Hospitality staff shortages leave rural pub managers working alone

David Chapman, executive director of UK Hospitality Cymru, said having to mothball rooms wasn’t uncommon.

“I know of floors closing, of rooms being closed. We’ve had shortages of people who want to clean rooms. We’ve had shortages of chefs. We’re really adaptive as an industry and people come up with these solutions, but I think that’s levelled off now.”

Mr Chapman said he felt the industry had struggled with “myths” about poor pay and long hours.

“We’ve had to encourage people to join us,” he said.

“Wages have increased by about 50% in the last four years. Obviously, it’s difficult in our industry where you have to serve people on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays when people want to go out.”

Mr Chapman said many hotels and restaurant he knew of were working hard to make their jobs more flexible and he wanted more people to consider hospitality as a “carer” rather than a short-term job.

He said he hoped Wales’ new tourism tax could be an opportunity to invest money back into the industry and he wanted to see revenue going towards bids for big events or concerts to be hosted here.

A spokesperson for the Welsh government said it was working with businesses to help them “access funding for training and to ensure more year-round, permanent, quality jobs”.

“We are investing an additional £78m to provide a sixth successive year of support for retail, leisure and hospitality businesses with their non-domestic rates bills,” they said.