A chronic shortage of service personnel in tourism is noted in tropical Thailand: soon there will be no one to serve tourists. Crisda Tansakul, the adviser to the Thai Hotel Association, announced an acute personnel crisis.
As data from the Ministry of Labor the country showed, the shortage of personnel in Thailand has been growing for more than one year. During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-2021, the “staff shortage” subsided a little, because. there were few tourists, but soon the “holes” in tourism and hospitality became even more noticeable. Since the opening of the country in July 2022, more than 11 million foreign tourists have visited the “land of smiles”, and the country was not ready for such an influx of tourists, The Thaiger noted. First of all, a severe personnel crisis affected the main resort island of Phuket, where open vacancies in the tourism sector exceeded 17 thousand, the city of Chiang Mai (9 thousand vacancies), and Chonburi province with the resort city of Pattaya (3 thousand vacancies).
“The situation is getting worse as more tourists come and we don’t have enough manpower to serve them. We need more employees, from bellhops to hotel managers,” the official admitted. In the pre-Covid year of 2019, tourism peaked in Thailand, when almost 40 million foreign tourists, including Russians, visited the Asian country. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a sharp decline: in 2020, the number of tourists decreased to 6.7 million, and in 2021 to only 427,869 people. Despite a long break, in the second half of 2022, the tourist flow went up sharply – the number of visitors increased to 11 million.
According to a study by the National Institute for Development Management, anti-COVID measures, including a global lockdown, have influenced the choice of a profession for 3.9 million employees who previously worked in the tourism industry. According to the agency, before the pandemic, 7.7 million people worked in this sector. Of those laid off, 60% returned to their hometowns to work in agriculture, 20% sought employment elsewhere, and 20% started their own business. A similar situation after covid has developed in Europe.
Despite the upbeat forecast from the Tourism Board of Thailand (TCT), which expects up to 30 million foreign holidaymakers in 2023, the sector still faces significant challenges. As costs rise, it becomes increasingly difficult for hotels to turn a profit. “Major hotel chains are expanding their workforce by offering higher salaries, but small and medium-sized hotels are still experiencing liquidity problems, making it difficult for them to spend on attracting new employees,” TCT chief Chamnan Srisawat told Thai media.
To address the shortage of workers, the department has partnered with educational institutions across the country in an attempt to find employees and is even offering loans of 10.55 billion rubles. at the current rate from the State Savings Bank to small and medium-sized hotels. TCT is also recruiting interns from schools with a tourism profile and a hospitality management focus to help fill open positions. In this situation, the Russians should be prepared for the problems associated with the lack of service personnel in Thailand.