ANALYSIS:The very efficient member of staff who welcomed delegates to the 75th annual conference of the Irish Hotels Federation, in Killarney, on Sunday was not Irish.
The dining room staff were a smooth, multicultural team capable of speaking a range of European languages. As you might expect when hoteliers gather for a hoteliers’ conference, the host venue was in pristine form and staff were performing at their best.
All of which presents something of a delicate problem for the industry. Fáilte Ireland has always made much of the particular quality of the welcome of an “Irish” native as Bord Fáilte did before it.
Nobody at the conference wanted to stray into the dangerous territory of making too much of the nationality of staff members.
But hoteliers muttered that with unemployment levels in the Republic about 14 per cent, where are all the Irish workers? Michael Magner, owner of the Vienna Woods Hotel in Cork, said he started collecting glasses in a hotel in Limerick at 14 and now owns his own hotel.
But he said there are no defined school-level subjects directing candidates towards hospitality. Since Fáilte Ireland ended its Fetac courses about two years ago, some two-thirds of hotels have said they have had difficulty getting entry-level staff.
Initiative
Philip Gavin of the Talbot Hotel group said he had up to 40 jobs to be filled by May. He said he knows from experience he won’t get trained Irish staff but the group will have to do its own training or employ overseas workers.
When he took over as president of the hotels federation last year, Michael Vaughan of the Vaughan Lodge, in Lahinch, Co Clare, submitted a plan to Government to train up to 3,000 members of the long-term unemployed for entry level jobs. But, he said, “shockingly”, and despite high unemployment, the Government has made no progress with the initiative.
But the staff issue is just one problem. Up to 80 per cent of hotels outside Dublin, Cork and Galway do not see many overseas visitors and depend on the domestic market.
Just 80 hotels are in Nama, but another 90 are in receivership and as many as 300 thought to be operating only with the tolerance of the banks.
Competing with these hotels, which are typically heavily discounting accommodation deals just to keep the heating on, can be difficult.
Low margins
Willie Loughnane, whose family has run the County Arms hotel in Birr for 50 years, said he was keeping numbers up with low-margin family packages.
In early March his 81-bedroom hotel did 200 breakfasts, which was very good. Margins may be low but they were getting through the recession.
One of the biggest problems is the British market. Tourism Ireland, the all-Ireland body, targets an additional 200,000 visitors by 2016.
But set against a drop of 100,000 last year, and a million since 2007, hoteliers believe the marketing is just not working.
Yet hoteliers are optimistic. In the short term there is the Gathering 2013, which is already starting to see advance bookings coming in.
There is also the special reduced vat rate of nine per cent introduced by Minister Leo Varadkar, which has led almost half of hoteliers to say they plan to take on more staff this year.
Whether those staff can get entry level training in Ireland, or staff have to be sourced, pre-trained from abroad, is according to Michael Vaughan, a matter for policy makers.
