Europe's hospitality sector is operating with roughly 10% of its positions unfilled, and in Greece the staffing gap reaches 14%. That's the figure at the center of a new roadmap published by HOTREC, the Brussels-based association representing the European hotel, restaurant and café industry, which frames the shortage as a structural problem rather than a post-pandemic blip.

The numbers matter because hospitality is labor-heavy by design. When one in ten jobs across the sector sits empty, the cost doesn't stay in an HR spreadsheet — it lands on operators as reduced opening hours, thinner service teams and slower table turns during peak season. In Greece, where tourism demand is highly seasonal and concentrated in the summer months, a 14% vacancy rate effectively means thousands of positions go unfilled exactly when revenue is at its highest.

What does HOTREC actually propose?

The association's roadmap centers on two levers: skills and mobility.

• Skills: building clearer training pathways and recognized qualifications so the sector can attract workers who see hospitality as a career, not a stopgap.
• Mobility: making it easier for workers to move between EU member states and fill demand where it peaks, rather than leaving vacancies stranded in national labor markets.

The logic is straightforward. A Greek hotel struggling to staff its summer season can't fix the problem domestically if the local labor pool is exhausted. Cross-border mobility — supported by mutual recognition of qualifications and less administrative friction — widens the recruiting pool without new immigration debates, since the workers are already inside the EU.

Why the gap persists

Hospitality's staffing problem has compounded over several years. The sector shed workers during the pandemic and hasn't fully recovered them, while competing industries have absorbed part of the same labor pool. Wage pressure, irregular hours and limited career visibility keep recruitment expensive for operators.

For a restaurant or hotel running on tight margins, a 10% vacancy rate cuts in two directions. Paying overtime or premiums to cover shifts inflates the labor percentage. Letting service levels slip instead risks revenue and repeat business. Neither option is free, which is why an industry body like HOTREC is pushing for policy-level fixes rather than leaving each operator to bid alone for scarce staff.

What it changes for operators

The practical question for a European operator is whether a roadmap translates into hires. Skills frameworks and mobility provisions move slowly — they run through EU institutions and national governments, not through individual businesses. In the near term, operators in high-gap markets like Greece will keep competing on pay and conditions. Over the longer term, standardized qualifications and easier cross-border hiring could lower recruiting costs sector-wide.

Greece's 14% figure will be the one to watch. If mobility measures take hold, seasonal markets with the widest gaps stand to gain the most, since they benefit first from any worker willing to relocate for the season.