Seasonality: Is it a problem or challenge facing future tourism employment? Implications for management.

• Author: Grobelna, Aleksandra

INTRODUCTION

The influence of travel and tourism (T&T) on economic and social development is indisputable as it opens up countries to business, trade and capital investment opportunities leading to new jobs and entrepreneurialism for the workforce (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015b). During recent years T&T has been growing at a faster rate than both the general economy and other significant sectors including automotive, financial services or health care (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015b). In 2016 T&T's contribution to world GDP generated US$7.6 trillion (10.2% of global GDP) and supported 292 million jobs (1 in 10 jobs) (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2017b). T&T's expansion is forecast to continue (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015b) and the total T&T GDP is forecast to constitute 11.4% of global GDP by 2027 (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2017b).

Taking a direct perspective, T&T's direct contribution to GDP grew by 3.1% in 2016 (generating US$2.3 trillion), i.e. faster than the global economy as a whole (growth at 2.5%), and is predicted to increase at an average of 3.9% per year over the next ten years. When it comes to T&T's direct contribution to employment, it rose by 1.8% in 2016 (supporting 109 million jobs globally), which means that almost 2 million net additional jobs were generated by T&T directly. However, it is expected that by 2027 T&T will support more than 380 million jobs worldwide, which means 1 in 9 of all jobs in the world, and the sector is expected to contribute circa 23% of total global net new jobs over the next ten years (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2017b).

Based on the above, it can be argued that as one of the world's largest economic sectors, tourism can be perceived as a major source of employment (Lu & Adler, 2009). However, although it creates new jobs, drives exports, and generates prosperity across the whole world (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2017a), the T&T sector also experiences talent gaps and deficiencies as indicated in the World Travel & Tourism Council's report prepared by Oxford Economics (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015a). The overwhelming number of countries analyzed in the report were forecast to have deficit talent trends over the next decade (talent demand grows faster than talent supply).

Similarly, in the case of Poland, although T&T directly supported 305,000 jobs in this country in 2016 (1.9% of total employment) and is forecast to increase to 405,000 jobs (2.5% of total employment) in 2027 (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2017a), Poland is among the countries that are projected to have the most acute deficit T&T talent trends that can touch the college/university level in particular (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015a). Additionally, poor transfer of tourism graduates to the industry is observed, as over half of the graduates (54.7%), as indicated in a report commissioned by the Ministry of Sport and Tourism of the Republic of Poland (ACTIVE Group, 2014), were not working in consistence with their study profile, which makes the issue of tourism graduates employment a critical topic for both business and educators.

It is underlined that T&T has some unique characteristics that make it a challenging sector to recruit and retain talent and skills, and among many of these characteristics the seasonal nature of work is emphasized (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015a). Employment demands in tourism (particularly in hospitality) often reflect the customers' seasonal and leisure demands (see Kamari, 2004), which means that it is often difficult to offer full-time employment as in other sectors (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015a). Thus, unsurprisingly, the workforce here often involves temporary, seasonal, part-time or shift workers (Kamari, 2004; Kusluvan, 2003). These employment features, including seasonal jobs and their instability, may have a negative influence on students' vocational attitudes (see Grobelna & Marciszewska, 2016a; Jiang & Tribe, 2009).

On the other hand, peaks in demand create a real opportunity for seasonal employment of young people, particularly T&H students. It is underlined that seasonal fluctuations in many businesses in the tourism industry seem to promote student employment opportunities at times suitable for both employers and employees (Martin & McCabe, 2007). Students should be particularly welcomed by the service industry in view of high labor costs and huge fluctuations in demand (Barron, 2007; Barron & Anastasiadou, 2009). Industry practitioners should appreciate the flexibility and other benefits that young, multitasking, cheap and intelligent seasonally working students (Barron, 2007; Barron & Anastasiadou, 2009) may bring to their organizations. In a study by Lucas and Ralston (1996), answering the question "Why do you employee students?" employers indicated, among other answers: "to meet increased demand at a particular time" or "to cover for regular staff shortfalls during vacations." Thus, understandably, students as temporary employees seem to be particularly important for the industry (Shin & Lee, 2011). Their seasonal working experience, perceived as an introduction to the real world of work, may influence students' perception of tourism seasonality and employment aspiration in the industry. This seems to be of great importance, especially that, although tourism industry development can create new employment opportunities (Roney & Oztin, 2007), attracting and recruiting graduates seems to be a critical issue for the future success of an industry that experiences a shortage of skilled and well-qualified employees (Baltescu, 2016; Tan et al., 2016).

