Hospitality has a recruitment problem that other sectors do not: a large share of the people who used to do these jobs have left and are not coming back. The post-2020 exodus from hotels and restaurants was not a temporary dip in supply — it was a permanent reallocation of workers into retail, logistics and care, sectors that offered predictable shifts and weekends off. Any hiring plan built on the assumption that those people will return when pay improves is a plan that will not staff your season. What follows is what actually works when you hire hospitality staff across Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands: which seasonal contract applies where, why accommodation is now a bigger lever than pay, and the single scheduling practice that drives most of your turnover. Recruit ten weeks before the season, and recruit the returners first Seasonal hospitality runs on two clocks: the Alpine winter season and the coastal summer season. Both have fixed start dates, and both are staffed by a pool that empties in order of who advertised first. Ten weeks before opening is the realistic lead time once you account for contracts, accommodation allocation, hygiene documentation and — for cross-border hires — the paperwork that has to be in place before someone can legally start. Operators who begin four weeks out are not choosing from the same pool; they are choosing from what is left of it. Before you advertise at all, work your returner list. In hospitality this is worth more than in almost any other sector, because a returning commis or receptionist already knows your property, your POS, your menu and your standards, and needs a fraction of the training. Most operators lose this list every year: the season ends, nobody records who performed, and by the time the next season comes around the phone numbers are stale. Recording a simple rehire flag for every seasonal worker before their contract ends is the cheapest recruitment activity available to you. The contract depends on the country, and getting it wrong is expensive Austria — seasonal employment is governed by the applicable collective agreement (Kollektivvertrag Hotel- und Gastgewerbe), which sets minimum pay by category and governs how the season is defined. The KV is not negotiable and is the first document a labour inspector will ask for. Germany — a fixed-term contract with a Sachgrund for genuinely seasonal work, or a Minijob for marginal hours. The Minijob earnings ceiling is indexed to the statutory minimum wage and changes most years, so verify the current figure before building a rota around it. France — the CDD saisonnier, which unlike an ordinary CDD does not attract the 10% prime de précarité. Many operators use the wrong instrument and either overpay or expose themselves at the prud'hommes. Spain — since the 2022 labour reform, the contrato fijo-discontinuo is the standard vehicle for recurring seasonal work and carries an obligation to recall the same workers in following seasons. In a sector where returners are your best hires, treat that duty as a structural advantage. Italy — the contratto stagionale sits under a distinct regime from an ordinary fixed-term contract, with different rules on renewal and on the right of precedence for the following season. Netherlands — the Horeca CAO governs pay scales and allowances, and the WAB rules on on-call work mean an employer must offer fixed hours based on the average worked after twelve months. Accommodation has overtaken pay as the deciding factor In Alpine resorts, island destinations and coastal towns, the constraint on staffing is not wage level — it is that nobody can find or afford somewhere to live for a four-month season. An operator offering a staff room at a realistic deduction will out-recruit a competitor paying meaningfully more without one, every single time. If you provide accommodation, put it in the first line of the job ad, not in the benefits list at the bottom. Be specific about what is actually on offer: single or shared, distance from the property, what the deduction is, and whether meals are included. Vagueness here reads as a bad room, and candidates in this sector have learned to assume the worst. If you cannot provide accommodation, say so plainly and recruit locally rather than nationally. Attracting applications from candidates who cannot physically take the job wastes their time and yours, and it inflates your applicant numbers while leaving your rota empty. Split shifts are your retention problem Here is the uncomfortable position: the split shift is the single biggest driver of turnover in restaurants, and most operators treat it as an unavoidable feature of the business rather than a scheduling choice. A team member working 11:00–14:30 and 18:00–23:00 has a fourteen-hour working day with an unpaid gap in the middle that is too short to go home and too long to be useful. Staff who live in provided accommodation tolerate it. Staff who commute do not, and they leave — usually around week eight, after the season has started and you cannot replace them. You do not have to abolish split shifts to fix this, but you do have to be honest about them in the job ad and you should be paying a premium for them. Operators who moved to straight shifts for part of the team, or who guarantee two consecutive days off per week, consistently report lower mid-season churn. That is worth more than the flexibility you give up, because a mid-season resignation in a resort town is close to unfillable. Hygiene documentation belongs at the top of the funnel Food handling requires documentation that varies by country: in Germany, the Belehrung under §43 of the Infektionsschutzgesetz before starting work; in Austria and Italy, HACCP training obligations; in other markets, local equivalents. None of it is difficult, all of it takes time, and discovering on day one that a new starter cannot legally handle food is a rota problem you created for yourself. Ask about it in the application form. Two fields — hygiene documentation held, and language level — will tell you more about deployability than a page of work history. And where the documentation is missing, most of it can be arranged in days if you start when the candidate applies rather than when they arrive. Flowxtra's approach to structured application forms and multi-channel publishing for hospitality is on our hospitality and tourism page. Be explicit about tips, because candidates assume the worst Tipping practice differs sharply across these markets and is one of the most common sources of mid-season disputes. In Austria and Germany tips are customary and usually distributed among the team, but the distribution rule is set locally and is rarely written down. In France the service compris convention means the tipping culture works differently from what an incoming German or Italian candidate expects. In Italy the coperto is a cover charge, not a tip, and does not reach staff at all in most establishments. In the Netherlands service is included and cash tipping is modest by comparison. A candidate weighing two offers is trying to estimate real monthly income, and tips can be a substantial part of it in front-of-house roles. If your distribution is generous, saying so precisely is a competitive advantage you are currently wasting. If it is not, saying so honestly costs you a few applicants now and saves you a resignation in week six. What loses you people is silence, because in the absence of information candidates assume the worst arrangement they have personally experienced. Write the rule down before the season: who is in the pool, how it is split between kitchen and service, and when it is paid out. This costs nothing and removes one of the few conflicts that reliably escalates in a small team working long hours together. Cross-border hiring needs the paperwork started early Hospitality recruits internationally more than almost any sector, and that adds steps that cannot be compressed at the last minute. EU nationals move freely, but posted workers need A1 certificates, non-EU nationals need work authorisation that runs on government timelines, and payroll registration in the country of work has to exist before the first shift. The practical rule: decide your international sourcing in the same week you decide your season dates. An excellent candidate whose authorisation lands three weeks after opening is not an excellent candidate for that season. Pay a trial shift, and be careful how you frame it Trial shifts are standard practice in this sector and legally sensitive in most of these countries. A brief, genuinely observational trial is generally defensible. A full service where the person works the section unsupervised is work, and it must be paid and covered by insurance. Beyond the legal position, there is a recruiting argument: candidates talk. An operator known locally for unpaid trials develops a reputation in exactly the informal networks that fill hospitality vacancies, and that reputation costs far more than the shift ever saved. Measure the drop-off before you raise the wage Before increasing pay or widening your advertising, measure how many people open your application form and how many complete it. Hospitality applicants are overwhelmingly mobile, frequently applying between shifts, and often do not maintain a CV at all. If your form requires a desktop, an account or a document upload, your completion rate will be dismal — and every euro added to the wage simply buys more applicants for a form that rejects them. Fix that number first. It costs a morning, it works within a week, and unlike a pay rise it is not permanent.