A New World During COVID-19: Employability Skills in Tourism, Hospitality, and Events Organizations

Abstract

COVID-19 has changed the landscape of the tourism, hospitality, and events industry worldwide. This study determines if the employability skills needed in the tourism, hospitality, and events industry in Australia and Singapore have changed since the pre-COVID era. The implications of this research can impact tertiary education institutions which need to address necessary changes to employability skills in the curriculum. The Australian Higher Education Standards Framework created by TEQSA require employability skills as part of the learning outcomes for all degree courses. The Department of Education, Science, and Training developed the Employability Skills for the Future Report. This report identified eight employability skills, and 13 personal attributes, which were deemed necessary by employers. Studies prior to the COVID-19 pandemic 112identified communication, leadership, and teamwork as the top three skills areas needed for the tourism, hospitality, and events industry. This study utilized the Employability Skills Framework to conduct a critical assessment of employability skills needed during COVID-19. Job advertisements were searched to identify a range of positions for investigation–from frontline to back-of-house and from junior supervisory to executive levels. Fifteen positions were chosen, and for each position, 20 job descriptions as detailed in job advertisements were collected from Australia and 20 respective job descriptions from Singapore. This resulted in 40 job descriptions for each position for a total of 600 job description for analysis. The researchers used a qualitative approach and NVivo software to analyze the employability skills for each of the job titles in Australia and Singapore respectively, to determine similarities and differences of skills needed between each country. Overall, the results indicate that communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills were the most desired skills by the industry. These findings provide information for the development of curriculum to meet the respective needs of each country as the industry moves through this pandemic era.