A major culture problem: why people don’t want to work in hospitality

Plugging the huge shortage of staff in the hospitality sector is a narrative we’ve been grappling with for years now. People are no longer surprised to hear that there are more than 100,000 vacancies in hospitality at any one time, nor that the proportion of vacancies has increased by 48% since the Covid-19 pandemic (UK Hospitality).

But what are the real issues causing this crisis of adequately staffing the hospitality sector? We know that, in the UK, Brexit has taken away crucial European workers in the industry. An enormous 92,000 hospitality workers left the country the year after Brexit, according to The Caterer. And we know that – globally – the pandemic hit hospitality hard. Many workers lost their jobs and haven’t returned, as they consider the hospitality sector too risky. Plus they’ve found better pay and an improved work-life balance elsewhere. These are critical factors. But hospitality was already struggling to attract and retain staff before any of this happened.

Some of the problems with staffing in hospitality run much deeper, and they almost always lead back to culture. Whether it’s the actual culture of working for hospitality companies, or the perception of it, addressing culture deeply and thoughtfully could transform the industry. Here are the four key pillars that could help tackle the issues in hospitality staffing at the moment.

1. Re-discover the meaning, joy and positive image of hospitality

Jobs in hospitality are not all tough and badly paid. The salaries might be on the lower side for those starting out, but career progression can be rapid. Look at many of the directors and senior leaders in hospitality chains today. It’s a common story to hear how they started on the reception desk or front of house and worked their way up. There aren’t many industries where you can do that without having some formal qualifications first.

Harpreet Singh Saluja, the Group Operations Director for AG Hotels said: “[There is] the stigma that hospitality is not the greatest career. I think promoting hospitality in a much brighter light, within the UK and Europe, would be a great thing.”

“It's always a question of image,” said Florian Hepp, Director of Employer Branding for Central Europe Marriott. “This image is sometimes self-made. The kitchen, for example, is a very demanding work environment. It’s loud, it’s hard, and sometimes you have difficult working hours.” But it’s not always like that. Working in a hotel kitchen also offers opportunities for creativity. You can develop strong team bonds. And shift work can be helpful to accommodate other personal commitments. It’s all about how you frame it. And there are a variety of other careers in hospitality aside from kitchen work, from accounting to marketing.

Some experts believe that the problems of staffing in hospitality come from too much focus on profit. “Hospitality was meant to be a great service industry rather than just a moneymaking business,” Singh Saluja said. “[People] looking at purchasing hotels as a business should think of hospitality at the core of hotels. It’s not an asset where they just buy it and squeeze every single penny out of it.”

It’s often said that hospitality is all about people, but with mounting commercial pressures, we don’t often hear about human experiences anymore. Marriott is on a mission to change this. Ultimately, they want their employees to be their brand ambassadors. “The C-level can tell you how great it is to work at Marriott,” Hepp said. “But we’re convinced it’s even more credible when associates share their very personal stories about their experiences with Marriott. And it doesn't always need to be positive, it just needs to be authentic.”

To further this aim, Hepp’s team is currently taking regular content creation trips to their properties, to find out more about staff members and their personal experiences. Hepp recalled a story from a Marriott property in Vienna, about a time when Lionel Richie was coming to visit the hotel. One of the staff members was a huge fan, and management arranged for her to help welcome him to the hotel. “She guided Lionel Richie and his security guards into the elevator,” Hepp said. “She turned around for a second, the doors closed and Lionel Richie went up to the fourth floor. The elevator came back a few seconds later. She was so nervous because she’d lost Lionel Richie in the hotel! The doors opened and Lionel Richie starts singing, ‘Hello? Is it me you're looking for?’” Hospitality is not all celebrities and glamour – far from it – but it’s stories like these that bring the experience of working in the sector to life!

2. Make hospitality careers rewarding and personalised

The variety of careers available and the buzz of working in a hospitality outlet should create hugely exciting careers. So why don’t we hear more about hospitality careers that are being nurtured? It often comes down to a culture that accepts the revolving door of staff coming in and out, rather than one that thinks about creating a work environment that is too good to leave.

Hepp says that the latest graduates of hotel schools and vocational courses now include company culture as a top five priority. “Work culture and alignment of values are becoming more and more important,” he said. “This is about inclusive environments, career development opportunities, corporate social responsibility, and work-life balance. To build a great culture within teams, I recommend spending as much one-to-one time with your associates as possible. You need to specifically look at individual expectations and then react to that.”

