2004, the population was estimated at 1.71m,
accounting for approximately 2.8 per cent of
the UK total (www.dfpni.gov.uk). NI repre-
sents a compact geographical area of great
natural beauty, stretching just 150 kilometres
from the north to south and 190 kilometres
from east to west, boasting attractive country-
side, hills and coastal views, the most famous
of which being the world-renowned beauty of
the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim.
The tourism and hospitality industry in NI
consists of a amalgam of heterogeneous busi-
nesses. While there are large, multi-million
pound accommodations and attractions, Clarke
(2004) notes that the majority of tourism
revenue goes to small, owner-managed enter-
prises spread throughout the province. The
NI labour market is dynamic and changing,
particularly in the hospitality sector. As a
result of the reduction in political violence,
from 1960s to mid-1990s, there has been
sustained employment growth — total employ-
ment in the hotels and restaurants sector
increased by over 80 per cent between 1991
and 2001 (Department for Employment and
Learning, 2002). Recent research puts the
total number of full-time equivalent tourist
and hospitality workers at just under 43,000
(People 1st. 2006), and contributes some Ł291m
to the economy, with an additional Ł121m
from domestic tourism, and represents approx-
imately 3 per cent of GDP (NITB, 2005). The
industry is, however, faced with a number of
challenges if it is to respond to the ever
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changing expectations of visitors and local
people alike. The Northern Ireland Labour
Force Survey (2004), report that the hotels and
restaurant sector is characterised by a high
proportion of female employees and also a high
level of part-time work. Female labour accounts
for 65 per cent of the workforce while part-
time working accounts for 62 per cent. The
workforce is predominantly young with 58 per
cent aged below 40. The level of work relevant
qualifications is too low — 29 per cent having
no vocational qualifications. Staff in the industry
describes their employment as temporary or
casual at 11 per cent. The industry is also char-
acterised by low wages. Average income earned
in tourism is around two-thirds of the average
for all NI industry (Department for Employ-
ment and Learning, 2002).
Historically, the Province’s hotel sector has
been somewhat backward in its approach to
both service quality and customer care over
the years (Douglas and Connor, 2003).
Consumers have become more eager than
ever to complain and transfer their allegiances
to perceived providers of quality service
(O’Neill and Palmer, 2001). In the past a lack
of global service awareness had resulted in a
gearing of the local tourism product towards
the domestic marketplace where, the conserv-
ative nature of the NI population was disin-
clined to complain. This led to an
unprofessional, inefficient service standards
being accepted as the norm. With little
competition to encourage innovative devel-
opment the industry has generally taken a
somewhat casual approach to consumer care
and service (Douglas and Connor, 2003). This
fact, coupled with the increasingly competi-
tive nature of the business environment has
forced many hospitality practitioners to
upgrade the quality of their offerings but find
they are hampered by the lack of skills in the
workforce. The dilemma in front office work
is the role of information technology versus
the human dimension of the service encounter.
Although the revolutionary potential offered
by communication technologies is immense,
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Baum and Devine
the human dimension should not be replaced.
Poon (1993) argues that new employees in
hospitality:
Must be trained to be loyal, flexible, tolerant,
amiable and responsible…at every successful
tourism establishment, it is the employees that
stand out…technology cannot substitute for
welcoming employees (p. 262).
As front office staff is in a direct communicative
and selling position, their skills need to be
honed to deliver higher levels of service quality
as a means of achieving competitive differen-
tiation. In order to improve the satisfaction of
guests, first of all, all staff in front office should
understand guests, then be familiar with hotel
product and be further proficient at marketing.
In addition, employees should also exhibit skills
of communication and emotion control.
In summary, it is imperative that the hospi-
tality industry in NI continues to improve its
competitiveness and moves from a position
which is based on low costs to one based on
higher value-added, innovation, creativity and
high workforce skills. The hospitality industry
is confronted by a series of problems that need
to be resolved fast, such as low work relevant
qualifications and skills shortages among
employees as well as an imbalance of specific
training requirements. A key to resolve these
problems is to survey the specific situation of
employees and to find out what skills will be
required in the future so as to take advantage
of new opportunities and to enhance the devel-
opment of NI’s tourism and hospitality
industry.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this research study was to
develop a picture of the skills profiles, work
background, educational attainment, attitudes
and plans of one key group of service workers
— that of hotel front office, located within NI.
Gathering information about this important
area of service and work in the hospitality
industry provides first-hand data for improving
training and career development. The research
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 Skills and training in the hotel sector
findings will not only enrich the knowledge
of front office but also be useful for policy
makers to gain some insights into human
resources management.
This study was based on a survey that was
conducted on all 22 four- and five-star rated
hotels in NI, accessed from the NITB database
and located in the counties of Antrim, Derry,
Down and Fermanagh, in the main cities of
Belfast and Derry. Four- and five-star hotels
were chosen as those properties most likely to
be operating in the international market with
work demands at this level of service, providing
a good basis for comparison with other loca-
tions where similar research is being under-
taken by the authors, for example Brazil,
Egypt, Kenya and Malaysia. It is also the sector
of the hotel industry where the widest range
of skills (technical, technological, emotional,
aesthetic) are likely to be required in the
workplace.
An invitation was sent to the General
