Hospitality: the new rock'n'roll

With the staffing crisis only likely to get worse, David Coubrough reckons that it's time to pump up the volume.

Owners, lenders, developers and operators gathered like confetti at a wedding for the recent International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin.

We heard from the World Travel & Tourism Council that, following the trauma of 2001, we are now in recovery mode and that by the end of this year a foundation could be laid for a return to boom times in 2003 and 2004.

This was all very heartening news, but there is a problem: where are the people going to come from to resource a potential boom, in western Europe in particular?

The facts are stark. Birth rates in most of the developed world are well below the replacement rate, certainly in western Europe. On present trends, the population of almost every western European nation will decrease in the next 30-50 years - dramatically, in some cases.

In Germany, a United Nations survey predicts that the population will shrink from 82 million in 2000 to 71 million in 2050. Italy will see an even more precipitous drop, from 58 million to 43 million.

These statistics are striking enough but, from a strategic human resources point of view, the worst news is that the decline will come almost entirely at the expense of the workforce. In Germany, the labour market will shrink from 40 million to 30 million - a staggering 25% reduction in the managers, workers, thinkers and doers available to keep this huge economy going.

At the Berlin conference, the session on Human Capital - The Shrinking Labour Market, which presented these stark facts, was largely ignored by the financial big players and industry leaders, while my panel representing the leading human resources professionals from Hyatt, Starwood, Hilton and the Lausanne Hotel School told it as it is.

It is a fact that while Europe declines, other regions will grow significantly (for example, India will gain 500 million people, Nigeria 160 million, Indonesia 100 million, Bangladesh 140 million, Mexico 50 million, etc).

What are we to do? We must become properly joined up with Europe to market the hospitality industry to the developing nations, and offer training and development across all key European cities. Opportunities and challenges could be packaged to attract a vast workforce to combat the current and future shortfalls.

Make hospitality the new global rock ‘n' roll - it is 30 years since we danced to Crocodile Rock. It was the West, after all, that gave popular music to the world.

The industry needs a united, co-ordinated European approach and, while we don't have to adopt the euro, we can adapt Slade to sing "Mama, we're all Europeans now".

David Coubrough is chief executive of both Portfolio International and its parent company, Prime People