The euphoria unleashed among companies in the tourism sector by a record season both in prices and in demand contrasts with the concern to find qualified workers to attend to this great wave of travelers that is beginning to arrive in Spain these days. The problem goes back a long way, it got worse with the pandemic and it still hasn't been solved. In fact, the lack of experienced personnel is more noticeable now that tourists are returning en masse, as the CEO of the Meliá hotel company, Gabriel Escarrer, warned this week.
"The shortage of qualified personnel is a reality and with increasing competition between companies to attract talent, we are facing a great risk for our sector, since for us people are essential," the manager wrote in his Twitter account. LinkedIn. Escarrer's diagnosis is shared by the vast majority of the tourism industry, as warned by executives from some of the main companies in the latest edition of Fitur. The difficulty is in finding employees with previous training in the sector and in retaining it. The rotation of the templates is excessive, with all that this implies.
“It is not easy to find workers, especially in positions that require training and experience. But it is true that as of today the teams are complete, above all thanks to the permanent and intermittent permanent workers, who are the ones who cover the most qualified professional positions”, they explain from the Riu hotelier. The problem, this company points out, will come at the peak of the season, “when other hotels, bars and other offers that need professionals for their businesses open. Then there is usually a process of lows and highs at the worst possible moment ”.
The difficulties increase in territories with a highly stressed housing market, with little supply of flats and very high prices, such as the Balearic Islands, Gabriel Escarrer has pointed out. From Riu they also point out that in the Canary Islands the lack of professionals in qualified positions is constant. Above all, they are experiencing a shortage of workers in the kitchen, bars and canteens, not in assistant or helper positions, but rather experienced personnel capable of assuming positions of responsibility. "Historically, we have opted for on-the-job training and, given the lack of professionals, we still need to train staff at the hotel itself to be able to cover higher-ranking positions later," they say.
Gonzalo Alcaraz, Hesperia's general business director, confirms that the sector "is somewhat stressed in terms of hiring and there is a lot of competition." He considers, however, that workers value being part of value projects "and with a weight in the premium and luxury segment, which undoubtedly gives us stability in the case of Hesperia." The hotel company has also activated training programs that allow it to attract and retain talent. Meliá, for its part, has anticipated recruitment programs in sensitive areas, has intensified relations with professional schools and universities and has deployed a program to reconnect with staff who disassociated themselves from the sector due to the pandemic and sought work in other branches of activity. In the Balearic Islands it has even come to offer accommodation to some employees.
Mónica Pérez, Director of Studies at InfoJobs, stresses that around 3% of people employed in tourism who lost their jobs during the covid crisis left the sector permanently and have not returned to rejoin this activity. In this sense, the latest report on the labor market by Infojobs and Esade points to a "growing imbalance between supply and demand" in tourism "which is creating difficulties in attracting professionals. If the long term is taken, in 2022 there were almost 35,000 fewer candidates in tourism and restaurants than in 2019”, with a similar level of offers.
“This is a sector with demanding working conditions in terms of schedules and companies have reacted to the problems in finding workers by raising salaries somewhat; in a context of wage moderation, tourism has increased wages by 5%”, says Mónica Pérez. According to the analysis by Infojobs and Esade, the average salary offered in tourism and restaurants in 2022 was 19,166 euros per year, 5.1% more than in 2021, the highest increase among all the branches of activity studied. However, it is the third sector with the lowest average salaries offered, only behind customer service and retail sales.
"There is no shortage of workers, what is missing are better working conditions and higher salaries," says Francisco Galván, head of CC.OO Hospitality. Catalonia. The union has analyzed the Social Security affiliation data and considers that the positions that are not covered are marked by precariousness. Meanwhile, the sector continues to lead job creation in Spain, with more affiliates in February than in the same month of 2020, before the pandemic –see graph–. Retaining those workers seems like the big pending task.
