ACI HR Solutions has released the results of its 2014 Travel and Hospitality Industry Salary Survey.
Speaking at the official launch event held at the Singapore Tourism Board and attended by HR and Travel & Hospitality professionals, ACI's Founder & CEO, Andrew Chan said this year's results showed positive signs for staff working in the Asia Pacific travel and hospitality sector, with 68 per cent of all respondents who participated in the survey indicating they had received a pay increase in the last 12 months.
"2013 proved to be an excellent year for international tourism which showed a remarkable capacity to adjust to changing market conditions, fuelling growth and job creation across the region, despite the lingering economic and geopolitical challenges." Mr Chan said.
While salary continues to be an important factor for candidates, Mr Chan pointed to the increasing trend in the importance of career development on employee satisfaction. A total of 71 per cent of all respondents stated that career progression was either ‘extremely important' or ‘very important', with just 3 per cent saying career progression was unimportant.
Interestingly, employees appear more satisfied with their current prospects than they did in previous years, with just 34 per cent of those surveyed said they believed that their current employer offered ‘excellent' or ‘good' opportunities for career progression, compared with the 28 per cent seen in 2013, and only 22 per cent felt career prospects with their present employer were ‘poor' or ‘zero' compared to the alarming 35 per cent from the previous survey.
Mr Chan said one of the possible reasons was that the improved economic outlook has allowed companies to expand, creating new opportunities for existing staff in new areas of their business or sub-regions.
Launched in late January, the survey this year attracted over 800 respondents from 9 countries across the Asia Pacific region.
These range from company CEOs, managing directors and general managers through to middle management and front line staff.
The largest proportion of respondents (37 per cent) was based in Singapore with China (31 per cent), Hong Kong (17 per cent) and Thailand (4 per cent) also providing strong samples.
Underlining Singapore's reputation as one of the most expensive cities globally, average salaries from respondents grew by 16.1% according to the 2014 survey. This was followed closely by Thailand (11.5%) and China (9.8%). On actual highest average salaries from the survey, that once again belonged to Macau with (U$106,800), followed by Hong Kong (U$84,936) and Australia (U$81,939). Malaysia once again posted the survey's lowest average salary (U$37,418).
