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.

Best Western France encourages its employees to discuss pay and other key issues together with management, Siegel said.

The company also rolled out a policy of employee benefits, and dangled a motivational bunch of carrots to staff, which include preferential rates at the group’s hotels and performance-based reward points that can be cashed in for gifts. Additional benefits include free support services such as workplace counseling and childcare.

The challenges of attracting, training and retaining staff come at a time when the hard-hit sector is slowly getting back on its feet.

Business advisory KPMG in its latest study on the French market said hotels had suffered between 45% to 70% losses in turnover in 2020.

Training and giving greater value to employees and teams are among the drivers for recovery, said Stéphane Botz, national director, France, of KPMG Hospitality.

In addition to other benefits, better wages are a key component when it comes to luring workers to the trade.

Union-employer negotiations have been underway since November, with unions rejecting a 10.5% wage hike, which would have been the first since 2018.

Unions have asked for between 16% and 34%, with sources stating unions likely are soon to ask for an average 16.3% increase.

Lower-level staff might see approximately a 4% increase, with unions saying that because they have compromised, they expect further wage discussions later in 2022.

Gaulon said discussions have been difficult.

“It’s not that we don’t want to pay our workers more, but it’s a matter of our [hotels and other] establishments surviving. If we give too much, [they] won’t be able to [survive], unless the state helps us and lowers costs,” she said.

She said the concern is not simply a problem of tough working hours but the longtime “denigration” of hospitality jobs.

"All unpopular professions are affected by this difficulty to recruit," she said. "The cause is neither salaries nor working conditions, but a negative image given to vocational training that has existed for 40 years."

She believes the onus is on employers to lift their game, and added that in this demanding profession, staff are not always paid overtime, and that is a major turnoff for potential employees.

“Some still operate the old way by paying their employees 35 or 39 hours, while making them work 60 hours a week," she said. "This is unacceptable, and that is also why we are in this situation. Every hour worked must be paid or compensated with time in lieu, and if it’s like that, we’ll get out of this mess.”

Hoteliers predict the restructuring of salaries and worker shortfalls are long-term problems that will take up to five years to overcome.

Jean-Philippe Cartier, CEO and founder of the small luxury-hotel group H8 Collection, said the choppy recovery and “incredible turnover” that began last summer is continuing into the winter season.

“Our sector has bounced back remarkably. Reservations are going well for all kinds of hotels and ski resorts,” he said.

To meet this growing demand, Cartier said better salaries and working conditions are a priority.

“Salaries are one solution, but so is the improvement of working hours. No one wants to stop working at 2:30 in the afternoon, then start again at 6:30 in the evening, with an hour on public transport to get home, and then come back to work again. The sector has to become attractive for workers again,” he said.

Due to staff problems, the group is always “stretched to the limit,” he said, and currently is seeking between 10 and 30 employees.

“We have about 100 staff. I imagine for big hotel groups, the talks are more complicated,” he added.

UMIH’s Héguy said the union is focused on rethinking "the attractiveness of the hotel and catering trades."

Roger Sengel, president of the UMIH’s Bas-Rhin region in northern Alsace, said the industry needs workers from younger generations.

“Many young apprentices threw in the towel,” Sengel said.

The industry wants the government to be part of the solution, not only by bringing down employee costs.

“We hope that the labor inspectorate can do a better job with more resources to eliminate such practices, and that those establishments that are sullying our image are brought to task and forced to respect labor laws,” Gaulon said.

Trained staff are snubbing thousands of hotel and hospitality job openings, despite France having an overall unemployment rate of 8%.

The government is promising urgent measures to fill the skills gap and encourage young workers, with Pôle Emploi, the national employment agency, stating 14% of the current uptake of new, short-term training courses offered by the state are in hospitality.

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