Managers of all hotels in the selected category,
inviting participation in the study. Contact was
made with the management to confirm the
number of front office employees working at
the premises — 150 front office employees
were identified. A significant proportion of
management was supportive and agreed to
distribute the questionnaires to front office staff,
requesting their participation on a voluntary
basis. From the 150 questionnaires distributed,
64 were returned and usable which form the
basis of this analysis of hotel front office work
in NI.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Respondents — who are the front office
employees?
Responses were mainly received from front
office management and supervisory level at 41
per cent; senior staff members 23 per cent;
junior and trainees 31 per cent. From the
remaining 5 per cent, two candidates were
‘night porters’ and one termed themselves as a
‘shift leader’ (Table 1).
274 Tourism and Hospitality Research Vol. 7, 3/4, 269–280
Table 1: Position of respondents
Position of respondent (n=64) %
Department manager 21.9
Srupervisor 18.8
Senior staff member 23.4
Junior staff member 21.9
Trainee 9.4
Other 4.7
There is clear gender imbalance in the
composition of the front office workforce as
87.5 per cent respondents were female and 12.5
per cent were male. Considering the predom-
inant age group of the candidates, almost half
fell within the age bracket of 22–25 years. Job
scope was generally wide, with all staff being
directly involved with reception work. All staff
holds responsibility with respect to the cash
desk 100 per cent, reservations and telephone
enquiries 97 per cent, concierge 63 per cent,
accounts 34 per cent; and sales and marketing
27 per cent. Other responsibilities included
room service requests and night auditing at
9 per cent.
All but five of the respondents work full-
time in the hotel front office, committing
between 39 and 49 h per week to the job. Part-
time hours range from 20 to 32 per week. Only
two of the respondents were working in a
temporary or internship. Split shifts were
worked by 11 per cent of the respondents. This
model of employment is, not surprising, not
popular with employees.
Respondents and their education/
training
Table 2 points to a reasonable level of educa-
tional attainment among respondents relative
to the perceived demands of the job, and is
consistent with the findings of the Baum and
Odgers (2001) study which noted that higher
levels of education were not required to under-
take work in front office. Within the sample,
only 34 per cent of the respondents studied in
the area of hotel front office prior to entering
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Table 2: Educational attainment
Educational level (n=64) %
Primary 0 five years, 29.7 per cent want to remain in their
Secondary 28.1
Vocational 14.1
Certificate/diploma 32.8
Bachelors degree 25
the sector. Although 66 per cent of the respond-
ents did not study any formal full-time school,
college or university programme in hotel or
front office work before entering into their
position, many of their educational attainments
are transferable skills for front office work.
Other areas studied by respondents at post-
secondary level included business studies 16 per
cent, accountancy 3 per cent, office administra-
tion 16 per cent, computing/information tech-
nology 8 per cent,; sports/leisure activities 3
per cent and other wide ranging educational
areas 20 per cent — languages, professional
cookery, hairdressing/beauty, media and travel
consultancy. This trend towards nonspecialist
training for front office also appears across a
number of European countries. Baum and
Odgers (2001: 93) note that hotels accept the
reality of the marketplace and are willing to
recruit staff without front office experience
provided they have good general education and
a willingness to learn.
In terms of part-time and short courses
undertaken since commencing work in the
hotel sector, most of the respondents have not
been able to avail of taking external courses in
front office and tourism. For the majority 56
per cent of front office employees surveyed, the
skills required for front office work were acquired
exclusively on-the-job. This situation is not
substantially different from that found in other
European countries (Baum and Odgers, 2001).
Respondents and their work/careers
For 66 per cent of the respondents, their current
employer was their first experience of hotel
work. The balance had previously worked in
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Baum and Devine
hotels elsewhere in NI, 34 per cent. But only
17.2 per cent of employees surveyed plan to
remain in their current job for between one to
current employment for less than one further
year. This reflects potential instability in the
hotel working environment. This finding is in
agreement with Riley et al. (2002) in stating
that: if an industry contains a wide range of enter-
prises of different size and a wide range of jobs
therein, then inter-industry mobility will be encour-
aged because there are always vacancies for new
entrants to take up (p. 99). Table 3 certainly
suggests that plans are vague and may also be
a result of the lack of commitment to the
current establishment (due to poor wages) and
or the choice of many other positions available
within the hotel labour market in NI.
This degree of instability in the work envi-
ronment is in line with the generally high
labour turnover in equivalent work areas in
Western Europe (Baum and Odgers, 2001).
Another possibility for labour turnover in this
sector is the low wages. The respondents were
asked to state their salary per hour, week or
yearly. The average weekly wage was recorded
at Ł210 per week. This is in line with findings
from The Northern Ireland New Earnings
Survey (2003) for the hotel and restaurant
sector in NI, which displayed the lowest average
gross weekly earnings in comparison to their
Great Britain counterparts.
Respondents and their future plans
Respondents were asked about their career
plans. Table 4 indicates that the majority 61 per
cent see their future firmly within the hotel
sector. This demonstrates a commitment to
hospitality work.
Promotion opportunities among the respond-
ents were recognised as being relatively limited
— with 32.8 per cent rating promotion oppor-
tunities as ‘poor’. This presents little motivation
for a group of employees who are committed
to remaining within the hotel sector, substan-
tively within the same hotel thus, suggesting
problems in the future.
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 Skills and training in the hotel sector

