Qualified labor, a pending task in Banderas Bay
The saying goes: “Jobs so hard that they even pay to do it”… although there another side of the coin, the one of people who enjoy their jobs so much they even celebrate being paid to do it .
I decided to talk about this because Labor Day was commemorated May 1st, an emblematic date for society in its eagerness to claim social rights and, and I chose the topic because a phenomenon took place In the Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit region last year: the lack of qualified labor.
Right now, according to the Association of Hotels and Motels of Puerto Vallarta, there are more than 5,000 vacancies in the tourism sector alone between hotels and restaurants, this is “alarming” confirmed by the National Chamber of the Restaurant Industry and Seasoned Foods (Canirac) in Puerto Vallarta.
There are a lot of circumstances that contribute to the shortage of personnel, it has been in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and especially at the beginning of this contingency thousands of workers had to leave their jobs and return to their hometown states such as Chiapas, Oaxaca and Michoacán, and even to Mexico City. Others had no choice but to start a business, some with great results that they no longer wanted to return to a company where they have to work more than eight hours on minimum wage.
But, the ultimate reason for this lack of labor is the continuous growth of the sector, new hotels or real estate developments that require personnel to cover different areas, and they are facing the fact that there is none.
According to the Secretary of Tourism of Jalisco there is a total offer of 26 thousand lodging rooms in Puerto Vallarta of which 15, 600 belong to the traditional hotel industry and the rest (10, 400) to the timeshare scheme. For its part, the number of rooms in the municipality of Bahía de Banderas is 14,580 rooms, according to Marketminder.
On the same topic, the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) on the North Coast reported it had a record of 25, 000 unionized workers integrated into the local tourism industry before the pandemic; the current number of workers is 18, 600.
It’s important to note that this crisis is not exclusive to the region, not even to México. The same problem has also been seen in other countries such as the United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Portugal, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) reports, which points out that “the recovery of the sector depends on its ability to solve this difficulty” and warns about the impact of staff shortages, hence the critical need to address the problem.
I have no doubt that the tourism sector is facing one of its biggest challenges after the pandemic, so it is time to “grab the bull by the horns” and take action to bring in workers again, to regain their confidence, so they stop seeing companies as unpleasant places to work.
What do you think about this? What should the sector address to bring in new workers or retain current employees? I’ll be reading your comments.
