Professor Tom Baum (Department of Human Resource Management) was keynote speaker at the International Hospitality and Tourism Conference at Luzern in Switzerland on November 24. He spoke on "The Future of Work in Hospitality and Tourism". The theme was the impact of demographic change and an aging workforce on what has always sold itself as a "young people's industry", which will require a paradigm change with respect to the delivery of products and services in the sector and, above all, in the workplace culture of the industry.
As an industry, said Professor Baum, hospitality has not even started to consider what this could mean and how it will respond to demographic change within its workforce.