Vocational job creation

So here we are in 2013.  Sure with lots of plans, hopes and resolutions.

Just saw that the government aims to create 56,000 jobs forOmanis this year:  36,000 in the public sector (of which 20,000 in military) and 16,000 in the private sector. Wow! That’s over 1000 freshmen every week of the year.  There is certainly a challenge in the volume and also the relatively short period over which they have to be achieved. One might think this will not encourage quality in the selections.

Perhaps on the longer term, some more consideration could be also given to the qualitative, vocational aspects of job creation.  It is hard to believe that all those 20,000 who will be newly employed by the military, do see their carriers as soldiers or support staff. Perhaps a lot of them yes but more likely not most of them.

May sound a bit like leapfrogging some stages of labor market development, but I think employers should have an increasingly vocational perspective towards new hires. Even when it comes to quotas.  Asking people why they are going for that job should not only be a checklist interviewing question. Add on  how do they imagine a day work in that position looks like, and what they see themselves doing in five years, and you’ll pretty quickly get all parts of the puzzle.

There is nothing more disappointing than seeing a service person hating his/her job. Especially in the hospitality and tourism related service areas. It’s not only about service level and quality. It’s also about the sustainability of employment figures. Those people forced in their jobs, sooner or later will feel frustrated and quit, or survive day by say doing a crappy job and discouraging others who might like what they do and want to be good at it. The labor market does not really work on a meritocratic basis (at least not for the Omanis) and in most of the cases, if you have the nerves you can hold onto a position for quite some time without really excelling at it, to say the least. As a result you would be better trying to choose something that you feel some vocational call for.  Assisting youngsters in a vocational job selection is something would do a lot of good in this country. A combination of high school programs and more conscious hiring practice would certainly yield results in the medium to long term.

The other extreme is having your hobby as your job and be lucky enough to a make a good living out of it. Where are you on the scale…?

The bottom line 2012

Let's just have a quick look back on 2012 and see where the tourism offering of Oman has moved in a year. I am not talking about hard facts not announcements and press releases. What do we have more compared to 2011 that attracts more tourists? Off the top of my head:

• Almouj Golf officially opens including the par 3 floodlit golf course
• Ghala Valley Golf Club opens full 18-hole grass course
• Best Western opens Premier in Muscat
• Duqm sees torrent of new hotels: Veronica Floating Hotel and City Hotel Duqum with Crown Plaza just missing the line to open this year
• Salalah Beach project progresses with the opening of the Marina and the Juweira Butique Hotel
• Other openings which are arguably tourist attractions but might ad to the mix: Opera Galleria, MGM, Go Cart track, Amouage's new factory and visitor center etc.

In terms of sweet talk, promotion and softer type issues there was much more. Here are a few:

• Muscat Arab Tourism Capital for 2012 - and all the nice buzz around it
• An agreement to develop a Kempinski Hotel The Wave was signed by a consortia of investors
• A new Intercontinental was announced for Muscat Hills (since the one in Shaati will be replaced by a W hotel)
• Alila hotels signed up to manage the future Omran Hotel in Jebel Akhdar
• Oman Sail has waved the country's name all over the sailing word this year, wining the Extreme Sailing Series, tourism promotion awards and bids to organize international sailing events
• And of course Sheraton managed to stay closed for another year.

The above suggest to me that perhaps we need to remind ourselves of the basics: visitors are coming for attractions. The better they are packaged the more will come. Hotel are just services, parts of the package but are rarely the attractions themselves. I am really looking forward to new tourist products in the coming years that act as attractions rather then just services. Here are a few with some potential: The City Walk Muscat could finally be proper master planned activation of beach areas, The Oman Convention & Exhibition Center,  The Alila Resort in Jebel Akhdar, The Club Med in Salalah, and the de-industrialized and leisure focused waterfront regeneration in SQ Port in Mutrah etc. Insha'Allah.

Omani success...through sports again

I have been enthusing over the role of sports in building a competitive mind set and subsequently economy for some time now. I know the link might seem pretty  remote at the first glance, but put in a cultural and strategic context it does make sense to me.

So here's another success of Omani sportsman that should encouraging, inspire and drive kids to take up  various sports and if suits them to engage in professional performance pursuits.

