As global tourism demand surges toward record levels, a catastrophic labour shortage threatens to choke growth, close businesses, and hand competitive advantage to destinations that act decisively now
Paris, France (Tourism Reporter) — The numbers are staggering, the timeline is urgent, and the consequences are existential. By 2035, the global travel and tourism sector will face a shortfall of more than 43 million workers, with demand for labour exceeding supply by 16 per cent. The hospitality industry specifically is projected to be 8.6 million workers short—approximately 18 per cent below required staffing levels. This is not a distant threat; it is already crushing operational capacity, forcing hotels to close floors, restaurants to reduce service hours, and attractions to turn away visitors at the very moment demand is breaking records.
For destination management organisations, tourism ministers, and economic development agencies, the message is unambiguous: you can market your destination brilliantly, secure direct air routes from key markets, and develop world-class tourism products—but if you cannot staff hotels, restaurants, attractions, and transport services, none of it matters. The workforce crisis is not a human resources problem to be delegated; it is the central strategic challenge determining which destinations will thrive and which will stagnate over the next decade.
The Scale of the Crisis: Regional Breakdowns
The workforce deficit is not evenly distributed. China is projected to face the largest absolute shortfall at 16.9 million workers, followed by India at 11 million and the European Union at 6.4 million.
In relative terms, the impact is even more severe in certain economies. Japan’s travel and tourism sector will see its workforce supply projected to sit at 29 per cent below 2035 demand levels, followed by Greece at negative 27 per cent and Germany at negative 26 per cent. For tourism-dependent economies like Greece, where the sector represents a substantial share of GDP and employment, this is not merely a staffing challenge—it is an economic crisis in the making.
In North America, the situation is already acute. The U.S. hospitality sector employs approximately 17 million people, with the Canadian sector employing around 1.2 million as of Q1 2025. Yet despite near-record guest spending and occupancy rates, the hospitality industry experiences a 70 to 80 per cent annual turnover rate, creating a treadmill effect where operators are perpetually recruiting just to maintain current staffing levels, let alone grow.
Recent policy shifts have compounded the crisis. Immigration enforcement actions in the United States have been linked to nearly 100,000 hospitality job losses, with foreign-born workers accounting for one-third of the travel-related workforce. The result: hotels unable to open all rooms despite strong demand, restaurants reducing operating hours, and tourism revenue lost not from lack of interest but from inability to serve.
Europe faces similar structural headwinds. France’s hospitality sector alone anticipates needing over 336,000 new hires in 2025, yet domestic talent pools are drying up due to an aging workforce, post-pandemic burnout, and fierce competition from other industries. This translates to more than 107,000 visa opportunities for employers willing to recruit internationally—a policy response that acknowledges the severity of the crisis but also highlights how dependent many destinations have become on imported labour.
Root Causes: Why Workers Are Staying Away
Understanding the crisis requires acknowledging uncomfortable truths about the tourism and hospitality sector’s employment value proposition.
1. Compensation No Longer Competitive
Wages in the hospitality industry have been on a notable upward trajectory in 2024–2025 as a direct outcome of labour shortages and inflationary pressures. Yet even with increases, hospitality wages in many markets remain below what workers can earn in retail, logistics, or entry-level technology roles—sectors that often offer more predictable schedules and better benefits.
2. Career Perception Problem
Fewer young people have entered the hospitality industry since the pandemic, with many younger candidates, particularly those under age 30, demonstrating less willingness to take entry-level or intensive shift jobs, especially in customer-facing roles. The sector suffers from an image problem: perceived as low-skill, transient work rather than a viable long-term career path. This perception persists despite the reality that tourism supports diverse, high-skill roles in revenue management, digital marketing, sustainability, and destination strategy.
3. Retention Crisis
Demanding scheduling patterns, limited visible career progression, and relatively low wages are commonly cited as driving factors behind the high turnover rate in hospitality. When experienced workers leave, they take institutional knowledge with them, forcing leaner teams to operate under additional strain whilst simultaneously training new hires—a vicious cycle that degrades service quality and burns out remaining staff.
4. Structural Demographics
The reduction in younger workers entering hospitality is compounded by shrinking working-age populations relative to economic growth in many developed economies. Japan, Germany, Italy, and other aging societies face a double challenge: fewer workers entering the labour force overall, and tourism growth outpacing population trends.
5. Housing Affordability
In tourism-dependent regions—resort towns, coastal areas, alpine communities—property values and rents have been driven skyward by second-home ownership and short-term rental conversions. Workers cannot afford to live where the jobs are. This is not a theoretical problem; it is forcing businesses to close or reduce operations despite strong visitor demand.
