Hospitality experts have said that more Saudi Arabian women apply for vacancies in hotels compared to men
In March this year, AccorHotels launched its second management training programme in KSA. For the first time, it included female Saudi nationals, as well as male.
At the Hotelier Middle East Awards 2015, the Young Hotelier of the Year award went to 24-year-old Saudi Arabian Yasmin Al Sanea, assistant human resources manager at InterContinental Hotel Al Jubail. Al Sanea, who is the first female manager at the property, told Hotelier that her short-term goal is to become the first female head of department. After that, Al Sanea’s long-term goal is to become the first female general manager in KSA.
The news clearly indicates an increase in opportunities for women working in hotels in KSA. Suddenly, Saudi women seem to have set their sights on careers in the hospitality sector, and beyond that, it seems hotel groups are actively encouraging the change.
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Al Sanea confirmed this: “When I first joined, there were just a couple of girls, you could count them, just four or five. At the moment we have up to 13 working in our property. The number of females working, or wanting to work in Saudi, has increased.”
“Five years ago in hospitality, the only women employed in hotels were [expat women] in housekeeping, in cleaning roles. In the past, a Saudi lady graduate would not work in hospitality,” AccorHotels KSA & Egypt director of human resources and training Amar Belgat told Hotelier. Previously, he added, women in the Kingdom focused on the public sector, particularly health and education. “The work life [in hotels] was not attractive for them and their families. In a 400-key hotel, you have 400 employees, among them 95% will be men. So it is not a welcoming destination for some women,” Belgat explained.
In order to encourage women in to the hospitality workforce, Belgat said that AccorHotels is working with local authorities to ensure that local traditions and laws are respected.
These efforts have included focusing the employment drive on non-guest facing roles for now, as well as ensuring there is appropriate segregation of male and female staff members within the hotel’s offices.
According to 42.9% of readers polled by HotelierMiddleEast.com, the biggest challenge to women progressing in hotels is perceived to be the difficulty of laws regarding interaction of males and females. Belgat admitted that this presents some logistical challenges for hoteliers, but was adamant that it was worth the effort.
Talking to Saudi-based hoteliers during Arabian Travel Market 2016, the experiences each shared of their own properties corroborates that there has been a definite shift; a fairly recent one, and one that hoteliers welcome.
“We have quite a few Saudi females working in Al Faisaliah Hotel, in the reservations, operator, and human resources departments,” Alexander Blair, GM of Al Faisaliah Hotel in Riyadh told Hotelier. “This is my second time working in Saudi Arabia. I was here in 2005-11, and then back again in 2014, and in comparison, you can see how [the number of women] is becoming more and more.”
When asked whether women were being encouraged to aim for managerial roles, Blair told us “Absolutely. We have just launched a management training programme, solely for Saudis, both male and female.”
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