Courses adapt to meet needs

With the dynamics of the job market changing in all sorts of ways, the tourism industry is facing the shifts and movements with equanimity.

Simon Fulham, communications officer with CERT (the tourism training and development agency), is optimistic about the future. "CERT is doing very well at moment," he assures, "even faced with the competition posed by the huge choices and options for people coming out of school in IT and other areas - and with the fact that there are fewer leaving school in the 16-plus age group, making less people available to the tourism industry."

CERT figures and facts further reassure about the health of the industry. "Last year we'd 6.3 million tourists in Ireland and there's been a corresponding growth in the number of hotels. At the moment we've got 854 hotels in the country, which is up on the 1999 figure of 826, and a 1998 total of 775.

"The numbers employed in the industry as a whole are growing too. There were 184,140 people working in hotels, guesthouses, restaurants and licensed premises up to December 2000 while the same figure for the year before was 175,604.

"In hotels alone the numbers went up, too - 53,906 in 1999 as compared to 57,397 in 2000, an increase of 6 per cent in the figure for hotel workers. Back in 1992 there were 30,693 hotel workers in the country; between 1996 and 1999 alone that figure grew by 39 per cent. The jump in restaurant figures is just as startling - an 118 per cent rise from 19,893 in 1992 to 43,268 last year."

Significant also are the increasing numbers of restaurants; 1,263 in 1992 as opposed to 2,120 last year, a rise of 68 per cent. Fulham has the figures too on the regional distribution of employment. These are highest, not surprisingly given the nature of the industry involved, in the south and east where the figure is 45 per cent.

The Border counties, midlands and west come next with a figure of 30 per cent while 25 per cent of those employed in tourism work in Dublin. "Dublin has 15 per cent of the industry's hotels, restaurants, guesthouses and licensed premises," explains Fulham, "while 44 per cent are located in the southern and south eastern part of the country. The Border, midlands and western areas have 41 per cent."

So - with encouraging growth recorded all round where do most people going into the industry want to work? "Reception is very popular. It always has been and looks likely to remain so," Fulham says. "We run reception/front of house courses, most particularly in Dundalk IT and in the Tourism College, Killybegs, leading to a National Crafts Certificate in reception/front office."

Other institutes and colleges offering courses in reception and front of house training include the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology where they are completing details of a 29-week hotel and front office operations course.

Waterford Institute of Technology's course for the national diploma in business studies in tourism and hospitality studies also qualifies students for reception work.

The Cork Institute of Technology has a hospitality skills course which includes front office training and in Ballyfermot College of Further Education the hotel, catering and tourism department has a course specifically on reception and guiding.