Aviation is not the only one suffering from a lack of personnel: a mass “flight” of tourism specialists has begun, which is already becoming a real problem. This happens primarily in the so-called civilized countries. Thus, in only one region of Germany, the shortage of workers in the field of manual tourism amounted to almost 100,000 people. Moreover, employees of hotels and travel agencies who fled tourism, forced to become cashiers and cleaners during the pandemic, do not want to return to the hospitality industry at all.
Thus, a lack of professionals in the hotel and restaurant sector was reported in the North Rhine region of Germany. According to the statement of the Statistical Office of the North Rhine-Westphalia region (NRW), of the 789,000 people who worked in this industry before covid, 216,000 left their jobs, and about half – 117,000 people – returned.
Other employees were successfully retrained in various fields. For example, 35,000 people moved to supermarket checkouts, and another 20,500 people also moved into the field of working with food products. Almost 17,000 more went to the cleaners altogether. As a result, the shortage of workers in tourism reached more than 100,000 people.