What Drove This Hospitality Workforce Solutions Firm to Enter India

18.03.2024 - 12:47 / skift.com / Peden Doma Bhutia

Frontline Performance Group, a firm specializing in hospitality workforce solutions,announced its entry into the Indian market last month.

Paul McLoughlin, president of Frontline Performance Group, highlighted India’s burgeoning domestic travel sector and robust economy as key factors driving the decision. “This growing domestic tourism market can sustain a vast number of hotels,” he told Skift.

McLoughlin emphasized India’s growing middle and business classes, as well as the rising interest by millennials in domestic travel. He expects India to become one of the top domestic travel markets globally, citing the commitment of major hotel brands to expand their luxury offerings in the region.

Frontline Performance Group aims to help partners with revenue growth, as well as enhancing service quality and guest engagement through talent retention and development programs.

Its sales program teaches employees to provide customer service while also engaging in upselling and cross-selling techniques.

Frontline aims to build on existing partnerships with hotel chains like Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott to establish a foothold in India’s domestic hospitality sector.

McLoughlin also sees India as a crucial market in achieving the company’s ambitious goals of reaching 1 million rooms in their program and generating over $2 billion in additional revenue annually by 2024.

“In our estimation there are hundreds of millions of untapped incremental dollars in the hotel market in India today, something we are striving to remedy,” he said.

Hiring in the hospitality sector rose by around 271% in the past two years, according to a January report by Teamlease, a staffing conglomerate in India.

Hiring numbers across various job levels have increased significantly due to the tourism boom. Food and beverage roles are up 37%, while housekeeping positions have risen by 22%. Skilled jobs at higher levels have seen an 8 to 10% bump, according to the report.

The group’s recent acquisition of TSA Solutions, its largest competitor, laid the groundwork for expansion into India and other southern Asian countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and South Korea — countries with robust tourism-driven hospitality.

McLoughlin emphasized the shift towards subscription-based client support, enabling the company to extend its reach and provide assistance worldwide, including in India and other key Asian countries.

“Our shift toward subscription enabled us to expand our reach and support hotels in countries where we do not have a physical presence, it quite literally made our support available anywhere in the world,” he said.

The company is also in the process of implementing advanced AI translation for its training content. “This will not only