Bridging Employability Gaps for MSME Hospitality Enterprises: A Skills and Industry Alignment Study

Abstract

The hospitality industry is dependent on Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), which are most important in the creation of employment and the economic development as a result of the tourism industry in the economy. Nevertheless, there is a consistent disconnect between the competencies of the workforce and the MSME hospitality enterprise competencies. Such an incompatibility has caused decreased productivity, low quality of service, and sluggish growth of the enterprise. This research aims at investigating skill gaps in employability of MSME hospitality businesses and also investigating the competencies and skills of the workforce and their correspondence with industry demands. The research is a mixed study method, which involves survey data collection and statistical analysis. A total of 210 respondents collected the data (hotel owners, restaurant managers, and hospitality employees in the local tourism clusters). Evaluation of the relationship between training exposure and employability readiness was done using descriptive statistics, skills-gap indexing and a correlation analysis. The findings reveal that about 64% of the employees do not possess industry-related soft skills, including communication and customer services, and 58% of them do not show adequate technical skills concerning online booking and hotel management. Businesses that used formal training courses were found to have an increase of 31 percentage points in employee productivity index and 26 percentage point in customer satisfaction ratings. Moreover, the regression analysis indicates that there is a significant positive correlation (r = 0.72) between the indicators of enterprise performance and the skill alignment. The results emphasize the role of industry-led training systems, workforce-level vocation, and skill development programs to minimize the gaps in employability. The paper finds that by improving the partnership between training providers and MSME hospitality businesses, it is possible to improve the workforce preparation and sustainability of the sector considerably.