‘Generation X' blamed for staffing crisis
The hospitality industry is having to rely more heavily on immigrant workers, because people born in the 1960s and 1970s are not willing to stay with a company and work their way up, a Swiss hotel school conference was told last week.
Jeffrey Catrett, dean of the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne, Switzerland, said staff from "Generation X" - those now in their 30s and 40s - were not often willing to "work their way up the corporate ladder".
Speaking at the school on Friday (5 October) at a strategy conference attended by former students, Catrett said that in 1985 immigrant workers made up just 7% of the hospitality workforce in Europe and North America. Last year that figure reached 37%. He said that the attitudes of Generation X were the main cause of the decline in home-grown workers.
He added that this generation was not willing to spend 15 years in a company working their way up the corporate ladder and was generally distrusting of the industry.
Catrett said that finding and keeping staff was the greatest problem facing hotels.
l Bookings over the Internet at Accor's hotels have grown from 2,000 a week last year to 25,000 a week in August this year, André‚ Witschi, Accor's senior vice-president for Europe, told the conference.
