Top hotel offers guests £1,000 ... if they can recruit staff!
Four-star resort will reward its visitors – for f illing vacancies
A SCOTTISH island hotel hit by a staffing crisis is offering people £1,000 vouchers if they can help to recruit new employees.
Like many businesses hit by the pandemic, the Auchrannie Resort, on the Isle of Arran, has struggled to boost its staffing levels in recent months – forcing it to reduce its capacity to visitors.
Now the award-winning four-star business, whose guests have included actor Gerard Butler, has launched a scheme offering a generous reward for every job vacancy filled to anyone who can help them recruit a range of staff for around 20 to 30 vacancies.
Customers of the hotel, which has around 160 full-time staff, were notified of the offer along with a unique referral code to pass on to job applicants. Emails were sent out last week inviting them to share with friends and family, saying ‘earn £1,000 worth of Auchrannie gift vouchers for each person you help us recruit’.
Last night, Gordon Hay, the resort’s business development manager, said: ‘We were looking at different ways to engage with people to potentially bring in new applicants and make people aware we are recruiting.
‘There are lots of people looking for staff and you need to do something to stand out and this is an idea we had. We have a very loyal customer base and we engage with them a lot on all sorts of things, so we thought why not try this as an option and offer an incentive – and it might get them thinking of someone who might like to work in hospitality at Auchrannie.’
Situated near Brodick, the resort, which has a range of accommodaBrexit tion including hotel, lodges, spa resort and campsite, was the first in Scotland to become employeeowned in 2017.
In an attempt to preserve the 32-year-old business during the coronavirus restrictions, bosses were forced to close its doors from December to January.
Mr Hay said factors including and Covid have contributed to the shortage in staff.
He said a decision had now been taken to limit the occupancy until the end of October, so the resort could provide the usual level of service to the guests who are already booked in.
He added: ‘We are currently operating at 80 to 85 per cent occupancy rather than 100 per cent’.
Although it is early days, Mr Hay said there had been ‘a handful’ of applicants since the launch of the incentive scheme and they look forward to receiving more over the coming days and weeks.
Customers with the unique referral codes pass them to candidates to include in their application.
If successful, the person who referred them will receive half of the reward – £500 worth of vouchers – after the new recruit has been employed for three months and the second payment after six months.
Mr Hay, who said the hotel had a database with 30,000 subscribers,
‘Looking at ways to engage with people’
added: ‘What we don’t want is people coming in on day one, us paying out and they don’t actually last.
‘Everyone eligible will get £1,000. Half is paid after three months because that is our normal trial period. Anyone who comes on board comes on for an initial 12 weeks and then we assess and if they are still with us then they are classed as being successful.
‘We then pay the other part of the voucher in another three months.
‘We have a staff incentive scheme for them to refer someone and it’s based around the same principle to keep it simple and in line with what we do at the moment.’