Labour shortages remain the biggest challenge in hospitality despite rising cost pressures, say industry leaders and investors.
Radisson Hotel Group chief executive Federico Gonzalez told the Deloitte European Hotel Investment Conference last week: “The worst challenge is the scarcity of labour.”
Stephen Walker, principal at private equity firm KSL Capital Partners, which specialises in travel and leisure investments, argued the Covid-19 pandemic was “a wake-up call for the [hospitality] industry”, saying: “We realised our labour base was eroding. People were leaving for jobs as truck drivers.”
He warned: “The future is going to continue to be employee constrained. We’ll solve some of that by technology and people doing less of the work, and some by multi-tasking and not paying different rates for different roles, say for housekeeping and serving lunch.”
Dalata Hotel Group chief executive Dermot Crowley told the conference: “The most important thing is to make the sector more attractive and treat people better. A recent survey in Ireland found the industry is still an unattractive place to work. It’s hierarchical – kitchen porters are not seen as important as food and beverage managers. We have to treat people with more respect and pay people better.”
Crowley said: “Housekeeping is a key issue. We became reliant on people from outside the UK and Ireland and with Covid they went home. In Ireland, we had a campaign saying ‘Mums and Dads, we need you’ with shifts that allowed them to drop off and collect their kids from school. We offered flexible working to students.”
He suggested “flexibility is a big advantage in hospitality”, adding: “Asking people to do more isn’t going to get us to where we want to be. Housekeeping is a difficult job and the hardest to recruit for.”
Emma Underwood, general manager at the Midland Grand Dining Room at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London, said: “People feel pushed and undervalued. During Covid, employees were looking for safety and security.
Now they want to be somewhere that is not understaffed, and with eating and laundry facilities because they are worried about their energy bills.”