The hospitality industry in Europe is currently experiencing a huge shortage of staff, which is already creating problems in hotels, bars, and restaurants ahead of the holiday season.
Tourism business owners are offering more and more incentives to job seekers to try to attract new employees to work.
According to experts, there is an urgent need to fill approximately 200,000 vacancies in the most popular resorts throughout Spain.
Thousands of workers left Spain and Portugal when international travel ended due to the pandemic, and many of them have not returned since.
And now employers are ready to go for higher wages, free accommodation, and cash bonuses, just to hire people.
At the same time, many former employees have decided to move to other industries, so you have to start almost from scratch.”
Wages for staff working in bars and restaurants have increased by 60 percent, according to official figures, but the tourism industry is still one of the lowest-paid.
The shortage of employees is particularly acute in Spain and Portugal, where tourism accounted for 13 and 15 percent of GDP, respectively, before the pandemic.
It has also become a little more difficult for both countries to recruit qualified staff in the UK after Brexit. The tightening of restrictions on hiring seasonal workers in the UK has meant that Britons cannot fly to Europe and help fill employment gaps as easily as before.
Problems related to the understaffing of accommodation facilities and other tourism infrastructure are on par with others, including possible strikes by staff at airports and numerous flight cancellations.