Seasonality and Casual Employment in Tourism Industry

Running head: SEASONALITY AND CASUAL EMPLOYMENT
Seasonality and Casual Employment
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1SEASONALITY AND CASUAL EMPLOYMENT
Tourism is one the largest and speedily growing industries in the world. Seasonality
has always been regarded as one of the most distinguishing aspect of tourism and it has been
gradually become of the most typical feature of the tourism on the international basis after the
temporary movement of people (Radicchi 2013). The seasonality refers to the temporal
imbalance in the tourism that might be expressed in context to the dimensions of elements
like the number of visitors, their expenditure, traffic on the highways, employment etc. It has
commonly regarded as one of the major problems in the tourism industry and has been held
responsible for exacerbating various difficulties that are faced by the industry including that
of the problem of employment. This paper will elaborate on the fact the seasonality and
cyclical nature of tourism has resulted in the high incidence of the seasonal, part-time and
casual employment.
The seasonal change in the supply for and the demand for the destinations and
attractions are endemic within the hospital and tourism industry. Ridderstaat et al. (2014)
have describes seasonality as a cyclic pattern that repeats itself every year. The issue of
seasonality in the tourism industry demand in one of the most continuously vexing policy
issues, especially in the environments of peripheral and cold climate. It indeed causes very
notable challenges for the tourism and hotel industry (Iweze and Nwogu 2014). The product
and services of the tourism industry cannot be stored and therefore, the hotel room which
remains unsold or un-booked is a lost income for the organization. The hospitality industry is
regarded to be non prestigious and temporary employment (De Beer, Rogerson and Rogerson
2014). The image of career in the tourism industry might change because of the emerging
tourism business and the new markets. The impact of seasonality is notable in the alpine
region of the Australia’s New South Wales. Where the issue of seasonality and the challenges
associated with it are inalienable parts of the global tourism, the tourism employment with
proper human resource management could turn into a beneficial career.

2SEASONALITY AND CASUAL EMPLOYMENT
The industry of tourism and hospitality create numerous employment opportunities in
several different areas such as transportation, accommodations etc. Therefore, availability of
the trained and skilled manpower is very important element in the overall success of the
tourism program (Agarwal 2013). Hence, employees are considered to be the sine qua non of
this industry. It is to be noted that tourism is mainly about the people. The visitors are the
people who are subject to changes in their demands, decision making and behavior. These
changes are really tough to predict (Aylen, Albertson and Cavan 2014). However, it is also to
be noted that the constraints of the employment issues in the tourism industry is that of the
unstable and fluctuated employment, low pay, and low job status. Employees are the heart of
an excellent service delivery system but a must less attention is paid to the employees of the
tourism and hospitality sectors than the other (Khan 2014).
The levels of employment in the tourist destination follow the seasonality of the
tourism demands for most of the resorts and tourist destinations. During some months of the
years the number of visitation of tourists is very high and therefore, the tourism industry then
hire more number of workers and employees to the business, while when the visitation rate is
low during the lean seasons, the businesses then cut staffs. Most of the resorts, hotels and
tourist destination have high season when there is a high level of visitation of tourists and
employment level. On the other hand, it is said to be as low season when the tourist visitation
and employment level is the lowest (Subramanian and Shin 2013). Hence, this results in an
obvious fluctuation in the employment level. Almost a quarter of all the employees working
in the tourism industry are temporary or casual. Tourism industry is though the fastest
growing industries; it is indeed the fastest growing employers of casual labor in the world.
The tourist visitation in the tourism industry decreases the most at the months of December
and November as compared to the month of January (Poudyal, Paudel and Tarrant 2013) and