The Algarve’s hoteliers’ association has involved its members in a call for some social engineering by demanding that regional Councils implement, "active housing policies at controlled costs, with a view to motivating and attracting workers from other regions of the country and also immigrants from third countries."
The association considers the local shortage of labour, "in quantity and quality, as one of the biggest structural problems in the Algarve today."
For the association, the current shortages in this area are largely due to the "historical lack of mobility between those residential areas where workers live and their workplaces which often are located outside those urban areas."
According the association, led by Elidérico Viegas, it is necessary to establish partnerships between the public and private sectors, with the aim of promoting tourism through, "continuous training during the low season, aimed at creating stable and lasting teams throughout the year, improving the quality of services, increasing productivity and, therefore, the profitability of companies and regional and national tourist competitiveness.”
"It is important to streamline and make flexible the processes of legalisation of immigrants to work in the economy in general and tourism in the Algarve in particular," concluded Viegas who did not make clear what these partnerships would do to solve the problems of low wages and expensive accommodation for incoming workers.
Whether Councils will rush to build low-rent properties for hotel workers, remains to be seen but with hotels again making money, while moaning about a lack of workers, the problem is in the hotel owners' hands. Wages rise when staff are in short supply, an equation that Viegas fails to expand on and hotel groups are attuned to training their own staff, rather than paying the State to do so.