Thus, research on T&H students' employment aspirations and their critical antecedents is particularly advisable. Given the low status of industry employment, due to seasonality and instability of many tourism jobs, the perception of tourism seasonality and its consequences for employment, and particularly in view of the industry's future workforce, this calls for empirical attention.

Based on the above, the objective of this study is to present T&H students' attitudes towards the problem of seasonality in tourism employment. The aim of the research is to answer the following research questions:

Q1: May students' perception of seasonality in tourism employment relate to their own employment aspirations in tourism after graduation?

Q2: may students' seasonal working experience have an influence on their attitudes towards seasonality in tourism employment?

The following hypotheses are proposed:

H1: That a negative perception of seasonality in tourism employment decreases T&H students' employment aspirations in tourism.

H2: That a positive perception of seasonality in tourism employment increases T&H students' employment aspirations in tourism.

H3: That there is a relationship between students' seasonal working experience in tourism and their perception of seasonality in tourism employment.

The research value of this study may result from the fact that although there are many previous studies that have examined students' perception of the T&H industry, empirical research focusing specifically on the issue of perceived seasonality in relation to students' employment aspiration is limited, especially within the context of the Southern Baltic Region. Thus this study provides a new perspective on students' perceptions of employment in the T&H industry taking the case of Central-East Europe. The results of this study aim to be of great importance to the industry which suffers from a low employment status and experiences chronic shortage of skilled and well-qualified employees.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The concept of tourism seasonality

The concept of seasonality is defined differently, depending on the science that deals with the essence of seasonality. In economic terms, seasonality is associated with revenue that has not been achieved because business activity is reduced or ceased altogether in certain periods. BarOn's work (1975), which identifies the basic components of seasonality and the importance of cyclicality in the creation of demand for tourism services, is the foundation for the study of the nature of seasonality in tourism.

There is no universally accepted definition of seasonality. Although the essence of this phenomenon is that, with a certain regularity, greater or lesser interest in a given tourist region or tourist attraction occurs, many researchers of this issue propose definitions which focus on different aspects. These definitions can be sorted using classifications based on the essence criterion referred to by the authors of the definition. In general, definitions can be grouped into three areas: (i) seasonality symptoms, (ii) seasonal outcomes, and (iii) the preferences of tourists determining their demand for broadly-defined tourism services (Figure 1).

In Butler's definition (1994; 2014), the emphasis is on seasonality, which is a "temporal imbalance in the phenomenon of tourism, which may be expressed in terms of dimensions of such elements as numbers of visitors, expenditure of visitors, traffic on high-ways and other forms of transportation, employment and admissions to attractions". Similarly, Bender, Schumacher and Stein (2005) argue that seasonality is the year-to-year variation associated with specific periods, and Biedermann (2008) describes seasonality as "a prevalent characteristic in travel and tourism marked by sharp variations in demand depending on the time of the year." More specifically, the seasonality characteristics were mentioned by Wall and Mathieson (2006), who in their definition pointed out the recurring yearly cycle: "the peak season and the off season that are separated by two shoulder seasons." Some authors point out cycles shorter than yearly, with varying intensity of visits: month, week, or even a single day (Holloway, 1994; Lundberg, Krishamoorthy, & Stavenga, 1995). With reference to...