W Europe Jobs Drain Workforce From Holiday Resort Balaton

Budapest, June 23 (MTI) – Hotels in the area of the country’s most popular holiday resort Lake Balaton are struggling to fill seasonal jobs as local workforce find better-paying employment in western Europe, business daily Vilaggazdasag said today.

Plenty of vacant positions await seasonal workers in the region but it is very difficult to find suitable well-trained workforce, the paper quoted Henrik Hoffmann, the president of the Balaton region tourism development federation, as saying.

To help remedy the situation the federation has chosen in an unprecedented move to put out advertisements seeking cooks and receptionists in advertisements for instance in neighbouring Romania, Hoffmann told the paper.

He said the situation is so acute that they have even gone to secondary schools around the lake to recruit students and train them at crash courses. Although hotels would have an interest in further improving services, they end up hiring whoever comes their way since they are unable to stand competition with wages offered in Austria or in Great Britain, Hoffmann said.

“People in the industry here work in the main season 12-14 hours a day for a gross wage of 100,000-150,000 forints (EUR 326-490), which means that they are quite underpaid.”

Wages should be at least doubled which the hotels’ revenue level could hardly allow, he said, adding that a solution could be to reduce taxes in the industry.

Photo: kapos.hu

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters