Hospitality attrition typically ranges between 35 and 70 per cent a year. Radisson Hotel Group reports 11 per cent.
That gap demands an explanation.
The company’s answer is learning. Not training in the conventional sense of compliance modules, safety certifications or service scripts, but a structured development ecosystem designed to make careers visibly progress within the organisation. In 2025, 40 per cent of vacancies were filled internally. Employees completed more than one million courses, accounting for 8.5 million learning hours. Sixty-five per cent of digital skill badges earned were shared publicly on professional platforms.
“Our philosophy is rooted in one of our core Culture Beliefs: We grow talent, talent grows us,” says Mehr Sanduja, director of people and culture, South Asia, Radisson Hotel Group. “When our team members grow, the company grows with them.”
The strategy has become increasingly important. Radisson plans to operate more than 500 hotels in India by 2030, creating between 65,000 and 80,000 jobs. In a market where talent poaching is common and younger professionals increasingly value career progression over salary alone, building careers internally has become an operational necessity.
Onboarding as culture installation
Radisson’s development journey begins long before employees settle into their roles. Every new hire follows a structured 90-day welcome programme designed to introduce the company’s culture before its operational processes.
“Our philosophy is rooted in one of our core Culture Beliefs: We grow talent, talent grows us. When our team members grow, the company grows with them.”
Mehr Sanduja, director of people and culture, South Asia, Radisson Hotel Group
Three programmes anchor the experience. Living Responsible Business covers ethics, diversity, sustainability and human rights. Yes I Can! develops empathy, active listening and solution-oriented behaviour rather than scripted service responses. Living Safety and Security prepares employees for critical situations.
The distinction matters. Hospitality depends on human judgement far more than scripted interactions. Employees who understand why the organisation behaves a certain way are more likely to respond consistently when situations fall outside standard operating procedures.
“In India, the 90-Day Welcome Journey has been particularly effective in helping first-time hospitality professionals from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities build confidence and become Moment Makers much faster,” Sanduja says.
The programme’s multilingual delivery reflects another practical reality. Many first-generation hospitality professionals arrive with limited exposure to corporate environments. Localised learning helps remove confidence barriers that standard English-only training often reinforces.
Building careers, not courses
Radisson Academy combines self-paced digital learning, live regional programmes and external content through Typsy, a hospitality learning platform offering nearly 2,000 video lessons.
The combination reflects operational reality. Hotel employees cannot always attend scheduled classroom sessions, while digital learning alone rarely creates the peer relationships that strengthen careers.
The scale suggests genuine investment. Seven regional learning events in 2025 brought together 632 participants from 60 countries. Employees completed more than 120,000 Typsy lessons during the year.
Digital badges allow employees to showcase newly acquired skills publicly. The fact that nearly two-thirds chose to share them voluntarily suggests employees view learning as genuine career capital rather than another compliance exercise.
The metrics that matter
Radisson measures learning through engagement, retention, internal mobility and business outcomes rather than course completion alone.
Its 2025 engagement survey recorded 95 per cent participation and an engagement score of 84 per cent, well above the hospitality industry average. Encouraging though those figures are, engagement surveys inevitably capture sentiment rather than behaviour.
The more compelling number is attrition.
An 11 per cent attrition rate in an industry where annual turnover commonly ranges from 35 to 70 per cent represents a meaningful competitive advantage. Hospitality depends heavily on experienced employees who understand operational rhythms, build guest relationships and preserve service consistency over time.
Pulse surveys introduced in 2025 supplement the annual engagement survey by capturing employee sentiment more frequently. Their value, however, depends less on measurement than on whether employee feedback genuinely influences organisational decisions.
Career conversations as trust infrastructure
Beyond formal learning, Radisson has invested in direct conversations between employees and leaders through initiatives such as Career Conversations, Radisson Talks and LinkedIn Live sessions.
“In a market where organisational structures can often feel hierarchical, direct conversations help demystify leadership and encourage people to take ownership of their careers,” Sanduja says.
In any Indian organisations, hierarchy limits visibility into career opportunities. Creating structured access to senior leaders reduces that distance and makes internal mobility feel more attainable.
Career Fest reinforces the message by openly discussing available opportunities across the organisation. The fact that 40 per cent of vacancies were filled internally suggests these conversations lead to tangible career movement rather than simply stronger engagement scores.
Technology as an enabler
Artificial intelligence has already reduced Radisson’s hiring time by about half, allowing recruiters to spend less time screening applications and more time engaging with candidates.
The same thinking is now shaping learning. The company is exploring AI-powered personalised learning journeys alongside virtual reality service training.
“We want technology to take care of routine tasks so our people can focus on creating exceptional human experiences for guests,” Sanduja says.
That balance matters. In hospitality, technology creates value not by replacing people but by giving them more time to deliver the experiences guests actually remember.
The expansion test
Radisson’s investment in learning appears credible. The company discloses stronger people metrics than many hospitality organisations, and its attrition rate suggests the strategy is producing measurable outcomes.
The harder challenge lies ahead.
Growth often exposes weaknesses hidden inside successful people programmes. Maintaining learning quality, internal mobility and cultural consistency across more than 500 hotels will prove considerably harder than building them across today’s network.
If Radisson succeeds, its biggest competitive advantage may not be its hotels. It may be its ability to keep the people who run them.