HR issues of Gen Y in tourism: Anticipating the future challenges - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 281

product and service, increasing the operating cost
and having barriers to meeting the required quality
standards (Marchante, Ortega & Pagan, 2003).
Besides, the changing nature of employee demo-
graphic and attitude require new ways of under-
standing values, attitude and behaviors needed
(Solnet & Hood, 2008). The main argument by the
authors is that the current nat ure of work offered by
hospitality and tourism organizations do not appear
to motivate generation Y employee. Thus, employers
must have the understanding of the needs and aspi-
ration of the new generation of employee to ensure
the industry can offer the opportunities seek by
this group. With a proper human resource manage-
ment practice by organizations, such as recruitment,
intrinsic and extrinsic benefits and performance
management, it will generate a positive organiza-
tional outcomes leading to higher profitability, lower
turnover and better customer retention.
In Malaysia, the major challenge in upcoming
years for tourism industry is to ensure that Malay-
sia's tourism industry's service is at level of excel-
lent. Malaysia received about 22 million tourists and
they have a different kind of expectation. Thus, it
is the challenge for Ministry of Tourism and Tour-
ism Malaysia to ensure that the tour operators and
tour guides are well monitored. In order to ensure
that the supply of labor is continuous, the tourism
industry will need to rebrand itself. This forum is
to create a favorable image of the industry so that
future candidates feel interested to join the tourism
workforce, and later reside their careers with the
tourism industry.

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4 FUTURE RESEARCH

Based on previous studies, a niche industry like
tourism will usually require a group of well-edu-
cated, skilled, enthusiastic and committed to work.
Since this industry is unique in nature, it is neces-
sary to conduct extensive research on its human
resource requirements and challenges before con-
tinuing to develop a typology of skill set and values
that would fit into it. The intention of developing a
typology is to make better projections of the future
workforce needs. At the same time, the study also
intends to look at the variation in term of skills,
values and expectations of Gen Y pertinent to the
current recruitment practices.

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