As ACTA tackles the industry-wide labour shortage, amongst several issues that are currently bedeviling retail travel in this country, ACTA’s president says the issue comes as no surprise.
“In 2019 the No. 1 issue was labour. In 2023 the No. 1 issue is labour – and it’s more acute than ever,” Wendy Paradis told attendees at the association’s annual golf tournament in Milton, Ont., last week.
Paradis said that with the aging of the baby boom cohort, demographers forecast a changing (and diminishing) labour market to affect all industries in Canada by 2025, adding, “We’ve known (this) for 30 years.”
However, she added, “COVID moved it forward.”
That’s because many baby boomers were inspired to simply retire, or leave the careers early, rather than face the prospects of recovery and rebuild in an industry that all but shut down during the pandemic years.
Any number of owners and managers will say that attracting – and retaining – new staff has become a critical issue for most companies in the industry, especially as travel not only returns to, but exceeds, pre-pandemic levels, making keeping up with demand, and the burden on existing staff, greater than ever.
Coupled with shortages on the supply side – resulting in long waits on the phone, for example, or the constant cancelling of flights – one agency group president recently told Travel Industry Today that it was turning down business, or rather being more selective whom it chooses to service.
Not all business is good business (anymore), Uniglobe’s Dean Dacko said.
“We’re all recognizing it and we all had a painful lesson with respect to what is good business practice, and what is sustainable for the long term,” he added. “I think all of our agency partners and owners are recognizing that there is a difference between the pre- and post COVID rational and business model.”
One silver lining is that more and more agents are finally introducing service fees to reflect their valuable time, with Dacko noting, “Today, we’re defining what a good relationship looks like – and that includes a proper a remunerative relationship.”
As for ACTA, Paradis said the association is looking for ways to attract new entrants to the industry – and that includes frankly recognizing the industry for what it is.
Deserved or not, she said, “We’ve suffered some real reputation damage (in the public’s eyes) during the pandemic” as consumers observed or endured travel’s many challenges.
Of course, in some eyes, the chaos only served to demonstrate the value of having someone to help navigate the process, especially when things were going wrong (cancellations, AWOL travel suppliers, border woes, complicated testing regimes, etc).
Nevertheless, the situation has particularly scared away young people seeing the retail industry as an attractive career option.
“We have a huge issues attracting young people,” said Paradis. “And even if they want to join, their parents say ‘no.’”
To that end, Paradis said attracting labour is top ACTA priority, and will require the industry being “more creative” to do so, not least by recognizing changes in the labour market.
An example is the trend towards many people wanting to work part time, and at home.
And she further noted that the most likely candidate to take up a career as a travel agent is someone aged 40 to 60, not out of school.
“Our eyes,” she said, “have to be wide open.”