By Andy Silvester
The British seasonnaire – a fixture of the European holiday scene from the mountains to the seas – is under threat.
And it’s more than just a tragedy for perky young Brits looking to combine a lengthy holiday with a bit of paid work.
It’s battering British firms which used to rely on UK staff to provide a home away from home for their guests.
Thirty years of building up a programme of accommodation in Austria has pretty much been completely wiped
The number of British travel staff working in the European Union has plummeted by more than two thirds since Brexit.
That near 70 per cent drop-off, revealed by trade bodies ABTA and Seasonal Businesses in Travel (SBiT) in June, was blamed on the additional cost of obtaining visas, work permits and other post-Brexit bureaucracy.
Interviews with leading UK travel agents reveal groups slashing the size of their operations in Europe, bumping up costs for consumers and even considering relocating from the UK entirely.
Now the sector is calling for an urgent shift in its arrangements with the EU.
A snowstorm of bureaucracy
Let’s start with Skiworld, Britain’s largest ski tour operator, which runs a range of chalets across the European alps. Since 2019, the firm has seen a near complete wipe-out of its operations in Austria.
It now operates only in St Anton, slashing its operations elsewhere because they simply can’t get the staff.
A collapse in the number of UK seasonaires working in its European resorts, between the 2016/17 and 2022/23 seasons is to blame, with the only saving grace being an increase in European workers in the same period – who have kept its Austrian business alive.
“Thirty years of building up a programme of accommodation in Austria has pretty much been completely wiped,” Diane Palumbo, sales and marketing director at Skiworld, told City A.M.
Covid-19 is also to blame for its struggles, but Skiworld said that anypost-pandemic recoveryhas been blocked by Brexit related problems.
Frustratingly, a “good season last year,” Palumbo said, had been capped by the “uncertainty about being able to get our operations going.”
That block on post-covid recovery, particularly significant this year as travel demand rebounds, was echoed across a number of operators interviewed by City A.M.
Two thirds of UK travel businesses think Brexit will have a more significant longer term impact on their operations than the deadly virus, per an industry survey by ABTA.
Sunning and sailing in the Greek islands? No longer
“At a time when we were trying to recover from the pandemic, it has taken a lot of hours to come up with new solutions to try to find and recruit. So there’s been a time element to it, a cost element to it, and the customer service element to it, where we don’t feel that we’ve been able to continue the same sort of level of service in a lot of our resorts,” Chris Wright, managing director at Sunvil, told City A.M.
London-based Sunvil offer a range of package holidays, from group tours to island hopping in Greece and hiking trips on sunny trails around the Med.
The firm has had to up prices for consumers due to additional post-Brexit costs caused by staffing problems and said it has seen a near third drop in the number of UK staff it employs overseas.
“Any increase in cost will eventually filter its way through to the cost of a holiday and we compete with specialists in the market where we all provide a good service.” Wright explained.
Plans to expand have also been ditched, with Sunvil rowing back on proposals to up the amount of islands it offers holiday on in Croatia.
“We were planning on adding some new destinations into the programme and we’ve gone about it a different way, it’s been a lot smaller,” Wright said.
“In the past the skilled ones we would keep through the winter. We can’t do that now.”
Alongside Sunvil’s sunny offerings, sailing operators – whose boats are often staffed by skilled British instructors who are harder to replace – have also floundered.
Poor staff retention, due to post-Brexit time constraints on Brits working seasonally in EU resorts, has been particularly damaging, Barrie Neilson, director at Sailing Holidays told City A.M.
“In the past the skilled ones we would keep through the winter. We can’t do that now.”
Neilson said the firm – which offers yacht charter and flotilla holidays in Corfu – had considered relocating to the Greek island in order to sidestep the problems.
Neilson said operations would cut by around ten to fifteen per cent.
Paul Charles, CEO of travel consultancy The PC Agency summarised the issues that have seen “too many” travel firms “nursing higher costs.”
“Profitability has been hit by red tape forcing restructurings, the hiring of more local workers in a destination at higher costs, especially with currency fluctuations, and the need to employ legal experts to advise on different regulations.”
Is there a way out?
There are a number of policies that could help post-Brexit Britains’ travel groups thrive, according to ABTA, SBIT and travel experts.
Youth mobility schemes, for example, allow young people to work abroad for up to 2 years. However, despite agreements with countries including New Zealand, Australia and Japan, the UK currently has none with any EU member state.
Tanzer told City A.M. that an extension of the scheme would “allow greater labour mobility for travel jobs without compromising the UK’s approach to immigration.”
Paul Charles said that “only by enabling more mobile schemes for UK workers can the situation be improved.”
“The government needs to seek the amendment of Brexit rules to enable more free movement between the UK and European member states, otherwise productivity and profitability in some countries will never be improved.”
One former seasonnaire turned London tech rising star tells us it’s not just a jolly….
As classmates did law conversions or consultancy grad schemes, I was totally uncomfortable committing myself to a career upon graduation. I signed up to be a seasonaire in Austria because it sounded interesting. To this day I claim it is the best job I’ve ever had. Rise by 10am, hit the slopes, work from 4 till midnight, and repeat.
I wasn’t from a skiing family, and I could barely get down a red run at the start of the season but I didn’t feel out of place, surprised by the diversity of people who wanted to earn 230 euros a month. I had my EHIC should I damage myself, and even improved my German. A working holiday provided space to think and assess what to do, improving my confidence and experience with responsibility. It would be an incredible shame if 18-21 year olds today did not receive the same opportunity.
Aaron Tanner is now Global Head of Revenue at London data firm BlueOptima
