Tourism is selling rest to record numbers of travellers while the people delivering those experiences face staff shortages, longer workloads and growing burnout. For hotels, restaurants and travel businesses, the workforce crisis is becoming an operational issue, not simply an HR concern.
The people behind the holiday
The tourism industry has become very good at measuring demand. Arrivals, occupancy, room nights, passenger numbers and visitor spending all tell operators how many people want to travel.There is a less visible number that may prove just as important: how much pressure the workforce can absorb. The latest World Economic Forum Travel & Tourism Development Index 2026 puts the scale of the problem into perspective. Demand for workers in Travel & Tourism is projected to exceed supply by more than 43 million people by 2035, a potential shortfall of 16%. The WEF says workforce constraints are already affecting businesses’ ability to meet demand and maintain service quality.
That changes the industry’s recruitment problem. Finding people for the next busy season is one challenge. Keeping experienced employees from leaving because the workload has become unsustainable is another.
When understaffing feeds burnout
The cycle is straightforward. Vacancies increase the workload on existing staff. Heavy workloads contribute to fatigue and burnout. Employees leave, making the original shortage worse.
A May 2026 poll of around 100 hospitality professionals by OysterLink found that 34% cited understaffing as the leading reason workers leave hospitality, followed by low pay at 32%. The survey is small and was conducted through the company’s website and social media channels, so it is better read as an industry snapshot than a representative global measure. But its findings capture a problem operators are encountering across markets. The wider labour picture supports that concern.
The International Labour Organization reported in 2025 that tourism continues to face shortages of labour and skills, with seasonality, informal employment and wages below economy-wide averages affecting the sector’s ability to attract and retain workers. Temporary and seasonal employment can also restrict access to training and career development.
For employers, the consequences extend beyond an empty position on the roster.
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The pressure is showing up in hotel operations
The US provides a useful snapshot of the commercial impact. An American Hotel & Lodging Association survey published in March 2026 found that more than half of participating properties were somewhat or severely understaffed. Labour costs were cited by 65% of hotel owners and operators as a financial pressure, while 42% identified workforce shortages.
The timing matters. US hotels are heading into a year shaped by major travel demand and the FIFA World Cup, with operators needing to prepare for peaks while already managing higher labour and operating costs. New York offers a more specific example. Hotel operators and unions reached an eight-year labour agreement covering around 25,000 workers in May, shortly before the World Cup. The negotiations centred on wages, staffing and workloads, illustrating how workforce questions have moved into the mainstream of hotel operating strategy.
For hotel companies, this is a delicate equation. Higher staffing costs can squeeze margins, but running understaffed can mean overtime, turnover, recruitment expenses and pressure on guest service.
It is not just a post-pandemic problem
The pandemic accelerated the movement of workers out of tourism, but the industry’s labour difficulties pre-date Covid. The OECD has described tourism’s workforce shortages as a structural problem linked to low wages, variable and long working hours, casual employment, limited social protection and skills gaps. Accommodation and food services account for more than half of tourism jobs in countries where comparable data is available, and these subsectors have continued to experience persistent shortages.
The pandemic exposed the vulnerability of that model. Workers who had built careers in hotels, restaurants and tourism moved into other industries. Some never returned. At the same time, tourism businesses have had to compete for labour with sectors offering more predictable hours and clearer career paths. That competition is unlikely to disappear simply because visitor numbers continue to rise.
Migrant workers add another layer
International mobility has become an important part of hospitality’s workforce strategy, particularly in markets where hotels depend heavily on migrant labour. A study published in Tourism and Hospitality Research in June 2026 examined burnout among migrant hotel workers and found that the problem was shaped not only by individual stress but by employment insecurity, financial pressure, cultural expectations, emotional demands and limited organisational support. The research was based on 17 in-depth interviews, so it does not provide a statistical measure of global burnout, but it offers a useful look at the conditions affecting an important part of the international hotel workforce.
The implications are significant for international hotel groups. Recruiting workers across borders can help fill vacancies. It does not, by itself, solve the question of whether those employees have sustainable working conditions once they arrive.
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The seasonal squeeze
Seasonality makes the problem particularly acute in destinations where tourism demand rises sharply for a few months. A hotel cannot postpone housekeeping because it is short of staff. A restaurant cannot close the kitchen halfway through dinner service because the roster is thin. An attraction cannot simply reduce visitor numbers when demand exceeds the available workforce.
The pressure lands on the people already working. New Zealand has been tracking this issue through a series of hospitality and tourism workforce surveys. The government’s latest programme examines burnout, pay, retention, workplace experience and the industry’s ability to attract workers. The data is valuable because it moves the discussion beyond vacancy numbers. A business can technically fill every position and still have a workforce struggling with excessive workloads, poor schedules or low morale. That distinction matters.
A bigger workforce gap is coming
The industry’s projected labour shortage makes retention more important. The WEF’s 43-million-worker forecast is not a prediction of jobs that will simply go unfilled on a particular day. It points to a structural gap between the people tourism will need and the workforce available to provide them. The response is therefore moving beyond recruitment.
Training, career progression, labour mobility and technology all have a role. So do better scheduling, manageable workloads and working conditions that give employees a reason to stay. The ILO is also looking at more structured pathways for tourism workers. In April 2026, it reported on work involving Egypt, Germany and Italy to better match tourism and hospitality skills with labour demand and improve labour mobility pathways.
For operators, workforce planning is becoming inseparable from business planning.
The holiday paradox
There is an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of the travel economy. People take holidays to step away from work. The industry depends on millions of workers being available precisely when everyone else wants time away. The busiest hotel weekends, the strongest restaurant services and the peak travel seasons are often the periods when frontline employees have the least opportunity to switch off.
That makes burnout more than a wellbeing story. It can affect service consistency, recruitment costs, employee turnover and the ability of businesses to take on additional demand. It also raises a question for destinations planning another round of tourism growth: is there enough workforce capacity behind the visitor targets?
Tourism has spent decades refining the measurement of demand. The next phase may require equal attention to the supply side — not just how many rooms, seats or attractions a destination has, but how many people are available to run them, how long they stay in those jobs and whether the workload allows them to keep doing them well.
The question, then, is not simply how many holidays travellers need. It is how much recovery time the people making those holidays possible can afford!
