B.C. gets creative addressing its hospitality labour crunch

With most COVID travel restrictions gone or reduced, “it’s shaping up to be a great time for the accommodation industry to rebound with vigour in the Okanagan and Kamloops” according to iNFOnews.ca.

“For sure, the shortage of labour is definitely a huge issue,” Alison Langford, the B.C. Hotel Association’s newly hired workforce strategist told the B.C. based media outlet. Langford is compiling numbers to see how bad the situation actually is, acknowledging that there were times during the COVID pandemic when hotels said they were full even though they were only at 50 to 60 per cent capacity due to labour shortages.

“We have a serious crisis on our hands,” Langford said. “What are we collectively going to do to resolve this and why are people not going into these kinds of jobs? Why are they not interested in a hotel career or a restaurant career?”

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