The Asia-Pacific Tourism Workforce of the Future

Abstract

This article addresses the challenges of long-term planning for a tourism workforce at a regional level, a significant yet underconceptualized area in the literature. We draw on Yeoman’s future thinking techniques to generate a four-quadrant matrix designed to facilitate the development of scenarios that identify workforce challenges the tourism sector in the Asia-Pacific is likely to face through to 2030. Applying a modified Delphi technique, an expert panel aided in the formulation of dimensions on which our matrix is based. Their inputs over three rounds informed the development of four scenarios for the future of the tourism workforce in the Asia-Pacific. Utilizing these scenarios or “possibility spaces,” the article provides a framework for discussion and a platform for workforce planning and policy within this region.

Keywords

Asia-Pacific tourism workforce scenario planning future 2030

Introduction: The Asia-Pacific, Tourism, and Its Workforce

There are indications that the Asia-Pacific region is emerging as a new epicenter of global tourism, set to challenge the traditional hegemony of Europe and North America in terms of both the number of international and domestic arrivals and the value of their spend. Tourism is projected to grow in the Asia-Pacific from a current 331 million international arrivals to 535 million by 2030 (UNWTO 2012a). The influence of the region on global tourism, however, extends beyond volume and value to include product, service, and brand innovations that learn from but then outstrip concepts from elsewhere. Driving such growth and change are rising regional living standards and, consequently, rapidly expanding levels of travel within the Asia-Pacific region itself. In particular, the rise of the newly affluent middle classes in the Asia-Pacific provides opportunities and challenges for the regional tourism industry. These, among a wider array of changes, portend significant impacts on the workforce environment into the future (ILO 2010) and highlight the need to adopt a long-term and strategic perspective.

Economic indicators demonstrate the importance of tourism to global employment. The industry is responsible for some 235 million jobs (UNWTO 2012b), equivalent to 1 in every 12 jobs in the global workforce. This figure is projected to grow exponentially over coming decades (to 296 million in 2019) in line with increased consumer demand for travel from existing and newly emerging markets. The ILO (2010) highlights the limited capacity for achieving numerical efficiencies within the tourism workforce, arguing that the structural and organizational characteristics of the industry mean it is unlikely that technological or systems solutions will significantly reduce labor intensity in key operational areas. Tourism faces systemic, intractable, and often cited workforce challenges relating to increasingly demanding customers (Goussinsky 2012), the sector’s status as an employer (Kusluvan 2003), problems in recruitment and retention of talented staff (Hughes and Rog 2008; Solnet, Ford, Robinson, Ritchie and Olsen 2014), the impact of stochastic demand on career opportunities (Richardson 2009), remuneration and workplace conditions (Davidson, McPhail, and Barry 2011), and employee participation and pressures placed on the human resource function (Hoque 2000; Riley, Ladkin, and Szivas 2002; Deery 2006; Baum 2007b; Solnet, Kralj, and Baum, forthcoming). It is difficult to foresee these factors and the underlying issues changing or disappearing although, undoubtedly, the precise nature of the work that people undertake within tourism will continue to evolve into the future (Baum 2007a).

The problem and challenge that this paper addresses centers on the intersection of predicted growth of tourism in the Asia-Pacific region, the impact of this situation on the region’s (tourism) workforce, and an apparent lack of long-term planning, policy formulation, and regional considerations for workforce development (Liu and Wall 2006). One explanation for this lack of planning in some parts of the Asia Pacific may reflect cultural considerations, particularly in so far as they relate to time. Burns (2004), for example, highlights the cultural limitations of applying westernized strategic planning processes for the Soloman Islands. Addressing this gap now is also timely in light of impending changes in the workforce environment in the region through measures such as the free labor market for professional workers in ASEAN from 2015 (ASEAN 2009; Chia 2011). There is little in such discussion that develops comprehensive and forward-viewing policy with respect to the workforce across parts of or the totality of the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, it is not surprising that the tourism workforce, representing the skills requirements of just one sector within a complex economic environment, does not attract analysis much beyond the unit of analysis provided by the nation-state (see, e.g., TILG 2006; LNTA 2009). While the case for what Daguerre and Etherington describe as active labor market policies as applied to future planning has been made in the context of tourism, it is only at a national level in Thailand (Esichaikul and Baum 1998). Therefore, we can surmise with reasonable confidence that, based on a review of the scholarly and trade literature as well as public policy sources, there is no evidence for a formal long-term workforce plan for tourism in the region or for its constituent parts beyond the individual state. In the absence of a forward-looking skeleton of this nature, planners, policy makers, and operators are unable to effectively reflect on how different futures may impact on their own circumstances, and are thus at a distinct disadvantage when compared to their counterparts in Europe (as we will note by reference to European Commission 2009, later in this discussion).

