Tourism bounce-back suffers from lack of experienced workers
Wednesday, 21 October 2020
Despite having laid off an estimated 40,000 workers, some parts of the tourism industry are struggling to recruit staff as business bounces back.
Auckland’s 5-star Park Hyatt hotel is full, but learning and development manager Ksenia Eliseeva said it was extremely difficult finding suitably experienced staff because many migrant workers had returned home.
“The shortage of labour is becoming quite scary, it’s going to be a very, very difficult time … the recruitment pool seems to be really shallow.”
Ramada Queenstown Central general manager Pauline Ewen considered herself lucky to score a suitably qualified local resident for a front office manager position because only six of the 128 applicants had appropriate experience, and very few were New Zealanders.
**READ MORE:
* Coronavirus: Challenging times ahead for Canterbury tourism town Hanmer Springs
* 18 job losses confirmed at Hanmer Springs Pools and Spa complex
* Hotel staff shortages spell trouble for tourism
**
New Zealand Hotel Owners Association executive director Amy Robens hears a lot of similar stories, and she wants the new Government to urgently address visa issues preventing the employment of migrant workers still here.
“They say all these jobs must be given to Kiwis first, but they’re not applying for them.
“Horticulture and viticulture have an exemption so migrant workers can go and pick fruit. We need a similar exemption across tourism and hospitality, so we can actually start to get these sectors moving properly.
“We have two hotels in the same group that are 150m apart from each other. One is closed because there’s no occupancy, the other is open but a migrant worker from the closed hotel can’t go and work in the open hotel because of immigration policy. You can only work for the hotel and the business that is on your visa.”
Robens said the hotel sector now employed half the 20,000 people it had employed at the peak pre-Covid-19, and the worry was how it would cope once the borders opened.
Eliseeva's more immediate problem is the coming summer season when the Park Hyatt will need another 70 staff.
New Zealanders are splashing out on up market accommodation and the Park Hyatt’s hotel suites, which cost at least $2000 a night, are popular but Eliseeva worries about maintaining service standards if staff are stretched.
She said there was a risk they could be lost to less high pressure positions, and she also believes New Zealanders have been spooked by the possibility of another lockdown.
“A lot of local people have lost trust in the industry, and they’ve gone to administrative work or retail that provides more job security.”
The Go with Tourism website matches displaced tourism workers with potential employers and 259 of the 380 jobs currently listed are in tourism and hospitality, with 75 per cent in Auckland.
Programme director Matt Stenton said there was demand from hotels in Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown and Christchurch.
Other areas of tourism are having mixed results when it comes to recruiting workers to cater for increased domestic patronage from Kiwis forgoing overseas trips.
Christchurch Adventure Park general manager Anne Newman said attracting the right candidates for vacancies was hard.
“We can teach people the skills, it’s finding people with the right attitude; it’s surprising how many people want to work in the industry but don't want to work with customers.”
Having laid off almost a fifth of his 100 employees in March, Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools manager Graeme Abbot has been rehiring and said staff numbers were now higher than they were at the same time last year.
The good news was that Hanmer Springs, long a favourite hangout for Cantabrians, was attracting more North Islanders who were staying two or three nights longer and spending freely.
“We’ve had a huge lift in people from Wellington and Auckland in particular. People are spending more money than they normally would on accommodation, and the accommodation filling up first is at the higher end.”
However, Abbott said it was difficult to recruit qualified massage therapists for the thermal pools’ spa and said he was looking at leasing a property to provide accommodation for workers new to the area until they found their feet.