Category: News

Salaries for the majority of professionals working in the Gulf region were unaffected or positively impacted over the past 12 months, according to recruitment major Hays.

Its 2021 Salary & Employment Report delivered largely positive data for last year despite it being a year of “unprecedented change and challenges for the global jobs market” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The report, which was compiled from a survey of more than 3,500 employers and employees from across the region, found that while 18 percent of salaries decreased in 2020 compared to 2019, 34 percent increased and 48 percent remained the same.

“As ever, when it comes to salaries, it has been a mixed picture for professionals in the region. With the outbreak of Covid-19 and associated movement restrictions enforced on all in our personal lives, it may be easy to assume that we were all similarly impacted in our professional lives but, as our survey shows, this is just not the case,” said Chris Greaves, managing director of Hays Gulf region.

The report found that of all the different job functions, IT and tech professionals experienced the greatest number of pay increases in 2020 (38 percent), while the lowest number of salary increases were paid to those in office support and administration roles (26 percent).

“Demand and salaries for tech professionals have been relatively high as, despite the challenges Covid-19 has brought to businesses this year, the need for automation is more crucial than ever in enabling organisations to remain competitive in their respective markets. Employers are willing to pay high salaries for the top tech talent to ensure they are setup as efficiently as possible for business going forward,” said Greaves.

He added: “In contrast, demand and salaries for office support and administrative roles have decreased as the pandemic forced the closure of many offices during lockdown and this, along with the shift to more home and remote working, has made many of these roles redundant.”

When comparing different industry sectors, telecoms, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, and banking and financial services were the three most robust industries in 2020, with only 6 percent of employees experiencing a pay cut.

In contrast, the four sectors which introduced salary reductions to the highest degree were aviation, hospitality and tourism, engineering, and property, with 34 percent of employees having their salaries reduced last year.

“It is of no surprise that these industries have been most negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdowns and threats of spreading the virus reduced tourism numbers overnight in March and there are still many barriers to travelling. Demand for oil and oil prices have therefore fallen and resulted in some significant cutbacks on fiscal and monetary policies of governments whose economies are somewhat reliant on the oil and gas industry – namely those in the Gulf. This has then seen many construction projects in the region go on hold or be cancelled altogether,” said Greaves.

Looking ahead
According to Hays, salary expectations for 2021 are optimistic with nearly half of employers (47 percent) planning to increase pay rates in the next 12 months. Similarly, 47 percent of employees expect their salary to increase in 2021, most commonly by 5-10 percent.

From our own experiences in the market, business activity really picked up across all sectors towards the end of 2020 and we believe this momentum will continue over the coming months, giving rise to a larger proportion of the working population receiving salary increases in 2021 compared to 2020,” noted Greaves.

He added: “Employers will undoubtedly be more cautious with spend on hiring and remuneration of staff than they were pre-pandemic but we believe that the worst impacts of the pandemic are behind us and organisations will only add to their headcount and reward staff going forward rather than freezing pay or making further redundancies.”

Source:https://www.arabianbusiness.com/jobs/456853-how-the-coronavirus-pandemic-impacted-salaries-in-the-gulf-in-2020

The Gulf’s travel and tourism industry may have lost up to $60 billion during 2020 due to the ongoing restrictions related to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Consultants Frost & Sullivan said in a new research report that the sector’s financial loss is expected to reach $50-50 billion, with hotels likely to account for up to $15 billion of the losses.

Frost & Sulllivan said the growth in the tourism and travel sector in the GCC region was about 10 percent during the past five years.

Based on this growth, it was expected that the entire spending on traveland tourism in the region would have reached $110 billion in 2020 but coronavirus dramatically changed things.

“As consumers step out of their homes, maybe for the first time since global lockdowns, they will still want the luxury of a hotel stay but would wish to limit their exposure to other guests beyond their families,” Frost & Sullivan said.

The consultants added: “While the industry is in the process of reinventing itself, it is prudent that the decision-makers understand the basics and ensure that it is not only done in the right areas but also with the right intent for the check-in bells to keep ringing and the footfalls to keep increasing. Understanding the consumer experience journey and innovating at every stage feasible, to make the consumer feel secure, will be the key.”

Dubai gradually reopened its tourism sector in July while Abu Dhabi delayed until last month to allow international visitors.

Saudi Arabia closed its air, land and sea borders again on December 20 following the spread of a new variant of Covid-19 and reopened on Sunday while Oman reopened on December 29

The research said the sector has seen growth in domestic tourism led by Saudi Arabia as most countries closed their borders to international visitors for long periods of the year.

It added that 65 percent of all hotels in the region are expected to adopt bio-bubbles – a safe and secure micro-environment, isolated from the outside world to minimise the risk of infection.

By design, it permits only authorised and accounted for people to enter the protected area after testing negative for the virus.

IPL T20 Tournament in UAE pioneered the bio-bubble and executed a tournament featuring 300+ participants across 24 matches in three cities with zero infections, the report noted.

Frost & Sullivan also said it expects the global cloud kitchen market to grow to $1 trillion by 2030, with operators having a strong foothold in the overhead heavy and predominantly urban GCC market.

“More people are staying home for extended periods as organisations adopt remote working to counter the virus effect. This is feeding demand for whatever industrial kitchens serve up and get F&B operators to deliver to homes around the country.

Plus, with residents less likely to visit crowded destinations, including restaurants, ordering-in has become a definitive need of the hour,” it said.

The report added: “In future, we will witness more experiments like ghost kitchens that can meet the growing demand for delivery… third-party delivery will be a trend that will replace the current staple of eating-out.”

https://www.arabianbusiness.com/travel-hospitality/456789-gulf-tourism-losses-due-to-coronavirus-could-reach-60bn