The Future of Hospitality: AIHM’s Research on the Next Generation

At the Asian Institute of Hospitality Management (AIHM) in academic association with Les Roches, our academic team has the opportunity to work with brilliant young leaders from around the world. As we teach, train and mentor, we are inspired by the dreams and aspirations of AIHM students.

In some ways, students’ energetic and ambitious mindsets are familiar. Every young generation possesses a vision for their future. In other ways, it’s apparent the next generation entering the workforce is very different from those of us already well into our careers.

Recently at AIHM we developed and hosted an experiential workshop and networking event to explore some of these differences. At the AIHM Employer Forum on 9 February 2024, we brought together hospitality employers and many of our Bachelor’s degree students to gain a better understanding of these generational differences and find similarities among us.

In what ways are current hospitality leaders and young employees’ motivations similar? In what ways are they different? How can industry best work with the next generation, leverage their talents, and empower them to grow their careers within our organisations? These are some of the questions we set out to address.

I also invited AIHM Lecturer, Yuth Thongcharoen, PhD, to join the event. Our lecturers are interested in pioneering the future in multiple disciplines, and Dr. Yuth—in addition to being a very engaging facilitator of learning—embodies this. Utilising data generated during the event as well as follow-up research, he authored a paper that contains many of the findings and presented it a recent conference.

I sat down with him to discuss this research study titled: “Bridging the Gap Between Expectations of Current Hospitality Leaders and Young Employees’ Motivations: A Qualitative Research Endeavor into Multi-Generational Discrepancies”.

Today, I’d like to invite you to read the transcription of our discussion to discover insights which can be used to change the way individuals and teams recruit and interact with the next generation of leaders.

Introduction from Warren Stanworth, the Academic Dean of the Asian Institute of Hospitality Management in academic association with Les Roches

“I am pleased to announce that the first scholarly research study from our institute of higher education is currently being developed. To prove its authenticity the following blog is a conversation between the interviewer and the researcher. The whole conversation has been transcribed without interpretation demonstrating its authenticity and context of the origins of the research.”

Samantha Lauver-Marion, BSc: Thank you so for joining me today, Dr. Yuth. We’d like to talk about the process you've undergone to be able to prepare this research and to present it in the recent conference. Can you tell us some of the inspiration behind this initiative?

Yuth Thongcharoen, PhD: Honestly, you were a big part of the inspiration because it was your intiative and AIHM COO Chris Meylan’s initiative to invite me to collaborate on the project. After listening to your explanation and description of it all, it really made a lot of sense, and it was something that I feel is really conducive to what we do here at AIHM. I was really glad to be invited to take part.

SLM: What I thought was really invigorating about how this all unfolded is that I invited you to the first AIHM Employer Forum with a general understanding of what I was going to be creating in that initiative, and then through your active participation in the actual session, you were able to watch the experience unfold; and then through your guidance, you've been able to extrapolate this and build it beyond what it was originally intended to be. You’ve been able to create something that we can give back to our growing community and to add to the bodies of research on how to engage employees of this generation of which our students are a part.

Can you tell me from your own perspective a little bit about the AIHM Employer Forum event that we attended?

YT: First of all, I would like to say I was really impressed with just the way the students interacted with the hospitality leaders we invited. The actual event was similar to the research title. The event was a way to collect data to bridge the gap between what current hospitality leaders expect from their young employees—and then what motivates the young employees to work and maintain long-term employment with different properties or companies in the various jobs they may do. Therefore, the endeavour was “multi-generational” for sure.

As educators and employers, we get older every year, but the students arriving are the generation of new young professionals. Within this we can clearly see the gap getting bigger and bigger between generations. The same phenomenon happens across industries as well, including in hospitality.

When I attended that event, it was really nice to see the way the students were interacting and handling themselves in social settings, networking, and using English in a very proficient manner. The confidence they displayed impressed me. It’s quite a reflection on the job that we do here to prepare them for the real world.

SLM: Thank you so much, Dr. Yuth. It's great to hear about how you experienced the event. To be able to showcase our students and their growing confidence in this initiative was really an important aspect of it so I'm really glad that stood out to you as well.

Prior to actually hosting the event, I conducted an interview with four students. We filmed that discussion and produced an interview of it, and we used the video to lead into the live discussions during the event.

We flipped the usual conference-style or panel discussion setting, and we had the most junior or the youngest in the audience be the ones that were positioned at its front. Usually, it's those that are the most senior leaders or those that are most accomplished who would be sitting at the front and giving advice to the younger generation about what they could do to excel in their career, to be inspired in this or that area. In contrast, we wanted to be able to give voice to the younger generation to illustrate the fact that we're all actually quite similar in the way that we view our values or what we're looking for in a successful and fulfilling career.

