St Raphael Resort and Marina - Empowering Women in the workplace
04 Mar 2021
At our award winning St Raphael Resort and Marina, we strongly believe in supporting all our staff and in equal opportunities for all. As many know, I am myself a lady and the Managing Director of the company, and we are one of the few hotels, both locally and internationally to be led by a woman. In an industry that is known to be male dominated, our Resort is proud to promote and support equal opportunities for all. We know that in the hospitality sector, various departments are unbalanced, with unequal counts between men and women, however we aim always to find the best person for the job, and aim at being understanding and where possible flexible to the needs of our staff.
In a workforce of 250 staff, nearly the half are women, and we are very proud to have such a number with us in an industry that is usually more male dominated, at least in Cyprus. We would like to see this number increase, as perhaps more and more women are encouraged to enter the tourism sector and most importantly to remain in it. One of the primary reasons that the hospitality sector sees less female employees is due to the long, round the clock hours which is taxing on women who have families. While hotel needs are not changing, the way many departments are managed may be the key to keeping more women in the team.
Many more women start off in the sector, but by their mid thirties move into other fields and professions. Few in our industry make it to middle management and even less to senior managers. We are therefore extremely proud to have five female department heads out of a total of twelve (not including myself as MD) and many more valued key members of our front and back of house teams. We have developed lots of training for all our staff and heavily invest in our team as a whole, promoting good work ethics, a no bullying culture, and even have a course to help teach all our staff, whether male or female, how to present better, from personal appearances to professional manners. Needless to say we support our wonderful staff when they become mothers, and equally are flexible to those of our team as new fathers! We believe in equality in all areas.
As we celebrate International Woman’s Day and have so many more celebrations coming up like Mother’s Day, Women’s Equality Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Day and many more you may or may not know about, we would like to take the opportunity to thank all our team for making us the wonderful Resort that we are, to tell our beloved guests that we miss them, and to remember all the fantastic women from mothers, children, influencers, famous guests and valued friends who have passed through our doors on so many occasions. In the famous words of Queen Elizabeth II who visited our hotel in 1993, ‘Good memories are our second chance at happiness’. So we will take the time to remember you all, while looking very much forward to seeing you all again this Spring when we reopen.
Be strong, be women, be you!
Farah Shammas
Managing Director
