In episode 6 of our "Tour Tech: Your 5 Weekly Takeaways to Tourism Success" podcast series, part of the EU-funded Tourbit project, we learn about how digital approaches can improve transparency in recruitment and create a more empowered and dedicated workforce that is a good match for your brand.
The hospitality industry faces a unique set of challenges when it comes to staffing. Seasonal fluctuations in demand necessitate a flexible workforce, but high employee turnover rates often leave hotels scrambling to fill critical positions. Traditional methods of finding and hiring temporary staff can be time-consuming and inefficient. In episode 6 of our "Tour Tech: Your 5 Weekly Takeaways to Tourism Success" podcast series, part of the EU-funded Tourbit project, we learn about how digital approaches can improve transparency in recruitment and create a more empowered and dedicated workforce that is a good match for your brand. This article explores how Merytu, a freelance marketplace app designed specifically for the hospitality industry, is a game changer for hotels such as Independente Hotels & Hostels.
João Silva Santos, CEO of Merytu outlines the need for a new model of recruitment that is simpler than the traditional outsourcing models used in the hospitality sector to better support HR teams. Merytu, which launched in 2021, offers a solution to these staffing woes by connecting hospitality businesses with a pool of pre-vetted freelance professionals across over 21 functions; from cooks, barmen and waiters to cleaners and event assistants, putting transparency at the centre of reinforcing hospitality teams. The concept focuses on valuing the effort put into working and achieving appropriate career results and pay based on individual aspirations.
Duarte d'Eça Leal, Founder and Managing Partner of Independente Hotels & Hostels, a group of four properties in Portugal, explains that the chain aims to create social platforms that connect travellers with locals, with travel becoming synonymous with wellbeing. He believes that technology can promote better integration and communication between humans and create stronger engagement.
Duarte outlines the challenge faced by the hospitality industry in scaling and adapting operations to ensure lean management in order to carefully balance the variable cost of human resources and find employees that match the mission and vision of the organisation. A major challenge posed by traditional hiring methods is that it is conducted through non-digital platforms where employees are contacted via phone and email, with limited ability to tailor the process to a specific business function and the uncertainty of employee skills that this brings.
João explains that freelancers create detailed profiles on the Merytu app, highlighting their experience and skillsets, with 50,000 people already registered on the platform. These profiles are categorised by experience level, ensuring hotels can find qualified candidates to fill specific needs. Hotels seeking temporary staff simply post requests on the platform, outlining the required skills and desired availability. Freelancers can then review these requests and choose to accept or decline invitations based on their own schedules and preferences.
Merytu streamlines the process further by offering transparent pricing; hotels pay an hourly fee to access the platform and connect with qualified freelancers. Significantly, companies and employees rate the performance of each other across five metrics and receive written feedback identifying any additional skills that freelancers should improve to support ongoing professional development. By providing a positive experience for freelance workers, hotels can leverage Merytu to build a strong employer brand and attract top talent within the freelance hospitality workforce to build a more committed and dedicated workforce.
Duarte highlights that Independente Hotels initially worked with Merytu at only one property in 2021 and has gradually scaled up to three of its locations. Only Comporta is not currently utilising Merytu given the remoteness of the location, with the aspiration to incorporate the app in recruitment processes once a critical mass of available employees has been achieved.
Merytu offers several key benefits for hospitality businesses. The platform allows hotels to quickly find qualified staff to meet their temporary needs, ensuring they are adequately staffed without incurring the overhead costs associated with full-time employees. Additionally, Merytu streamlines the hiring process by automating tasks including searching for candidates, scheduling interviews and even automatically offering free insurance to cover any risks associated with the job.
Independente Hotels has found Merytu to be easy to adopt, integrating seamlessly with their existing systems. With Millennials and Generation Z being digitally native and using technology across all aspects of their daily life, the platform helps the hotel chain to gain access to a wider talent pool, allowing them to find qualified freelance staff to fill various roles, and reach their desired audience base with ease. The streamlined recruitment process facilitated by Merytu has saved significant time and resources, enabling an even stronger focus on providing excellent visitor experiences. This has enabled the company to remain resilient to the effects of inflation, with a 40% increase in employee salaries over two years.