The purpose of this study is to attempt to fill this gap by adopting a longer-term perspective on tourism’s workforce in the Asia-Pacific region through to 2030. This is designed, in part, to compensate for the apparent failure of stakeholders in the public and private domain to address tourism workforce issues in a context that is both strategic and long-term (Baum and Szivas 2008). It is arguable that a vision of 2030 in such a narrow domain as the workforce of a specific industry sector may be considered futile and even foolhardy—how can such thinking have any value so far into a very uncertain future?

Our contention is not that the workforce challenges have not been acknowledged—they have (to some degree) as we have highlighted above. These issues manifest themselves in significantly different ways across the region. Ruhanen and Cooper (2009) interpret the challenges with respect to tourism employment in the specific context of the Asia-Pacific and caution against generalization with respect to tourism labor markets in the region, noting in particular the diversity that is characteristic both within and between its constituent countries.

With the benefits of hindsight, it is possible to attribute some of the challenges faced with respect to workforce management in the last 20 years to suboptimal forecasting or visioning by those at the helm of tourism development in the Asia Pacific. A review of the region’s current headline workforce issues, both in tourism and within the wider economy, begs the question about whether any of these could have found a space within scenarios scripted by earlier generations of planners. We may be drawn to conclude that, yes, these issues should have featured. Take, for example, current Australian labor shortages in tourism, exacerbated by a labor-hungry mining sector. Perceptive scenario analysis in 1990 might have identified likely demand for raw materials emanating out of economic growth in China and other Asian economies. Such analysis may also have drawn a clear link between this, Australia’s mineral wealth, and demands on labor that could impact across other sectors of the economy. Likewise, in 1990, Singapore was well on the way to developing its services hub position in the region. The seeds were already sown for the acute shortage of low-skilled workers it currently faces in tourism and across the wider economy (STPB/UNDP 1990) and the country’s status as a migration magnet for low- and high-skills workers was already evolving. Finally, in 1990, political change was afoot in many of the planned economies of Europe as well as in China, with an increasing openness to change—the consequences for this for tourism and its workforce requirements in China but also in Indochina might have shown up in the opportunity spaces created by effective scenario planning.

Thus, our argument is that a failure by our predecessors to think ahead and to envisage what the tourism workforce landscape might look like is as a direct contributor to contemporary woes. To avoid a recurrence of this, what is required are more sophisticated forward-looking models that offer stakeholders the opportunity to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. We do this by presenting not a single-point forecast (Inayatullah 2002) but rather a series of scenarios designed to encourage not one outcome but several, useful particularly in relation to mapping out complex and layered causal powers inherent in social processes and outcomes (Bergman, Karlsson, and Axelsson 2010).

This paper adopts a futures thinking approach drawing on, among others, Yeoman, Galt, and McMahon-Beattie (2005a) and Yeoman (2012). We propose four scenarios built on the intersection of two themes or drivers that we derived from an analysis of the broad literature on tourism workforce issues and then honed via a panel of experts. These experts evaluated a range of impacters in order to identify the two drivers most likely to shape the Asia-Pacific workforce environment in 2030. We paint a picture of each scenario and describe how it could play out in terms of workforce policy, practice, management, and development. We conclude with broad implications in both theoretical and practical terms for stakeholders in the region.

Scenario Planning

This article builds its analysis on a scenario-planning process, an approach that has been used to prepare organizations, governments, and regions for emergent futures. Although related to forecasting, scenario planning differs in that it assumes that a range of plausible but uncertain futures exist (van der Heijden et al. 2002). As Yeoman, Galt, and McMahon-Beattie (2005a, p. 7) articulate, “scenarios are a range of pictures and stories of the future that are constructed using drivers and trends that shape the future. These drivers are manipulated to give alternative outcomes in which plausible and multiple scenarios are constructed for a specific date in the future.”

Debate about the use of scenario planning in tourism has been limited, partly because of confidentiality of much of the work that has been undertaken for client organizations (Yeoman et al. 2007). Researchers have used scenario planning in tourism to examine a range of topics including natural heritage (Eden and Ackermann 1998), landscape amenity (Tress and Tress 2003), transport and mobility (Dubois and Ceron 2007; Page et al. 2010), and demographic and social change (Yeoman et al. 2010). Perhaps the most extensive use of scenario planning in tourism has been by Yeoman and his colleagues. This work covers a substantial number of studies for VisitScotland, including scenarios related to the foot and mouth disease outbreak (Yeoman, Lennon, and Black 2005b), the Iraq War (Yeoman, Galt, and McMahon-Beattie 2005a), climate change (Yeoman and McMahon-Beattie 2006), an influenza pandemic (Page et al. 2006), oil depletion (Yeoman et al. 2007), and transport issues (Page et al. 2010). Further work has been conducted on future tourists in 2030 (Yeoman 2008) and scenarios for tourism in 2050 (Yeoman 2012).

