Excerpt from CoStar

The French hotel industry has the same COVID-19-era challenges of many markets, but labor issues there are acute, with unions and employers trying to negotiate a wide divide despite industry and state incentives to attract, train and retain staff.

Wracked by chronic staffing shortages, the French hotel industry is negotiating pay raises with unions while calling on employers to improve working conditions and help win back disaffected workers.

The hospitality industry in France has been hit by one of the sharpest labor shortages, with approximately 237,000 jobs lost between February 2020 and February 2021.

“COVID-19 is exacerbating existing workforce shortfalls two-fold,” said Roland Héguy, confederate president of hotel industry trade body the Union des Métiers et des Industries de l’Hôtellerie, or UMIH. “We were already 15% short of employees before the epidemic. Today, we are missing 30%."

In France, as in other countries, the pandemic has been a turning point for hotel staff.

“With the lockdowns, our employees returned home and realized that we can live differently,” Héguy said.

Many staff have decided not to return to work, particularly in hotels with restaurants, which were closed for seven months at the height of the pandemic lockdowns.

Véronique Gaulon, national vice president of the UMIH’s catering section, called 2021 a “catastrophic and nightmarish year.”

“We have always had employees who leave. But in this case, they had time to think about their future. Do I stay or do I go? And then everyone made the same decision at the same time,” she said.

The shortage is "not being compensated by young people leaving training schools,” she added, “because there has been a drop in enrollment. We are at a point of no return.”

Hoteliers feel the industry is at a crossroads. The attractiveness of hospitality jobs, employment shortfalls and employee loyalty were also crucial issues at the latest annual congress of the UMIH held in Strasbourg.

The French government is urging hotels to improve on-the-job learning, staff development and career paths.

Best Western Hotels & Resorts is one hotel firm in France relying on in-house training plans.

Pierre Siegel, owner of the Best Western Monopole Métropole Strasbourg, said the hotel firm is ready for the challenge of improving careers and the workplace.

“The aim is to make employees feel proud to work with us and be happy. The more we retain them and gain their loyalty, the further we move away from recruitment problems,” he said.

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