The Oman Sail teams in the Extreme Sailing Series have finished the championship in top position.  The Wave (skipper Leigh McMillan) has won the gold by a narrow margin ahead of a French team, while Oman Air (skipper Morgan Larson) clinched the podium in a tight and exiting last race, literary winning on the last meters.

This is a huge result for Oman and Oman Sail, a timely justification of the strategy they took some years back.

What will be important now, it to provide proper media coverage to Hashim Al Rashdi (@hashim_alrashdi) from The Wave Muscat team and Nasser al Mashari from team Oman Air to talk about how much work and dedication is needed to achieve these levels.

To tell the story of the journey that took them from aspiring young dinghy sailors to members of the best sailing teams around the word. They should not forego this opportunity and act as inspirational figures. Having the professional backing of OmanSail behind this might be an easier task than for many other promising athletes in Oman.

Health camp or lancet?

I have read the other day in the Hi magazine's readers comments section on ways  to improve the domestic tourism.  If you have been following my tourism related mumbles inhere, you know I  emphasized a few times the importance of domestic tourism and means of improving it.
A new thought is related to health tourism. This is normally associated to wellness, spas, thermal water, nutrition, holistic light treatments (non-intrusive). Not to be confused with medical tourism (dental, plastic surgery etc.).

I have a couple of surgeon friends in Muscat and they always amaze me. Not just their ability to save lives and improve conditions of living, but also of how much they have to work on obesity related malfunctions. And these are very costly interventions most of the time covered by the patients themselves. So there is a whole lot of disposable income available for painful interventions with the hope of quick and sustainable result. These are certainly quick and in most cases result in noticeable  improvements,  however they are all but sustainable. For that it would take change of habits, mentality, the proof of results through nutrition and lifestyle. No lancet can do that.

But, there might be an opportunity for some retreat programs aimed at changing your lifestyle, nutrition, exercise habits achieving sustainable results and a healthier population. Maybe it sounds naive but it's actually not. There are several examples of such 'fit farms'  where guest partake in a 7-10 days strict retreat type programs, living in  a remote "hotel" which resemble more like a camp. It's not an all inclusive, all you can eat health resort with some light morning stretching followed by beach pose all day long pretending you are recharging. It's more like a boot camp that once you sign up and pay the expensive fee they guarantee you will walk out as a different person. With more self confidence, more healthy nutrition habits, being aware of how to push your limits, and perhaps with a bit more inner balance. The best such example is The Ashram (in California and Spain) and perhaps the Canyon Ranch in US.

Obviously there are thousands of variations from a sports and endurance focus to weight loss, from detox and nutrition to body and soul balance etc. The bottom line, with people struggling for a healthier lifestyle and willing to spends thousands of rials on surgeries there must be a case for such programs and facilities.

Multi-sport complex for Bidbid area

It was some time ago I wrote about my views on the importance of sports for developing a competitive, just-do-it mentality.
It seems that others see potential in sports development as well. According to the Omani press,  yesterday was signed an agreement to implement a $300mn worth greenfield sports complex development  for Fanja Club, known as the defending champions of the one Omani Football League.

The integrated project in Al Seeh Al Ahmer is planned to include outdoor sports facilities for football and tennis and indoor sport hall for sports like handball volleyball, basketball and swimming. The integrated feature will be completed by a 5-star hotel, 60 villa units and a small golf course and other leisure elements.

Such integrated sport complexes are known for some time, especially in urban context in Europe. In many cases these huge areas (often ex horse racing tracks) became centrally located through the gradual expansion of cities, so they are facing a mismatch between value and functional utility. Through such integrated re-development, value is unlocked  while maintain the sports and social function.

In this case I am not aware of enough details to provide a proper opinion, but based on the public statement it seems there is quite a bit of conceptual uncertainty in the scheme. First of all I am not sure such a complex needs a 5-star hotel, a 4-start would seem a better match. What they mean buy a small golf course: par-3, 9-hole, 6-hole or eventually a themepark-like minigolf? How will professional sports be wed with access to public, or it is just meant for professional sports? Will the sports demand be enough to sustain a full time medical center or intention is to have a fully blown sports clinic to service the whole country? The circulated amount seems way too big for any possible payback within a reasonable time frame. And so on...

Let's look at the bright side: even if nothing will happen which I hope will not be the case, there is talk about sports development and that increases awareness on its importance.