There is a paucity of studies that employ scenario planning in the context of the future direction of tourism’s workforce. One exception is the analysis provided by Oxford Research/The European Commission (2009) which employed scenario planning as a key route towards the identification of options for the future of the workforce in hotels and restaurants across the 27 member states of the European Union. The study identified four futures for European tourism, colorfully labeled as the “Marco Polo,” “Sunny Beach,” “Body Shop,” and “Asceticism” scenarios and, from these, derived the emerging tasks, competencies, and occupational roles at all levels within the industry, relative to each scenario. Others (e.g., Heicks 2010; McLennan et al. 2012; Orchiston 2011) have undertaken scenario planning work in the Asia-Pacific region; however, none of these studies advocated a whole of region approach, nor are they focused on the workforce, notwithstanding a parallel study appearing in this special issue (Robinson, Ritchie, Kralj, Solnet, Baum and Ford 2014).

The scenario planning approach to our analysis of the future of the tourism workforce in the Asia-Pacific employs three distinct methodological stages. First, we reviewed the literature on the subject to identify drivers of change in tourism generally and in relation to the tourism workforce specifically. Next we sought guidance from a panel of experts using three rounds of a modified Delphi method in order to clarify which drivers of change are likely to impact the tourism workforce environment of the Asia-Pacific region that, in turn, was used to develop four distinct workforce scenarios. Finally, we created the scenarios that evolved from the intersection of the two preeminent drivers. In the next section, we describe this Delphi method and the process we employed in this study.

The Delphi Method: Process and Results

Three rounds of a modified Delphi method were used in this study. The Delphi method is a technique of “structuring a group communication process so that the process is effective in allowing a group of individuals, as a whole, to deal with a complex problem” (Linestone and Turoff 1975, p. 621). The Delphi method was initially developed as a forecasting tool, employing a systematic and interactive process that engages a panel of experts on a chosen subject matter. This data collection method is not without criticism, in particular, concerns of its juxtaposition between a positivist and naturalistic paradigm making the establishment of validity, reliability, and rigor particularly challenging (Hassan and Keeney 2011). Another criticism of Delphi studies is the risk that the composition of the expert panel across rounds can change, thereby diminishing the continuity of the evolving consensus. Despite these criticisms, it is nonetheless a promising option and recommended in relation to informing future scenario studies (Nowak, Entreat, and Guenther 2011) and as such was deemed appropriate for the current study.

Following established processes for using a modified Delphi method (Hassan and Keeney 2011; Linestone and Turoff 1975; Nowak, Entreat, and Guenther 2011; Rowe and Wright 1999), we conducted three consultation rounds. Before seeking opinions from the expert panel, the process commenced by examining a broad range of tourism workforce literature (e.g., Baum 2007b; Baum and Szivas 2008; Kusluvan et al. 2010; Ladkin 2011; Solnet, Kralj, and Baum, forthcoming). We reviewed the body of literature to identify the factors most likely to influence the tourism workforce in the Asia-Pacific region into the future. This process involved each researcher individually reading the literature and composing a list of factors that were commonly mentioned across journal articles. The lists produced were then cross-checked against each other. Factors that appeared on all lists were considered the most representative “top-of-mind” factors and were therefore included in the first round of expert evaluation. First-round factors are briefly described in Table 1.

Table 1.

Influencing Factors on the Asia-Pacific Tourism Workforce in 2030.

Brief Description of Influencing Factor
1. The impact of global economic prosperity (or stagnation) on tourism growth in the Asia-Pacific region.
2. The degree to which rising labor costs in the Asia-Pacific region creates conflict with owner/investor expectations of return on investment.
3. The availability of frontline workers in the Asia-Pacific region willing to work in the tourism industry in an increasingly competitive employment environment globally.
4. The nature of consumer demand/expectations and the requirement for either customized, local, and authentic experiences or the continued rise of standardized, global products offered by international brands.
5. The direction of “brain drain” in terms of management talent either leaving the Asia-Pacific region or being attracted from the “traditional” economies of the United States and Europe.
6. The effect of political stability and harmony (or instability and hostile relationships) in the Asia-Pacific region on intraregional planning, cooperation, and growth.
7. The dynamic between low-cost labor and technology substitution in the Asia-Pacific tourism industry and its effect on service delivery and customer satisfaction.
8. The existence of free labor movements (such as ASEAN 2015) vs. closed borders and protectionism that inhibit migration flows.
9. The degree to which Asia-Pacific tourism economies will suffer competitively because of their dependence on an aging workforce.
10. The gap between prosperity and poverty across the Asia-Pacific region.

The next step was to select an expert panel to judge the importance of each item regarding the future of Asia-Pacific’s tourism workforce. The panel was identified using a “snowball” approach (Atkinson and Flint 2001; Noy 2008) initiated through an extensive network of existing professional associates. This network included senior industry professionals, government officers, academic researchers, and consultants with a common expertise in workforce planning and development issues across the Asia-Pacific or within major constituent countries of the region. The criteria for inclusion of participants were that they held a senior position in the private sector, public sector, government, or academe and were one or more of the following: tourism/hospitality/travel-focused, had a significant remit in the Asia-Pacific area, and/or were knowledgeable on workforce/HRM issues.