Technology is useful when it serves a strong purpose and speeds up operational processes that only serve functional needs. Duarte shares the example of how technology can be used in the future to speed up the hotel check-in process by asking guests to share their passport and card details prior to arrival and only do a quick check of the ID upon arrival. Such a transition to this process would result in the hotel's role shifting towards being a concierge, understanding whether guests want to explore more of the destination straight away or relax in their room upon their arrival.
João and Duarte agree that it's important to make quick data-led decisions and not fear failure. The core vision of businesses should remain unaltered, but the process needs to remain agile to enable change along the way. Incorporating feedback from knowledgeable employees, testing and making continuous adaptations is therefore crucial to success. This flexibility is often missing from implementation plans, where good ideas sometimes fail because there is no margin for error and where leeway isn't incorporated into budgets to explore operational processes in more granular detail. João summarises this by explaining how Merytu was founded in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic when many hospitality companies had reduced staff volumes and how the original idea needed to change. Ultimately, this put Merytu in a strong position when the industry gradually restarted, with the company having plans to expand into new markets at the end of this year.
The hospitality industry is on the cusp of a major shift in human resource practices. Technology-driven solutions like Merytu are poised to become increasingly popular as hotels seek more efficient ways to manage their temporary staffing needs and scale operations to respond to demand. This necessitates a focus on matching specific skills and experiences to the unique needs of each position.
By embracing technology and adopting a more flexible workforce model, hotels can ensure they have the right talent in place to thrive in the ever-evolving hospitality landscape and follow a standardised recruitment process that helps to create a strong brand reputation. This leverages the fact that Millennials and Generation Z are digital natives, reflecting the need to adapt HR processes to utilise the platforms they engage with. This shift also helps freelancers become more flexible with their shifts and fit work around their life, aligning with the changing desires of employees and creating stronger levels of commitment from employees.
Transparency is key to the process, along with a strong focus on ethics through the provision of work insurance for all employees. Similarly, by rating the performance of both the company and employees, skills development becomes a central goal built into the process where feedback becomes crucial to building strong relationships between staff and the companies they work for.
Here are the five key takeaways:
The podcast series is part of the Tourbit project, co-funded by the EU's COSME programme, with the support of the Catalan Tourist Board, Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Paris & Co, Arctur Doo, Hub Brussels, Iceland Tourism Cluster, Lapland University of Applied Sciences and NEST - Tourism Innovation Center.
The hospitality industry faces a unique set of challenges when it comes to staffing. Seasonal fluctuations in demand necessitate a flexible workforce, but high employee turnover rates often leave hotels scrambling to fill critical positions. Traditional methods of finding and hiring temporary staff can be time-consuming and inefficient. In episode 6 of our "Tour Tech: Your 5 Weekly Takeaways to Tourism Success" podcast series, part of the EU-funded Tourbit project, we learn about how digital approaches can improve transparency in recruitment and create a more empowered and dedicated workforce that is a good match for your brand. This article explores how Merytu, a freelance marketplace app designed specifically for the hospitality industry, is a game changer for hotels such as Independente Hotels & Hostels.
João Silva Santos, CEO of Merytu outlines the need for a new model of recruitment that is simpler than the traditional outsourcing models used in the hospitality sector to better support HR teams. Merytu, which launched in 2021, offers a solution to these staffing woes by connecting hospitality businesses with a pool of pre-vetted freelance professionals across over 21 functions; from cooks, barmen and waiters to cleaners and event assistants, putting transparency at the centre of reinforcing hospitality teams. The concept focuses on valuing the effort put into working and achieving appropriate career results and pay based on individual aspirations.
Duarte d'Eça Leal, Founder and Managing Partner of Independente Hotels & Hostels, a group of four properties in Portugal, explains that the chain aims to create social platforms that connect travellers with locals, with travel becoming synonymous with wellbeing. He believes that technology can promote better integration and communication between humans and create stronger engagement.
Duarte outlines the challenge faced by the hospitality industry in scaling and adapting operations to ensure lean management in order to carefully balance the variable cost of human resources and find employees that match the mission and vision of the organisation. A major challenge posed by traditional hiring methods is that it is conducted through non-digital platforms where employees are contacted via phone and email, with limited ability to tailor the process to a specific business function and the uncertainty of employee skills that this brings.