The asset called employee contd' - Motivation

It is not difficult to differentiate between a job done by a motivated and a non-motivated employee. Lack of motivation can hardly be compensated even by the most of experience there is. Sooner rather than later the sings of ignorance and apathy will be show on the job done.

In contrary when we are dealing with a motivated team, the sky is the limit, even if the sky is actually never really reached.

While there are many elements to it, I found that there are three major things that make or break employee motivation:

1. 1. Job security – How much effort you’d put in a work knowing you might not be around next month, or next year to witness the consequences. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean a job for life and that you cannot be dismissed even if you are clearly not doing your best to perform. I mean an environment where team members are not sent away without a clear explanation, where before somebody is sent away is given clear messages about his performance and given the chance to change and improve, where if somebody is fired there is subsequent communication to the team on explaining the main reasons (without discrediting the ex-employee) of his/her departure.
2. Sense of direction and progress – it is difficult to push hard without knowing what are you pushing for. Letting people know where is that they should be heading and how is that relevant for the team progress as a whole, is key. Same as the appraisal of where we are on our route to those goals (or where we think we are).
3. Recognition and reward – even the best steering can only get you that far without the fuel for the engine. A pet on your back can do much more than most managers think. Let alone some modest but clear words of praise (avoid being cheese, that sometimes does more harm than good, especially in front of peers). Finally a good asset’s worth and paycheck has to be in balance. You cannot defy the market value for too long (some employees are mastering this skill though.)

Notice, I put the money in the third group. Not that I would not welcome a raise and it would not improve my motivation, but in general there is a whole lot that can be achieved before giving a pay raise. Provided the other conditions (job security, sense of direction and progress and recognition) were not met before.  You would often hear people saying that “I am a mercenary and I am here for the money but…” this and that…

I always take this with a grain of salt. The explanations that usually follow relates to elements under 1 and/or 2. Obviously this might not apply to everybody but in my experience of working with superiors or team members, they typically proved to be the reasons for lack of motivation. What about you?

Photo by: Helder Almeida

The asset called employee contd' - Aquisition

Like with any asset let's start with the acquisitions, recruitment that is. It is probably the most difficult HR decision for an employer. No matter how many HR professionals are around you equipped with an arsenal of tests and interviewing techniques, it still remains more often than not a shot in the dark. The more sophisticated the assessment tools, the more books and blog posts are written in how to "read and trick" them if you are an applicant.

I noticed that in case of companies and organization in Oman a nice CV with the right buzzword and professional acronyms will do most of the job. Probably there is an overreliance on the academic and professional track record of the candidate, and less emphases on it's personality and non-technical, soft skills required for the task at hand.

Of course I am aware of most factors that distort the process such as, quotas to follow, wasta etc. but some of those you'll find in other economies as well.

I have interviewed for a junior and mid level position around 70-80 people so far and hired around 8-10 in the last 16 years, in my various earlier positions. I can say that in perhaps two cases I was absolutely certain it was the right hire. In most of the other it was the least doubtful choice and in one case we went for a risky approach but did not really paid off.  I learned that the best approach for me is trying to understand the candidate from the following three perspectives:

• 1. motivation - is (s)he really up for this, would  this job  put him/her on fire, at least for the first 12 months or so. How does this position fit in the candidate ambitions etc.
• 2. ability - does (s)he have the skill set required to perform the job. And I don't only mean the background, as most of the technical knowledge is not learnt in schools anyway, but more the essential soft skills, personality, social skills (especially when it comes to sales or team work), learning skills (are they systematic learning by doing persons or quick learners - learning by watching types etc.)
• 3. fit  - do you as employer feel comfortable spending more time with this person than with most of your friends or even family? Is there a natural click, a "kind of like this guy" feel? This is probably the most sensitive one. Rationality should be put aside and instincts should be at play here.

Anyways, no matter how hard we try it will remain -more often then it should- a trial and error game.  One thing for sure, do not let your HR do all that work for you, get involved from as early as you can. As team leader you will bring in the real perspective and look at the candidates as potential colleges not as people to fill positions.

