Thailand's hospitality industry is growing by leaps and bounds, already approaching 40 million annual arrivals, becoming one of the leading sectors of the economy. The main risk to continued growth is ability to train and mobilise sufficient qualified human resources to cater for the burgeoning tourist numbers. Top management can readily be sourced from overseas sources. Thailand is a highly-prized and preferred location for skilled managers. However, the middle and lower ranks of hotel, restaurant and general tourism personnel are not so easy to develop. Raw recruits are always keen to join the hospitality industries but it takes more than donning a uniform or an apron to make a service-ready hospitality professional.
To fulfil training needs, three experienced European-origin professionals have teamed-up to start a unique operation. Kingsmen Hospitality was created by the inspiration of Danish-born and trained Michael Clarke, along with Claus Enghave, subsequently joined by French-born Roman Fix. All three graduated in various aspects of hospitality management: Michael Clarke as Chef de Cuisine, then graduated in hospitality management; Claus Enghave has served as Chef de Rang, Maitre d'Hotel, Sommelier and Banquet director; Roman Fix graduated in restaurant and catering operation. All three working with top class worldwide establishments, including those with Michelin stars, located on four continents.
Their commitment is to communicate the secrets of service perfection to hospitality industry entrants in Thailand. Starting with raw recruits, they combine training with work experience in selected hospitality establishments.
We asked Kingsmen partner Roman Fix to explain what are the unique features of Kingsmen Hospitality services:
What services does Kingsmen offer to the hospitality industry?
Basically we are a Bangkok-based Hospitality company proposing a vast array of short- and long-term staffing solutions to hotels, bars and restaurants in Thailand. We also propose tailored training programs ranging Restaurant Service Techniques, Bartending & Mixology, Business & Hospitality English as well as Food Handling. We're also building up a section taking care of everything related to MICE and events management.
Is the composition of the market changing?
Most visitors will continue to come from the Asia Pacific region, over 31 million by 2020, followed by European tourists, over 5 million. The number of Chinese visitors is expected to keep growing and the presence of Korean and Japanese markets is remaining strong. As for European tourists, Thailand has always been a privileged destination, formerly more for Northern European countries but nowadays it is more global, also extending to Southern European countries.
So there is a great need and urgency for the entire HoReCa sector to source experienced hospitality workers who have been properly trained, arriving on time to work, being well-groomed and having good professional skills.
Improving the capacity of this workforce to communicate efficiently with visitors is another key aspect. English remains the Lingua Franca but there is also a huge need to master a third language in addition to English.
How do you manage recruitment?
Recruitment is one of our key challenges, along with reducing turnover and making sure our staff can deliver the best quality of service. We're currently working to recruit people. The biggest source is social media. This is such a powerful tool, especially in Asia and particularly in Thailand. You just have to play with it, whether you like it or not. We work a lot with Facebook for instance. We are constantly inviting new potential recruits to come to meet us, take our training and enrol. A bit like in the army, actually! We are lucky to have a great word of mouth network.
Having a good network is definitely one key ingredient and knowing who is interested to work with us is primordial. Luckily all three of us have been working in hospitality, so we do have strong relationship with the sector. We are planning to organise recruitment drives shortly. We are also organising partnerships with vocational colleges and universities.
Thailand's hospitality sector has quite high staff turnover. How do you respond to that?
Based on our experience, over 75% of the time, workers leave companies for three reasons:
- They are not properly taken care of, or they are left on their own: This is our primordial concern. We want to make sure that we have a direct relationship with each of our Kingsmen. Our relationship with our staff is the core of our activity. Our personalised training, privileged relationship with properties (hotels, bars, restaurants) and individual follow-up with each of our workers, makes the difference.
- They're not happy with their management: There aren't bad staff or workers but only bad managers. So we have established a privileged relationship with our Kingsmen. They are not just part of the company: they ARE the company. We are building an inclusive Monitoring & Evaluation program to make sure everyone is up to the task proposed and happy to participate.
- They are not paid enough: The wages we pay our Kingsmen are recognised to be among the highest in the market, and our margin is extremely reasonable. We pay our Kingsmen a bit over market rates, and they know that. We're also running monthly market studies to make sure that our offers remain attractive to all sides. Team members work directly with us, regardless of the nature of their contract, partners and clients alike.
Our incentive program is tailored to make sure everyone is satisfied with what they earn. The more competency they achieve, the more skills they develop, better English, improved grooming, extra knowledge and skills on wine and cocktails for instance, the more they are able to earn.
We are the only company in Bangkok offering training, monitoring and evaluation for our employees at such a deep level.
Get more skills: get better pay cheques, not by next year but by next month. That's a key element to keep people working with you.
With such excellent strategies and detailed implementation, there is no doubt that the young Kingsmen recruits are destined to become the most skilled and highly motivated hospitality staff in the Thailand market.
Author: Roman Fix: rfix@kingsmenhospitality.com
KINGSMEN HOSPITALITY CO. LTD 760/280 Phattanakarn Soi 38, Suanluang, 10250 Bangkok, Thailand. Mobile: +66943237428, Info: contact@kingsmenhospitality.com
Website: http://www.kingsmenhospitality.com
Series Editor: Christopher F. Bruton is Executive Director of Dataconsult Ltd, chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult's Thailand Regional Forum provides seminars and extensive documentation to update business on future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.
