Purpose -This paper aims to explore the opportunities and challenges faced by hospitality employers in accommodating a culturally diverse workforce in Northern Ireland. Design/methodology/approach -This is an exploratory paper based on interviews with hospitality employers in Northern Ireland. It seeks to answer the question "What opportunities and challenges does a culturally diverse workforce create for hoteliers in Northern Ireland?". Findings -This research highlights the potential of international workers as an invaluable new source of labour for the hospitality industry, provided that they are properly looked after and managed.Research limitations/implications -Future research could analyse the role of multicultural management in assuring business benefits associated with cultural diversity. Practical implications -The research suggests the importance of a positive proactive management system and solutions for training that could be incorporated into the workplace that celebrates its employee's cultures, that values and explores differences and that actively seeks to learn from other cultures, demonstrates tolerance, respects differences, identifies similarities and strives for inclusiveness. Training solutions are provided. Originality/value -This study suggests the removal of barriers to the successful integration of international staff into the workplace and society, while benefiting all staff, their organisations and the Irish tourism product.

International workers are a growing category of employees in the hospitality industry of Northern Ireland (NI). The retention and skills shortages of the industry are significant factors in facilitating this increase. Thus, international workers could be an invaluable new source of labour for the hospitality industry, provided that they are properly looked after and managed. However, little is known about the number of people moving to Northern Ireland to take up work in the hospitality industry. This paper sets out to answer some of the 'unknowns' -including nationality, demographic characteristics, educational, employment and economic background. The paper draws on data collected through a survey of migrant workers in nine hotels in Northern Ireland and focus groups with migrant employees in all of the survey establishments. Issues of social integration within the workforce and the wider community as well as the future that migrant workers see for themselves are discussed from a human resource perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to address the growing importance of migrant workers to the hospitality industry of peripheral locations in the UK. The paper draws on data collected through in-depth surveys of and focus group discussions with migrant workers in hotels in three peripheral locations in the UK. Findings point to varied experiences for international workers in terms of recruitment and selection of international workers; their work-related and social integration within the workforce and the wider community; aspirations for training and development among international employees; insights into the futures that migrant workers see for themselves; and their overall experience of living and working in the UK. The study is located in three regions of the UK and each study is of relatively small scale. This is a potential limitation but compensation is afforded by the depth of information collected in each location. The study suggests that employers are unwilling to invest in the development of international staff who have high levels of general education and training that is not sector specific. Promotion opportunities are seen to be limited. The paper points to the need for hospitality management to make more effective use of this source of labour. This paper is the first to undertake a study of the migrant worker experience in peripheral areas of the UK and to focus on a diverse skills sector such as hospitality

PurposeThis viewpoint paper aims to assess a curriculum response within a specific vocational sector, hospitality, driven by the recent surge in intra EU labour migration and the ensuing increase in workplace cultural diversity.Design/methodology/approachThe paper identifies an appropriate curriculum response by assessing the industry implications and proffering a conceptual model of curriculum response.FindingsThe experience across business sectors, such as hospitality, emphasises the need for training that is geared to meet the needs of both international and indigenous employees and that, critically, intercultural issues represent a significant training gap. It is posited that the curriculum response is multifaceted embracing the need to address course content, learning outcomes, assessment methods and the training needs of educators.Originality/valueThe paper is targeted at academics within applied business education, specifically in those areas of the services sector that have experienced significant labour migration in recent years. It is also of wider value to those involved in curricula design in a vocational context.

This paper addresses the contribution of tourism's workforce to destination image and branding and considers the role that employees play in visitors' interpretation of their experience of place. The focus of this paper is on the contribution of working people to the image of place and the potential for contradiction in imagery as the people who inhabit and work within a place change over time. At the same time, those consuming the place as visitors may well have expectations that are fixed in traditional and outdated imagery. The location of this paper is Ireland where the traditional marketing of the tourism brand has given core roles to images of people and the friendliness of Irish hospitality, represented by traditional and homogeneous images. Interpretation of Ireland as a destination, in the tourist literature, by tour guides and within the cultural heritage sector generally, has widely perpetuated these traditional and, arguably, cliched images. Recent growth in the "Celtic tiger" economy has induced unprecedented and large scale migration from countries across the globe to Ireland, particularly into the tourism sector. This paper raises questions with regard to interpretation and branding of a country as a tourist destination in the light of major changes within the demography and ethnicity of its tourism workforce.