Tourism is growing again, but without people there is no recovery
Global tourism has entered a new phase of strong recovery, but behind the optimistic figures an increasingly visible problem is threatening to slow the sector’s growth: a chronic shortage of workers. According to UN Tourism data, international tourism continued to grow during 2025, and in the first nine months an increase of five percent in international arrivals was recorded compared with the same period in 2024. Europe remained the world’s strongest tourism market, while Eurostat estimated for the entire European Union that 2025 brought a record 3.08 billion overnight stays in tourist accommodation establishments. But behind such results lies an increasingly difficult question: who will work in hotels, restaurants, campsites, airports, agencies, and transport if interest in these occupations is weakening and migration policies are becoming more restrictive?
The tourism and hospitality industry traditionally relies on a large number of workers in jobs that are physically demanding, seasonal, often lower-paid, and exposed to major fluctuations in demand. The pandemic only accelerated this problem. A large number of employees left the sector during the lockdowns and later did not return, and since then employers have been trying to fill the gaps with higher wages, more flexible schedules, and additional benefits. Still, according to the assessment of European and American professional organizations, that effort is not yet sufficient. In many destinations, demand for travel has returned faster than the workforce.
European record results and a structural labour shortage
European tourism is entering 2026 with very strong demand, but also with serious constraints in the labour market. Eurostat states that 2025 was a record year for the number of overnight stays in the EU, seven percent above the pre-pandemic year 2019. At the same time, the European hotel and hospitality industry warns that growing demand is not being matched by a sufficient inflow of workers. HOTREC, the European association representing the hotel, restaurant, bar, and café sector, announced in January 2026 that European hospitality is still on average short by about ten percent of the workforce it needs. This is a sector which, according to the same source, employs around 10 million people in approximately two million businesses, the vast majority of which are small and micro-employers.
This means that the problem is not limited to a few tourist centres, but is taking on the characteristics of a structural weakness of the European economy. At the height of the season, the consequences are most visible: some establishments reduce capacity, shorten opening hours, limit their offer, or postpone opening certain facilities because there are not enough chefs, waiters, housekeepers, receptionists, lifeguards, and support staff. At the same time, the gap is widening between regions that strongly depend on seasonal tourism and urban areas where workers more often choose more stable occupations with fewer seasonal risks.
In recent months, the European Commission has been speaking more openly about the connection between demographic pressure and labour shortages. In its analyses, it states that population ageing and increasingly pronounced labour shortages have increased the importance of immigration from outside the EU for meeting labour market needs. In other words, Europe simultaneously wants to maintain a strong tourism sector and restrict some of the channels through which that sector obtains workers. It is precisely in this gap that one of the key political and economic problems of the coming years lies.
Why tourism finds it harder to attract people
The shortage of workers is not only a consequence of a lack of candidates, but also of a change in the perception of the jobs themselves. The International Labour Organization warns that the high share of seasonal and temporary contracts in tourism limits career development and access to education, which further worsens labour and skills shortages. When a worker sees neither long-term security, nor a clear opportunity for advancement, nor a decent relationship between effort and pay, then it is logical that he or she will seek an alternative in other service or logistics activities.
Employers therefore no longer compete only with one another, but also with a whole range of other sectors that offer more predictable schedules, less weekend and holiday work, and less emotional and physical exhaustion. The problem is especially pronounced in destinations with high housing costs. In many European tourist centres, a seasonal worker today can hardly cover rent, transport, and basic living costs without additional help from the employer. Because of this, it is increasingly often not only pay that is cited as an obstacle to employment, but also the issue of accommodation, transport, working hours, and the overall quality of life during the season.
WTTC, the World Travel & Tourism Council, estimates that in 2024 the sector supported a record 357 million jobs worldwide, and that in 2025 that number should grow to 371 million. But the same source warns that by 2035 demand for workers could exceed supply by more than 43 million people, while in hospitality alone the shortage could reach 8.6 million workers. This shows that the problem is not a temporary post-pandemic disruption, but a long-term challenge that is already affecting business decisions, investment, and service quality.
United States: tourism is seeking workers, while policy is tightening entry
In the United States, that conflict is even more visible. The American Hotel & Lodging Association, AHLA, announced in February 2025 that 65 percent of surveyed hotels still report staff shortages, even though many employers have increased wages and expanded benefits. In other words, even after years of adaptation to the market, the hotel industry in the U.S. has not returned to the level of staffing stability it had before the pandemic.
At the same time, the U.S. Travel Association warns that international traffic to the United States weakened during 2025. In its October 2025 analysis, the organization states that international arrivals to the United States are moving toward a level of only 85 percent of the 2019 results, with an estimated decline in international spending to about 173 billion dollars, which is 3.2 percent less than a year earlier. In April 2025, the same organization, citing preliminary data from the Department of Commerce and border services, also warned of a decline in international visits of approximately 14 percent in March 2025 compared with the same month of the previous year.
For the tourism industry, this is a double blow. On the one hand, there is a lack of workers, and on the other hand, part of the demand is weakening, the part that brings higher spending and longer stays. Foreign guests carry particular weight for the American market because on average they spend more than domestic travellers. When there are fewer such guests, pressure grows on the business results of hotels, restaurants, attractions, and local suppliers, while the ability of employers to further increase wages becomes even more limited.
