Regardless of growth in manpower development and the available complex training programmes, tourism businesses continue to face a number of challenges in upskilling and reskilling the work force. Even though lifelong learning has been promoted by most businesses, low skilled employees have been excluded from participation. Most businesses invest their training in highly skilled individuals and less on low-skilled employees. The paper uses a qualitative approach where in-depth interviews were conducted with key tourism stakeholders. The results show that measures have been put in place for supporting sustainable tourism recovery, promoting greener tourism systems and transition into the digital age to make the sector more resilient post Covid-19 pandemic. With the rapid change in the global technological environment, the tourism industry is facing lack of skilled manpower in emotional and technology intelligence to fix the existing job opportunities. Thus, the pandemic has forced many organisations to accelerate the adoption of digital technologies and digital offerings at a faster rate. Hence, the use of technology has improved service delivery across sales, customer service and operations. There are a number of benefits associated with upskilling and re-skilling of employees which vary from inclusive growth to reduction on unemployment benefits dependency. Re-skilling the employees to be life-long learners and critical thinkers would ultimately benefit the organizations and help employees in their self-growth. This paper integrates different approaches in preparing employees during the new normal to respond to the changing employment scenarios in times of uncertainties, transformations, and challenges. The paper explores new trends on training that would support the development of relevant competencies and skills in the labour market. The paper concludes that cooperation and creativity, continuous professional development and IT have to change the tourism business and help other sectors to adapt and enter into a new digital transformation age.
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In-Text Citation: (Cloete et al., 2022)
To Cite this Article: Cloete, G., Ndlovu, J., And, A. M. K., & Prabhakaran, S. (2022). Prospects for Manpower Development in Tourism Sector: Re-training for Relevance in the Post Covid-19 World. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(12), 1680– 1690.
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