This process identified 72 potential expert panel members. Panelists were informed of the research aims by email and were asked to commit to completing multiple online survey rounds. A total of 47 experts indicated that they were willing and able to commit, representing an initial response rate of 65.2%. Panelists resided in 17 countries in the Asia-Pacific area and held varied roles and positions (industry, government, academic, consultant, and others) with specific professional responsibility for tourism workforce-related matters.

Delphi Round One

The first round of our Delphi process involved seeking opinions and feedback from panelists regarding the initial list of influential factors contained in Table 1. An online survey asked respondents to rank the likelihood and perceived impact of each of the 10 factors in terms of the tourism industry in the region (on a rating scale of 1 = “least important” to 7 = “most important”) and to elaborate where necessary. Panelists were also invited to suggest additional factors that they felt were likely to have a significant impact on the tourism workforce in the Asia-Pacific by the year 2030. All 47 experts who had agreed to participate responded to the first round.

Analysis of the data collected in Round One allowed the research team to identify factors that were consistently supported by panelists as well as those that were generally deemed insignificant or unlikely. Descriptive statistics were used to identify the overall means, standard deviations, and frequency of response types (e.g., number of times that “most important” or “least important” was selected) for each item. This process highlighted areas of strong agreement as well as lack of consensus in other areas. The open-ended responses were also reviewed and coded to draw attention to other themes deemed relevant and important by the panelists. Some items were merged while others were slightly revised, resulting in a shorter and manageable list of four workforce impact “key trends.” These key trends formed the basis for the second round of the Delphi process (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Ranking of the Likelihood of Key Trends Occurring.

Key Trends	Mean^a	1st Choice (Percentage)	1st + 2nd Choice (Percentage)
“Tourism will continue to benefit from economic growth and prosperity”	1.62	58.6	79.3
“Tourism experiences will be heavily influenced by technology”	2.07	27.6	75.9
“Tourists will demand highly individualized/customized experiences”	2.14	37.9	62.1
“Political stability and cohesion will exist across the Asia-Pacific region”	2.86	10.0	44.8

N = 31. Scale: 1 = most likely; 4 = least likely.

Delphi Round Two

The second round of the Delphi process required the same panelists to rank the likelihood of each the four workforce impact key trends occurring (from most likely to least likely). We received 31 responses (57.4% response rate of the available panelists), with panelists representing the same 17 countries as in Round One. Table 2 provides a broad summary of the results from Round Two.

In order to acquire richer data, the four key trends were further broken down into proposed drivers of change within the workforce arena. To illustrate, drivers of the “technology influence” trend included “tourism workforce adapts easily to the use of workplace technology” and “self-service technologies will be prevalent across the tourism sector.” The allocation of drivers to key trends was determined based on the analysis performed in Round One. Panelists were asked to comment on the likelihood of each of the anticipated drivers occurring and what impact these drivers might have in terms of shaping the key trends.

As can be seen from Table 2, the level of economic prosperity is clearly a trend that panelists believe to be the most likely influence on the regions workforce, and thus forms one of our scenario axes. However, the key trend for the second axis was less clear. Further analysis of the open-ended responses regarding key drivers revealed that panelists did not distinguish between the customization of tourism experiences and the influence of technology on experiences. Accordingly, we subsumed the “technology” trend into the “customization” trend and selected the “customization” trend as the dimension for the second axis of our matrix. In this regard, the resulting scenarios focus on customization (or otherwise) of tourism experiences while acknowledging the influence of technology on this trend.

Delphi Round Three

The final round sought final agreement from our panel regarding the selection of the two items for the axes of our scenario-planning matrix. All respondents from Round Two participated in this final round and all but two (93.5%) indicated that they were in agreement with the selection of dimensions for the axes of the matrix. One commented that they felt economic prosperity versus stagnation would be an influential factor but did not feel that customization versus standardization would be a significant factor in 2030. This respondent did not elaborate as to why they held this belief.

Having achieved agreement from the panel of experts, we plotted the two dimensions against each other to devise a four-quadrant scenario-planning matrix. Figure 1 depicts this matrix that forms the basis for the discussion and implications in the next sections. The axes were labeled to represent the extreme of the driver’s influence and its contrary position (e.g., There will be rain > There will be no rain). The resulting scenarios were then labeled: “Us and them,” “Dirt-cheap deals,” “Market of one,” and “Cookie cutter.” The next sections will further describe details of the four scenarios.

Figure 1.

The four-scenario matrix of “possibility spaces.”

