Hospitality experts have said that more Saudi Arabian women apply for vacancies in hotels compared to men
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.
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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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