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Why hospitality employees leave and how to understand why
Hotel, restaurant and banquet staff leave for reasons that vary by department and season. How to ask what sits behind the first answer and act on it.
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Hospitality · Tourism and travel companies
HR for Tourism and Travel Companies: Tour Managers, Drivers and Peak Seasons
A tour or travel company sells itineraries that depend on people in the field, from the desk that books to the guide who is with the group. Here is how to organise desk staff, guides and drivers around the seasons.
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Share your requirementsA tourism or travel company plans and sells journeys: leisure packages, pilgrimages, group tours, corporate travel and ticketing, and local day tours. The office team handles enquiries, quotes, bookings, visas and tickets, and works closely with hotels, airlines and transport vendors. In the field, tour managers and guides travel with groups, drivers carry them, and local coordinators solve problems on the spot at any hour. Work follows the seasons of the destinations it sells, with a busy summer, a festival period or a winter peak and slower months in between. Field staff may be away from home for days, speak several languages and handle large sums in cash. An error at the desk, such as a wrong date or a missed booking, is discovered by the traveller hundreds of kilometres away, and the person who bears the anger is the one in the field.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in tourism and travel companies, you may see
- Desk and field blame each other
- Guides and tour managers are freelancers in practice
- Seasonal peaks overwhelm the office
- Field staff handle cash and crises alone
- Sales targets crowd out service
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in tourism and travel companies
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
- Travel consultants and sales staff
- Reservations and ticketing executives
- Tour managers and tour guides
- Drivers and transport coordinators
- Visa and documentation staff
- Operations and destination coordinators
- Accounts and customer-care teams
Where HR strains in tourism and travel companies
Desk and field blame each other
A mistake in the booking appears as a failure on the road, and the sales, operations and field teams argue over who is responsible.
Guides and tour managers are freelancers in practice
Many are engaged trip by trip, with unclear terms, uneven pay and no common standard of service or conduct.
Seasonal peaks overwhelm the office
Enquiries triple within weeks, new staff are hired in a hurry and quality drops, while quiet months leave consultants idle.
Field staff handle cash and crises alone
Tour managers carry advances and settle payments on the road, and a lost bag, a delayed flight or a medical issue needs a decision at once.
Sales targets crowd out service
Consultants paid on bookings may push packages without checking feasibility, leaving operations to solve the result.
HR topics for tourism and travel companies
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Performance Management; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for hospitality, not in general.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a tourism and travel companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Create a single trip file
One record that sales, operations and field staff all use, listing what was sold, who is responsible for each part and who to call, so handovers are clean.
What this coversHide
Create a single trip file
One record that sales, operations and field staff all use, listing what was sold, who is responsible for each part and who to call, so handovers are clean.
What this coversHideOne record that sales, operations and field staff all use, listing what was sold, who is responsible for each part and who to call, so handovers are clean. The HR process consulting work shows how to map it.
Write terms for guides and tour managers
A clear agreement on pay per trip, advances, expenses, conduct, feedback and cancellation, drafted with a qualified professional.
What this coversHide
Write terms for guides and tour managers
A clear agreement on pay per trip, advances, expenses, conduct, feedback and cancellation, drafted with a qualified professional.
What this coversHideA clear agreement on pay per trip, advances, expenses, conduct, feedback and cancellation, drafted with a qualified professional. The HR documentation process gives the format.
Plan seasonal hiring early
A forecast of enquiries by month and a plan for temporary desk staff, trained before the peak.
What this coversHide
Plan seasonal hiring early
A forecast of enquiries by month and a plan for temporary desk staff, trained before the peak.
What this coversHideA forecast of enquiries by month and a plan for temporary desk staff, trained before the peak. The HR strategy and workforce planning work covers it.
Give field staff a decision guide
A short manual of who to call and what they can decide on their own for delays, medical issues, complaints and cash, practised through role-play.
What this coversHide
Give field staff a decision guide
A short manual of who to call and what they can decide on their own for delays, medical issues, complaints and cash, practised through role-play.
What this coversHideA short manual of who to call and what they can decide on their own for delays, medical issues, complaints and cash, practised through role-play. The conflict management training supports it.
Balance incentives with service
Link part of the sales reward to trip feedback and fewer changes after booking.
What this coversHide
Balance incentives with service
Link part of the sales reward to trip feedback and fewer changes after booking.
What this coversHideLink part of the sales reward to trip feedback and fewer changes after booking. The performance and incentive design work helps.
Start by checking where you stand
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirements- Pick three recent trips with complaints and trace which part of the chain failed.
- List your guides and tour managers with the terms each works on, and note which are written.
- Chart enquiries by month for the last year and compare it with the staff you had.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the licences, employment status of field staff and record-keeping obligations that apply to your travel business.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
How GullyHR helps
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
- HR process consulting
A clear chain of handover from sale to booking to field, with named owners.
- HR strategy and workforce planning
A seasonal plan for desk and field staff that matches the travel calendar.
- Performance and incentive design
Rewards that include service quality, not only bookings sold.
- Customer-service skills
Practical training for consultants and tour managers who handle anxious or angry travellers.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in hospitality, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Management
"We need two more people": the headcount plan nobody wrote
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 min readRead article
HR Management
Why employees need clear expectations before performance reviews
A review can only judge what was agreed beforehand. How to set expectations that are specific, written and revisited, so the review stops being a surprise.
5 min readRead article
HR Process
12 signs your company has outgrown founder-approved HR
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
It depends on how they are engaged and managed. Ask a qualified professional to confirm their status, then set the terms in writing and apply them consistently.
Use one shared trip file, hold a short review after each trip and look at the cause rather than the person. Over time the same errors become visible and can be fixed.
Plan from your own enquiry numbers, start early, and train temporary staff on your products and systems before the rush. A rushed hire at the peak rarely works well.
Write down the limits for refunds, changes, expenses and emergencies, and who they can call. People decide better when they know the boundaries.
Include feedback and trip changes in the reward, and let operations comment on bookings that cannot be delivered as sold.
We would trace a few recent trips with complaints to see where the chain broke between desk and field, then review the terms under which guides and tour managers work and how enquiries by month compare with your staffing. A single trip file or written guide terms could be the first piece of work. Whatever you choose, scope is agreed in writing afterwards.
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