The employment of young people in Italy on the weekend has aroused controversy, and the Minister of Tourism has a monetary solution.
“Young people who work on weekends will earn more than on normal days.” The Minister of Tourism, Daniela Santanche, announced this in the presentation to the Chamber of Deputies of the bill on accessible tourism. There has been much debate recently on the lack of workers in tourism.
The Minister acknowledged that “there is a great possibility of employment in tourism, but working on Saturdays or Sundays is tiring for young people; they are more attentive to the quality of life and at leisure.”
For this reason, Santanche assured: “We are thinking, and I think we will convince them in the next 15 days by approving incentives so that those who work on holidays earn much more than on weekdays.
“This is a sector in which there are truly many employment opportunities in which to imagine the famous social elevator.”
Santanche threw in a dig at those who preceded her in government stating: “We have always believed in tourism as the ‘oil of the nation.’ Everyone agrees, but then little has been done. Finally, today we have a ministry with a portfolio, and this is a change of pace.
“When there is a vision and [we] believe that this should be the first company of a nation, this is done, and I am confident that there is a great employment opportunity in tourism.”
The Minister concluded by hoping that someone will vote unanimously on the bill.
“If this proposal did not have the vote of the entire assembly, it would be very worrying.”
“Tourism must be accessible to all. A democratic country must give people with disabilities the freedom to access not only accommodation facilities but also transport,” she stated.
Work, Escape from Tourism
On closer inspection, this is a paradoxical situation. For the current year, in the face of a demand for tourism that many analysts believe is growing “extraordinarily,” the offer of service risks appeared blunt due to a shortage of personnel which, according to estimates, stands at 50,000 units. Add to this another 200,000 workers that could be added to that huge channel of related industries which involves sectors such as catering, airport facilities, and tourist services in general.
A full-blown shortage happened in the 2022 summer season.
The difference today is that there is an awareness of this deficit before the start of the peak season, and there is much anticipation for what may emerge from the worktable promoted by the Ministry of Tourism where, together with the trade associations, operational responses must be immediately studied and transformed – with the help of the government – into effective measures.
According to Confcommercio, a non-profit firm which offers tourism, accounting, taxing, advertising, ICT, consultation, legal, and credit services, and data from Infocamere, an IT company that provides data management services for the Italian Chambers of Commerce, as well as surveys by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, Italy is the European country with the largest number of companies in tourism: 383,000 (at the end of 2021) with over 1.6 million employed. This means a specific weight of 18% on the total of Italian companies and an incidence of 3.7% on the real economy of the country system.
According to Eurostat, Germany, Italy, and Spain boast almost half (48%) of all tourism work units surveyed in Europe with a total of 2.6 million employees. But it is always Italy that, in the post-COVID period, appears to be the place with the greatest suffering of specialized or qualified personnel.
This is a complex and unpredictable situation from an organizational point of view which, according to analysts, risks causing damage in terms of the average loss of turnover in the summer period equal to -5.3%.
As for remedies, most of the trade associations are demanding measures worthy of an emergency: national collective agreements, personnel recruitment through innovative forms of collaboration with private systems such as Adecco, the world’s second largest human resources and staffing provider, as well as matching alliances with effective data exchange for targeted research of specialized personnel.
Tax exemption measures and new types of seasonal contracts are also needed to allow all companies in the supply chain to invest in human resources.
For the future of the tourism, hotels, and restaurants, there are two levels to address. The first is linked to the obsolete definition of the front office where staff are in contact with the customer. The second is the digital one, where an eruption of Artificial Intelligence is looming to provide innovative solutions on customer interaction.
