Region’s hospitality and tourism sectors speak out on major recruitment crisis

THE huge vacancy gap in the UK’s hospitality and tourism sectors is costing the economy billions of pounds and pushing businesses in Wales to the brink.

There are now a record 1,295,000 job vacancies in the UK - with hospitality one of the sectors desperate for more staff, especially as businesses gear up for the busy summer season.

UKHospitality estimates that shortages are suppressing economic activity in hospitality alone by £22bn - with the pandemic hangover and Brexit adding to an existing problem of finding skilled - and even unskilled - staff. This has led to businesses reducing menus as well as service and opening hours, and in some cases closing on certain days.

David Chapman, of UKHospitality Cymru, said: “Ongoing hospitality recruitment and skills issues in Wales are limiting the visitor experience, damaging business viability and threatening to derail the industry recovery. Salaries have risen in upper double digit numbers inside a year but many businesses are still reporting shortages of workers.

“It means the visitor offer available is increasingly limited, sometimes thirty per cent below ‘normal’ trading, with some pubs and restaurants closing an extra day, hotels closing some rooms and perhaps paring down dinner numbers to match staff availability. This damages our efforts to bounce back to profitability and quickly return to contributing the near £3.6 billion(Wales figure) a year we were paying into the public purse.”

Nathan Cousins, general manager at the St George’s Hotel in Llandudno, said: “2022 has been extremely challenging in terms of recruitment, we like most other businesses within the industry have had difficulties in recruiting staff across most departments, especially chefs, housekeepers and bar staff.

“Due to the lack of suitable staff within the local area we are being forced to recruit from further afield, we then need to provide accommodation for these staff but the availability of suitable housing within Llandudno is limited due to a lot of properties being bought up and converted to holiday lets.

“This is not just a short-term issue, the lack of young people entering into the hospitality industry through the years has and will continue to create a tremendous skills shortage in the sector.”

Two hoteliers in Snowdonia and on Anglesey, who didn’t want to be named, echoed these concerns, describing a “perfect storm” of issues around recruitment and rising costs.

The Snowdonia hotelier said: “It’s really challenging to add to the team at present; no option but to look overseas but that’s costly, takes months and we’ve yet to onboard anyone so unsure if it is right for us in the end. Affecting all departments really as well but kitchen most acute - we have half a team at present; they are doing amazing things but it’s not sustainable and we’ve curtailed ops and service times to safeguard them. Result is we are running at 80-85% capacities.”

They added: “I’ve spoken to a few locally as well and how disheartening it is to be turning away customers or having long waits. We won’t make it back in winter as there is simply not the demand. Costs are likely to take another jump in winter as well.”

The second hotelier said the demand for holidays was there but the problem has been finding enough skilled staff.

He said they did not want to place remaining staff under too much pressure and also did not want to compromise standards, which he warned could have a long term impact on people’s view of the region.