For example, working within a team or an organisation that values empathy is one of the big things that came out when we were using the Mentimeter platform. We used Mentimeter as an anonymous, real-time response platform to be able to encourage even the most reserved students to feel confident to engage in the setting. I was delighted it really did work in the way that I’d hoped it would.

YT: I agree. The event was really a great success. Before attending, I didn't know the agenda for the night or what to expect. My thinking was that I’d just come, observe, collect some data and write a paper. But then when I showed up, it was quite a spectacle.

You know, a lot of guests came, and they had a tour of the campus, and they got to socialise before the actual event took place. Students were lovely as they always are, just being themselves. Then when the main event—the session held in the Amphitheatre—took place, the way that you had set up data collection being online, with interactive surveys, real time data collection, in a non-threatening anonymous context…it was really great.

In the way you managed the event, students were able to have conversations with the hospitality leaders that came—and then you'd switch the seats around so they got to talk to everyone. Everyone got to talk to everyone.

And so besides that online survey data, the observational data was really rich. I was able to include that into the paper as well.

The panel discussion with the four students was brilliant. The individual students were excellent because they really had a lot experience and insight to share. As you know, students who go through our three-and-a-half-year Bachelor's degree programme complete internships in their second semester and fifth semester. They do two different internships along the way. Having had those internship experiences already as part of their journey, they were able to share their perspective based on real-world experience in the workplace as well.

After the Forum, I was also able to conduct a follow-up questionnaire with the students about their use of English language on the internships and how confident they felt with it, how they felt about about their competency and proficiency. They genuinely only had very positive things to say about their educational experience here and the way that it really prepared them for the real world.

SLM: Thank you so much. I also want to use this opportunity as a jumping-off point to connect with current leaders who do want to engage more effectively with this generation, who want to know what they can to do make them feel more confident and facilitate their successful contributions and growth in their organisations.

As you expressed, we designed this event in a way that the young representatives were able to be confident. They led the employers on a campus tour. When we encourage or invite our students to do certain things like take people on a tour of the campus and show them what life is like here studying with AIHM, we also want to let them do it in their own way. When the company representatives were taken on the tour, they were led by the students who engaged in internships at their properties. The students who interned in the hotels were the ones to invite the company participants to the Employer Forum. And then they were the ones who took them around the campus. The students were able to tell them stories in their own way.

At the end, so many of the employers commented about how confident, as you said, the student were—and also about how passionate they were about showing off this community that we’re all building together.

When you're trying to engage with this generation and you want to give them opportunities to grow and to be a contributing member of your organisation, give them a chance to action the requests that you have but to do it in their own way.

Also, give them a chance to consider what they can contribute. Give them some time to reflect and then perhaps provide their proposed ideas in a written format rather than asking them in that exact moment to spontaneously be able to share their thoughts and ideas. That spontaneous, on-the-spot contribution isn’t a skill set they've honed fully like the older leaders who are present with us.

This is just something to keep in mind as we're trying to grow this community. They’re extremely capable of confidently sharing their ideas, but maybe the best way of empowering that is through a different format and method than we’ve used in the past.

Returning to your research, I’d love it if you could tell us about the conference where you presented your paper. What was its focus? What was your inspiration to share your research at this specific event?

YT: I had the privilege of presenting our research on behalf of AIHM, and I need to mention that you are co-author of the paper as well. I think the synergy was excellent because the Forum was a really innovative way of collecting data. Then, I had the easy job of just putting it on paper. So it was great teamwork.

The conference was the 8th Foreign Language Learning and Teaching Conference, and the theme was “Global Voices in ELT: Embracing Multicultural Perspectives”.

Photo credit: https://2024.flltconf.com/

I was looking at different conferences where I might seek to present this research paper, and this conference in particular seemed to resonate with the context of the research. It resonated not only with the fact that we use English as our medium of teaching and communication here at AIHM, but also with the focus on multicultural perspectives. I submitted the paper, and with some minor revisions, I was able to go present it at this conference.

It was really a productive experience. The other researchers and educators in attendance had a lot of great comments and feedback about how the research was very up-to-date, novel, and applicable to do what we do here at this institution. And some of the findings were quite interesting.

For example, from the older generation through to the current younger generations just entering the workforce, it seems like some of the themes in terms of values are quite similar, but the difference is in the way that they prioritise them. The research showed that the older generation put a lot more weight on job security, job benefits and getting promotions—whereas the new generation is looking more at spending time with family and friends, health and fitness, and being part of an organisation that mirrors their own culture, values, and mission. That was quite interesting to see. Also, romance and love was at the bottom. Perhaps that was a reflection of the sample size, and that point would be more prominent if we expanded the data set. But based on the research it seems like the values are: family, friends, and then work, and then romance. I found this difference of priorities to be a salient finding that was a bit surprising.