Painting the Opportunity Space for Tourism’s Workforce in the Asia-Pacific, 2030

The four quadrants provided space wherein different visions of Asia-Pacific’s tourism workforce environment could be elaborated. The European Commission (2009, p. 58) note how the four extremes formed by the drivers and their contrary positions together create a “possibility space” within which understanding of how the future may evolve can be framed. In our study, it is somewhere within this possibility space that the actual future for the Asia-Pacific workforce of the future is likely to be located. While the evidence from the expert panel suggested the potential for a range of differing scenario possibilities, we distilled their judgments down to two core drivers of change within the Asia-Pacific’s tourism workforce environment, namely, economic prosperity versus sustained downturn and customized versus mass tourism experiences. These drivers, in turn, allow for the creation of four scenarios, each of which presents different implications for the workforce and its stakeholders—government, employers, employees, and education/training agencies. Using the rich data provided by our expert panel, these four scenarios were elaborated through a process of repeated analysis and interrogation within the research team, and implications for stakeholders were developed. A summary of the key features of each scenario is provided in Table 3. Each possible scenario will now be described in more detail.

Table 3.

Summary of the Four Scenarios.

	Us and Them	Dirt-Cheap Deals	Market of One	Cookie Cutter
Economic situation	Sustained downturn	Sustained downturn	Growth, growth, growth	Growth, growth, growth
Nature of consumer demand	Customized luxury for a privileged few, living it up	Large scale, localized demand for standardized, “cheap and cheerful” deals	High quality, customized services and products for large and growing market	Mass tourism dominates regionally; standardized services and products for large numbers of tourists
Tourism workforce characteristics	Employment opportunities in tourism—flat but demanding high skills/quality Employment deemed desirable and high status	High volume, low skills Mobile, low skills workforce from periphery to core	Demand for high numbers of highly skilled workers at all levels Competition for labor from other sectors Social exclusion from the tourism workplace of marginalized classes/groups High levels of mobility within the region Region acts as a magnet for employees from other countries	Focus on recruitment of high numbers Competition high from other sectors High levels of technology substitution to reduce dependence on labor
Tourism education and training	High-quality entrants in elite programs Skilled employees likely to migrate out of region	Low value placed on education and training by all stakeholders Focus on basic skills development in schools and workplace	High-status education and training Programs in demand from out of region	Training focuses on training large numbers in routine skills Schools/universities have low status and recognition High-quality education received out of region

Scenario 1: Us and Them

“Us and them” is a divided world, with a relatively few, privileged travelers in the region enjoying luxury and personalized experiences. The workforce is highly skilled and able to respond to their every need.

Relevant drivers from Delphi process (Round 2):

increased gaps between rich and poor

growth of niche tourism markets demand specialist skills and competencies

majority of tourists seeking customized experiences

global, luxury brands drive consumer choice

tourism workforce adapts easily to use of workplace technology

tourists adapt easily to use of experience-enhancing technology.

The context

The global economy remains stagnant in 2030, with consequences for growth and development across the Asia-Pacific region. The optimism that heralded double-digit growth in many countries of the region during the early years of the twenty-first century, fed by rising consumer demand in both the Asia-Pacific and the wider developed world, has evaporated. In its place, the regional economy experiences sustained stagnation, with a high proportion of the population in most of the larger countries (China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam) living in relative poverty, with few opportunities to travel. Population growth remains a challenge in some parts of the region and unemployment, especially between the vocal and militant young, remains stubbornly high. Economic pressures act as a barrier to regional and, indeed, global cooperation and integration and result in political tensions between regions and individual countries. Within the Asia-Pacific, the region remains characterized by heterogeneity in economic, social, and political terms and this is especially true in terms of national labor markets, which remain widely divergent.

Tourism and the tourist

Those who are able to travel, within the region, are from the middle classes who achieved relative wealth in the 1990s and 2000s and were seen, at the time, as at the vanguard of a new Asia-Pacific discerning consumer society. This large-scale, affluent class has not materialized. Rather, those able to travel internationally, within the region and beyond, form a relatively small elite and have developed discerning tastes, demanding experiences that are tailored to their interests and requirements. Tourists from outside of the region are also faced with ongoing economic challenges but those who do visit the Asia-Pacific likewise seek authentic, individualized delivery of products and services. Consumers in the region balance their preferences for higher-cost individualized, bespoke services at the destination with purchase of low-cost options in some areas of their vacations, particularly in relation to air travel where low-cost carriers, emerging as increasingly important in the Asia-Pacific in 2013, now dominate domestic, regional, and long-haul travel. By contrast, with stagnant regional and international travel, domestic tourism continues to grow in most countries of the region and the majority of this avails of local, low-cost services offered by small operators.

The workforce

As a consequence of economic downturn, tourism employment has not grown in the region to match national government projections or those of the UNWTO. Indeed, tourism organizations have responded to a flat market by seeking productivity efficiencies in all areas of their operations where this is permitted. Thus, technology has played a major role in enabling operators in all key sectors (accommodation, transport, food service, attractions) to individualize experiences while reducing the size of the workforce. There is, however, demand for high-end skills that are required for the customization of both technical and personal services. Tourism’s workforce is increasingly required to demonstrate a combination of operational, emotional, and aesthetic skills in meeting the needs of their discerning clientele.