The Cost of Inaction: Quantifying the Economic Impact
The workforce crisis is already costing destinations billions in foregone revenue.
When hotels cannot fill housekeeping, front desk, or food and beverage roles, they close floors, reduce restaurant hours, or cap bookings below capacity. Housekeeping is consistently identified as the hardest role to fill, with nearly 38 per cent of hotels reporting shortages for this position. A 200-room hotel that can only service 150 rooms due to housekeeping shortages loses not only room revenue but also ancillary spending on dining, spa services, and activities.
The compounding effect is severe. Reduced service quality leads to negative reviews, which suppress future bookings. Overworked staff deliver poorer guest experiences, creating a reputational drag on the destination itself. Minneapolis businesses lost up to $81 million in January 2026 due to labour disruptions and declining travel activity linked to immigration enforcement—a stark example of how workforce instability translates directly into economic loss.
For destinations competing on service excellence—Switzerland, Japan, Singapore—the stakes are even higher. If labour shortages force quality declines, the brand differentiation that justifies premium pricing erodes, and market share shifts to competitors who solve the staffing equation.
Solutions That Work: Policy and Practice from Leading Destinations
The good news: some destinations are addressing the crisis with innovative, replicable strategies. The bad news: most are not.
Singapore: A Whole-of-Government Workforce Strategy
Singapore exemplifies comprehensive, multi-year workforce planning. The city-state has implemented a suite of initiatives aimed at improving workforce development and employee engagement, including government-backed training programmes, technology adoption subsidies, and career progression frameworks.
The SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit provides eligible companies with $10,000 in credits to offset workforce transformation initiatives and training courses aligned to Industry Skills Frameworks. This is not generic skills development; it is sector-specific, competency-based training designed to create clear career pathways.
Singapore’s Workforce Singapore agency worked with the Singapore Tourism Board on a hotel sector Job Transformation Map to determine new skills, key trends, and future direction in human resources. The result is a shared understanding across government, industry, and educators of what skills are needed, how to develop them, and how to retain talent once trained.
Singapore also embraces immigration pragmatically. Markets like Singapore report a significant surge in hospitality job postings—up 14.6 per cent from April 2024 to April 2025—signalling confidence in the restaurant and tourism recovery and an active effort to staff up to meet demand. This is matched by streamlined work visa processes for hospitality roles, recognising that domestic supply alone cannot meet demand.
Switzerland: The Apprenticeship Model
Switzerland’s vocational education system is the gold standard for hospitality workforce development. Institutions like EHL Hospitality Business School—ranked the world’s best hotel management school by QS World University Rankings for the seventh consecutive year in 2025—integrate academic rigour with hands-on operational training.
Switzerland’s model combines classroom learning with paid apprenticeships in working hotels and restaurants. Students graduate with both theoretical knowledge and practical competency, making them immediately valuable to employers. Critically, the system also elevates the perception of hospitality careers, positioning them as skilled professions rather than temporary jobs.
The Swiss government supports this through federal certification frameworks and industry partnerships. EHL Hotel School Passugg is accredited through the Swiss federal government framework for HF programmes and is a member of HotellerieSuisse, which has over 3,000 industry members. This alignment ensures training meets actual industry needs and that graduates are recognised and sought after globally.
France: Immigration Reform Targeting Hospitality
Facing acute shortages, France has modernised its immigration system to specifically address hospitality workforce needs. The 2025 update to the Shortage Occupation List has streamlined work permits for non-EU talent in high-demand hospitality roles, making it easier than ever to sponsor international hires.
France now offers multiple pathways: the Salarié en mission pathway for qualified employees, the Travailleur temporaire pathway for seasonal and temporary roles, and simplified processing for shortage-listed occupations like restaurant cooks and hotel receptionists. Processing times have been reduced to as little as 2–4 weeks under the new rules—crucial for seasonal rushes.
This is immigration policy as economic development strategy. France recognised that domestic supply was insufficient, that tourism is a strategic industry, and that administrative barriers were self-defeating. The reforms are working: they provide a legal, streamlined channel for employers to access global talent whilst maintaining labour standards.
Saudi Arabia: Investment in Training at Scale
Saudi Arabia’s tourism transformation under Vision 2030 includes massive investment in workforce development. His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism for Saudi Arabia, noted that the kingdom has provided over 649,000 training opportunities, with a workforce that is nearly 50 per cent women.
This is not incremental adjustment; it is industrial-scale workforce creation. Saudi Arabia is building tourism from near-zero to a target of 150 million annual visitors by 2030. The workforce does not exist yet, so the government is creating it—through vocational colleges, partnerships with international hospitality schools, and mandatory training requirements for tourism operators.
