According to Laura Eggleton, general manager at the Holiday Inn Muscat Al Seeb, the biggest challenge preventing women from progressing to leadership positions is the idea of “being first”, whether it be as the first female manager in a hotel leadership team, or as the first female general manager (GM) appointed by a hotel operator.
“When I announced to friends that I was leaving the UK to embark on a new role in the Middle East, most people tried to convince me I was making a mistake and that this region wasn’t accommodating to women in leadership roles. Fortunately, they were all very wrong,” Eggleton told Hotelier.
Is enough being done to include women in the hospitality industry, however? Julia Miller, director, compensation and benefits, Middle East and Africa (MEA), at Hilton, believes companies should also offer “flexibility where possible, for both male and female team members”.
“At Hilton, we pride ourselves on creating a family-friendly environment, which is why we introduced a minimum of 12 weeks’ fully paid maternity leave for female team members in the Middle East and Africa earlier this year,” she said.
According to Tullberg, however, hospitality in the region is still something of a man’s world. “Most of the largest hotel chains do have programmes in place to [promote] women in leadership, and there have been some very positive achievements. For example, in Saudi Arabia, Rezidor has gone from zero female managers in 2014 to eight. Earlier this year, Rezidor appointed the first female hospitality GM in Saudi Arabia, and Accor appointed its first female GM in KSA just a couple of months later. Rezidor has also introduced an enhanced maternity leave policy, and I hope this will inspire others to do the same.
“We still have [a long way] to go though, with no women among the top 100 most powerful leaders within hospitality in Middle East,” she noted.
One of the problems, IHG’s Eggleton added, is that it’s still a relatively new phenomenon to see women in leadership roles.
“People are often surprised to see a female GM and, as we know, people resist change. It’s really a matter of perception. I guess people see it as too much of a change from the ‘normal’, stereotypical GM we see in this region, and don’t want to take the ‘risk’ of changing the habit of a lifetime by appointing a female business leader,” she concluded.
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