Season start: serious labour shortage at Lake Balaton
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Due to forced closures, many workers have left the hospitality sector. In recent years, it has not been easy to find workers for the Balaton high season for caterers and accommodation providers. Still, the Covid epidemic has made the picture even more confusing.
The local governments and beach operators of Lake Balaton are already very much preparing for this year’s opening. Tourists can also be happy because they can expect a lot of innovation and improvement.
In the hospitality sector, however, some already envision the import of foreign labour, although the situation is still better than in Budapest. 24.hu talked to Balaton restaurants before the 2021 high season.
The shortage of manpower now that restaurants may be opening again from early May is a particularly burning problem in many places.
As the restaurants and accommodations opened at the same time, all the closed places began to look for workers at once.
András Dobai, owner of the Kredenc pizzeria in Balatonfüred, said that experienced Balaton restaurants might have been prepared for the current labour situation, but shops operating exclusively in the high season are in a more difficult situation since they usually have to build the team from scratch.
Kredenc delivered pizza five days a week, so they were able to employ a larger number of staff than in previous years. But recruiting for the summer wasn’t that easy. In Dobai’s experience, businesses that laid off almost all staff immediately when the pandemic broke out are not very popular now for recruitment either.
In any case, compared to Budapest, “Lake Balaton is now the happiest barracks” survived this period well. In the summer of 2020, an unprecedented number of guests vacationed there. He sees that anyone who went bankrupt at Lake Balaton after the summer of 2020 must first conduct a self-examination.
Balázs Csapody, the owner of the well-known restaurant in Balatonszemes, Kistücsök, said that they had managed to keep all the employees since the shutdown in November. This was partly because they switched to takeaway service and were only fully temporarily closed in January and February.
It was planned to hire an additional ten people for the summer, and prospective employees started applying for them as early as March. According to Csapody, the number of people leaving the profession is not very high. According to his experience, those who went to other sectors in November-December last year are “staying in the hospitality industry”.
The UK also has a serious shortage of experienced staff in the hospitality industry. As a result of the lockdowns many went to work in more certain jobs such as in supermarkets or online retailers. Many EU staff left and returned to their home countries and have decided to stay there. Then there is the Brexit knock on effect – all the young people who would go to the UK for a few years and work in the hospitality industry, by and large cannot anymore under the new Points System for work visas. This has a direct impact on wages – if a restaurant there offers the minimum wage they will get no applicants. Double the minimum wage they might get a few. High time restaurant staff – especially waiters and waitresses were well paid in the UK!