The country’s hotels report fewer unfilled positions. But does that mean the staffing problem is getting better?
Greece's hotel vacancy rate fell from 19% in 2024 to 14% in 2025. According to the Institute of Tourism Research and Forecasts (ITEP), unfilled positions dropped from 53,817 to 36,145. That's a measurable improvement. Yet hotels also reported 15,162 fewer required positions than in the previous year. The number of filled positions increased by 2,510, while vacancies fell by 17,672.The distinction matters. Hotels employed more people, but they also planned for fewer positions. The figures cannot tell us whether recruitment has become more effective, whether more employees are willing to return or whether hotels have changed how they organise their work. Each possibility has different implications for an industry that depends heavily on seasonal labour.
The question, then, is not simply how many positions remain unfilled. It is whether hotels can build teams with the experience and stability needed to deliver their service throughout the season.
The value of experience
Recruiting enough people to open a hotel for the season is one challenge. Building a team that understands how the property operates is another. Employees develop this understanding through daily work: learning service standards, coordinating with other departments, recognising recurring problems and knowing how to respond when things do not go to plan.
Experience matters when employees need to respond to situations that are not covered by routine procedures. An unexpected guest request, a change in room availability or a delay between departments may require employees to use their judgement, draw on past experience and coordinate with colleagues to keep things running smoothly.
This knowledge is not always documented in procedures or captured by formal training. It also develops through working relationships, shared routines and an understanding of how colleagues respond under pressure. The more familiar a team is with the operation, the better positioned its members are to anticipate needs and coordinate their work.
For hotels, workforce experience is more than a matter of seniority. It is an operational resource that develops over time and helps teams deliver service consistently, even when circumstances change.
What makes people stay?
Pay is part of the answer, but so are working hours, accommodation, workload and relationships with managers. These conditions shape employees' day-to-day experience and can influence whether they consider returning for another season.
Not every departure can be prevented. Seasonal work will not suit everyone, and employees may leave for career opportunities, family commitments or a preference for year-round employment. Hotels cannot control every reason someone chooses to move on. They can, however, examine the conditions they create and whether those conditions give experienced employees a reason to return.
Research on Greek seasonal hotels offers a useful starting point. In Workplace Conflict, Turnover, and Quality of Services, Belias, Rossidis, Sotiriou and Malik examined how workplace conflict and management's approach to resolving it relate to employee turnover. Published in the Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, the study found that cooperative approaches to conflict resolution were associated with a lower likelihood of employee turnover, while enforcement or competition and avoidance were associated with a higher likelihood (Belias et al., 2023).
The findings do not establish that management practices are the main cause of Greece's staffing shortage. Nor did the study find that service quality was related to employees' intention to leave or to the occurrence of workplace conflict. Its contribution is more specific: the way management handles workplace problems may influence employees' decisions about staying or leaving.
For hotels, this has practical implications. Teams work under pressure, and managers often need to resolve problems quickly. Disagreements over schedules, workload or the distribution of responsibilities will not always have easy solutions. What matters is whether concerns are addressed. Managers cannot promise that every employee will be satisfied, but they can influence how people experience the workplace.
Beyond the vacancy rate
The vacancy rate tells hotels how many positions remain unfilled, but not whether experienced employees return, how workloads are affected or how much management time staffing problems consume. Four measures can help hotels build a more complete picture: staffing gaps, workforce continuity, operational pressure and management capacity.
1. Staffing gaps: vacancy rate
What proportion of required positions remains unfilled?
The latest ITEP figures offer a useful example of why context matters. Greek hotels reported 17,672 fewer vacancies in 2025 than in 2024, but they also reported 15,162 fewer required positions. The number of filled positions increased by 2,510.
The figures show an improvement in the number of vacancies, but they do not explain why hotels reported needing fewer people. That distinction matters. Before concluding that recruitment has become more effective, managers need to understand whether staffing needs have changed, too.
2. Workforce continuity: seasonal employee return rate
What proportion of eligible employees from the previous season return?