The nature of front office work
The survey was designed to collect responses
to a series of statements about front work from
the employees surveyed. All the respondents
were asked to indicate the extent of their agree-
ment or disagreement with each statement by
circling the appropriate number on a five-point
Likert-type scale of 1–5, where 1 equates to
Table 3: Plans to remain in current job
How long plan to remain in current job?
(n=64)
Less than 6 months
Six months to one year
Between one and five years
No plans at this stage
Table 4: Next career move
Career move (n=64)
Promotion in my current job
Move elsewhere in this hotel
Move to another hotel
Move out of the hotel sector
Other
‘Strongly Disagree’ and 5 to ‘Strongly Agree’.
Table 5 indicates the mean response to each
statement.
Table 5 provides a somewhat mixed picture
of perceptions of work in hotel front office
among respondents. They were strongly in
agreement with the statement relating to the
challenge and demands of front office work
closely followed by the enjoyment of meeting
and greeting customers. By contrast the
respondents chiefly disagreed with the state-
ment ‘I was familiar with most of the tasks in
%
front office before starting work’ ranking it at
the lowest level and the respondents did not
7.8 agree with the statement that front office work
21.9 is ‘common sense’. It comes as no surprise that
17.2 these respondents found the work of front
53.1 office as both demanding and challenging,
requiring professional skills to carry out the
tasks of the job as many of the respondents 66
per cent had not studied in the area of hotel
front office prior to entering the sector. This
% secures the belief from the Northern Ireland
Labour Force Survey (2004) stating that a
37.6 continuing proportion of the workforce requires
9.4 employability skills — employers reported a
14
gap between the skills of the current workforce
23.4
and those needed to meet their business objec-
15.6
tives. From this assessment, it was perhaps

