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The restaurant and inns sectors in particular continue to find difficulty recruiting not only unskilled or semi-skilled personnel but also staff with specific skills; for example good quality managers for inns are hard to find and will often be ‘imported’. This situation is not solely a problem for the hospitality sector as, for example, in November 1999 the Windermere Steamboat Museum faced a shortage of skippers to operate its services after the winter lay-off and was seeking new captains and crew members for training in sufficient time for the forthcoming season.

A notable contrast is manifest between urban and rural operations when it comes to employment. In the case of the urban enterprises the majority of staff are recruited from within the area (including and perhaps surprisingly the managers). But this may often not be the case, especially with senior positions in tourist resort localities and emerging destinations. As Prosser (1992) argued, opportunities for personal development and senior jobs are invariably limited and cites the case of Club Mediterranean’s resort in Turks and Caicos Islands where locals complained that the jobs open to them were the lowest paid and menial. This is a recurrent argument and one which is by no means restricted to emerging destinations. This further illustrates ‘leakages’ through the import of more experienced staff, and flags up the influence of multinational companies and foreign investors.

Recruitment can also be difficult due to the level of demand overall as this can exceed local resources. In rural or coastal localities that develop as they become more popular tourist destinations, the generation of employment will inevitably outstrip local supply due to a combination of factors, including:

• declining number of potential employees in the locality;

• lack of desire on the part of some persons who are available; and

• lack of the necessary supporting infrastructure to attend the place of work.

Further exacerbating the situation in the UK is that these employment opportunities are predominantly in hospitality operations (estimated to account for some 93% of employees in tourism (Leidner, 2004)), which are not renowned for being attractive to young people in the UK. Additional to this is the oft cited denigration of tourism jobs (part-time, seasonal, low paid, female) invariably by commentators not involved in the business and as such are basing their opinions more on their own values in that such employment does not meet their perceptions of some ideal type of employment. This is certainly something of a myopic view; for example, Andriotis and Vaughan’s (2004) study based on Crete reveals it is neither so simple nor necessarily problematic (see Zientara, 2012). Secondly, it is generally recognized as an opportunity for young people. Thirdly, given declining rural populations there are not that many younger persons (18–25 year olds) available. Staff are therefore imported leading to the need for staff accommodation, as in the LDNP and rural Scotland. This importation of staff is also a most likely occurrence in any developing tourist destination in undeveloped rural/coastal areas; witness Cancun in Mexico or the Galapagos Islands (see Chapter 3). Thus some of the acclaimed socio-economic benefits arising through local employment are lost to the community.