ReWork Consulting

Platf9rm
Hove
East Sussex

sarah@reworkconsulting.co.uk

Image Alt

Visitor Attraction Management: Addressing Recruitment Issues And Attracting Talent

Visitor Attractions Recruitment Drive Man Talking To Students About Student Jobs

Visitor Attraction Management: Addressing Recruitment Issues And Attracting Talent


It’s no secret that the UK visitor attractions industry has struggled to recover post-pandemic. In March 2023, the Guardian reported that visitors to the UK’s leading attractions were still down 25% compared to pre-covid numbers.

Arguably though, a reduction in footfall may be at least allowing attractions to cope with the difficulty in recruiting staff. Research in April 2023 found that 45% of visitor attractions in Scotland were struggling to fill vacancies from front-house staff to office-based positions. Some were even concerned regarding their ability to open for the summer season due to staff shortages.

The truth is that if the sector is going to recover, we need great people working in visitor attractions across all roles. From admissions, visitor experience, retail, food and beverage, to marketing, technology and management. The challenges of our sector when it comes to recruitment though cannot be underestimated. Even post-Brexit and post-pandemic, attracting seasonal workers and competing with the wider leisure and tourism sector made attracting talent in visitor attractions difficult.

In this guide to addressing recruitment issues and attracting talent in 2024, we’ll look first at the challenges and how we might overcome them. Then, we’ll explore some creative ways we can rework recruitment and enhance the appeal of the visitor attractions sector Gen Z and other talented professionals.

Puzzle pieces with figure on signifying recruitment for business


Regional Recruitment Challenges Of Visitor Attractions

Recruiting locally is usually preferential, especially when hiring seasonal workers. One of the greatest challenges for many visitor attractions is they are not always easy to get to. Roles in museums, galleries and experiences in popular tourist cities will often receive more applications because transport links mean they’re accessible. However, heritage sites and theme parks that tend to sprawl into the countryside may give the benefit of impressive ground but are somewhat isolated. These attractions can often only be accessed by car and seasonal or junior workers who are often on lower wages and are younger, may not have access to a car.

Some attractions in more isolated locations offer coach transport for visitors from local stations and other more central locations. However, these are often timed to coincide with visitor arrivals and not necessarily at times employees may be able to use these shuttle buses. If visitor attractions can provide shuttle buses for employees specifically to work around their shifts, this could help attract workers from local towns and connected areas.

Of course, not all roles need to be onsite. Working from home and hybrid working models are still very popular, particularly amongst generations Y and Z. Such flexible working may also help to attract talent back into the industry who find commuting a major barrier to getting back to work, particularly parents of young children as well as neurodiverse or disabled professionals. Some roles don’t require full-time onsite attendance and moving these roles offsite may open up space and reduce overheads in addition to attracting talent into the sector.


Recruiting Seasonal Workers Into UK Visitor Attractions

The end of freedom of movement has had a huge impact on recruitment in the attractions, leisure, hospitality and tourism industries. With fewer seasonal workers coming from overseas to experience working abroad, we do need to look at attracting talent closer to home. This can be particularly difficult when sourcing seasonal workers, as a large proportion of working people prefer and require the stability of long-term employment in their home country.

The most obvious solution to this is to employ students whose study breaks tend to coincide with peak busy periods in our sector. Most students will require some training, depending on the position, but it’s well worth investing in students. Those who enjoy a positive seasonal work experience may return to grow their career in our sector, just as I did. I worked at Brean Leisure Park in Somerset during summer breaks at university, then at Australian Maritime Museum whilst I was travelling. These experiences were not only enjoyable at the time but they also helped me to realise I wanted to build a career in this industry. Hence, visitor attractions should see seasonal workers as an opportunity not only to fill temporary roles but also to showcase the career opportunities and benefits of working in the leisure, hospitality and tourism industries.

Aside from students, others who may be attracted to seasonal work might be those who usually work in education and therefore may be available outside of term time. Also those with careers in the arts where work may be less consistent. Additionally, it may not only be younger people who will be considering seasonal work in 2024 and beyond.

Since the pandemic, the UK has struggled with labour shortages across multiple sectors. This has largely been attributed to the departure of the older workforce. Some members of the older workforce claim to have found themselves reprioritising their home life during the various lockdowns, discovering that it was financially viable to not return to full-time employment and instead opted for early retirement. However, whilst many are rejecting the idea of returning to the workforce full-time, seasonal work that offers flexibility may be an option they’d consider. Particularly as working at visitor attractions is often fun, stimulating and, in some cases, not the kind of high-pressure environment where the work tends to follow employees home. 


Recruiting School Leavers In Attractions, Leisure And Tourism

We need to ensure we’re engaging the local community to attract school leavers. This means outreach to local schools, potentially taking on work experience candidates and attending careers fairs and local events where we can promote career opportunities.

In 2023, Adventure Island in Southend hosted a school leavers event to recruit for their summer season. With a focus on the fun and sociable aspect of the employment, but also a commitment to helping students achieve their goals, the adventure park has earned a reputation as a great place for young people to work.

Whilst some career paths in our industry require further education, there are also many potential career opportunities for school leavers. Particularly, if we pitch working within a visitor attraction as a career, not just a job. However, to do this we must have proper schemes in place and progression paths established.