João explains that freelancers create detailed profiles on the Merytu app, highlighting their experience and skillsets, with 50,000 people already registered on the platform. These profiles are categorised by experience level, ensuring hotels can find qualified candidates to fill specific needs. Hotels seeking temporary staff simply post requests on the platform, outlining the required skills and desired availability. Freelancers can then review these requests and choose to accept or decline invitations based on their own schedules and preferences.
Merytu streamlines the process further by offering transparent pricing; hotels pay an hourly fee to access the platform and connect with qualified freelancers. Significantly, companies and employees rate the performance of each other across five metrics and receive written feedback identifying any additional skills that freelancers should improve to support ongoing professional development. By providing a positive experience for freelance workers, hotels can leverage Merytu to build a strong employer brand and attract top talent within the freelance hospitality workforce to build a more committed and dedicated workforce.
Duarte highlights that Independente Hotels initially worked with Merytu at only one property in 2021 and has gradually scaled up to three of its locations. Only Comporta is not currently utilising Merytu given the remoteness of the location, with the aspiration to incorporate the app in recruitment processes once a critical mass of available employees has been achieved.
Merytu offers several key benefits for hospitality businesses. The platform allows hotels to quickly find qualified staff to meet their temporary needs, ensuring they are adequately staffed without incurring the overhead costs associated with full-time employees. Additionally, Merytu streamlines the hiring process by automating tasks including searching for candidates, scheduling interviews and even automatically offering free insurance to cover any risks associated with the job.
Independente Hotels has found Merytu to be easy to adopt, integrating seamlessly with their existing systems. With Millennials and Generation Z being digitally native and using technology across all aspects of their daily life, the platform helps the hotel chain to gain access to a wider talent pool, allowing them to find qualified freelance staff to fill various roles, and reach their desired audience base with ease. The streamlined recruitment process facilitated by Merytu has saved significant time and resources, enabling an even stronger focus on providing excellent visitor experiences. This has enabled the company to remain resilient to the effects of inflation, with a 40% increase in employee salaries over two years.
Technology is useful when it serves a strong purpose and speeds up operational processes that only serve functional needs. Duarte shares the example of how technology can be used in the future to speed up the hotel check-in process by asking guests to share their passport and card details prior to arrival and only do a quick check of the ID upon arrival. Such a transition to this process would result in the hotel's role shifting towards being a concierge, understanding whether guests want to explore more of the destination straight away or relax in their room upon their arrival.
João and Duarte agree that it's important to make quick data-led decisions and not fear failure. The core vision of businesses should remain unaltered, but the process needs to remain agile to enable change along the way. Incorporating feedback from knowledgeable employees, testing and making continuous adaptations is therefore crucial to success. This flexibility is often missing from implementation plans, where good ideas sometimes fail because there is no margin for error and where leeway isn't incorporated into budgets to explore operational processes in more granular detail. João summarises this by explaining how Merytu was founded in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic when many hospitality companies had reduced staff volumes and how the original idea needed to change. Ultimately, this put Merytu in a strong position when the industry gradually restarted, with the company having plans to expand into new markets at the end of this year.
The hospitality industry is on the cusp of a major shift in human resource practices. Technology-driven solutions like Merytu are poised to become increasingly popular as hotels seek more efficient ways to manage their temporary staffing needs and scale operations to respond to demand. This necessitates a focus on matching specific skills and experiences to the unique needs of each position.
By embracing technology and adopting a more flexible workforce model, hotels can ensure they have the right talent in place to thrive in the ever-evolving hospitality landscape and follow a standardised recruitment process that helps to create a strong brand reputation. This leverages the fact that Millennials and Generation Z are digital natives, reflecting the need to adapt HR processes to utilise the platforms they engage with. This shift also helps freelancers become more flexible with their shifts and fit work around their life, aligning with the changing desires of employees and creating stronger levels of commitment from employees.
Transparency is key to the process, along with a strong focus on ethics through the provision of work insurance for all employees. Similarly, by rating the performance of both the company and employees, skills development becomes a central goal built into the process where feedback becomes crucial to building strong relationships between staff and the companies they work for.
Here are the five key takeaways:
The podcast series is part of the Tourbit project, co-funded by the EU's COSME programme, with the support of the Catalan Tourist Board, Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Paris & Co, Arctur Doo, Hub Brussels, Iceland Tourism Cluster, Lapland University of Applied Sciences and NEST - Tourism Innovation Center.
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