Hospitality labour shortage hurts Te Anau businesses

Monday, 12 April 2021

Great South predicts about 1000 workers have left the Fiordland region since the Covid-19 pandemic struck and New Zealand borders closed.

That has left many businesses struggling to recruit hospitality staff now, and wondering how they will get enough to operate during the 2021-22 summer season.

Daniel Anderson of The Ranch Bar and Grill said he wished there was a magic bullet that could solve his search for staff.

He's three short in his restaurant now, but he'll need at least a dozen more staff by December.

He's advertised on social media, on job seeker sites and in Southland and Central Otago but he's having little luck in finding the right candidates.

“Trying to find people that want to work, or people that we can put through their duty managers licence, or even just finding people that have a driver's licence would be really helpful because we still have to run the courtesy coach,'’ he said.

**READ MORE:

* Coronavirus: 5000 job losses predicted for Southland

* Coronavirus: Fiordland tourism 'hit by truck'

* Government package offers breathing room for some Southland businesses, but not all

* Visitor numbers fall in Fiordland after road closures and China travel ban

**

'We’re running the business as leanly as we can, but we still need a minimum number to have the place open.

He predicts some of the bigger hotels in Te Anau will need about 70 staff when the next summer season begins.

It was likely that some borders would still be closed and there would no overseas workers in the country on holiday on working visas, who often took on hospitality jobs, he said.

Milford Sound Lodge and Fiordland Outdoors Co.​ general manager Christine Wallace said the Covid-19 pandemic had created a perfect storm for businesses in Fiordland.

Finding skilled staff had always been hard, but not having foreign nationals to employ was making the problem even worse, she said.

“Businesses have contracted to cope with the lack of tourists, and now they have to slowly start ramping up again and they can't get staff, and there's no access to migrant workers,'’ she said.

“I wouldn't like to guess how many we are short, but I know that with chefs we are about a quarter down on what we need, from my experience. People with a hospitality background are very hard to find and at this point in time it's quite cumbersome to take on someone and skill them up.''

Finding staff to work at Milford Sound during the summer would be even more difficult, although she was unsure yet how many she would need.

“It's very hard to get kiwis to go there and live in a remote environment, away from their friends and family. Overseas workers used to relish that experience, but now there are none of them here.'’

Real Journeys general manager Paul Norris said at the moment the company only had a small number of roles that it was recruiting for in Fiordland, and it had noticed fewer applicants than previously.

“Some of our seasonal contracts have been extended to cater to the domestic market. For example, we are running more of our two-night Doubtful Sound overnight cruises through winter.'’

It currently employed about 250 staff, and around half of those were in the Fiordland region.

'We anticipate that recruitment may be an issue in Fiordland when we start planning for next summer, especially in some of our more specialist roles.'’

Great South general manager tourism and events Bobbi Brown said while Te Anau wasn’t alone in having a labour shortage and places like Queenstown were also affected, it was a little bit harder to deal with in more isolated areas.

Many businesses were waiting to see what impact the trans-Tasman bubble would have on business before they started planning for summer and working out how many staff they would need.

It will survey companies in about six weeks' time to see how many workers are needed in the area, and in what specific areas.

“Foreign workers have all gone home and a lot of tourism-related businesses relied on them,'' she said.

'Also there's not a high number of people that are unemployed and looking for jobs, so that makes it pretty challenging to find staff.'’