TOURISM & CATERING: After a two-year slowdown, numbers of people training are breaking records for the tourism/catering industry. Rose Doyle reports

At the heart and forward movement of our tourism and hospitality industry for the past 35 years, CERT has been taking long, illuminating looks at the way things have been, and should be, going in the industry.

With employment down after a decade of growth, the organisation which co-ordinates education, recruitment and training in tourism, reports that the most significant growth in recent years has been in tourism services and attractions - there there are now an estimated 400 additional operators, an increase of 15 per cent on l999 figures. Heartening, too, are 2001 figures showing an increase in people being trained in the industry.

After a two-year slowdown in training, 11,800 new recruits and employees took CERT courses last year, an 8 per cent increase on 2000 and a new record for training in the industry. The only area to show a decline was self-catering accommodation, where the estimated decline was 3 per cent. The conclusions drawn from these and other CERT findings come down firmly on the side of competiveness as a key issue for the future.

CERT, keen to ensure that growth takes the right direction, has already begun to act on its findings. Improving productivity and performance feature prominently in the organisation's programmes for 2002 and beyond.

Fiona Scott is CERT's very new public relations executive. Three weeks into the job she is enthusiastic and confident that the way forward has to do with quality. "Because we're so very concerned about quality," she explains, "we've recently launched the CERT Best Practice Programme to help boost tourism performance and competiveness. Other programmes like it will follow. These are challenging times and since Ireland can't compete on costs we'll have to be ahead on quality and excellence."

Scott points out that Ireland has never been a workplace "noted for low labour costs. So what we need to go for is an increase in training and excellence. We want to benchmark training in Ireland against international best practice and so will be encouraging the industry to increase training and improve performance, as well as the quality of service."

The move is based on the findings of a CERT international benchmarking study which concluded that Irish companies could seriously improve performance by developing these self-same principles of best practice.

CERT's new Best Practice Programme is designed to help companies improve operational performance, provide practical assistance to all companies, identify cost-savings and performance-enhancing measures within each business.

The first Best Service Excellence Awards have recently been presented to nine service companies by CERT. The winners ranged across the country and, between them, put 1,200 management and staff through intensive training in areas such as communications, team building, empowerment and delivering excellence in service. The CERT programme is designed to help employers get the most out of staff in a structured and sustainable way in order to lead to higher staff retention rates and better standards of service in the industry.

In the two years since its launch, some 4,000 managers and staff members in more than 50 businesses have completed the programme.

Looking to the year ahead, CERT offers some interesting statistics. Responding to a CERT questionnaire on business prospects, the replies of operators were mixed. One third thought things looked worse than they did this time last year, 28 per cent thought business would be better next year, while 12 per cent preferred to wait and see.

Asked about employment figures, 57 per cent of those in the business anticipated having the same numbers in employment next year, a quarter planned to hire additional staff, and just over a tenth thought staff numbers would be down.

It was in its end-of-year report for 2001 that CERT noted that, despite the prospect of 2002 being another difficult year, some 82 per cent of businesses expect employment levels to be at least maintained at 2001 levels. The most optimistic forecasts were in the hotel sector, where only 10 per cent of operators projected a reduction in staffing.

CERT also looked at the employment of non-nationals in tourism. The growth in these figures is estimated at 20 and 30 per cent of total industry employment, though indications are that future growth is unlikely to be as marked as this. Even so, CERT is confident that "cultural diversity will remain a feature of the tourism workforce into the future."

Given that the events of September 11th made it an extraordinary year, there's still a warning not to be ignored in the fact that employment levels in some key sectors in 2001 fell back close to those recorded in 1999. Employment in hotels and restaurants, which together had accounted for more than 100,000 jobs in 2000, fell by 5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. In the licensed trade, employment fell by 2 per cent.

With the future of the industry firmly in mind, CERT is continuing to implement its Strategic Plan 2000-06, now well advanced on most fronts. As a part of this, the organisation is in the process of putting into place the Education Project element of the People in Place programme, an industry-led initiative which aims to protect and enhance the industry's core values. Pupils of an initial 20 primary schools acros the state will be given the People in Place message about the importance of caring for domestic and international visitors as well as the environment, with the overall word highlighting the value of tourism in their localities.

CERT acknowledges that the industry is facing difficult times ahead but is confidently buoyant that "by addressing the factors threatening to make it less competitive, it can survive and thrive in the future." The organisation warns against complacency, however, and affirms that "the nature of Irish tourism is that it must compete on quality, rather than on price." Which is why, together with the need to hold competitiveness, CERT is intent on urging tourism businesses to "examine how they can move quality and productivity centre-stage."