A CRITICAL HUMAN RESOUCES ISSUE

DOES THE INDUSTRY FACE A LABOUR CATASTROPHE?

Have previous generations had to deal with the acute labour shortages that hospitality faces now and over the years to come? Are there precedents to the drought of labour that the hospitality industry faces over the next 10-15 years?

Tourism has grown exponentially with the birth of mass air travel to the point where there is no place on earth where tourism is not an opportunity and is not potential for some form of travel or another.

Our industry now employs approximately 100 million people.

Add to that the fact that space hotels will be developed and additional hospitality employees will need to train as astronauts within the next 20 years and one can easily see that the quantity that the industry will lack in 10-15 years could easily reach 15 million.

Supply and demand will push wage rates up exponentially.

Now let's be clear, we are not short of workers, they are just in the wrong places and can not get to where the work is. Does this sound familiar to the days when labour was needed for agriculture (sugar and cotton), construction (roads and railways) and hospitality (maids and butlers).

It was over 10 million then and we predict 10 million tomorrow. We have learned our lesson and will never repeat the tragedies of the Slave Trade but what will be different in the 21st Century from the 18th century? What has changed that will allow us to move 10 million workers again to where there is work and where everyone benefits?

1. Travel will be voluntary.
2. Air transport allows comfortable travel everywhere at relatively low cost.
3. Workers can be moved to where the work is for brief periods of the high season and then return home enriched financially and experiencially.
4. Employers will pay full rate or union local wages plus transportation costs both ways.
5. Workers can repatriate some of their wages to their families at home.
6. Employers will act as trainers.
7. Workers return home within a year with worldly experience.
8. Developing countries create employment while preparing their people for tourism.
9. Workers are repatriated after each contract and are not emigrating.
10. International Organisations collaborate on working conditions, identity checks, travel documents and perhaps hi-tech ID cards.
11. Receiving countries enjoy increased income tax revenues.
12. Seasonal layoffs are turned into a working travel experience and industry turnover is reduced as workers realise this is a full time professional career.
13. Technology permits rapid communication of supply and demand.
14. Workers will not need to stowaway on rickety ships, airline undercarriages or climb border walls.
15. Employers will welcome these travelling ambassadors as precious contributors to their bottom line.
16. Workers will move on with an enhanced CV, new skills and family savings.
17. Walls of intolerance will crumble and cultures will blend.

The machinery is in place already. A consortium has been formed between ILO, IOE, IUF (see below) and the international industry association and the only pieces that are missing are,

1. Chain support. Most CEOs deny, ignore or delegate the impending catastrophe.
2. Financing. The consortium needs legs.
3. Political will. Receiving and sending countries need to put the pieces in place through the UN. The World Tourism Organisation is probably the most appropriate.

For more information, contact [email protected]

ILO    International Labour Organisation

IOE    International Organisation of Employers

IUF    International Trade Union Federation.