Preliminary findings from the latest CERT Employment Survey have shown that employment across key sectors of the tourism and hospitality industry grew by a further 5% in 2000, to a record 184,000 - this represents a slowing down in the trend recorded over recent years. In addition, the survey revealed that staffing issues and the tightening labour market may constrain future development of the industry.

The survey also indicates that the number of firms recording job vacancies continued to rise across all sectors, and that up to 50% of businesses within the sector have expansion plans for the coming year.

Commenting on the findings Eamonn McKeon, Chairman of CERT said "the continued growth of employment in these difficult times for recruitment reflects the successful efforts of CERT and the industry to compete with other sectors of the economy for skilled staff.”

The increase in CERT recruitment during 2000 was achieved largely as a result of new initiatives such as targeting women wishing to return to work and the longer-term unemployed. Under its strategic plan, CERT plans to increase the number of trained new entrants by 50%.

The largest increase in employment occurred in the hotel sector, where job growth is estimated at 6%, to a total of 57,400. Employment growth in the restaurant sector is estimated at 5% to total 43,200.

According to the survey, there are significant plans for business development across all sectors. More than 50% of hotels, 40% of restaurants, 50% of guesthouses and 30% of licensed premises indicate that they plan to increase their services and facilities over the coming year.

Staffing related issues now dominate those factors considered to be constraining the development of the tourism and hospitality sector. Staff shortages generally, the rising cost of labour, relatively high staff turnover, and difficulty in recruiting well trained staff were among the factors cited as constraining future development.

Pictured at the launch of CERT’s End of Year Review and Employment Survey results are (l-r): Shaun Quinn, Chief Executive and Eamonn McKeon, Chairman of CERT.

A native of Knocklong, Co. Limerick, Fionnbar Walsh began his career in the industry 22 years ago when he commenced training as a Chef in Rockwell. He went on to study for his Management Degree in London while he worked with the Sheraton Hotel Group.

Having lived in Italy, Canada and the UK, Fionnbar returned to Ireland and settled in Tralee where he was involved in the construction and opening of the Abbey Gate & Johnston Marina hotels, and is now managing the Smerwick Harbour Hotel in Dingle.

Fionnbar is married to Elma and they have two children Jema & Donal. In his spare time he enjoys sea angling off Kerry’s lovely coast and, being a Limerick-man, is a keen fan of both Hurling & Rugby.

Loganair and Aer Arann Express are to provide services over the next three years on the essential air services routes linking Donegal, Derry, Sligo, Galway, Knock and Kerry with Dublin. The two companies were selected following a public tender process conducted in accordance with EU regulations.

The main features of the new services linking Dublin include:

• Extra capacity and flights to and from Kerry and Galway
• New services to and from Knock and Derry
• State funding increased from £3.3 million to £10 million annually.

Daily flights from Kerry will be provided by Aer Arann Express who have undertaken to provide four flights during the peak summer months. Aer Arann Express has also secured the contracts to provide scheduled air services for the next three months on the three other existing public service obligations routes which link Donegal, Sligo, and Galway. Aer Arann has won the new Knock/Dublin route while Loganair will fly the new Derry/Dublin schedule.

Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Dr. James McDaid TD recently announced that Ireland is to host a World Golf championship in 2002 for the first time. The American Express Championship will take place at Mount Juliet Estate, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, from September 19th – 22nd 2002. The championship is a four-day, 72-hole stroke-play competition with an estimated field size of 65 or 70 players.

You finally gave in to those colleagues, friends and marketing people, all of whom insisted that if you weren’t doing business on the World Wide Web then you wouldn’t be doing business anywhere. Perhaps you weren’t convinced at the time but what was the point in trying to stand out against popular opinion and the advance of technology? So, you got a web site — after all, there were thousands of teenagers making millions out of dot com companies and you just wanted a few extra bookings for your hotel.

And then the doubts set in: shares in the new technology companies crashed, dot com empires disappeared overnight, Bill Gates lost more money than the gross national product of Luxemburg last year and, worst of all, there were disappointingly few people booking rooms through your web site.

So, why have you not had more bookings? There are three possibilities that you should consider.

1. Perhaps your web site doesn’t make the hotel attractive to potential visitors.

You don’t need a web analyst to look at your site to judge whether it presents an attractive prospect to potential guests. Look dispassionately at your site, compare it with other hotel sites and try to see it from a stranger’s point of view. It doesn’t matter how well you market your web site, if it doesn’t do justice to your hotel then it won’t generate bookings.

Judgements about whether a site is good or not, in marketing terms, can be rather subjective but there is one test that you can apply that has solid statistics behind it.

Find out how many visitors your site gets during an average week — this information should be available from your ISP (Internet Service Provider).

If you’re getting hundreds of visits and no one is booking accommodation, then the site is probably making a poor job of presenting your hotel. If there’s no one visiting your web site, it’s not surprising that there are no bookings coming from it and you have to look elsewhere to find out why there are so few site visitors.

2. Perhaps your web site isn’t being found by potential guests when they search the web.

Your site should appear in the search engine results when a search is made by someone wanting the type of accommodation that you offer. The search engine matches enquiries to the different sites in its database by checking the search criteria against its own summary of web site details.

