Journal of Tourism & Hospitality
Open Access

Abstract

Employment Opportunities and Challenges in Tourism and Hospitality Sectors

Sintayehu Aynalem, Kassegn Birhanu and Sewent Tesefay

Tourism is one of the main economic engines for nations with total contribution of 9.5% to global GDP and 8.9% of total employment in 2013. Tourism can only flourish if the industry can employ qualified staff or sustainable workforce which is the heart for excellent and prompt service delivery system. Thus, this review made to give summarized information about challenges and opportunities of tourism and hospitality employment. Narrative review was used where selected and related articles, reports and studies of the topic are compared and summarized. Tourism and hospitality creates diversified employment opportunities in different sectors like accommodation, food and beverage establishments, transportation services, travel agencies, tour operation companies, natural and cultural attractions sites. The challenges are poor pay and working conditions, sexual harassment, discrimination, unequal treatment, low education and training, undemocratic and rigid corporate culture, seasonality and political instability which drastically reduce the number of visitors which in turn brings high employees’ turn over. Concerned stakeholders including, academicians, policy makers and business owners of tourism and hospitality shall take actions to bring sustainable work force for the development tourism and hospitality sectors.