Last resort: Tourism ‘suffering badly’

Operators’ dire staff issues in hotspot Taupo¯ seen right around country

Taupo¯ is at the epicentre of a tourism jobs crunch. One hotel says demand for staff is running at unprecedented levels while at Mt Ruapehu ski-fields warn that without urgent Government action parts of the slopes may not open this season.

While some operations are short by scores of staff both Kiwis and from overseas, Ruapehu Alpine Lifts (RAL) says difficulties getting just one highly specialised grooming machine driver from Sweden into the country could affect its operations on two ski fields.

Taupo¯, with its central location attractive to a surprisingly strong surge in domestic tourism, recovered quickly after last year’s April/May lockdown.

Tracey Poole, Hilton Taupo¯ hotel manager, says the property hasn’t seen an early winter for bookings like this for a decade. It is having to go through temp agencies to plug workforce gaps and there are still vacancies and not enough locals to fill them.

“‘We’re suffering badly from it. There is a huge shortage right across the country.” In a town of just on 20,000, and plenty of other tourist businesses competing for staff, there’s not enough local candidates and Kiwis are less willing to work in the hotel sector than those workers form overseas.

“We have less opportunity to recruit locally and we have relied hugely in those busier times on working visa holders. We need as many as we can get.” And she points out the requirement to pay the median wage of $25.50 an hour to visa holders from overseas was distorting the wages throughout businesses which had Kiwis doing equivalent roles on lower rates.

At RAL, chief executive Jono Dean says the situation is dire.

He said there simply weren’t New Zealanders who could do some jobs and not worth training them up for just a few months work, such as a groomer operator who was licensed to winch a $500,000 machine around ski-fields at Whakapapa and Turoa.

”That’s the nature of our industry. It would be like training an apprentice builder and telling them they can only work in summer,” says Dean.

‘We literally need one person and that application with Immigration has been in since March of this year — it’s a deplorable length of time. It twill have a significant impact on the terrain we can operate — it means we can’t open parts of the resort.”

Throughout the country the picture is the same in the industry that pre-pandemic vied with dairy to be the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner, based on businesses which shed tens of thousands of jobs a year ago which are now struggling to find staff to fill vacancies, estimated at up to 80,000 over the next five years.

While the Council of Trade Unions doesn’t have a specific position on tourism it says what needs to happen in the labour market isn’t simply about improving pay.

“All New Zealanders deserve good jobs, that provide proper careers, and allow them to meet their and their families aspirations. Tourism is no different in that regard,” said a spokeswoman.

Pay was an important part of that — but so is job security, training, and opportunities for career advancement.

The tourism sector in the past has been characterised by low-paid, seasonal, insecure work.

“It also tends to be in places that have really difficult housing markets, making finding and maintaining a home really difficult.”

The CTU also believes that any business with a model built upon a continuous supply of migrant labour is not truly sustainable.

“The sector needs a long-term plan to move away from its reliance on imported labour.”

Public agency Go With Tourism (GWT) first launched in Auckland in April 2019 to tackle an industry skills shortage.

When Covid-19 hit in March it temporarily shifted its focus to help industry workers with redeployment but now has switched back to its original mandate, in an illustration of the whipsaw impact of the pandemic.

Matt Stenton is GWT’s programme director and says from Stewart Island to Northland staff shortages were broad and severe.

“The biggest problem at the moment is we have lost up to 90,000 workers in tourism, hospitality in the last year. We now look at the next five years needing 80,000 people.”

He said the issue was complex. Kiwis avoided tourism jobs because many roles were seasonal, casual and sometimes short term.

“And we’re asking people to move around different regions, there’s no security in that.”

These were all reasons why the jobs were ideal for overseas workers who, as with many Kiwis on their OE, are prepared to move around more and tolerate more casual conditions. There is also something else. “And then there’s an issue that goes back into schooling and is systemic. I’d go right back into the fact that Europeans have never been that great at serving people,” said Stenton.

An attempt to get comment from Tourism Minister Stuart Nash on labour shortages was not successful.

Asked whether Nash was available to talk about problems businesses were having finding staff and what the Government was doing to help solve it, his press secretary Kathryn Street said “workplace relations / immigration settings are not strictly one of his roles.”

Instead she referred the Herald to a story in another newspaper in which Finance Minister Grant Robertson quoted on the issue of pay rates generally.

Nash is also Minister for Economic and Regional Development and Small Business.

National’s spokesman on tourism Roger McClay was keen to talk and says Nash needed to get to the coalface more frequently where he would see many businesses that “deserve to survive” at risk of closing down.

“He’s talking about tourism in the years to come and he’s much less focused on the problems today. I think he needs to get out and talk to tourism operators a lot more than he is able to in Wellington.”

Increases in benefit rates announced in the Budget was making it more difficult to persuade some people to take on jobs, he said.

Most tourism businesses were small operations which had made considerable sacrifices during lockdowns and much of the Government’s support so far had been for bigger firms.

”The tourism sector doesn’t understand why the vaccinated people willing to go through MIQ are not being allowed into the country.”