The Human Resource Training and Development of Employees Working on Luxurious Hotels in Greece

Abstract

Due to the rapid changes in the business and tourism environment, including globalization and technological innovations, traditional forms of competitive advantage are considered to be inadequate. Increasing competition requires the development of the ‘internal’ potential of each organization, with the result that human resources and their management are now regarded as one—a new sector of strategy that is considered vital to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the tourism industry. The training and development of staff and executives in the Tourism sector, through which employees acquire skills and knowledge, are recognized by the most important and main functions of Human Resource Management in the tourism industry. It is important to mention that training and development is even more important on luxurious hotels, since the customers are very demanding and they have high expectations from how the personnel will treat them. The aim of the present research effort is twofold: initially it is attempted through the bibliographic review, the extended review of the concepts of Human Resource Management and consequently the Education and Development of Personnel and Executives in Luxurous hotels in Greece and then to make suggestions for future research. The outcome of this literature review is that there are some training and development programs on Greek luxurious hotels. However, there is the need to develop formal programs on training and development since most of the hotels have informal approaches on such policies. The companies which will formalize this process are expected to gain from the leverage of their service quality and from higher customer and employee loyalty.