In the dynamic landscape of Singapore's hotel industry, significant shifts are occurring. With the industry recovering from the impact of COVID-19, it's poised for significant change. This transformation is expected to redefine traditional hotelier roles, such as hotel managers and guest service associates, and introduce new ones. Current trends suggest a future where digital technologies, data analytics, and sustainability play integral roles. The sector is thus shaping an innovative vision of the future that incorporates advanced technologies and aims to deliver unique guest experiences while fostering a robust workforce.

The future of Singapore's hotel industry rests on its capacity to navigate the following key trends while seeking opportunities amidst these challenges. Technological advancements, primarily fuelled by the digital natives, have catalysed a shift in the hotel industry, prompting faster adoption of innovative solutions. Simultaneously, the rise of hybrid travel has augmented guest expectations, necessitating the incorporation of technology to streamline operations and elevate guest experiences. Harnessing the data analytics trend, the industry can foster guest loyalty through tailored services.

Sustainability, a rising trend, has become a competitive advantage in the hotel industry. As eco-conscious travellers emerge, their influence on booking decisions is undeniable. Consequently, despite escalating energy costs and other hotel industry challenges, hoteliers must invest in sustainable technologies, offering long-term operational efficiency and resilience. By acquiring sustainability certifications and being transparent about eco-initiatives, hotels can boost their brand image and appeal to environmental advocates.

The industry also grapples with an ageing workforce and stiff competition for talent across sectors. The increasing emphasis on purpose-driven work by younger generations necessitates reimagining hotel jobs. To offset these issues, the sector must infuse roles with purpose, restructure work arrangements, and inject new life into career paths. This approach requires the effective use of information technology in hotel industry practices to enhance staff engagement and boost service quality, even in roles like housekeeping.

In essence, these hotel industry trends — evolving guest preferences, the rise of sustainability, and changing workforce dynamics — present both challenges and opportunities for the hotel industry's growth. As digital transformation in the hotel industry progresses, hotels' creative and responsive strategies to these megatrends will be instrumental in shaping the future of Singapore's hotel industry, ensuring its resilience and growth.

The evolution of hotel industry trends, including digital transformation and sustainability practices, dramatically impacts hotel jobs. These trends lead to role redefinition and skill transformation, requiring workforce adaptability and continuous learning. These roles can be broadly categorised into high, medium, and low-impact.

High Impact on Roles in the Hotel Industry

High-impact roles are those experiencing significant changes due to technology or other megatrends. These roles require extensive job redesign, often enlarging, reconfiguring, or enriching the job scope. Consequently, hoteliers must reskill to maintain employability.

High-impact jobs in the hotel industry that requires extensive job redesign:

• Front Office Officer / Guest Services Officer / Guest Relations Officer / Front Office Agent / Guest Services Agent / Guest Relations Agent

• Housekeeping Coordinator

• Marketing Communications Executive / Public Relations Executive

• Marketing Communications Officer / Sales and Marketing Officer

• Reservations Officer/ Reservations Agent

• Revenue Specialist/Revenue Analyst

• Sales Coordinator/ Catering Sales Coordinator

Medium Impact on Roles in the Hotel Industry

Medium-impact roles are those moderately affected by technology or other trends. These roles require a balance between human intervention and technology, focusing human effort on high-value-adding tasks, with routine tasks becoming automated in the hotel industry.

Medium-impact jobs in the hotel industry that requires moderate redesign:

The evolving hotel industry landscape, accelerated by digital transformation and sustainability trends, is unearthing new job opportunities. As the hotel industry continues to grow and respond to customer needs, new roles are emerging, reshaping the traditional boundaries of hoteliers:

• Business Intelligence Analyst: This role focuses on managing and analysing data using business intelligence tools to derive performance insights on various hotel metrics, such as market share, pricing effectiveness, credit control, and market trends. Being data-driven and possessing a comprehensive understanding of business intelligence functions are key to this role, as they will support analysis to identify factors impacting hotel performance and collaborate with management teams to devise solutions.

   

• Community Partnerships Manager: This role leads in building strategic relationships with ecosystem players within and beyond the hospitality sector. This includes engaging with local enterprises, communities, and creatives and finding new avenues for value and revenue creation that align with the hotel's growth ambitions. Knowledge of the local heritage, culture, and arts scene is essential, and strong communication skills will prove pivotal in fostering deep partnerships.

   

• Sustainability Specialist: As sustainability becomes a key pillar in the hotel industry, this role focuses on evaluating sustainability standards and charting a sustainability roadmap for the hotel. The specialist will drive long-term sustainability goals and improve ESG performance. Familiarity with market trends, sustainable practices, sustainability indicators, and carbon reporting protocol is crucial, and the ability to translate sustainability efforts into increased business value and guest satisfaction will be paramount.

   

• Place Maker: The Place Maker curates unique destination-inspired journeys that bridge connections between the hotel and its surrounding communities. By utilising storytelling techniques centred around local history, culture, and heritage, they deepen the guests' immersion into the locale. Critical skills required include cultural sensitivity for design, consumer intelligence analysis, and empathetic design, paired with core competencies like customer orientation and building inclusivity.

   

• Wellness Concierge: The Wellness Concierge champions sustainable tourism by crafting wellness and wellbeing activities tailored to guests’ dietary preferences, fitness aspirations, and interests. Keeping in step with the latest wellness trends, they integrate novel ideas into the hotel's service offerings, ensuring the physical and mental wellbeing of guests from pre-trip consultations to their stay's culmination. Essential to this role is a blend of technical skills such as customer behaviour analysis, service innovation, adaptability, communication, and a global perspective.

   

• Technology and Innovation Strategist: This strategist pioneers technology initiatives, collaborating with functional heads and vendors to ideate, co-develop, and scale novel technological solutions. Making compelling business cases for the assimilation of new technologies, they engage key stakeholders, ensuring alignment with the hotel's long-term vision. This role requires competencies such as an understanding of emerging technology, technology road mapping, and technology strategy formulation, adaptability, creative thinking, and sense-making.

As the hotel industry navigates through emerging challenges, future hoteliers will require a unique blend of skills. These include robust hotel industry analysis capabilities to make data-driven decisions and understand market trends. Innovation will be pivotal to developing creative solutions and fostering service excellence. Furthermore, understanding the manpower ratio in the hotel industry will be crucial to optimise staff deployment and manage workforce efficiency. These skills will foster resilience and drive growth amidst evolving industry landscapes.

The Skills Framework

The Skills Framework (SFw) is a SkillsFuture initiative, designed to promote skills mastery and lifelong learning for the Singapore workforce.

For more information on each job role (career pathways, list of skills and competencies, critical work functions and key tasks), please refer to Skills Framework for Hotel and Accommodation Services.