Within the region, open labor markets (following on from agreement within ASEAN for free mobility of labor from 2015) sees talent concentrating in the economic hotspots within the Asia-Pacific, to the detriment of more peripheral destination areas. This is particularly the case in sectors such as air transport where the dominant low-cost carriers are headquartered in the major economic hubs in the Asia-Pacific but recruit their employees in those areas where labor is cheapest, the more economically marginalized countries of the region.

Governments in the region lose interest in tourism as an economic priority because of the failure of the sector to create large-scale employment opportunities, particularly for youth and minority communities. This, in turn, leads to a reduction in public sector investment in tourism development and marketing as well as in workforce development through formative vocational education and training and in-service development.

Education and training

As a consequence of the wider stagnation within the regional economy, tourism is able to recruit high-quality entrants for line service and managerial positions. Recruits have been educated and trained through highly specialist and elite programs in a relatively small number of regional universities and colleges, whose graduates are widely recognized within the region and beyond. As a consequence, tourism businesses in the Asia-Pacific face competition from beyond the region for the talented graduates of their hospitality and tourism programs.

Scenario 2: Dirt-Cheap Deals

Dirt-cheap deals gives many more travelers in the Asia-Pacific the opportunity to avail of regional tourism experiences but in a standardized, low-cost format. Demands on the workforce are limited and their skills are routine.

Relevant drivers from Delphi process (Round 2):

significant increases in the cost of labor

shortage of frontline workers for tourism

tensions between quality service delivery and return on investment (ROI)

tourism workforce adapts easily to use of workplace technology

tourists adapt easily to use of experience-enhancing technology.

self-service technology will be prevalent across the tourism sector

organizations more reliant on technology for management of tourism experience

social media heavily influencing tourist choices

The context

A similar economic picture to Scenario 1 in that the global economy remains stagnant in 2030, with consequences for growth and development across the Asia-Pacific region. The variation relates to consumer demand and expectations.

Tourism and the tourist

Unlike Scenario 1, however, participation in travel and tourism remains relatively buoyant, particularly in and from the major economies in the Asia-Pacific. The focus is on value tourism, with low-cost travel and packaged, standardized experiences. Despite economic stagnation, governments support travel for social and economic reasons and, therefore, encourage their citizens to avail of subsidized tourism opportunities, both domestically and within the region. To meet the needs of value and cost-focused mass tourists, international and regional operators invest in highly standardized accommodation, theme parks, retail, food service, and transport services that show relatively little by way of local authenticity or customization to meet individual traveler needs. Visitors travel with a limited ability to adapt to the local culture in terms of products, services, or languages.

The workforce

The product and service demands of tourism are standardized and limited but there is a demand for significant numbers of workers. As a consequence, the tourism industry in the Asia-Pacific remains dominated by a weak labor market, with limited value placed on professional workforce skills (either technical or managerial) and with high levels of inward and outward mobility as other opportunities arise or decline. Open borders for labor results in significant intra-regional mobility of trained and unskilled employees who gravitate in large numbers to the major economic and tourism hubs in the Asia-Pacific. Key tourism economies with ageing populations (Australia, Japan, Singapore) avail of this readily available labor within the region (taking a lead from ASEAN 2015) and attract cheap labor to meet the demands of low cost, high volume service delivery. Labor mobility will mirror key tourist movements as employers seek to recruit nationals from their main originating markets in order to ensure that their workforce possesses linguistic and cultural skills that match the requirements of their visitors, many of whom are first-time travelers.

Technology is employed, where possible, to reduce the need for human input into the service process and ensure consistency in its delivery. Technology also permits many routine tasks to be undertaken in a standardized manner with limited training and skills/competence so that the costs of labor can be minimized.

Education and training

The scale of the industry is very significant in the Asia-Pacific so, quantitatively, tourism employs significant numbers in all countries in the region, across all skills areas. This is recognized as a positive by governments that widely support training in the requisite skills necessary for work at this level within the industry. The focus of this workforce development is on basic employability and skills training in regional centers, with limited emphasis on meeting international skills standards. Technology is widely employed in support of training at operational and supervisory levels and work routines are designed so as to avoid the need for specialist skills and judgment as much as is possible.

Tourism education and training is not valued by employers, is seen as unnecessary by prospective employees and, as a result, there is a decline in the demand for quality programs in colleges and universities. Specialist tourism schools are downgraded or face closure because of lack of demand for high-level skills development or learning and students seeking higher level tourism education are forced to travel out of region to Europe or North America.

Scenario 3: Market of One

Market of One sees high levels of demand for quality and customized tourism experiences. The workforce is highly skilled and respected.

Relevant drivers from Delphi process (Round 2):

growth of niche tourism markets demand specialist skills and competencies

majority of tourists seeking customized experiences

shortage of frontline workers for tourism

tourism workforce adapts easily to use of workplace technology

tourists adapt easily to use of experience-enhancing technology

organizations more reliant on technology for management of tourism experience

The context

This scenario sees the global economy recover from its trough in the early part of the 2010s to reach strengths experienced in the early years of the century. The main driver of this strength lies in sustained growth in the Asia-Pacific region, and predictions of the Asian Century are clearly being borne out. Economically, the Asia-Pacific outperforms all other regions and this is reflected in tourism flows, both within the region and relative to other parts of the world. Economic prosperity acts as a stimulant for economic and political integration within the region, with continuing growth of free trade and, in the context of this discussion, the free movement of labor within and beyond the region. As a consequence, the region becomes increasingly homogeneous in its labor market characteristics.