Photo credit: https://2024.flltconf.com/

The next generation want to be in an organisation with empathic leadership and an organisation that has open channels of communication on not only the lateral level but on the vertical level as well. That’s in many ways what we have here at at AIHM. Everyone's got their office open, ready to listen, ready to talk, ready to advise, to mentor, ready to nurture.

Also, the next generation of leaders wants ownership of the decisions and activities that you take part in at work. Having that empowerment to make a decision, even if it's really small, and then being appreciated and complimented on those impacts that you have in the organisation, whether it's something small, something with a guest, something with a coworker, something that might even seem mundane or menial—it counts, it matters. That's what this generation wants to be a part of. It makes them feel like they're a collective part of the whole organisation rather than operating within a kind of a top-down leadership style. It’s different from a notion of: “You're the boss. I'm the employee. You tell me what to do and I do it. That's it.” It's interesting how this new generation is evolving on its own.

SLM: This reminds me of a quote from the video we produced in preparation for the AIHM Employer Forum. Angad Jesu Nazareth was one of the student representatives, and he said, “Our generation is looking for organisations that make employees feel like they’ve actually done something in the company and not just that they’re a part of the system.” He talked about how it's important that an organisation is valuing and appreciating the things that an employee is doing, even in their most junior level.

They are contributing to the success of the organisation, and it should be recognised because when we are valuing people for that which they are contributing, it will generate more positive contributions in turn. This is basic human psychology, but applying it to this younger generation in the workplace, especially in a fast-paced industry like the hospitality industry can sometimes be challenging to do. However, I hope people will see that you can empower other people, no matter where you or someone else is in the organisation. You don't have to wait for a certain position or title in order for you to be able to do that. It is in the hands of each of us. Even our youngest leaders can do this for each other.

Dr. Yuth, I know that some of the pre-existing research you've been examining looks a lot at the Millennials’ experience in the workplace. Did you find a lot of research talking about Gen Z, which is our current student's generation, or are you building upon the body of research focused on Millennials with the contributions that you're making in this subject area?

YT: In the secondary data collection, in reading the existing body of research, a lot of it focuses on the Millennials, which is Generation Y. I assume the reason for this is that Millennials are the main generation in the workforce at the moment. Research shows that about 75 percent of the workforce in 2025, which is next year, is going to be made up of the Millennials. They're in the workforce now—or, in some cases, about to enter the workforce. Most of the recent research I came across was on Millennials.

But for sure, we need to look at Generation Z. They're up and coming. They're mainly the student body that we're going to be dealing with from now on. Further research is probably going to naturally trickle down from Gen Y to Gen Z, or what some affectionately call the “Zoomers”.

SLM: I feel very uniquely positioned in this moment to be able to speak from experience on this subject, as I'm a Millennial myself. The title of the paper is “Bridging the Gap”. As a Millennial, I hope to bridge the gap between our young leaders and the current leaders of the hospitality industry.

Because where I am sitting, I see how similar we are. We just say what we mean in a different way. As you referenced, those that are leaders in the workplace now value safety and security in their employment as the top priority, and that is a very important thing. But it is also important to remember that when you are motivating and encouraging your team, that even though we have similar values, that which is the most important will vary based from person to person.

This discussion encourages the conversation to begin. Don’t just assume that an employee wants X, Y and Z in order to feel valued at work. Sit down and ask them what makes them feel most valued and how can you create an environment where they're able to feel that’s being provided to them whilst also managing the needs of the business at the same time.

It’s not that one generation’s set of values needs to be prioritised over another’s or that one person's values are more important than the other person’s. We need to act in harmony with one another, knowing that give and take will be needed along the way to successfully bridge this gap. It's not about closing one chapter and beginning another. It's about weaving in our experiences and our skill sets and our innate passions in order to all be able to contribute in the way that is most optimal for our current state and our future desired state.

Thank you so much, Dr. Yuth, for joining me today. I look forward to sharing our discussion today with our growing audience on the AIHM Higher Blog, and we’ll be continuing this conversation with a series of blog posts.

For those reading this post, if you would like to learn more and get involved with our continuing body of research, you may get in touch with Dr. Yuth by email at yuth.th@aihm.education.

For the employers reading this, we would love to invite you to join us at the next AIHM Employer Forum, which is happening in 2025. We’ll be expanding upon this initiative and inviting more leaders of every generation to join this exciting discussion!

Stay on Top of the Industry’s Rapid Changes

Do you want to follow the development of the next generation of hospitality leaders? Over the coming weeks, Samantha Lauver-Marion, the Director of Global Parternships at AIHM, will be sharing a series of posts on the insights that emerged from the AIHM Employer Forum. You’ll be able to read these on the AIHM Higher Blog. Follow Samantha on LinkedIn to be sure to catch the updates.

We also encourage you to follow AIHM on Facebook. You’ll find more posts by our lecturers and students, interviews with guest experts, and posts sharing a variety of campus events and student experiences.