Opening New Zealand’s borders to working holidaymakers is a good step in the right direction but is far from a silver bullet for the hospitality sector.
"With the current low rate of unemployment, any additional access to labour is great and will be welcomed by businesses struggling for staff," says chief executive Julie White.
"But this is not a permanent fix because these visas are for just three to six months, and these people are limited to work in one place.
"They will have to be trained but within six months they’ll be gone and we’ll have to start over and train new ones.
"And that’s assuming we have any to train in the first place. We’ve been so far behind the rest of the world to open up that many of these people have likely gone to other countries for their gap year or OE, most of them probably to Australia.
"The hospitality sector has traditionally been one of the biggest employers of migrant labour yet the Government turned that tap off and told us to employ more Kiwis. Well, that’s what we want to do too, but it’s really hard to find staff in this current high employment environment.
"The sector is suffering from a shortage of labour but this announcement does nothing to address that.
"We need to be offering more skilled visas so hospitality businesses can get the staff they desperately need."
