By Denis Sheehan, Publisher, H&C News: Public Evidence Session hears how travel chaos is due to government inaction on Brexit.
“This economic sabotage will see many sectors of our economy damaged to a point that will require decades to repair in future.”
Travel and hospitality are inextricably linked, tourists travel to the UK in search of hospitality. But as the summer season now approaches full swing, tourists continue to battle with travel to the UK severely disrupted.
Most hospitality businesses are also severely disrupted, struggling to operate anything close to full capacity due to the ongoing shortage of people available or willing to fill the 176,000 vacancies currently open.
The lack of people in hospitality jobs provides those that are with overloaded work schedules. Employers are frustrated, employees are disillusioned and leaving for sectors less stressful, and customers are both frustrated and disillusioned with what is, or rather is not going on.
The situation is clearly damaging to the economy. Less people in work, increased recruitment and training costs to businesses, and people unable to enjoy the hospitality experiences they desire. An inability to service demand as a consequence of a dysfunctional government.
In a public evidence session to MPs and business leaders yesterday, a panel of trade and industry experts detailed how Brexit is leaving the travel industry in disarray ahead of the sector’s busiest season.
Labour shortages, red-tape and increased costs post-Brexit are leaving the travel sector struggling to meet demand and consumers facing price hikes.
Witnesses reiterated desperate calls from the aviation industry to the government to add the sector to the shortage occupations list in order to plug labour shortages, warning that without government intervention consumer detriment will continue throughout the summer period and beyond.
Experts emphasised how Brexit red-tape has impacted every aspect of the travel industry, citing that airport baggage handling lines rely on up to 30% EU workers. Visa application categories lead to critical roles such as these, which are not classified as ‘highly skilled’, being resourced in the UK due to a shortage of people available to fill the vacancies.
This evidence comes ahead of the travel industry’s first post-covid and post-Brexit summer holiday season, leading to concerns across the industry that traveller confidence will waver when faced with an unreliable service.
We received a number of quote from the people on the panel. Ordinarily these are whittled down to a few, but in this case each and every has been used to underline how desperate the situation is, and will continue to be unless government relax visa regulations.
Simon Calder, journalist and travel expert, in his statement to the panel said: “There is an enormous amount of consumer detriment going on at the moment because of labour shortage and skills shortages. Aviation absolutely desperately needs to be added to the list of industries of which relaxed rules need to apply.
“That doesn’t matter if it’s the EU, or anywhere else, but we need people to deliver the great service we did in 2019 in the aviation industry.”
Luke Petherbridge, Director of Public Affairs ABTA, said: “Clearly the industry did ask for aviation critical roles to be added to the shortage occupation list but the Government wasn’t willing to do that so we would say there are visa routes that could be explored that would help to mitigate the challenges we’re facing.
“For our part of the sector this is about labour mobility generally…it’s actually the ability to move staff in both directions between the UK and EU…we’re seeing very significant operational challenges putting on trips to Europe”
John Geddes, Head of Corporate Affairs Menzies Aviation, said: “We need a relaxation in immigration, for sure. We need the relaxation of immigration and freer movement of staff.
“We as a global business need the ability to move people to make things better, but we just can’t do that. The UK doesn’t then benefit from our ability to do that. We could make things better, but we can’t.”
Nigel Milton, Chief of Staff and Carbon at Heathrow Airport, said: “About 10% of our direct employees today are from the EU…The points application system is still overly complex, visas are still expensive.
“The visa categories don’t allow for some of the critical roles at the airport these roles such as security officers and baggage handling are not viewed as being skilled…they do require extensive training, they are key links in the chain, those sorts of roles…are most under-resourced…. what we’re certainly seeing in the UK is that we do not have enough people available to fill the vacancies that there are.”
Hilary Benn MP, co-convenor of the UK Trade and Business Commission, said: “The travel industry should not be abandoned to deal with, on top of Covid, the costly and chaotic implications of the Government’s half-baked Brexit deal.
“Industry experts have workable ideas to ease the pressures, and it is high time Ministers took note and acted on these rather than sit back and watch the sector continue to face problems throughout the summer and beyond.”
The situation being faced by the UK travel industry, hospitality, and many more of the engines of our economy are not being serviced by government as they stick rigidly to their ridiculous Brexit dogma. This economic sabotage will see many sectors of our economy damaged to a point that will require decades to repair in future.