Recruiting enough people for the season gets a hotel ready to operate. Keeping experienced employees helps it build on what the team learned last year. Returning staff already know the property, its routines and its guests. When they leave, that knowledge has to be rebuilt, often while the hotel is already operating at full pace.
Research supports paying attention to why people leave, not just how many positions need filling. A meta-analysis by Park and Min (2020), covering 144 independent studies of hospitality employees, identified job strain, role stressors and work attitudes among the factors associated with turnover intention. Belias et al. (2023), studying Greek seasonal hotels, also found that approaches to workplace conflict resolution were associated with employees' likelihood of turnover.
These findings do not mean that every employee who fails to return has had a bad experience. Some leave for personal reasons or to pursue year-round work. Tracking return rates alongside exit feedback and conversations with employees can help hotels distinguish between departures they cannot control and problems they may be able to address.
3. Operational pressure: overtime and workload
Are employees working longer hours or taking on extra duties to cover staffing gaps?
The number of employees on a hotel's payroll does not show whether staffing is sufficient for the work that needs to be done. Workload varies across departments and throughout the season, depending on occupancy and operational demands. Tracking overtime and additional duties alongside these demands can help managers identify where pressure is concentrated, whether work needs to be redistributed and whether staffing levels need to be reviewed.
4. Management capacity: time spent responding to staffing gaps
How much management time is spent dealing with staffing problems rather than planning, coaching and supervising teams?
Staffing shortages create demands beyond the need to fill vacant positions. Managers may need to reorganise rotas, redistribute responsibilities, arrange cover or support teams working with fewer people. These tasks can take time away from training new employees, supporting existing staff and preparing for the weeks ahead. When staffing problems persist, the demands of managing them may leave less time to address their underlying causes.
Research by Koutoulas and Chytiri (2025) examines the challenges the staffing crisis has created for hotel managers in Greece. It provides useful context for considering how staffing shortages affect management responsibilities, not just frontline operations. Hotels could track the time managers spend dealing with staffing disruptions to understand how these demands affect planning, supervision and staff development.
Reading the four measures together
No single figure will explain why a hotel is struggling to recruit or retain staff. The value comes from looking at what happens across the four measures and how they change from one season to the next.
Fewer vacancies alongside more returning employees and manageable workloads would be encouraging. If vacancies fall but fewer employees return, overtime remains high and managers continue spending time responding to staffing disruptions, the hotel may still be compensating for staffing difficulties rather than resolving them.
These patterns do not prove what is causing the problem. They give managers a more useful place to start: examining why employees are leaving, how work is being distributed and whether managers have the time to support their teams. The question is not just whether hotels can fill their vacancies, but whether they can do so without repeatedly placing the burden on the people who remain.
A different measure of progress
There is also a human dimension that operational data cannot capture on its own. Hospitality depends on people who show up every day, often under demanding conditions, to deliver an experience that guests may remember long after they leave. The quality of that experience is shaped not only by employees' skills, but also by whether they have the support and working conditions to use those skills well.
When an employee raises a concern about what is not working, the response matters. Listening will not replace adequate staffing, fair pay or effective management. It can, however, help identify problems that might otherwise go unaddressed. For employers, taking those concerns seriously is not just a gesture of goodwill. It is one way to understand the experience of the people on whom the operation depends.
Perhaps progress should be measured not only by how many vacancies hotels fill, but also by whether they retain experience, organise work sustainably and give employees a reason to stay.
Dedicated to my colleague from Mykonos.
Sources and further reading
- Institute of Tourism Research and Forecasts (ITEP). (2026). Employment in Greek Hotels 2025 (Η Απασχόληση στα Ξενοδοχεία 2025).
- Belias, D., Rossidis, I., Sotiriou, A., & Malik, S. (2023). Workplace conflict, turnover, and quality of services: Case study in Greek seasonal hotels. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 24(4), 453–476.
- Koutoulas, D., & Chytiri, A.-P. (2025). The post-pandemic landscape of the hotel manager’s job: Challenges and outlook from a Greek perspective. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 17(5), 726–739.
- Park, J., & Min, H. (2020). Turnover intention in the hospitality industry: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 90, 102599.