Chris Barr, general manager of the Banff Aspen Lodge (the Aspen), digested the latest news from his management teams daily stand-up meeting and thumbed through a stack of applications. It was July of
2018, and the managers had reported on the staff vacancies, especially at the Front Desk. The hotel regularly lost staff because of the transient nature of employment in the accommodation industry. Consequently, the Aspen faced the never-ending cycle of recruiting and hiring individuals who would place as much emphasis on excellent customer service as did the management team.
It would be imperative to have the vacancies filled with the right candidates before the ski season began in
Novemberespecially given the tight labour market. The question now before Barr was which candidates
should be interviewed within the following week to fill two vacancies at the Front Desk.
Barr was confident that the Aspen had many good human resource management practices. However, he
also wondered whether a more systematic long-term approach to human resource planning, recruitment,
and selection would be possible in such a transient labour market. Therefore, Barr thought it was time to
also review the Aspens overall approach to human resource management.
STAFFING THE ACCOMMODATION INDUSTRY
The Canadian Environment
The Canadian accommodation industry had grown moderately since 2010, with increases in revenue
ranging from 7.8 per cent in 2010 to 4.2 per cent in 2017.1 In 2017, Canadian hotels reached 65.9 per cent
occupancy, the highest occupancy rates since 1999.2 At the same time as demand was increasing in the
industry, the unemployment rates in Canada had dropped from a high of 8.1 per cent in 2010 to 6.3 per cent
in 2017.3 Canadas overall job vacancy rate (i.e., the number of vacant positions as a percentage of total
labour demand based on three-month moving averages) increased from 2.7 per cent in 2015 (when the
1 Kristelle Audet, Canadas Accommodation Industry: Industrial Outlook Summer 2013, Conference Board of Canada, September 17, 2013, accessed August 26, 2018, www.conferenceboard.ca/e-library/abstract.aspx?did=5776. 2 Courtney Jenkins, The Top 50 Report: The Canadian Hotel Industry Continues to Thrive, Hotelier Magazine, July 9, 2018, accessed October 8, 2018, www.hoteliermagazine.com/the-top-50-report-the-canadian-hotel-industry-continues-to-thrive/. 3 Rate of Unemployment in Canada from 2000 to 2017, Statista, accessed October 8, 2018, www.statista.com/statistics/57 8362/unemployment-rate-canada/.
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average hourly wage was $19.154) to 2.9 per cent in 2017 (when the average hourly wage was $20.10).5
With the unemployment rate declining and the job vacancy rate rising, the labour market became tighter.
Young Canadians who wanted to travel and see Canada, but who could not afford to do so without working
along the way, were often able to find jobs in the accommodation and food-service industries. Yet most
organizations in the industry were unable to fill all the job vacancies through this method.
Key success factors for the accommodation industry included having access to a multi-skilled and flexible
workforce, being part of a franchised chain, and word-of-mouth recommendations.6 It was important to monitor
online travel sites such as TripAdvisor, Kayak, and Trivago, and to move quickly to respond to negative feedback
because customers were likely to read the comments posted by other users. It was even more important to ensure
that staff provided a high level of customer service to minimize complaints in the first place.
The Alberta Environment
Albertas tourism industry benefited most from US visitors. However, in 2015, in addition to Americans,
Alberta had visitors from the United Kingdom (151,600), Germany (117,100), Australia (92,300), China
(85,300), Japan (60,100), the Netherlands (44,500), and other Asian (53,400) and European (53,300)
countries.7 The fact that visitors came from such a variety of countries highlighted the need for a multi-
