Licensees warned to be prepared for Olympics

Related tags United kingdom Olympic games Summer olympic games

Britain's hospitality industry has to get into training now if pubs are to win in the 2012 Olympics, the man charged with closing the sector's skills...

Britain's hospitality industry has to get into training now if pubs are to win in the 2012 Olympics, the man charged with closing the sector's skills gap has warned.

Brian Wisdom, chief executive of sector skills council People 1st, called on employers to take steps to make sure their staff are developed and retained in preparation for the run-up to the London games.

He also urged recruitment and training of older workers, and added that People 1st was pressing government to ease work permit restrictions for people from non-EU countries.

"In other Olympics hospitality employers have been forced to poach each other's staff - and that's not an effective way for the industry to exploit the Games," he said, during a debate staged to launch the Institute of Hospitality's new management qualifications.

"At the moment the hole is being filled by people from Eastern Europe - in London they make up 80 per cent of the hospitality workforce. But they are subject to high staff turnover.

"Developing careers now is the big challenge. We can't rely on importing a load of labour for 2012. We have to make sure those East European workers are developed and retained."

Research suggests that only 10 per cent of hospitality employers have so far budgeted for the Olympics, and 14 per cent do not envisage planning for the event at all.

While the Olympics themselves only last three weeks, the real gains can be made when UK hospitality comes under scrutiny from the world's media from 2011.

Wisdom predicted that a 'welcome to Britain' campaign would run alongside the games build-up as soon as the Olympic torch is handed across from Beijing next year.

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