Rethinking Talent Management Strategies in Malaysia’s Tourism Sector Post COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 triggered the downfall of global economies and heavily impacted the Malaysian tourism sector as the country’s borders were closed since March 2020. The decrease in number of tourists’ arrival into the nation caused huge losses for the tourism sector and unemployment rates have surged with more than 800,000 employees being out of employment and about 30 percent were for the hospitality and tourism sector. Although the government has provided numerous incentives and assistance to employers and employees from all sectors of the economy, the progress is rather slow, and it may take time to recover fully. One of the main challenges is the misfit of the employees who were retrenched as different knowledge, skills and abilities requirements are sought. Given this background, the paper provides avenues to rethink tourism talent management strategies post COVID-19 for the relevant stakeholders since the tourism sector is still seeing a surge in unemployment rates. This paper provides an up-to-date viewpoint in relation to COVID-19 and its spill over onto the Malaysian tourism sector while addressing the shift from ‘Person-Job-Fit’ towards a new norm ‘Talent-Job-Fit’ in managing tourism talent in order to create sustainable talent management within the sector.