Foreign hotel staff ‘better workers than picky Scots’

Many hotels now prefer to employ East European staff who have a “better work ethic”, bosses revealed.

MSPs on Holyrood’s economy committee are conducting an inquiry into the state of the tourism industry which is worth billions of pounds to Scotland’s economy.

Gavin Ellis, owner of the luxury Knockomie Hotel in Moray, said: “We are not preparing our youth for the real world – you have to get the attitude sorted.

“The expectations are incorrect, the culture is incorrect and somehow we have to change that.

“Recession does funny things to business. We’re certainly employing a lot more local staff than we have done in the past ten years, so I suppose some people might perceive that as a good thing.

“But my question mark is: why is it some businesses have a preference to employ people from Eastern Bloc countries over our own? That’s a tough thing to take in.

“One of the situations we have is, ‘I’ll come to your job but I won’t work Friday, or Saturday.’ That’s just not real in our trade, in our profession. So we have get the expectations in line.”

He said his last Polish worker will leave on 1 December this year, meaning the business will be “100 per cent Scottish”.

He added: “I’m proud of that, but that was not the reality 12 months ago.”

Recent figures showed that the number of Poles settling in Scotland has jumped to 53,000 last year from 3,000 in 2001. Eastern European workers are attracted by higher wages and a better lifestyle.

Norman Springford, chief executive of Apex Hotels, told MSPs: “It’s fair to say that the attitude of the UK youth is perhaps different from what we generally have found in European workers. They sometimes have a better work ethic than their UK counterparts.”

He added that many Polish workers have now returned home where more well paid jobs are now available, but he said they were “particularly good” workers.

Mr Springford said: “Our London hotels employ many from the Baltic states and again they’re very keen to keep them.

“It isn’t quite as simple as just saying, ‘can we put in a modern apprenticeship scheme and get a few employees from the colleges’ – sometimes the quality of the employee is not what we would like.”

The growing number of overseas workers settling in Scotland has almost doubled to 248,000 in recent years. The trend has been welcomed by the Scottish Government which says it brings economic benefits.

Tourism bosses also told the committee they are still aiming to increase revenue by 50 per cent by 2015, despite conceding there has been “almost no growth” in the sector.

Dr Mike Cantlay, chairman of VisitScotland, said the target is a “huge ambition” but stated: “We’re going to give it our very best shot.”

Visit Scotland chief executive Malcolm Roughead, also giving evidence yesterday, had told MSPs at a recent meeting that this target would not be met. Finance Secretary John Swinney has refused to ditch the target while accepting it might not be achieved.