Table 5: Working in hotel front office

Statement about hotel front office work Mean response Number

on five-point (n=64)
scale

Front office work is a challenging and demanding area of work 4.61 64

I enjoy meeting and greeting customers within my job 4.52 64
I enjoy the organisational parts of my job 4.28 64
I enjoy the use of technology within my job 4.19 64
Front office work is all about personality 4.05 64
My area of work is well respected by my family and friends 3.91 64
Front office is my preferred field for work and career progression 3.75 64
Most work in front office is common sense 3.58 64
A specialist course (in hospitality) is useful for front office work 3.48 64
I would like the opportunity to work in other areas of the hotel industry 3.37 64
I was familiar with most of the tasks in front office before I started work in 3.00 64
this area

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 Baum and Devine

surprising to find that college training in the Table 6: Importance of skills in front office
front office areas was not rated as a major need work
by respondents.
Importance of skills Mean Number
Other areas found to be in a relative strong response on (n=64)
agreement with the respondents was their 5 point scale
enjoyment of the organisational and tech-
nology-related dimensions of the job with a Communication (oral) 4.89 64
slightly weaker agreement on the importance Customer care 4.88 64
of personality in undertaking hotel front office Interpersonal 4.86 64
work. Team work 4.86 64
Use of FO equipment 4.59 64
Skills and front office work Professional and ethical 4.47 64
standards
The questions relating to the skills require-
Communication (written) 4.38 64
ments for work in hotel front office asked
Use of technology 4.27 64
respondents to rate a range of skills in terms Health and safety 4.13 64
of whether they were of ‘Very Low Importance’ Leadership qualities 4.08 64
(1) through to ‘Very Important’ (5) on a five- Marketing 3.72 64
point Likert-type scale. Table 6 presents the Accounting 3.70 64
mean rating for each identified skills area. Legal issues 3.69 64
The NI respondents were reluctant to
consider any area as ‘unimportant’. ‘Legal issues’
is recorded as having the lowest importance at
3.69. Thus one may assume that NI employees (Baum and Odgers, 2001). Indeed, a common
have high demands and expectations of their hotel sector response in English-speaking coun-
skills requirements for their front office job.The tries (Ireland, UK) is that foreign languages,
skills seen as most important are identified as while desirable in recruiting front office staff,
soft or generic skills; particularly oral commu- are not a priority because most guests have
nication, customer care, interpersonal skills, functional English.
team work and the application of ethical stand- The findings with respect to languages point
ards. By contrast, technical (use of technology), to the fact that only one respondent to the
health and safety, and applied business-related survey was not a native English speaker and,
skills including leadership qualities, marketing indeed, all but this one were either British or
and accounting rate lower. Irish.This finding is very much at variance with
trends in front office elsewhere in the British
Language skills and front office work Isles, particularly in larger cities such as Dublin,
The ability to use foreign languages has bene- Glasgow and London where an increasingly
fits for the work undertaken by front office cosmopolitan presence is evident among front
staff in hotels serving international visitors. office workers (Baum and Odgers, 2001).
Only 28 per cent of the respondents, however,
had a second language along side their mother DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
tongue, although they were quite aware of the The outcomes of this study highlight the argu-
importance of foreign languages. French and ment that, in service work in particular, commu-
Spanish were the most widely used second nication, emotional and aesthetic contributions
language albeit at a low level. to work are strongly influenced by the cultural
This poor level of language skill is inline and economic context within which they are
with most other Western European countries, located. NI in recent years has achieved
where mono- or bilingualism is the norm economic growth, falling unemployment and