Tourism and the tourist

The Asia-Pacific consumer market has matured very rapidly so that it is demanding of high-quality, customized experiences across the spectrum of travel, tourism, and retail. Regional brands have taken over from those originating in Europe and North America to dominate consumer choice. Regional travelers include many who have already gained considerable experience in the Asia-Pacific and further afield but there is also a consistent flow of new entrants to the travel market, experiencing international visitations for the first time but well prepared by high-quality domestic travel and widespread access to experience-enhancing technology so that they are able to learn from the personalized experiences of their more experienced fellow travelers.

The workforce

Tourism is a major regional employer and all areas of the Asia-Pacific benefit from tourism’s boom economy with large numbers employed both in traditional major centers (such as Bali, Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney) as well as in more peripheral but growing alternative destinations. In a highly competitive labor market environment, tourism maximizes the benefits accruing from open employment borders, encouraging regional mobility. As a consequence, the pull factor from major centers within the region may attract tourism workers at all levels and peripheral areas are unable to compete effectively for skills, thus reducing the competitiveness of local products and services.

However, there is major competition for labor and skills from other sectors of booming economies so that recruitment and retention are ongoing issues for tourism businesses. The consequences of a regional and sectorial war for talent is that the tourism industry has to respond by paying relatively high wages, enhancing its managerial professionalism and ensuring ongoing investment in human resource development at all levels. Tourism is increasingly seen as a “profession of choice” in the Asia-Pacific and is able to attract high-quality graduates, not only from specialist university and college programs but from leading business schools in the region and beyond.

The demand for high-skills, high-touch tourism services in the Asia-Pacific is a consequence of the consumer focus on customization of their experiences. This ensures that the industry remains labor intensive in all areas but increasingly excludes those with limited technical and, above all, soft skills and competencies in areas of languages, interpersonal and technological skills, and selective aesthetic attributes. The Asia-Pacific tourism industry is increasingly socially exclusive and no longer offers working opportunities to potential employees from backgrounds that are not in tune with those of their customers. Asia is forced to enter the global war for talent in the tourism sector, seeking to attract high-quality recruits from outside of the region at operational, managerial, and leadership levels who have the requisite competencies to meet industry needs. Countries in the Asia-Pacific instigate “return home for tourism” campaigns to attract nationals currently working in Europe, the Middle East, and North America back to the region.

Education and training

World-class centers of excellence in tourism education and training in the Asia-Pacific region, already emerging in 2013, come to dominate the global landscape and eclipse traditionally leading schools in Europe and North America. Students from throughout the world increasingly seek learning opportunities in Asia-Pacific, increasing their likelihood of remaining in the region after graduation. Tourism organizations invest in both initial training of recruits and in the lifelong learning of their existing employees, and the quality of this learning experience becomes a major competitive advantage in recruitment for those businesses that invest most effectively.

Scenario 4: Cookie Cutter

The Cookie Cutter scenario sees travel available to all but on a mass consumption basis. The requirement is for a large workforce but the skills level required is low.

Relevant drivers from Delphi process (Round 2):

significant increases in the cost of labor

shortage of frontline workers for tourism

tensions between quality service delivery and ROI

tourism workforce adapts easily to use of workplace technology

tourists adapt easily to use of experience enhancing technology.

self-service technology will be prevalent across the tourism sector

organizations more reliant on technology for management of tourism experience

social media heavily influencing tourist choices

The context

This scenario replicates the economic environment of Scenario 3 where economic growth and prosperity is the norm. The key variation in this scenario is located in the consumer domain.

Tourism and the tourist

The Asia-Pacific consumer market has not matured in the direction of customization. Rather, high levels of demand from a large and increasingly affluent population have created a focus on “standardized luxury” within tourism, enabling the maximum number of travelers to access core transport, accommodation, attractions, food service, and retail experiences without compromising local authenticity or culture. Major urban and resort centers in the region are the real success stories in Asia-Pacific tourism while more remote locations lose out. As a result, tourism is highly packaged and standardized for much of the rapidly growing regional market with limited demand for specialist skills and competencies.

The workforce

The predominance of high-value, mass tourism in major centers means that the demand for labor is high in the Asia-Pacific but the balance is skewed more toward unskilled labor than is the case in scenario 3. Because it competes with other sectors of booming economies yet offers fewer challenges and opportunities, tourism faces sustained recruitment and retention problems in the region at all levels. Tourism businesses need to look beyond the immediate region to regions such as Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe in order to recruit workers at all levels. At the same time, local talent is frustrated by the lack of opportunity to extend beyond mass production and service, and consequently is attracted away from the Asia-Pacific.

