News Analysis: Saudi women take on hospitality
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.
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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Rosewood Jeddah director of sales and marketing Sherif Mansour told Hotelier he had also noticed a change. “During the last 12-15 months, there is a shift. There’s more opportunities, but there are more candidates as well,” he said. “There is a big change. At Rosewood Hotel Jeddah, our director of human resources is a lady, and the majority of staff in the HR department are ladies. I also have several women in my team. I think there is a big improvement, and more opportunity for ladies.”
One argument for why this shift is taking place in Saudi Arabia, is that through the recent government efforts of Saudisation, an increased number of Saudi women is a default result, along with increased numbers of Saudi males as well.
Another argument is that, with KSA’s efforts to diversify the economy and meet the new tourism targets set out for 2030, women are a valuable, and as yet untapped resource, to boost the tourism workforce in the country.
Accor alone plans to increase its number of hotels in the Kingdom to 50 properties, from the current 16, by 2019. This, Belgat estimated, would involve the recruitment of four to five thousand Saudi nationals.
“In the last three to four years, the Kingdom has really moved away from a pure petroleum-based economy, to a more diversified one, which requires a country’s most valuable resource, which is its people,” Belgat said.
Currently in KSA, he explained, the unemployment figures for Saudi nationals are 6% for men, and 34% for women. In contrast, 51% of Saudi nationals who are graduates are women. For the bachelor degree level of graduates, this is 64%.
“What changed three years ago, was we started to see, for the first time ever, women cashiers in the supermarket, women working as the hostess in restaurants in the family section. I’m talking about Saudi nationals, not expats.”
“Whenever you try to recruit employees, you get a lot more Saudi ladies applying for a position than men, which is linked with this unemployment rate,” he continued. “In terms of available resources in the market, women are much more available, and generally, they are more educated than the men.”
In February 2015, AccorHotels signed the United Nations’ “Women’s Empowerment Principles”, which stated the hotel group’s commitment to fair employment of women, as well as facilitating them reaching managerial level.
This UN agreement, Belgat admitted, is also related to Accor’s training activities in Saudi Arabia.
“It was one of the motives. We have a really strong CSR commitment to employability of women, at managerial level. Our CSR commitment is to help the development of local communities, but let’s be frank, it also has to do with our interest which is to equip ourselves with the best people, with the most potential.
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“What we are trying to do at Accor is to develop them as much as possible for managerial, key positions of tomorrow. At the same time, as a French company, we want to incorporate fairness in skill development, for ladies and men.”
On the topic of equal pay for women, which is still a valid topic in “Western” countries, Belgat was firm that equal opportunity and equal pay will exist for female employees: “It is strictly followed that for the same position, you get the same package.” That is, however, with the additional information that “men and women are not being targeted for the same roles.”
Belgat, like Al Sanea, was confident that the current training drive will one day lead to Saudi Arabia’s first female GM. “That is our vision. That is what we want to achieve. Even [AccorHotels CEO] Olivier Granet has said, we are looking forward to having our first Saudi management training female graduate as a GM,” said Belgat.
He added: “We will give them equal job opportunities. Nothing says that a woman can’t manage a man. It is a managerial programme, so the aim is for them to grow and be ambitious.”
“Local authorities are very much in favour of each hotel having a deputy general manager who is a Saudi national. When we think about the deputy GM being a national, I don’t see what would stop us from having a woman. In our hotels, we have a deputy GM that is a Saudi national, but not yet a GM that is a Saudi national. So let us address that, and then we’ll see.”
Despite this, 9.5% of readers who voted in HotelierMiddleEast.com’s poll on the subject said that the issue is that women are simply not suited to senior management positions.
Nevertheless, both Mansour and Blair agreed that female employees have already been a positive addition to their hotels. “The work ethic of the female employees is excellent,” Blair argued.
A female HR director for example, Mansour added, “is a very good indication that ladies can be managers and directors”.
“As director of HR, you are in charge of the whole hotel, which is around 360 employees. Ladies make a really big difference. They have a different vision, and they instigate a lot of improvements. So this change is, overall, very beneficial for hotels,” Mansour added.
“I’m not going to place one gender over another,” said Al Sanea.
“However, what I have seen with my own eyes, is that females do have more commitment. They are ambitious. I think, due to their initiative and their commitment, they do add a positive touch to any department they join. I do hope we can have more females, because we do have a sufficient number of males already,” she concluded.