Uttarakhand Governor K K Paul recently said it was important to focus on skill development and proper training for women to help them get jobs and take up leadership roles in the hospitality and tourism sectors.
Though the hospitality industry employs a large number of women, they continue to be under-represented in senior positions and general management roles, he said at the inauguration of a two-day conference on ‘Hospitality and Tourism’ at Graphic Era University here.
“When it comes to women in leadership roles, the sector falls short of other industries and does not demonstrate the same advantage,” Paul said.
Citing the examples of companies like Pepsi, IBM, General Motors, General Dynamics, Hewlett Packard (India), Lockheed Martin, Xerox and Oracle that have women as CEOs, he said many multinational companies had given leadership roles to women. The Governor hoped the meet will help Uttarakhand take a step towards realizing its vast potential as a tourist destination by giving due emphasis to skill development and training among women.
“This would involve identifying tourism circuits, creating infrastructure in the area, and simultaneously training women with the necessary skills, and hopefully in the next few years they will make a substantial contribution to the GDP of the state,” he said.
Describing the theme of the conference ‘Trends, issues and women in hospitality and tourism industry’ as extremely relevant and capable of generating the amount of interest the subject deserves, he said the focus must be on acquiring skills to keep pace with technological development.
Underlining Uttarakhand’s vast potential in tourism and hospitality sectors, he said deliberations at the conference should be held especially in the context of the hill state.
“To this end, it is important to know which type of training would be necessary, whether there are enough institutions for hospitality management and whether the help of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) can be taken to train young girls for the hospitality and tourism industries,” Paul said.
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