Fear is spreading even among workers who have permits
The most sensitive part of the crisis is linked to migration. The American tourism and hospitality sector has for decades relied on immigrant labour, whether through permanent immigration, temporary visas, or other forms of labour mobility. But during 2025 and at the beginning of 2026, there have been increasing warnings that a more restrictive immigration policy and intensified enforcement actions are not affecting only irregular migrants, but are creating a broader sense of insecurity even among people who work legally.
The Washington Post reported in March 2026 that during 2025 there was a noticeable decline in legal immigration to the U.S. from numerous countries, including a decline in part of temporary and permanent visas. At the same time, the union UNITE HERE, which represents workers in hotels, food services, and tourism in the U.S. and Canada, published a report in February 2026 stating that immigration measures and rhetoric contributed to a decline in employment in American hospitality and tourism and intensified fear among workers. The report also cites cases in which, according to claims by union representatives, even workers with proper work authorization were exposed to pressure, detentions, or an atmosphere of insecurity that discourages them from coming to work.
Such an effect goes beyond the framework of individual legal statuses. When an impression is created in the sector that every contact with the authorities is a potential risk, employers lose not only the number of people on the schedule, but also the stability of the entire system. Absenteeism rises, willingness to change employers or move to another state falls, and some candidates give up on applying in advance. Employers then find it harder to plan the season, and existing employees work under greater strain, which further increases exhaustion and turnover.
Europe and the U.S. have different policies, but a similar problem
Although the political contexts are different, Europe and the U.S. face the same economic fact: tourism is a labour-intensive activity and functions with difficulty without a sufficient number of people in operational jobs. Automation can facilitate reservations, check-in, or part of the administration, but it cannot replace a chef in the kitchen, a housekeeper on the floor, a waiter in a full restaurant, a transfer driver, or a worker who maintains a complex at the peak of the season. The more successful and visited a destination is, the more labour it needs, and that labour must be available precisely when demand is highest.
Because of this, some European and American business associations are increasingly openly advocating legal and predictable migration channels, along with strengthening the domestic labour base through better working conditions, education, and retraining. European documents increasingly mention the need to recognize qualifications obtained outside the EU, easier worker mobility, and the alignment of migration policies with the real needs of the market. In the U.S., the debate is often conducted through the issue of quotas and procedures for temporary labour programs, but also through the broader political dispute over whether migration policy should primarily be viewed as a security issue or an economic issue.
What this means for travellers and local economies
For travellers themselves, the consequences of labour shortages may not always be immediately visible in statistics, but they are visible in everyday experience. Longer waits for hotel check-in, shortened restaurant opening hours, slower room maintenance, fewer facilities open, declining service standards, and greater pressure on prices are only some of the possible consequences. When the same number or a greater number of guests is served by a smaller number of employees, service quality almost inevitably comes under pressure.
For local economies, the risk is even greater. Tourism is not an isolated sector, but a chain that includes the supply of food and beverages, cleaning, transport, cultural content, trade, municipal services, and a range of small entrepreneurs. If a hotel cannot open at full capacity or a restaurant cannot keep its kitchen open all seven days, then not only that establishment loses revenue, but also suppliers, seasonal transport providers, local producers, and a range of other connected activities. In destinations that strongly depend on the tourist season, this becomes a question of broader economic resilience.
That is why the current crisis can no longer be reduced merely to the claim that “there are not enough workers.” According to available data, it is a combination of several interconnected processes: the strong return of tourism demand, population ageing, the reduced attractiveness of some tourism occupations, the high cost of living in destinations, and the increasingly tense relationship between the economic need for workers and the political desire for stricter migration control. As long as these problems are addressed only partially, tourism will formally grow, but it will find it increasingly difficult to maintain the level of service on which that growth rests.
Sources:- UN Tourism – data on trends in international tourist arrivals during 2025 (link)- UN Tourism – news on the growth of international tourist arrivals in the first nine months of 2025 (link)- Eurostat – estimate that the EU reached a record 3.08 billion overnight stays in tourist accommodation in 2025 (link)- Eurostat – a broader statistical overview of overnight stays in tourist accommodation establishments in the EU (link)- HOTREC – document on labour and skills shortages in European hospitality, published in January 2026 (link)- HOTREC – position paper “Skills and Labour Shortages in Hospitality – A Roadmap for Action” (link)- European Commission – analysis on migration, mobility, and the EU labour market (link)- ILOSTAT / International Labour Organization – analysis of tourism jobs after the pandemic, labour and skills shortages (link)- WTTC – projection of employment growth in tourism and warning of a global labour shortage by 2035 (link)- AHLA – survey according to which 65 percent of hotels in the U.S. still report staff shortages (link)- U.S. Travel Association – analysis of the decline in international travel to the U.S. in spring 2025 (link)- U.S. Travel Association – forecast for 2025 with a decline in international arrivals and spending in the U.S. (link)- U.S. Travel Association – overview of the importance of international guests for the American economy (link)- Washington Post – report on the decline in legal immigration to the U.S. during 2025 (link)- UNITE HERE – press release and report on the impact of American immigration policy on tourism and hospitality (link)- UNITE HERE – full report “Inhospitable” on pressure on workers and declines in the sector (link)
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