© 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. 1467-3584 $30.00 Vol. 7, 3/4, 269–280 Tourism and Hospitality Research 277
 Skills and training in the hotel sector
higher economic activity rates. In contrast,
productivity and competitiveness of many of
the hospitality businesses, however, lags behind
the rest of the UK and indeed other nations
in the Western world. NI has a number of chal-
lenges to face in the skills arena — dealing with
the impact of new skills and flexibility demanded
by increasing globalisation and working with
the reality of a national and increasingly inter-
national labour market. If NI businesses
are to compete successfully in an international
context they must address the negative impact
of skill deficiencies in light of the economic,
political, cultural and social factors that shape
the workforce.
This study points to a number of conclusions
and recommendations for hotel front office
work in NI. In particular, the findings of this
study show that this work area is dominated
by young, female employees, with a combina-
tion of general and vocational education and
with fairly extensive experience of hotel work.
The underpinning level of educational attain-
ment of hotel front office workers in NI, prior
to commencing work in the sector suggests a
requirement to have better employability skills
to meet the demands and challenges of the job.
In particular, due to the importance placed on
communication and the more generic skills
requirements for the job, it gives recognition
to the need for a specialist front office training
qualification with more focus given to the level
of language skills offered. As an integral part of
any organisation’s attempt to achieve competi-
tiveness is to invest significantly in the skills of
their workforce, this study showed that most
of the respondents have not been able to avail
of taking external courses in front office or
tourism and thus, the skills required for front
office work were acquired exclusively in-house.
This reinforces the notion that training is often
viewed as a cost rather than a benefit and must
be kept at the lowest possible level. The study
also points to the fact that front office work
offers unstable prospects in terms of career
developments due to relatively limited promo-
tional prospects and low wages. Better human
278 Tourism and Hospitality Research Vol. 7, 3/4, 269–280
resource techniques could be adopted, for
example a more competitive system and effective
measures, such as providing a supportive envi-
ronment to staff together with a flexible salary
package, should be established as soon as
possible in order to attract and keep better
talent.
This study suggests that front office work is
undertaken by a wide range of employees with
diverse backgrounds. There is little evidence
that the work area attracts people with a clear
career focus on the front office area or that
there is long-term commitment to front office
work among those currently in employment in
the area. These findings are consistent with
parallel findings elsewhere within developed
economies but contrast with a far stronger
career focus found in the hotels of developing
countries. Unlike other areas of hotel work in
NI, front office remains dominated by recruits
from the domestic labour market, pointing
possibly to the ‘soft skills’ (languages and
communications, emotional, aesthetic, market-
related) that employers believe may not be
offered by those drawn from external labour
markets. This analysis is of considerable interest
when set alongside the growing literature on
hospitality employment internationally, typified
by the work of Hoque (1999) in the UK and
Adler and Adler (2004).This latter work, located
in Hawaii, points to clear stratification of
employment within hospitality on a variety of
grounds including gender, ethnicity and voca-
tional motivation. The study of front office in
NI, in part, confirms aspects of the Adler and
Adler study but also points to far greater labour
market parochialism and stability than is to be
found in ‘idyllic’ resort locations.
In conclusion, an employee skills set is a vital
operational tool because service determines the
success of the hospitality industry. When hospi-
tality establishments compete for business, it is
the service levels that staff provides, that will
set it apart from the competition, encouraging
repeat business and increasing profitability. This
paper, however, suggests that there is evidence
to support the contention that hotel work,
© 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. 1467-3584 $30.00

specifically in front office, is constructed by a
combination of economic, political, cultural
and other factors in the local economy. It also
points to a work area that has not necessarily
changed in response to developments within
this wider contextual framework and this poses
challenges to all stakeholders with an interest
in this area of work — notably employers,
educational providers and those seeking careers
in hotel front office work. The second of these,
the education sector, has not really responded
to the needs of the work environment in the
hotel front office with programmes designed
specifically to meet its skills needs. Indeed,
bespoke courses, which previously existed for
this area of work in locations such as NI, are
now relatively unusual, replaced by generic
supervisory and management skills programmes
that do not focus on the specific needs of hotel
front office.
At a regional level, this paper points to the
need for further and more detailed analysis of
the NI tourism labour market and for compar-
ative studies into similar service work else-
where. This paper also points to some of the
challenges that tourism in NI faces with respect
to its human resources and the need to invest
in more specific training and support to include
better selling and marketing skills as well as
proficiency in languages in order for the
tourism sector to compete internationally.
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