The asset called employee

There are too many countries in the world that would envy the infrastructure Oman has and is about to have.  But what about the people the soft power of a country so to speak? The hardware which is pretty much there worth only as much as the software that runs on it.  Obviously it can always be running on imported apps and home made programs but better to have a well established own operating system, an open code that is ready to continuously improve and learn from outside inputs.

I have worked in organizations which had as only assets the people at their desks. They did not own the desks though, nor the buildings  or computers, no cars either. Everything was leased. So they had to make sure talent is retained and accounted for as well utilized asset. One can imagine that in these environment there is a lot of effort put in continuous development, retention, personal and carrier development programs, performance management etc. Much like the maintenance work in a factory or in a computer park. I also worked in organizations that lack all of this. Totally. The only thing they had is some sort of rationality regarding the employer-employee relationship, stemmed mainly from a master and servant customary setup. This came though with some degree of fairness but totally random and limited in capacity. Much like a family business with lots of personal involvement, emotion and all. Needless to say both have advantages and disadvantages and both have their own role in an economy.  Problem is when one or the other is missing.

I don't think there is anything new in saying that is key to the sustainability of the Omani economy to  have the institutional practices of being able to continuously maintain, refresh, and at times to rewrite the software. And I am not referring to a checklist to include in quarterly reports to the board, but more to a culture, a belief that my employee is my value, the better he does the better I do. So I better be spending time and effort in making sure he/she is at its best.

Not being an HR professional I can just write from my own experience of working under both styles and leading a team under the former. So I have decided to share some of the low hanging fruits that I think are easy to implement, cheep and have almost an immediate impact with regards to employee satisfaction, commitment and performance. And I hope you'll find them applicable to Oman. So maybe you'll find something of use if you are leading and/or managing (there are two very different things) people in Oman. Stay tuned.

Muscat Festival reloaded

It's already November and in three months time it's Muscat Festival Month. I have been out this year a few times with the family and have to say was above my expectations. Obviously there is a lot of work and resources that goes into this event, so it deserves some feedback on improvement.

Include a beach location / venue that has good accessibility and space for some beach and water related activities. Could have some kids area (slides, floating castles etc.) and a separate water sports, fun area (boat pulled gliding, water ski, rope wake boarding  banana ride etc.) and few beach "bars" for shakes, snacks and various soft beverages.

Get rid of the Omani Food Festival, leave a food village and that's it. Omani food deserves to have a proper festival on it's own. A food court that was set up last event can hardly be called a food festival let alone Omani. The Omani women cooking in the heritage village created more of a festival feel then the Indian food served in plastic bowls at the so called food festival.

Enhance the cultural element, get more music and dance in. Diversify to capture the Omani youth as well. There is no harm in having some bigger mainstream names perform a concert or two if they are the right choice. Get some instruments out that can be tried out by interested people. Include interactive drumming session when visitors can pick up a drum and follow the introductions of a drumming facilitator. Having 20-40 people in such a session is an awesome experience even watching let alone participating.

Create an Apple / Android App for the festival especially with date and time reminder for selected programs and map for location guidance. The program is so rich it makes life easier to have an automated reminder feature on your phone.

Coordinate with OmanSail to include a decent Regatta with state of the art in shore program and race coverage along with the Traditional Boat Racing.

Create a Safety First park and visitor center with fun rides and interactive experiences of low speed collisions etc. Almost certainly one of the large car dealers would be keen to showcase such an attraction. No need to mention the educative benefits which are obvious.

Include a football village in collaboration with OFA. Have the bigger names of the National Team there to meet people once or twice during the festival period. Have a small 5 aside pitch, could even be the inflammable vet pitch which is a lot of fun to play on barefooted.

And last but not least control the flow of vehicles (not just by having amateur traffic agents that do nothing but wave to cars) on the Qurum Beach road to avoid total congestion.

Any further ideas welcome...

Is Sheraton Ruwi recovering?

The long closed old Sheraton in Ruwi is showing signs of life once in a while.  It might be approaching the end of its 6-year coma, as yesterday just blinked, moved one hand and whispered that it might wake up as new in 12 to 16 months.  The doctors and relatives are confident.

As an outsider and not knowing the property well enough, I would speculate that once revived the hotel has good chances in failing to regain its glory, provided it will try to pick up business where it left it 6 years ago.

