Seasonality in hospitality and tourism employment: Issues of fits in human resources management

• Main Author: Abdul Hamid, Ibrahim
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: GV Recreation Leisure; HD28 Management. Industrial Management
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/2669/1/Ibrahim_Abdul_Hamid.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/2669/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

The tourism and hospitality industry in Malaysia often faced disparities in tourist arrivals throughout the years. The seasonality of tourism trade has become a common factor affecting the hospitality and tourism trade. The seasonality factor had influenced the industry employment, leading to seasonal employment, underemployment and unemployment. For the human resource managers, this creates the cyclical and repetitious tasks to recruit new staff, selection processes, training and retention of staff. Tourist destinations like Penang, Langkawi, East Coast States and Sabah are economically depend on tourists trade, which are very much seasonality in nature. A model for managing seasonality in employment is proposed; ranging from embrace seasonality to challenging seasonality. Discussion on the effects of seasonality on selected human resource practices is also presented in this paper.