Montauban. Occupation: hotels and restaurants are looking for weapons

Spring hasn’t arrived yet and UMIH is already preparing its summer recruiting campaign. This Monday March 13 in Montauban, the Union of Trades and Hotel Industries of Tarn-et-Garonne organized its second job fair. Seven round tables were organized which brought together professionals, schools and job seekers.

If the atmosphere has been friendly, the stakes have remained high: we need to regain attractiveness in the hotel and restaurant sector. At the departmental level, there are nearly 200 job vacancies each year! For the new UMIH president Pierre-Henri Vidal, the bad reputation of the professions in the sector is to blame: “Despite a better consideration of the human factor, the figure of the exploited and dilapidated employee under work persists!”

“Work everywhere, workers nowhere”

Unfortunately, it should be noted that the years of health crisis have not helped this business sector. A Greta-CFA continuing education consultant estimates “a 30% drop in catering candidates, since the year before Covid”. For Franck Legallic, restaurateur of the Jardin Il Tavolino, “it’s not the money that’s missing, it’s the desire”. Aware that he has a difficult job, but desperate not to find an employee to hire, he continues: “until mentality and education change, the situation will remain the same”.

However, education appears to be moving in the right direction with this new “5th future” program currently being piloted at two of the department’s colleges. Once a month, a field trip is organized by the College to introduce students to the world of work. Monday was in the hotel and restaurant sector: tastings, practical activities, exchanges with professionals… the art of hospitality was the protagonist and aroused the interest of the younger generations.

Furthermore, the transgenerational issue is also linked to the issue of modernizing these professions. In the time of the digital age in which three quarters of customers use the Internet to go to restaurants, the question of training companies to create their own website becomes relevant.

Another avenue, visibility must come from more ambitious policies that promote tourism in the department. As the president of UMIH points out, better visibility will attract more tourists, thus producing more turnover, which will make it possible to increase employee salaries and thus recreate an attraction among young people: “it’s a virtuous circle!” .