Desperate for workers, major hotel chains drop experience requirements

Hotel chains across Europe are reportedly shedding job requirements in order to recruit workers to jobs lost over the last two years of pandemic and economic chaos around the world. 

Major chains such as Accor and Melia "are hiring workers without experience or even a resume," Reuters reported this week, a sign of desperation as job slots go unfilled for months at a time. 

Part of the large surfeit of workers stems from labor loss inflicted by hotel closures during the pandemic; upon reopening, hotel have struggled to fill those positions. 

"Many employees have decided to move to other sectors, so we are starting an industry from scratch and we have to fight for talent," Gabriel Escarrer, the CEO of Spanish hotel manager Melia, told media recently. 

Supplemental industries such as catering are also facing massive shortfalls of workers, the news service reported, adding to the headache of trying to manage an industry long known for multi-tiered amenities. 

Sebastien Bazin, the CEO of the European hotelier Accor, said the crisis was a "wake up call."

"We've been not paying attention to a lot of people and probably underpaying some people for too long as well," he told the news service.