The lesson for other destinations: workforce development requires investment that scales with ambition. You cannot achieve transformational growth in visitor numbers without commensurate investment in human capital.
Technology: Bridge, Not Replacement
Automation and artificial intelligence are often positioned as solutions to the workforce crisis. They are not. They are tools that can reduce pressure on certain roles but cannot replace the human interaction that defines hospitality.
Some employers are turning to AI tools to help plug unfilled job roles and increase productivity. Self-service check-in kiosks, mobile ordering systems, and automated housekeeping robots can reduce labour intensity in specific tasks. But they cannot replicate empathy, problem-solving, or the personalised service that drives guest satisfaction and repeat visitation.
Positions which rely heavily on human interaction, and services that cannot be easily automated, will remain in high demand. Concierge services, fine dining, tour guiding, event coordination—these roles require cultural knowledge, emotional intelligence, and adaptability that technology cannot deliver.
The smarter strategy is using technology to make existing workers more productive and their jobs more sustainable. Dynamic scheduling software reduces burnout from unpredictable shifts. Revenue management systems optimise pricing, increasing profitability and allowing higher wages. Training platforms enable faster onboarding and skill development. Technology should augment workers, not attempt to replace them wholesale.
What Destination Leaders Must Do Now
For tourism ministers, DMO executives, and economic development officials, the workforce crisis demands immediate, coordinated action across multiple fronts.
1. Conduct a Workforce Audit
Quantify the gap. How many workers does your destination’s tourism sector need over the next 3, 5, and 10 years? What roles are hardest to fill? Where are the biggest retention issues? Data-driven planning is foundational.
2. Invest in Vocational Training Infrastructure
Partner with educational institutions to create hospitality-specific training programmes aligned to actual industry needs. Switzerland and Singapore demonstrate that government-industry-education collaboration works.
3. Reform Immigration Policy
If domestic supply is insufficient—and in most developed economies it is—streamline pathways for international recruitment. France’s reformed Shortage Occupation List is a model.
4. Address Housing Affordability
Tourism-dependent regions must solve the housing equation. Consider workforce housing mandates for new developments, employer-assisted housing programmes, or zoning reforms that prioritise long-term rentals over short-term lets.
5. Elevate Career Perception
Campaign to reposition tourism careers as skilled, valuable, and offering genuine progression. Highlight success stories. Partner with schools to introduce hospitality career pathways earlier.
6. Mandate Employer Standards
Require minimum wage floors, predictable scheduling, and benefits for tourism workers. Race-to-the-bottom labour practices are self-defeating. Sustainable tourism requires sustainable employment.
7. Create Regional Coordination Mechanisms
Workforce challenges cross municipal boundaries. Establish regional tourism workforce councils to coordinate training, share resources, and avoid competing for the same limited pool.
The Competitive Advantage of Solving This First
Destinations that address the workforce crisis decisively will gain disproportionate competitive advantage.
If you can reliably staff hotels, restaurants, and attractions whilst competitors cannot, you capture market share by default. Quality of service becomes a differentiator. Your ability to scale up capacity to meet demand surges—whether from new air routes, major events, or marketing success—depends entirely on workforce availability.
Conversely, destinations that ignore the crisis will find their growth constrained not by demand but by supply. Marketing budgets become wasted spend if visitors arrive to closed restaurants and reduced hotel capacity. Air route subsidies fail if the destination cannot deliver a quality experience once visitors land.
The workforce crisis is the choke point. Everything else—air access, product development, marketing—flows through it.
Conclusion: Act Now or Fall Behind
By 2035, one in three net new jobs added globally will be within the travel and tourism sector. This is an extraordinary opportunity: tourism as an engine for employment, economic development, and social mobility.
But only for destinations that solve the workforce equation.
The crisis is solvable. Singapore, Switzerland, France, and Saudi Arabia are proving it through different pathways suited to their contexts. What they share is recognition that workforce development is not a cost but an investment, and that half-measures will not suffice.
For tourism boards and governments still treating this as a peripheral HR issue, the window for action is closing. Competitors are already moving. The destinations that will dominate tourism over the next decade are the ones building their workforce infrastructure today.
The question for every destination leader is simple: are you solving this first, or are you waiting until it’s too late?
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The 43 million worker shortfall figure is striking and the regional breakdown approach makes a lot of sense because the crisis looks very different in Southeast Asia versus Europe versus the Gulf. The Singapore and Switzerland case studies are particulary instructive because they show two very different paths to solving the same fundamentl problem. The point about marketing and air routes being useless without adequate staffing is something destination leaders really need to internalize. Excellent and well-researched piece on what is going to be a defining issue for the industry this decade!