Marc Wachsberger | CEO | The Capital Hotels, Apartments & Resorts | mail me |
South Africa’s hospitality sector faces a paradox. Guests have returned, occupancy rates are recovering, and travel demand has regained strong momentum.
According to Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille, South Africa welcomed 10.485 million international visitors in 2025. This marked a historic record and surpassed pre-pandemic figures. However, the South African Hoteliers Association Report revealed that 77% of hoteliers struggle to recruit and retain staff. In addition, 58% reported that profitability has either stagnated or declined during the past five years.
These figures should concern every operator in the industry. If demand continues recovering while margins shrink and teams remain understaffed, the market is not the problem. Instead, the problem is structural. More importantly, it begins with how the industry approaches talent.
Why we need to rethink skills, not just fill jobs
The recent opening of The Capital Boardwalk forms part of this broader journey. The development also addresses another growing challenge in South Africa: youth unemployment. Growth at this scale creates meaningful opportunities. New properties hire local teams and help develop skills within surrounding communities. At the same time, these efforts directly address the hospitality talent crisis.
We don’t just have a staffing shortage. We have a skills and mindset gap. The Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa (FEDHASA) explained the issue clearly. The sector does not simply face a shortage of candidates. Instead, it faces a shortage of suitable candidates for a demanding service industry. This distinction matters enormously.
Hospitality remains one of the most human-facing industries in existence. Employees must consistently deliver warmth and professionalism under pressure. At the same time, guests expect excellence regardless of behind-the-scenes challenges. A classroom alone cannot teach this skillset. Similarly, a CV cannot fully capture these qualities.
Traditional hospitality training has historically prioritised technical competencies. These include food and beverage service, front desk operations and housekeeping protocols. While these skills remain necessary, they are no longer sufficient. The industry now needs attitude, adaptability and a genuine service mindset.
Employees must demonstrate a willingness to move beyond transactional interactions. They must also know how to read a room and maintain standards during difficult situations. Businesses can develop these qualities, but they must cultivate them intentionally. They do not emerge by accident. Addressing the hospitality talent crisis, therefore, requires a deeper focus on mindset and culture.
Rethinking recruitment – hire for potential, train for skill
One of the most important changes hospitality businesses can make involves recruitment. Companies must stop hiring purely according to paper qualifications. Instead, they should recruit for potential.
A candidate with a diploma but no passion for service may underperform compared to someone with matric and a natural instinct for hospitality. Unfortunately, the industry has been slow to recognise this reality. Qualifications often provide a convenient shortcut during high-volume hiring processes. However, recruitment shortcuts create expensive long-term consequences. They increase staff turnover, weaken guest experiences and worsen the staffing cycle, affecting many operators today.
We have learned that businesses should ask more than “What do you know?” They should also ask, “Who are you, and what are you capable of becoming?” This shift in thinking transforms how organisations build teams.
Businesses must own the training mandate
The industry often treats skills development as someone else’s responsibility. Businesses frequently look to government, TVET colleges and industry bodies for solutions. While these stakeholders play an important role, operators cannot outsource this responsibility completely.
If businesses want employees who meet organisational standards, they must build those standards internally. Structured onboarding, continuous coaching, mentorship from senior staff and growth-focused cultures are not luxuries. Instead, they form the operational foundation of a high-performing hospitality business.
The cost of ignoring training far exceeds the cost of investing in it. Staff turnover creates significant financial strain. Rehiring also increases operational costs. Furthermore, poor guest experiences can quickly appear on platforms such as Tripadvisor or Google Reviews.
Recovering from reputational damage can prove extremely difficult. Consequently, solving the hospitality talent crisis requires long-term investment in people development.
This thinking directly shaped our training academy. The company recognised early that external talent pipelines alone could not provide the calibre of employees guests expect. Therefore, it created an internal development pipeline.
The academy focuses on developing talent from within the organisation. It identifies individuals with the right attitude and invests in building their technical and professional capabilities. Importantly, the initiative is not merely a training programme. It also functions as a career pathway, a retention strategy and a statement about the value of human potential.
The programme reflects the belief that properly supported potential matters more than credentials alone. The results continue to validate this approach. Employees who feel supported remain with the organisation longer. They also perform better and become ambassadors for the brand. In hospitality, this represents one of the most important returns on investment.
Moving beyond reactive hiring practices
The South African Hoteliers Report confirms what many operators already understand from experience. The hospitality talent crisis is real, severe and unlikely to resolve itself automatically.
Nevertheless, the challenge remains solvable if the industry moves beyond reactive hiring practices and adopts a more intentional approach to talent development. This shift requires businesses to rethink what they value in candidates. It also requires organisations to accept that training is a core business function rather than a cost centre.
Most importantly, businesses must recognise that people are not simply their greatest asset in a service industry. They are the product itself.
South Africa possesses an extraordinary pool of untapped potential. The opportunity already exists. What the sector now needs is a stronger commitment to developing that potential and resolving the hospitality talent crisis for the long term.