Things have changed since then, lots of new upscale hotels came on the market and quite a few are just about to knock on the door like the Kempinski at The Wave, the W and the Westin in Shaati, The Intercontinental at the Muscat Hills just to name a few. The city is growing northwards; CBD is not going to stay in Ruwi forever. The Airport Heights are gaining already over Ruwi in offering higher quality office space and better accessibility.  

I am sure the owners have done their homework, but to me it seems that for that location there are two opportunities on the Muscat market that very few really cater for at the moment:

1. the extended stay business guests.  This segment still does not have a decent branded offering in town. If you’d like to stay for more weeks let alone months, you’d either put the big buck on the table or you’ll have to close your eyes and be happy with a locally branded compromise. The short term apartment rental market it also practically nonexistent.

2. the ergonomic, chic economy business hotel. The closest such brand in the Starwood portfolio is Element, however it’s rather unknown outside of North America.  Starwood website quotes an Element to be opened in Muscat in Jan 2016 (while it has no mention of a Sheraton to open any time soon), but that refers to the project replacing the Intercontinental Shaati along with the W and the Westin. A Four Points by Sheraton would also be a better option, allowing for a lower price point and avoid competition with the coastal 5 stars.

In my view, a combination of the above would be a much better bet for the glorious building than just stepping up as a face lifted Sheraton. Let’s see.

Non-existing hotel sold?

I read in Oman Observer last week that Garden Hotel in Dhofar region was sold for an amount that is quite decent in hotel value terms (RO 10 million).

On one hand such transactions are reassuring that there are encouraging prospects on the hotel market on the other hand it left me a bit puzzled as I had no previous knowledge of a Garden Hotel in Oman. I though it's just my lack of knowledge. Quickly searched around but still found nothing.   So it's quite a lot of money for a hotel that is nowhere to be found, I thought.  Then saw some raised eyebrows on twitter from others following Omani press as well, they also had no clue what this could be.

There must be something somewhere for sure, most likely a development project (but the article does not mention this).

I can only think of two scenarios: 1: we are dealing with a PR trick raising peoples interest (like me blogging about it) - very unlikely though.  2. it's just lack of publishing accuracy and journalistic interest putting something out that was not really verified and made sense of - more likely.

Anyways, whenever there will be a Garden Hotel in Dhofar region I hope it will do well.

Tour guide for a day competition

In talking to people who cater for travelers to Oman, and reading some of the few comments I have here in this blog it seems that besides flagship  hotels and natural attractions there is little activity going on in the country focused to provide a whole rounded visitor experience.

I tend to agree, however I think the activities and the animation component of the travel experience has a lot to do with packaging the existing stuff. This is not to say that we would not need new man-made  attractions and services (like a waterpark, or a frankincense house or a dhow museum etc.) but more that we should focus on taking out the maximum from our existing mix.

So I thought to encourage you to turn into tour guides for a few minutes and let's try to draft an ideal travel day for the following type of travelers.

• "Chilling couple":  25-40 years of age couple with no kids (on a week stay in Oman)
• "Fun for the Fam": family with 1-3 dependent kids between 4-13 years (on a one week stay in Oman)
• "Business unusual": 30-55 years old business person on a business trip suddenly finding himself/herself with one spear day to spend for leisure

You can enter the competition for only one type or all three. Please send the brief itinerary, or program only for ONE DAY.

Awards....hmmm, well I don't really have much to offer other than the fun of the exercise and that I am going to talk about the best ideas in future posts obviously with all the credits and references to their authors. So I encourage you to take the challenge and place a succinct comment with your suggestion OR e-mail me to: orielco [at] gmail [dot] com. I will consider anonymous posts as well but I would love to provide proper reference to the authors of the best ideas.

Come on, be creative and courageous! There is no bad idea just lazy reader...:)

Sink Hole to become a resort

I just read the other day that Muscat Municipality partnered up with the private sector to develop a new resort in  Quriyat region, on the site of the well known Sink Hole.  It is quoted by some prestigious publications as the world most beautiful sink hole.

If you've been there, you know that the place is quite simple and apart of this great natural attraction which is a huge rocky hole formation, filled with deep green crystal clear water (well at least until some less respectful travelers don't through diet coke cans in it) there is not much around. So using up the fame of the attraction it only makes sense to put up services around.

