Sri Lanka's hotel industry is set for more growth, with direct benefit to the economy project for the coming years. The focus remains on involving the local community in building the sector as it is developed to strengthen the economy.

The government has identified tourism as a sector with strong growth potential and a key source of jobs for Sri Lankan nationals, while a steady increase in arrival numbers is demonstrating growth in Sri Lanka's hotel industry.

The latest data from the everjobs.lk career report underscores that Sri Lanka’s hotel industry has a solid growth in job creation along with IT, education, apparel and banking & financial services sector jobs.

The recent edition of the career report is assembled by monitoring the traffic on everjobs.lk. After starting with market predictions, the team used the website analytics to refine the findings into a usable report.

“The latest jobs data confirms what we’ve known for so long; the hotel industry is stronger than ever, providing jobs, and making local communities stronger.” said everjobs Sri Lanka Country Manager Niels van Klooster. “This industry is promising consecutive job creation with a direct path to upward mobility, while creating good-paying jobs with benefits and rising salaries.”

“In a technological world, where online communications and technology playing a greater role in hotel industry and hospitality education, universities and technical and vocational institutions should offer courses in areas like reservations, marketing and communications. As the creator of jobs, the private sector can weigh in on designing curriculums to prepare graduates for hotel industry jobs, offering an assessment of graduates’ readiness for employment, and placing students in internships.” he added.

“Indeed, it remains an exciting time for the hotel industry as we see the pace of dynamic growth trending up. With all areas of the industry performing at or near peak levels, our future outlook is strong and we expect that to continue well into 2016.” read a testimonial from a Colombo hotelier. “Still, increased investments must be coupled with a robust skills training and education opportunities to strengthen the workforce, especially there’s a major skills gap in business management and operations and customer service roles.”