With no domestic alternative, Romania hoteliers more and more rely on non-EU workers

"I have to bring to mind that the hospitality industry is making efforts to increase revenues: almost every owner has increased or increases the level of salaries, obviously to the extent its activity allows, but with great efforts and we hope to become more and more attractive for other sectors, including for Romanians who work abroad today and who may return. I have examples of employees from abroad that I brought and who come to work in Romania, and I think this can expand," Ile said.

The leader of the employers' organization of hoteliers, who recently participated in an event to launch a new hotel in Bucharest, mentioned that one of the steps followed by them to cover the labour force deficit is to increase the ceiling of the number of extra-community workers accepted to work in Romania.

"Hotels, like restaurants, too, have the same problem of lack of labour-force. We are working on this in three directions: we are in dialogue with the Immigration Office to increase the ceiling and simplify the procedures for bringing in foreigners; we invest in education, in young people and in tourism high schools, from where we can take labour, and we hope that we will be able to adjust together with the authorities that tax reduction for our sector, whether it will be through the project supported by Mr. Nasui (Minister of Economy, ed. n.) - zero taxes for the hospitality industry, which we support and make a study in this regard, whether we will finally legislate the tip, as a measure of increasing the attractiveness of the potential employees to come and work with us. So, we hope for fiscal facilities to attract labour, stimulate education and simplify the procedures for bringing in foreign workers," the FIHR representative explained.

The government approved, on 11 August, the addition to 50,000 of the quota of non-EU workers who can apply for the right to work this year in Romania, thus doubling the number of 25,000 non-community workers approved at the beginning of the year, Agerpres informs.