Not having seen plans though I would think there are a few issues of concern, and perhaps some great opportunities as well, hopefully to be considered by the concept development team.

Original form: This natural marvel is beautiful as long as it is kept clean and and in its original form. Overcrowding it with stairs (take away the current concrete monster stair please), terraces etc. will kill it's spirit and beauty.

Crowd management:  I would even limit the number of people (like at the Al Hoota Caves) to be in at the same time to enable it to better impress visitors. The fact that the resort to be built has a relative low room count (67 rooms and 20 suites) is reassuring that the large crowds will be kept at bay.

Edutaimnent factor: When I was there with my family, I kind of missed some informative element from the experience which would explain the natural formation of the lake, and perhaps show some similar ones elsewhere. (in Tawi Attir-Oman, in US, along the dead Sea etc.) Having the resort there an people staying for few days, it's a unique opportunity to create a geological visitor center for them to show a short story of Oman's geo formations and related things to know. Introducing the edutainment factor would give a valuable and unique ad on to the resort at reasonable extra cost.

Can't wait to see the place ready!

Travel check to boost local tourism

The other day I attended a hotel investment event at Al Bustan. Nice turnout of Omani and Middle Eastern hoteliers partially due to the fact that it was at the same time as the Omani Investment Forum. The stats presented by STR Global and JLL Hotels indicated how Oman's hotel sector is going through a demand supply mismatch with demand lagging behind. This results in drop of room rates especially in the more expensive segment.
Another piece of takeaway was that the only market segment where occupancy, rate and RevPAR were still growing was the lower mid-scale and mid-scale market (3 star and weaker 4 star).

Yet another prof that domestic tourism has a lot of unexplored potential and that the sector is overly exposed to the international  corporate and leisure demand.

Without a major push in demand it will be very difficult to justify new projects, although Omran is currently developing a hotel (Khasab Hotel) primarily focused on the Omani families.  Obviously there are several ways to encourage domestic demand, but one idea could be to introduce a travel voucher for public sector employees. This is practically a check offered  as part of the employment package (as a perk) could only be used up in hotels in Oman and it would not be  convertible to to cash in any other way.  Later this could be extended to usage in other hospitality facilities like spa's and/or health clubs.

I would expect this to give a nice boost to the local demand and it would be a smart way to use up funds to generate further spending and economic benefit associated with the travel to the destination and perhaps other local expenditure. Again there are countries where the system works quite nicely, such as the Cheques Vacances in France,  Hungary or China for that matter. To be fair, in those places the check is further insensitive by a favorable tax regime.

The other existing segment that could be significantly strengthened  is the regional GCC demand but that is a separate topic for discussion.

Affordable variety for local travelers

With just under 3 million people Oman qualifies as a small country. As a comparison it has just a bit more inhabitants than Paris and bit less than Berlin.  In spite of its small size the domestic and regional tourism  is vital for Oman for a number of reasons: a) its remote location relative to Europe, b). it's highly seasonal foreign demand (due to weather) and c) it's niche character as a destination.

What is the best way to engage the Omanis and expat residents to travel more around the country? My call would be: the affordable variety. Now what the heck is that?  For instance a network of 8-15 interesting historic hotels, inns and guest houses located in historic and culturally interesting locations.

I am thinking about renovated and converted forts,  converted fishing villages with beach clubs, mountain vacation villages, desert camps (there are a few already). Destinations hotels in themselves around the country offering a critical mass of nice places to go for long week-end and short holidays (Dar Al Dhiyafa's). And most importantly they should all be different with a separate story to tell.  Hotels and guesthouses of 15-40 units (rooms) with limited service but still up to the standards of 3 star hotels with breakfast and all you can eat buffet dinner (an attraction on its own).

An example of a converted Pousada

In order to make such an initiate viable the rates should be affordable for an average Omani family. Therefore conversion budgets should be low, using existing structures. Staff should be not more than 8-15 for a location. Most of the operational overhead costs should be shared, so a common operator should be established that creates a joint reservation platform (online and call center), with shared sales & marketing function,  and other corporate services (accounting, legal, finance etc.)

There is nothing new in this though, other countries like Portugal have done this long time ago and their experience can serve as a good example. This chain of historic hotels, guest houses and mansions is called Pousadas de Portugal and can be checked out here. (Pousada means Inn in Portugese)