Lack of transit blamed for unfilled tourism jobs

There might be plenty of jobs in Niagara particularly in the tourism industry, but a lack of transportation to bring people to those jobs is cited as contributing to the region’s increasing unemployment rate.

Tourism marketing specialist Gregory Higginbotham said many people look to tourism as the “goto answer” for employment.

“Just wait until the tourism season comes. This is Niagara’s busy season, and when things don’t look up like you anticipate … you’re reaching out for other answers to what’s going on,” said Higginbotham, who works for Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls.

This year, just as Niagara’s tourism season hit it prime in June, Niagara’s unemployment rate increased to 7.2 per cent, up from 6.9 per cent a month earlier. While there are plenty of jobs available in the tourism industry, the challenge is getting people to those jobs every day.

“Accessibility and mobility of jobs is an important part of fuelling our tourism industry,” Higginbotham said.

Higginbotham, who is also an instructor in Niagara College’s tourism programs, said many of his students are interested in entrylevel jobs in tourism, but “they find it hard if they are studying in St. Catharines to work in Niagara Falls, for instance.”

“The problem is we just don’t have that local and regional transit infrastructure to be able to make sure that Monday to Friday we’re able to make our shifts,” he said.

Bob Jackson, chief executive officer for Lai’s Hotel Properties Ltd., said the increasing unemployment rates published last week are “somewhat contradictory” considering that there are unfilled jobs available in the tourism industry, as well as other businesses.

And although transportation has been an issue for hiring staff to work at the Niagara-on-the-Lake hotels his company owns, including Vintage Hotels and Niagara’s Finest Inns, he said it has been “a pretty good year staffing-wise” for the local hotels.

The hotels “struggled a bit last year, like everyone else,” but this year began participating in programs to bring workers in from eastern Canada, as well as a program that allows the company to hire workers from France.

“We house all these people and that helps us maintain that steady level of staff that we need throughout the high season,” he said.

While currently only about 25 of roughly 1,000 workers at the hotels are migrant, Jackson said he’d prefer to be able to hire local people.

“That would be a big win for sure, but we’ll keep doing what we have to do in the meantime. Everyone needs to protect their business, while lobbying to get the right infrastructure.”

In an email, Lai’s Hotel Properties hotel group chairman Mark Simon, based in Hong Kong, said in the 15 years he has been overseeing the company’s local hotels “the biggest problem that we’ve always had to overcome is a shortage of labour.”

Despite offering competitive salaries and an “extremely liberal” benefit package, he said there are still job openings among kitchen and housekeeping staff.

“We have to solve the transportation problem,” he said.

Aside from waiting for government action to establish a better inter-municipal transit system, Simon said tourism businesses can take steps to help themselves.

“I am struck by how many employers seem not to understand supply and demand,” he wrote. “We have more demand for workers in tourism than supply. There is a way to solve this. Pay, benefits and caring about your employees is a start. Government really can’t help you there.”

Regional Chairman Alan Caslin said Niagara is making strides towards ensuring Niagara people will be able to get to work, by amalgamating municipal transit services offered in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland.

“We need to put our plan in motion to make sure we get it right and finish combining the three transit commissions so we can focus on improving the routes, and making sure that we can extend services out to where they’re needed and where the jobs are,” he said.

Caslin said he has heard from several employers who are at the outer reaches of Niagara and can’t get people to fill job vacancies.

“One of the primary concerns is being able to get there on a reliable basis at the times that they need to be there. Not all jobs in the hospitality and tourism industry are day jobs. In fact most of them include evenings and nights.”

While continuing to work on finally establishing the integrated regional transit service, Caslin said efforts are underway to address some of the needs immediately.

Meanwhile, Higginbotham said some graduates of tourism programs are hoping to enter the profession at the management level.

“People see it very superficially in terms of money — it’s a minimum-wage job, I don’t want to do that,” he said.

Like for many professions, Higginbotham said, people must start off on the ground floor before advancing.

“We could probably do a better job of promoting that in the job descriptions that we put out there to make them a little more attractive to motivate people who might be early on in their careers,” he said.