Whilst seasonal workers will fill temporary roles, those staff you wish to retain will need to have a clear idea of what their future in your organisation could look like. Many businesses do this for graduate schemes and positions at higher-level roles. However, if you want to nurture and grow talent through the business then you’ll need to have a progression plan for entry-level positions too.

I have been involved with the not-for-profit scheme Give An Hour. The programme encourages various working professionals to give just an hour of their time to talk through their career with a young person, opening them up to possibilities in a range of different sectors. Being part of this gave me a great sense of fulfilment but, more importantly, if more people of working age took this approach to give something back we’d open up so many more people into the sectors we have found successful and fulfilling careers in. Especially those that are less traditional or commonly explored as options.


Attracting Talent To Visitor Attraction Roles

Attracting talent to visitor attractions is certainly a challenge, as it has been for many other closely associated industries including hospitality, leisure and tourism. Still struggling to recover after the impact of Covid 19, the attractions industry may feel like a fragile place to build a career, particularly for those who worked in the sector and lost their employment due to the pandemic. Winning back this lost talent should certainly be a priority and to do so the visitor attractions sector must present itself as an energetic and innovative career path, but also a stable and professional one.

Here are some things that visitor attractions can do to increase interest in their roles and career opportunities:

Ditch ambiguous career progression claims

Too many job descriptions cite career progression as a benefit but they fail to map out what that progression may look like. Job descriptions should be able to back up claims of ‘good career development’ by giving candidates an idea of potential future roles and/or responsibilities they may be exposed to.


Reconsider relevant industry experience

Many roles now ask for industry experience or cite industry experience as highly desirable, as standard. When trying to attract new talent into the sector, doing this puts up a huge barrier. It’s almost impossible to grow an industry if you’re only hiring from within it. Therefore, it’s important to consider whether visitor attraction experience is really necessary, especially for junior and entry-level positions.

Additionally, we need to ensure job specifications are specific to the role being advertised. Sometimes, job descriptions feel generic  – a cut, copy, paste effort. The requirements to apply and/or the list of responsibilities is so vast and overwhelming that it’s hard to understand what’s really needed. By doing this, employers may hope to appeal to a wider audience, but serious job applicants read job descriptions and think carefully about whether the role will suit them and/or if they will suit the role. Ambiguous and over complex job adverts are more likely to put off potentially good candidates and instead risk appealing to those who haven’t yet properly thought through their career goals and ambitions.


Repackage seasonal work

Seasonal work in the UK is often thought of in terms of low pay and low skill. Yet, in other places, this seasonal work for young people is presented as a valuable life experience and CV-boosting opportunity.

Take Camp America – they hire students and young people in a variety of roles where they will learn essential skills, expand their horizons and enjoy the experience – It’s more than a job, as you can see from this Camp America Recruitment video. Of course, if heritage sites, zoos, museums, theme parks and other visitor attractions in the UK were to take this approach to attract talent for seasonal work, then they would have to ensure they can deliver on these commitments.


Transferable skills


The skills candidates can learn working in the leisure, tourism and attractions sectors can be some of the broadest. The sector breeds a range of transferable skills for those candidates who haven’t yet picked a specific career path. Potential employees can work in a theme park/restaurant/heritage site and gain skills in anything from customer service, business management, leadership, stock management, HR, health and safety, marketing/PR, to food safety. How many sectors can claim that? 

What about millennials (27-40 year olds) looking for a career change? I’m reading Leaders Eat Last, by Simon Sinek, who makes some interesting observations between generations and offers actionable steps for leaders, millennials, and their parents, to combat and overcome some of the challenges this generation faces. We can’t just assume how our careers were navigated will be the same for the generations coming up behind us. Therefore, an industry like ours can be a wonderful training ground for future generations of the workforce, no matter where they end up. We need to make sure we’re promoting this.


Addressing Recruitment Challenges In Visitor Attractions

There is much to be done to address recruitment challenges in visitor attractions and we must begin to think not only about how we overcome current staff shortages but also how we want Generation Z to view the visitor attractions industry as a career option.

Many heritage sites, museums, zoos, nature reserves, aquariums, galleries and other visitor attractions are creating great career opportunities but there’s so much more we can learn. Particularly from other industries that have had success recruiting despite similar challenges.

Regardless of some unfair press, Gen Z have actually been found to be loyal and hard-working employees. Furthermore, they are invested in careers that promote a positive force in the world. This makes the visitor attractions sector potentially highly appealing. We just need to focus on how to reach out and communicate this. 

ReWork specialise in partnerships between visitor attractions and technology/ticketing software providers. Yet, our experience allows us to support a wide range of business requirements, including recruitment advice. As part of our ongoing consultancy support for Lakeland Arts, we recently advised on their strategy for recruiting for an IT/systems support role, helping them define what was needed and relay this in the job specification.

The recommendations ReWork made ensured the job description focused on the role’s key responsibilities, and how that would fit into the wider organisation. In removing any unnecessary sector-specific experience demands and focusing more on desired transferable skills, we widened the net and provided an opportunity to attract more applicants with the right ambitions, mindset and characteristics to fulfil the brief.

Ultimately, visitor attractions cannot expect to improve recruitment without scrutinising strategy, particularly the way we communicate job and career opportunities in our sector. When we start doing this, we open ourselves up to new approaches and, hopefully, attract more diverse talent into our sector.

Receive our Free Guide to Sourcing a New Ticketing System, as well as regular industry insight and advice

Add Comment