Bujumbura, Burundi — Human resource is often seen as one of the most important assets of tourism and hospitality organizations.

Few people will reject the proposition that the human element in tourism and hospitality organisations is critical for service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty, competitive advantage and organisation performance.

In the scenario of Burundi, two hotels can be differentiated on the basis of the services delivered. Often specific resources, assets and capabilities which need to be valuable are rare, non-substitutable, or imperfectly imitable and can be an important source of sustainable competitive advantage and performances differential among different hotels.

From a country in which tourism is virtually beginning to be developed, Burundi is gearing to be a player in the international tourism market since the country opened its doors to this sector a little more than five years ago.

Burundi's hotel industry has grown from a base of virtually 598 to 1,886 hotels in 2007 (UNDP report, 2010).With Burundi 's accession to the EAC, the government has recently allowed joint venture enterprises to invest in the tourism sector by offering incentives which can be accessed through the new investment promotion agency.

However, there is one glaring and urgent challenge in Burundi in which the scarcity of human capital has been overlooked as one important capital measurable like other investment such as the financial as an example.

Although the supply of labour in hotels and travel agencies is available, there is a severe shortage of operative, trained and qualified employees and managers with the requisite levels of professionalism and expertise.

Although there are indications that investment in this sector is increasing, mainly by construction of hotels, Burundi has to address its human resources issues at the national level, and there is currently very little focus on such issues.

What Burundi is lacking in fact is qualified personnel in all tourism-related sectors such as hotels and other accommodation; travel agencies including tour guides; tourist attractions including museums, cultural and historical sites and other tourism-related sub-sectors.

Therefore there is a huge demand for qualified people, and the government, supported by the private sector, should play a prominent role in sponsoring tourism education.

There is high turnover of employees in this sector and often young people who are employed are unqualified and I believe that such hotels do not provide a good learning environment that will benefit the development of their careers.

In addition to this problem is the difficulty of recruitment of personnel to work in hotels. It seems that the hotel industry does not appeal to young graduates of high schools and vocational training schools or even to tourism graduates from the universities. There are a number of reasons for this. First, people think that careers in hotels are short and that the jobs require no skills but demand intense physical stamina.

Job security is questionable, and this is perhaps a particular concern for people who have grown up under the impression that the most secure jobs can be found in government employment under which one's job was secured for life.

Second, the hotel industry is about serving people. Culturally, it is important among Burundian people to know that in serving people you need to have that bit of extra passion for what you do, yet serving people is no easy task. Young people with better educational qualifications will tend to consider working for a hotel only if they are offered higher positions with a competitive salary and benefits.

Unfortunately, most hotels cannot afford to fulfill such expectations. It appears that employee turnover is high in hotels and tourism related services in general. There are three possible reasons for this. First, flexibility for hotel management to employ/fire employees.

Second, employment contracts are not honored by hotels managers or employees and third, because of the poor quality of employees. Unfortunately, poor-quality employees lead to poor services. It is not surprising to find that many of them, especially those with a good educational background, aspire to work in other sector such as banking, retail or civil servants.

The efforts of hotels owners and managers to retain quality employees are also frustrated by the lack of quality manpower on the market. This demand is going to be stiff as now the whole EAC is all fiercely looking for qualified manpower to work in this booming industry.

Across the whole EAC community there is a great disparity in service quality between four and five-star hotels and those of three star ranking and below. Many of the former are joint-venture hotels with foreign brand names such as Serena, Holiday Inn, Hilton, Sheraton etc.

These hotels are managed as a chain operation, and the most advanced management styles and concepts are brought into their daily operations. These chain groups run intensive training programs for their staff at all levels.

Furthermore, some staff members can gain better exposure to various hotels world-wide through staff exchanges within hotels managed by the same hotel management group. By contrast, hotels of three stars and below cannot afford to invest much in training and development for their employees.

Service quality in these hotels is generally perceived as inferior to that in the four- and five-star hotels. Burundi needs, in the near future, to indentify a systematic training plan for human resources development based on:

On-the-job training; It is essential that "on-the-job training" should be the main means by which good quality manpower is supplied and service standards upgraded.

Training of trainers; Because it is unrealistic to train large numbers of people due to the high costs involved, "training of trainers" would be one of the primary ways of upgrading the existing training capability of the industry. In this way, these well-trained trainers can return to their cities or counties to conduct further training program based on local requirements.

Certifying educators and improving research skills. Teaching faculties should be upgraded by exposing the learners to international standards of teaching and modern learning approaches. It is recommended that most university or vocational school teachers should be licensed. The improvement of research capabilities would be one of the best ways to upgrade the effectiveness of teaching and learning among faculties.

To achieve this, faculties should be supported and encouraged to participate in international exchange programs and tourism- and hotel-related international conferences It is estimated that the demand for manpower in the tourism sector will increase substantially in Burundi, as tourism develops in the next two decades.

The human resources problems and requirements will be addressed based on the investment channeled into this sector. Problems will be the shortage of qualified manpower which will worsen. If these problems are not solved in a timely and strategic manner, this may dampen the potential for tourism to develop in Burundi.

Bearing in mind, that 20% of those working in this industry are under the age of 25 a young pool of manpower, with 46% with no more than primary education. (UNDP report, 2010).

The writer is the regional manager (Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania) of Eos Visions: a tourism, destination and events management Co.