‘More nationals are eyeing careers in hospitality sector’

More Qatari nationals have expressed “strong interest” in pursuing careers in the hospitality sector, which is facing challenges in attracting talent due to growing competition in the local and regional industry, according to a hotel executive.
“In the region, the hospitality sector is growing. It is quite difficult to attract talent, in some cases, and you need to diversify where to get the people from. Currently, we have a lot of interest from Qatari talents that are open to start hospitality careers, which we would very much welcome because it gives more authenticity to the experience of our guests,” InterContinental Doha the City general manager Pascal Eggerstedt said.
According to Eggerstedt, among the trending careers in the hospitality industry are food and beverage and information technology, as well as in sales and marketing.
“Because of the fast expansion of the restaurant scene in Doha, there’s a lot of talent that we’re looking for in food and beverage. In sales and marketing, the commercial side of the business has changed a lot over the past years.
“We work a lot with young talent that understand social media, and they interact with clientele on a commercial basis using the platforms that are now available to us, which we didn’t talk about a few years ago. I think technology will always be a game changer; and what you don’t know today, you will miss tomorrow. It’s absolutely something that we’re looking at,” he pointed out.
Eggerstedt said local and regional competition has posed some challenges in attracting talent, citing growth in the hospitality industry of other GCC players in the UAE, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Oman.
“If you see the growth factors in Qatar in the last three years, I think there were around 5,000 to 6,000 rooms added to the market so, we need a lot of people to come and work with us. Qatar has moved so fast but the trend is the same with other surrounding areas in the GCC.
“This makes it more competitive to attract the right and promising talent and we’re always ‘in war’ to attract talent because everybody wants to have the best people – the people who have a great potential to grow their careers with you so, it is not easy and it will not become easy in the coming years,” he said.
He said one way to overcome these challenges is that hotels forge partnerships with hospitality schools “to get the right talent from all around the world.”
“For example, at InterContinental Doha the City, we have about 14 nationalities in our team, which is fantastic because of the diversity, and it gives you great exposure of different backgrounds around the world,” he said.
He added: “When we talk about a great field like hospitality where there are so many different aspects of running the business, it’s not only a chef or a receptionist; there are so many other fields like sales and marketing, human resources, and finance, among others.