In this undated photo, the stage is set at Felix, The Peninsula Hong Kong, for a night of entertainment, ‘70s New York nightclub style. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Hotel owners appealed to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government to allow the sector to import 9,000 employees, in a bid to improve the industry’s reception capacity and boost the city’s tourism development.

The call came a day after the authority announced plans to import up to 20,000 foreign workers in the construction and transport industries to ease a labor crunch.

The federation said it hopes the HKSAR government will set up a special program for the hotel industry to import foreign workers similar to those for the construction and transport sectors

The hospitality industry in Hong Kong is currently short of more than 9,000 employees, and 93 percent of respondents are considering importing workers to fill those vacancies, according to a survey released by the Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners on Wednesday.

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Casper Tsui Ying-wai, executive director of the Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners, said the hotel industry faces a potential personnel shortage of up to 12,000 employees, which would seriously affect hotels’ reception capacity and service quality, and even the development of the whole tourism industry. 

The federation said it hopes the HKSAR government will set up a special program for the hotel industry to import foreign workers similar to those for the construction and transport sectors.

Tsui said that the federation welcomed the government’s decision to temporarily suspend labor importation restrictions on 26 jobs, including cooks, waiters, receptionists and hotel cleaners. 

The federation said it hopes that the restrictions can be lifted permanently in the future, to alleviate the shortage of workers in the hotel industry. 

Tsui said he hopes that the government can simplify application procedures for foreign workers and improve the efficiency of approvals for the relevant examinations. The federation said it hopes the government can speed up application procedures to as little as two months. In the past, it used to take about nine months to complete approvals. 

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Perry Yiu Pak-leung, a member of the Legislative Council for the tourism industry, said that the personnel shortage in the hotel industry will get worse during the summer vacation. 

Yiu said he hopes the government can set a quota for the importation of labor for the hotel industry as soon as possible. 

The federation also said it will encourage the authorities to extend the internship period for non-local students studying related majors in the hospitality industry from six months to two years, strengthen mutual cross-border recognition of college degrees, and boost the city’s vocational education, to cultivate more talent for Hong Kong’s hotel industry.

Contact the writer at mikegu@chinadailyhk.com