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The hotel industry is facing staffing problems, given that there is a migration of staff to destinations outside the country, Ana Hotels general manager Simona Constantinescu said on Wednesday, quoted by Agerpres. She admitted that the salary is a determining factor for which the qualified personnel of Romanian citizenship decides to leave the country. A solution for Romanian hoteliers will be to recruit staff from Asia.
“We are facing staffing problems at the moment – because as we have restarted tourism – hotels, restaurants completely closed this year and three months, plus cruise ships, which have resumed employment and then we have a migration of qualified staff of Romanian citizenship looking for work and leaving. Instead, the staff we had already begun to bring from Asia comes harder because there is another wave – and then there is some reluctance, but it comes. I spoke yesterday with some partners who came by plane and told me that the Dubai plane was 30% filled with a contingent of Asian workers. So, I said I’m recruiting at the airport. I will move a human resources department to the airport “, mentioned Simona Constantinescu at the event titled “The biggest players in the economy. The time of the 2021 action ”.
She admitted that the salary is a determining factor for which the qualified personnel of Romanian citizenship decides to leave the country.
“Certainly, the salary is a determining factor – it has increased people’s flexibility. They began to decide to leave the country more easily, and digitalization was certainly a factor that helped – the fact that they could communicate digitally with family members, before they may not have done so, but because of the pandemic they stayed apart. In addition, they are starting to leave for periods of a year or two, to earn more money “, added the general manager of Ana Hotels.
According to her, we also see “a wave of returns among young college graduates who during the pandemic suffered somewhat, because they were isolated in dormitories and felt the impact of lack of interaction with colleagues.”
“They realized that they are not in the social environment there and they started to come back. But, of course, they do not necessarily come to and work in the HoReCa field, where the salary is low compared to other industries. We also have a lot of people who decided to go to industries that operated during this period – retail, pharma – a lot. It is understandable: everyone weighs the benefit of work versus income and family safety. Especially in single-parent families I saw this insecurity and desire to have a secure job, while in te HoReCa they were technically unemployed, or were in Kurzarbeit, with short periods back to work, so this flexibility came with uncertainty.”, explained Simona Constantinescu.
She specified that the most understaffed positions now in Ana Hotels are those that involve unskilled work: ‘housekeeping’ and ‘back of the house’, respectively washing dishes, cleaning, “work that can be performed by workers from Asian countries who do not necessarily speak English either. ”
Hotel-restaurant operators are facing a crisis in the labor market: they are launching job advertisements and interviews in the HoReCa for which no candidates are applying, the Federation of Employers in the Hospitality Industry (FIO) has also warned. They claim that the confidence in the HoReCa industry is at its lowest level since 1989, and the lack of predictability strikes Romanian entrepreneurs and employees again. The hospitality industry is the sector that recorded the largest increase in net losses in 2020, about 220%, according to data presented by industry representatives.
Translated from Romanian by Service For Life S.R.L.