If the Indian economy is set to become a services powerhouse, the hospitality sector will be the one to provide the human energy.

The past few years has seen an exodus of hospitality professionals to areas like IT-enabled services, insurance, banking and healthcare, as also to travel, airlines, training, consulting and leisure.

These fast-growing sectors are luring hospitality managers by more than doubling salaries and the demand-supply gap is such that junior executives can make that leap to middle management and then on to senior management at a much younger age than before.

All this poaching is naturally causing industry stalwarts much vexation. Says Bernard Martyris, senior VP (HR), The Indian Hotels Company, "For HR professionals in this industry, retention has become the key performance parameter."

The Taj chain claims an annual attrition rate of 9%, which is relatively low, but that’s partly explained by the fact that the group has launched into a series of acquisitions, which automatically gives managers more avenues for growth.

But the churn — the company lost two 28-year-old food and beverage managers and one front office manager to hotel chains in Australia last week — has obliged it to hire middle managers in numbers, whereas it earlier preferred to hire only at entry level. "We haven’t been able to build up such a large pool of middle managers as is required to cope today," says Martyris.

At the recently-opened JW Marriott Hotel, general manager Hans-Georg Rohrbein has similar problems. Having recruited 600 people through a rigorous selection process earlier this year, he has already lost some of the best.

This includes a pastry chef, hired on a monthly salary Rs 28,000 for the chain’s Goa property in 1999, who left for a monthly salary of Rs 1 lakh this year. "Salaries have shot up across the board," explains Rohrbein. "Indian hospitality managers have built a reputations and are being hired by international hotel chains and cruise liners in big numbers."

The booming demand has certainly created growth opportunities for hospitality professionals. The question is, what should they do to leverage these?

One thing is certain: people skills will remain paramount and those who develop these, and quickly, are likely to move ahead the fastest. Middle managers here are rarely called upon to directly interact with a guest — unless a major crisis is at hand — but they do coach a team of juniors who handle such interactions. Vandana Ranganathan, corporate communications chief of BPO firm Daksh e-Services was formerly head of corporate communications at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi.

"Soft skills are the key to any job in the hospitality industry," she says, "Customer and team management skills are what make hospitality professionals so valuable to other industries like ITeS."

The crucial function in the hospitality industry has always been operations. Support functions like sales, engineering, accounts, IT and HR play their part, but are generally not considered industry-specific.

Says Milind Kelkar, chief operating officer of Grow Talent Company and former executive at Indian Hotels, "IT tools like customer relation management have evolved in hospitality in a way similar to the the service sector as a whole. The use of IT is no longer a major differentiator, at least among the top hotels".

IT has actually cut the size of the back office in hotels drastically. But when it comes to operations, there’s been no let up in recruitment. So what does hospitality look for when it takes on middle-level managers?

Says Carlson Hospitality country head KB Kachru, "Today’s professional is expected to have more business skills. For example, the earlier emphasis may have been on the ability to remember wine regions and the different varieties of cheese, while today one needs to have the ability to sell them to the guest and ensure they meet expectations in terms of quality."

Hardselling expensive cheese to the unwary guest may not seem like a nice thing to do, but a recession-hit hotel industry seems convinced it’s necessary. Says Tarun Thakral, GM, Le Meridien Windsor Palace, New Delhi: "Today, we’ve started looking for people who are business, profit and sales oriented as well. Middle-level managers need to take ownership of their areas of responsibility and deliver results."

While it looses its staff to other, better paying sectors, where is the hospitality industry itself recruiting from? In operations, it’s inevitably from within the industry. In the past, top hotel chains were particular about pedigree, never recruiting from lower-grade hotels, but the scarcity of trained professionals has changed that.

The Taj, for one, recently recruited a middle-level manager from an ITDC hotel, unthinkable ten years ago. Besides, the best chains also look for varied experience, which translates into dealing with different kinds of situations and clientele.

The larger the hotel you’ve worked for, the better, and if you’ve had a stint overseas, you’re especially hot. The top jobs in hospitality are in food & beverages production and service, followed by front office and house-keeping. These are all specialisations offered by numerous hotel management institutes sponsored by the ministry of tourism and new schools set up by the private sector majors.

But with the likes of GE Capital and American Express swooping down to recruit fresh grads, it shouldn’t be long before these institutes offer specialised courses in banking and finance as well.