. The tourism industry, as highlighted in Hospitality 2005, prepared by McIver Consulting and Tansey, Webster Stewart, is facing a twin challenge – the challenge of staff retention and staff recruitment. Of the 105,000 people required by the industry over the next five years, 40,000 will be required to fill new positions arising from the continued expansion of the industry. The remainder will be needed to replace staff who will leave the sector.
CERT is working closely with the industry to address these issues by strengthening its role in recruitment, undertaking further strategic research and international practice "benchmarking", as well as facilitating business to adopt human resource management and best operations practice as part of their drive to retain competitiveness. As the McIver study has highlighted, the industry must also focus on building on sustainable competitive advantage, in particular through concentrating more resources on staff retention and development. It will also need to change the way it works – become more productive with the same number of people.