The great realignment: What caused tourism’s labour crisis & how do we fix it?

After lay­ing off so many people dur­ing the COVID lock­downs, the travel, tour­ism, and hos­pit­al­ity sec­tors now face a labour crisis.

Frédéric Dimanche points to causes and pos­its solutions.

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. (You too can write a “GT” Insight.)

Last year ended on a pos­it­ive note for the travel & tour­ism industry as it over­came its greatest chal­lenge, the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Des­pite the Rus­si­an inva­sion of Ukraine early in 2022, and the high infla­tion that ongo­ing con­flict con­trib­uted to, tour­ists took to the skies in increas­ing num­bers as des­tin­a­tions relaxed their COVID requirements. 

Even China star­ted to reopen its bor­ders. 

Yet two major con­cerns remain for the tour­ism sector: 

1. The industry’s response to cli­mate change, and 
2. A grow­ing labour crisis. 

This “GT” Insight focuses on the second.

Also see the “GT” Insight Bites
“What are tourism’s biggest chal­lenges & threats (next five years)?”

Years in the making

As the tour­ism industry reopened, oper­at­ors dis­covered that many of the work­ers who had been laid off in huge num­bers dur­ing the pan­dem­ic had quit, retired, or changed jobs and sectors. 

That’s why pro­spect­ive employ­ers all over the world (e.g., in Europe, USA, and Thai­l­and) are scram­bling to find qual­i­fied personnel.

Many first thought that this was a dir­ect res­ult of the COVID crisis. 

How­ever, there are signs that the pan­dem­ic was merely a power­ful cata­lyst for what some have called “the great resig­na­tion”. 

The seeds for this world­wide staff­ing crisis were sowed much earlier. 

Human resource issues that were widely ignored by the travel & tour­ism industry long before the pan­dem­ic all con­trib­uted to post-pan­dem­ic staff shortages. 

These issues include:

• poor work­ing con­di­tions and hours (i.e., nights, week­ends, and holidays);
• low wages; and 
• men­tal health chal­lenges. 

The pan­dem­ic gave many laid-off tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity work­ers the decis­ive reas­on to quit for good. 

The ‘great realignment’ aka the ‘great resignation’

The so-called great resig­na­tion should in fact be seen as a great realign­ment.

It is not that people don’t want to work anymore. 

They are leav­ing their tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity jobs to get bet­ter jobs or start their own busi­nesses, even if that means in anoth­er sector. 

What they seek is not only a high­er income but also, and more import­antly, bet­ter work con­di­tions and benefits. 

This situ­ation is an indict­ment of hos­pit­al­ity and tour­ism man­agers and lead­ers whose prac­tices have for years led to this situ­ation and to the poor repu­ta­tion of the sector. 

Also see Andrew Chan’s “GT” Insight
“Data ana­lyt­ics, fin­an­cial acu­men are keys to a great career in tourism”

Lead­er­ship fail­ures have indeed driv­en good people away.

This situ­ation was worsened dur­ing the pan­dem­ic by gov­ern­ments’ incon­sist­ent decisions about clos­ing or reopen­ing the industry. 

Lack of busi­ness cer­tainty made it dif­fi­cult to offer job security.

In addi­tion, the media in some coun­tries often painted a dark pic­ture of how dan­ger­ous it was to travel dur­ing the pandemic. 

That led to not only a fear of trav­el­ling but also a fear of work­ing on the front­lines of the travel, tour­ism, and hos­pit­al­ity sectors. 

As the industry opened up again, trav­el­lers’ woes caused or exacer­bated by the labour crisis also con­trib­uted to the bad name of the sec­tor in a neg­at­ive feed­back loop. 

A reputational ‘time bomb’

A lack of labour affects the qual­ity of the ser­vices that are delivered to trav­el­lers, which becomes a repu­ta­tion prob­lem that can have neg­at­ive impacts on destinations.

More research needs to be done to assess how this increas­ingly bad repu­ta­tion will affect the future of the sec­tor and what can be done about it. 

Also see Peter Semone’s “GT” Insight
“What is des­tin­a­tion human cap­it­al? It’s the people!”

Tour­ism HR Canada recently con­duc­ted a study of Cana­dians’ per­cep­tions of tour­ism as a place of employ­ment. Its res­ults are telling. 

It is not sur­pris­ing then that col­leges and uni­ver­sit­ies with hos­pit­al­ity man­age­ment pro­grams are exper­i­en­cing a decline in enrol­ment world­wide (e.g., India). 

This rep­res­ents a time bomb that will exacer­bate the labour crisis if we don’t act now. 

Resolving travel & tourism’s labour crisis

A short-term solu­tion to the labour short­age in some coun­tries (e.g., Canada) is for the industry to ask the gov­ern­ment to adjust immig­ra­tion policies and increase tem­por­ary for­eign work­ers pro­grams to help alle­vi­ate the labour gap. 

How­ever, rely­ing on immig­ra­tion presents chal­lenges, such as the danger of fur­ther­ing racist ste­reo­types about minor­it­ies work­ing in hos­pit­al­ity and tourism.

Anoth­er short-term solu­tion is to rely on stu­dents for sea­son­al employment. 

How­ever, stu­dents often look to the tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity sec­tors for short-term employ­ment rather than as a viable career option. 

These are band-aid solu­tions that won’t solve the labour crisis in the long run. 

So, what are the solu­tions? Unfor­tu­nately, there are none that are ready to go. 

It took the tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity sec­tors years to cre­ate this cur­rent crisis and it will take a con­cer­ted effort over many years for them to address it. 

Also see K Michael Hay­wood’s “GT” Insight
“Win­ning from with­in: How can travel & tour­ism stem the brain drain?”

The fol­low­ing are some of the con­di­tions that will help the travel, tour­ism, and hos­pit­al­ity sec­tors to increase their competitiveness:

• The industry must make a con­scious effort to focus on job decency and dig­nity (and reas­on­able com­pens­a­tion). This has been noted as well by the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organ­iz­a­tion.
• The industry must con­tin­ue to boost diversity and to offer women and minor­it­ies bet­ter opportunities. 
• The industry must engage in wide and col­lect­ive efforts to improve its repu­ta­tion, includ­ing of its high­er edu­ca­tion and career advance­ment opportunities.
• Tour­ism man­age­ment pro­grams must change their approach to adopt more human­ist­ic man­age­ment and lead­er­ship approaches.

The travel & tour­ism industry is resi­li­ent. It has demon­strated this through numer­ous crises in the 21st cen­tury; from the 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The labour crisis it now faces is insi­di­ous, repu­ta­tion­al, and largely of its own mak­ing. Over­com­ing it will require the atten­tion of all stake­hold­ers who must real­ise that one can­not have a good tour­ism industry without pay­ing atten­tion to the people who deliv­er its ser­vices and experiences.

Agree? Dis­agree? What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a “GT” Insight of your own. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): By Gerd Alt­mann (CC0) via Pixabay.

About the author

Frédéric Dimanche is the Dir­ect­or of the Ted Rogers School of Hos­pit­al­ity and Tour­ism Man­age­ment, Toronto Met­ro­pol­it­an Uni­ver­sity (formerly known as Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity), Canada. After earn­ing his PhD at the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon, USA, Dr Dimanche worked in New Orleans, USA and then Nice, France before return­ing to North America. 

Frédéric has mul­tiple research interests that range from tour­ist beha­viour to des­tin­a­tion com­pet­it­ive­ness. He is an avid trav­el­ler and loves the outdoors.