Education and training

Tourism education and training focuses on the quantity of output rather than the quality of training and skills development, and the pressure from employers is on reducing the length and intensity of training. The private sector establishes an increasing number of their own training academies that provide more intensive and focused training in line with specific employer requirements. Tourism schools and universities lose competitiveness on the international stage and become primarily regional/local in the output focus. Talented and ambitious students opt to study away from the region in order to access high-quality education and training.

Limitations and Conclusion

We note the degree and force with which assumptions about the future are often very inaccurate (Schoemaker 1995). Scenario planning is not about predicting the future; rather it is designed to frame agendas that stakeholders involved in the area together with researchers and policy makers can use in anticipation of whatever shape the future may take. In this article, we identify and hypothesize impacts of a number of discrete assumptions, or opportunity spaces, about the possible shape of the tourism workforce in the Asia-Pacific in 2030. Managers, planners, and policy makers will be much better positioned to take timely advantage of opportunities if they can expand their imaginations to see a wide range of possible futures. This article presents four distinct scenarios. The challenge emanating from these is to plan for an environment where both organizations and governments have the agility and capacity to adopt appropriate size and shape to work within whichever workforce scenario predominates in the future.

This is an exploratory study and uses methodologies (Delphi, scenario planning) which are not without their critics. Our analysis is, inevitably, constrained, methodologically, as a result. However, we aspire to provide incremental knowledge and insights into possible futures that can be of value to both an academic and practitioner readership. We have reached this point in our discussion via a route that has engaged the work of past researchers in the field of workforce issues in tourism, globally and within the Asia-Pacific. Admittedly, it is challenging to envisage a future some 17 years ahead and any process will be subject to a wide range of unpredictable factors. We recognize that there are limitations and problems with Yeoman’s approach to scenario planning because it is rooted in an interpretation constructivist paradigm of qualitative research but, given our aspirations for a gaze into the future of employment in tourism in the Asia Pacific, it is unrealistic to aspire to anything that is more “scientifically” based in methodological terms. By seeking the guidance of an expert panel, we hope to have overcome some of these concerns as it is these panelists (and their colleagues) who are, or should be, engaging with these issues in terms of their leadership and influence roles in regional tourism. Each of the scenarios presents very different workforce requirements, which may have lead times of many years. For example, long periods of economic stagnation could force operators to make their workforces more productive and become more reliant on technology to individualize tourism experiences, a scenario that requires stakeholders to plan well in advance. Conversely, decline could lead to more value tourism and packaged, standardized experiences. This would put more strain on higher numbers of front-line, lower-skilled workers, which would then have ramifications for open borders intraregional mobility and policy development.

There was some evidence that our respondents found the process of hypothesizing into the future challenging and thus they may have included responses that reflect their current rather than possible future concerns. This is clearly a methodological risk with our adopted method. We also note the diversity that is the Asia-Pacific region at this moment in time, in political, economic, social, and, last but not least, tourism workforce terms (Ruhanen and Cooper 2009). Two of our scenarios see gaps between countries in these areas closing while the other two scenarios envisage that they will still be a major consideration in 2030. Which way this particular cookie crumbles will, clearly, have a major impact on what the tourism workforce will look like—who they will be, what they will do, how they will be educated, and what their nontourism options may be.

Evidence from the past 20 years suggests that our two prime drivers, economic conditions and the degree of tourism customization demands, have played a major role in shaping change within tourism’s global and regional workforce. Their influence can be seen in all dimensions of workforce management and development within the sector. Our panel expects these factors to drive and shape the future and we have built our scenarios on the basis of this analysis. There is now a collective responsibility for governments, industry leaders, and academics to further interpret the implications of the scenarios and put into place measures that can anticipate and work within the opportunity spaces that each implies.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

David Solnet, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia. David comes from a restaurant background, with 18 years of experience including senior management roles in the USA and Australia. He teaches and has published widely in the areas of the hospitality workforce and service management.

Tom Baum, PhD, is Professor of International Tourism and Hospitality Management in the Department of Human Resource Management, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He has a long-standing research interest in workforce issues relating to the global tourism sector.

Anna Kralj is a Lecturer in the Department of Tourism Sport and Hotel Management at Griffith University, Australia. Anna comes from a hotel background with over 12 years industry experience, including various management roles. Her research interests include the hospitality workforce, human resource management and service management.

Richard N. S. Robinson, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on tourism and hospitality industry workforce issues and food studies and food tourism. He has coordinated and worked on research teams for funded national and international projects relating to skills development, occupational cultures, mobility and workforce policy issues and investigating the characteristics and consumer behaviors of highly involved ‘foodies’.

Brent W. Ritchie, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research interests include tourism risk, crisis and disaster management, tourist behaviour and decision making.

Mark Olsen is General Manager of Consulting at EC3 Global, an international tourism advice house that is dedicated to tourism which plans for sustainable growth with a focus on responsible environmental, social, economic and workforce development that builds a stronger future for the industry.

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