The search engines are very secretive about how they evaluate this matching of enquiries and suitable sites but they all work on an analysis of the text on your web pages. For example, there is no possibility of your hotel being listed in response to an enquiry for "golf, hotel, Galway" if you don’t have the words "golf", "hotel" or "Galway" on your web site. Think of the words most likely to be used as search words by your potential guests and make sure that they are used, at least once if not twice, on your opening page.

As well as the text that appears on your page, there are hidden messages for the search engines, called "meta tags".

Whilst they are too big a subject to broach here, ask your web site developer to check that they are in place and make sure that the keywords in the meta tags also appear in the visible text on your page.

Of course, it may be that you have got all the necessary features for the search engines to catalogue your site but there is an even more fundamental problem that’s stopping you from getting web site visitors.

3. Perhaps the search engines don’t know your web site exists.

In theory, if you left a web site long enough, the search engines would find it and catalogue it. In reality, there isn’t a search engine in the world that catalogues more than ten percent of the web and, anyway, are you prepared to wait until the search engines happen to find your site?

Be proactive: go and register with the search engines yourself. Start with the search engines that you use: I’d suggest you try half a dozen such as Lycos, Google, AltaVista, Excite, WebCrawler and Yahoo. Go to the search engine’s home page and look for a link that says something like, "Add your URL" or "Add your site". That will take you to a page where you can provide your details for the search engine’s database — there is no charge for this service; the search engines want more sites, so they attract more users, so they can charge more for advertising.

Follow these three steps and you’re on way to having a site that does justice to your hotel, has the right information to help the search engines evaluate your site, is known to the search engines and is listed in their data bases.

Anyone who has ever made reservations or purchased goods over the Internet knows the benefits of web shopping. But research proves that some shoppers are still wary about using credit cards on-line. This is bad news for the hospitality sector, banks and consumers, as all three parties stand to miss out on the benefits of e-commerce.

Much of the focus to-date has been on technologies that help merchants sell goods, not on tools that ease customers’ worries about the security of transmitting their information on-line.

AIB and Irish payment technologies company Orbiscom, have developed new technology that will change the way consumers think about shopping on the Internet. All a customer needs is transactonline - a small, free software programme that resides on his/her computer – to be registered for AIB’s Internet banking service 24hour-online and to hold an AIB credit card.

No changes need to be made to a merchant’s technology or administration systems.

transactonline lets customers use their credit cards to purchase goods/services at a website, without revealing their own credit card number.

How does it work? transactonline generates a unique temporary Visa card number, which is used instead of the customer’s actual Visa card number. This number will be transmitted over the Internet to the merchant’s website. The merchant can process the transaction in exactly the same way as any other credit card transaction. You set a financial limit on the temporary number and once the merchant has settled the transaction, the number is never used again.

transactonline is not suitable where an actual credit card has to be presented to settle a bill on departure or where settlement of a bill does not take place until after the expiry date of the temporary number.

Merchants benefit because each transactonline generated number offers them more protection than an ordinary credit card number, since it has been verified and authorised against pre-determined criteria specified by AIB and the cardholder.

If you would like a demo of transactonline or some more information, visit www.aib.ie.

As we enter this, the first real year of the new millennium, it is with great enthusiasm that all involved in our industry can welcome the establishment of the all-island tourism company, known as Tourism Ireland Limited. This is without question, one of the most significant developments in Irish tourism in recent years. I particularly acknowledge the enormous commitment to this ideal displayed by our Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Dr. James McDaid and his counterpart in Northern Ireland, Sir Reg Empey. The combined budgets of Bord Fáilte and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, incorporating the recent allocation in the budget, represent the largest ever marketing fund for Irish tourism. Formed under the framework of the Good Friday agreement, the company, comprising leading industry representatives from North and South, will focus on the marketing of ‘the island of Ireland’ as a premier tourist destination.

I would also like to congratulate our Chief Executive, John Power on his appointment to the Board of this newly established company. Also appointed to the board is our member Charles Sinnott. I know he will bring the informed views of a progressive hotel owner and operator to this challenging new organisation. These appointments are an excellent endorsement of the IHF’s standing in the tourism industry.

On another note, the issue of Ireland’s inadequate transport infrastructure is one which has been highlighted by our Federation on many occasions over the years. As we have repeatedly emphasised, good access to and within the country linking remote counties to the capital, is vital for maintaining Ireland’s position as a premier destination.

Access to the regions is very much dependent on our road and rail networks and it’s extremely worrying and indeed frustrating, that there has still been no notable improvements in our infrastructure system.

I strongly welcome the allocation of the £22 billion of the £40 billion allocated in the National Development Plan for this purpose, but would call on the Government and the appropriate ministers to act quickly to ensure that these monies are put to work immediately. There can be no excuse for inaction - the money is now there and the Government cannot afford to delay in putting it to good use if our tourist industry is to be protected and sustained in the longterm.

Lack of a proper road and rail network throughout Ireland has, and will continue to act as a barrier to the development of the tourist industry in the regions. I would ask the Government to look to other countries who have successfully developed their infrastructure systems in a short space of time, such as Hondouras. In the wake of disaster in Hondouras, the Government enlisted the help of experts from all over the world to help urgently reconstruct their road network. I would ask the Irish Government to look at enlisting help from outside our own country if that is what’s required, to ensure the task at hand is carried out quickly and efficiently. It is now a matter of urgency and can no longer be put on the long finger. While I welcome the Budget allocation we simply cannot wait five years to see it come to fruition.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a healthy and prosperous Year 2001.