The hospitality industry has a talent shortage. Hotels, restaurants and resorts are searching for skilled people, experienced chefs and capable managers.
Yet, while employers complain about the difficulty of finding the right people, are we doing enough to attract, develop and retain the next generation of hospitality professionals?
In the latest episode of Hospitality Insight with The SilverFox, Stephen Hickmore tackles the complicated relationship between internships, workplace training, payment and the industry’s growing skills gap.
Internships are an essential part of hospitality education. Students need practical experience, exposure to real working environments and the opportunity to turn classroom knowledge into professional competence. Employers, in turn, need opportunities to assess potential employees before making permanent appointments. Done properly, it should be a mutually beneficial relationship.
But here is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable.
At what point does an internship stop being education and start becoming unpaid employment?
There is a legitimate argument for structured, supervised internships in which students are still learning, making mistakes and requiring considerable guidance. However, what happens when that student becomes competent, performs the job reliably and contributes meaningfully to the operation? If a hotel or restaurant is benefiting from that person’s productive work, is it fair to continue expecting them to work for nothing simply because the word intern appears on their agreement?
Hospitality cannot have it both ways. We cannot complain about a shortage of talent while creating barriers that make entering the industry financially difficult for young people. Nor should businesses confuse a genuine training programme with a convenient source of free labour.
The answer is not necessarily to abolish internships. It is to make them purposeful, properly supervised, time-bound and fair. Employers should distinguish between learning opportunities and productive work, with clear expectations about remuneration, progression and the point at which an intern should be offered paid employment.
For hospitality educators and industry leaders, this is about more than money. It is about respect, responsibility and the long-term sustainability of the profession.
If we want young people to choose hospitality as a career, we must offer them more than promises of future opportunity. We must demonstrate that their skills, time and contribution have value today.
Perhaps the real question is not why hospitality has a talent shortage, but whether some of our own practices are helping to create it.