Seeing staff as individuals, giving them space to articulate their goals, and being committed to helping them get there unlocks rewarding careers. This attracts and retains staff. Of course, this has to go hand-in-hand with operational viability and commercial success. But even the current trend of delivering operations with fewer staff members can help create more fulfilling careers. Multitasking is something more hotels are referring to, where staff are trained in different aspects of hotel operations. This means upskilling staff and giving them experience in different areas of the business, which means they are more likely to get promoted.

“We are doing a lot of cross-training across departments to help us in terms of flexibility,” said Karen Weisheit, Hotel Manager of Grove of Narberth in Wales. “Most of our reception team are trained in the restaurant. I'm the Hotel Manager, and I'm in the restaurant most days. We're just a very flexible team that can support each other where needed.”

Multitasking ticks a lot of boxes for hotels, but there are other things that can be done to make hospitality jobs more attractive too. The Grove of Narberth has had a four day working week since 2022, giving staff a good work-life balance. They give milestone rewards such as meals and overnight stays when staff reach a certain length of service, and they invest in extensive and ongoing training. “Look after your people,” Weisheit advises. “If you care for them, they will care for your business and your guests. That is something we see day in, day out.”

3. Prioritise leadership over expertise

It's more important for line managers to engage with their employees than to be an expert in their field. That might sound like a controversial statement. But not enough emphasis is placed on the value of human relationships in hospitality careers, and the power of effectively leading, nurturing and looking out for staff. It’s not just the responsibility of human resources teams to look after people; it’s everyone’s responsibility.

“It boils down to the leaders you have in your business,” said Singh Saluja. “How do they portray the business? How passionate are they? If somebody is looking to leave, are they trying to promote them? I think it's the culture within the business you create, and that's how you see recruits following the culture through.”

Effective leaders can spot the potential in their people, and find ways to help them progress. AG Hotels has multiple properties across the world, and Singh Saluja can spot good and bad leadership instantly. “We’ll see a site which has a great leader, and they have employees who join at a very basic level, who become a great asset to the business,” he said. “Yet sites with a wrong leader could be given a candidate with the right attitude, but is not being trained properly, and they lose that asset.” To develop great leaders, AG Hotels invests in leadership management courses, and is currently building a Learning Management System (LMS).

At Marriott, developing great leaders is high on the agenda too. “Open communication and transparency from leadership are essential because employees value them,” Hepp said. “Employees want honesty and regular feedback. They want to know the clear expectations regarding their roles and responsibilities. They want to know the company's direction – I think they have the right to be more involved in that.” He says that managers should be much more like “mentors and coaches” these days. Indeed, the Strategic Solution Partners 2023 Hospitality Industry Survey deduced that “finding quality workers who stay for more than a year is a problem. Without enough senior leaders on board to mentor, more will leave.”

4. Inspire the younger generation

It’s one thing challenging and changing cultures and perceptions of the hospitality industry now, but if the staffing shortfall is ever to be filled, younger generations will need to be inspired to become a part of it. A key way this is starting to happen is through government-back apprenticeships. With more of these on the table, routes into fulfilling hospitality careers will start to flourish.

Cumbria Tourism has been working with the University of Cumbria on designing degree apprenticeships for the hospitality sector. “Apprentices are in the workplace four days a week and they are at university on the fifth day,” Gill Haigh, the Managing Director of Cumbria Tourism explained. “All of their work with the university is geared around the needs of the business, and helping them to develop within that business. And of course, they're getting paid at the same time.”

The county of Cumbria is a tourism hotspot, but has a low population, with just 2% of people actively seeking work according to Haigh. It’s like a microcosm that sums up the larger scale issues of hospitality recruitment. To help with this, Cumbria Tourism has collaborated with a number of partners to create a portal about all the career opportunities and routes into hospitality. “That could be going to college first, going directly into a job, becoming an apprentice or a degree apprentice,” Haigh explained. “It talks to 16 year olds and 18 year olds, but also to mums and dads. It's trying to help them to understand the industry.”

Inspiring the younger generation can come in many forms. Staff from Grove of Narbeth visit career fairs to promote the hotel. They also invite young people to take part in work placements, and the head chef regularly goes into local colleges to cook with students. Working with young people in this way is a recognition that change in the sector is going to take some time to filter through. But Weisheit says it’s vital to “invest in the generations that are coming after us.”

There’s no doubt that staffing in hospitality has become a deeply entrenched issue. But the good news is that we have the knowledge and tools available to make hospitality an attractive, rewarding and sought after sector to work in. Now we just have to get on and do it.

Since writing this article - there have been many more insightful articles - we will continue to explore this topic especially on our podcast Travel Market Life. 

Ryan Haynes
Director | Lead Consultant
Haynes MarComs Ltd