Northern Ontario tourism operators getting creative to stay fully staffed

Northern Ontario tourism businesses are hoping to put the staffing shortages of the pandemic behind them this season.

Kevin Wyer, the general manager of the 200-room Delta Hotel in Sault Ste. Marie, says they have a full compliment of 175 workers going into the summer, a big change from the "frustrating" times of 2021.

"There were days we couldn't sell all of our rooms, there were days we couldn't sit our entire patio because we didn't have enough culinary staff or service staff," he said.

"Last year was better, but we still had lots of revenue opportunities lost because we didn't have enough associates to clean every room every day."

Wyer says it made for tough decisions trying to help the owner's turn a profit, while having a good experience for customers and keeping staff from burning out. 

"So it was very hard to balance, do we just all work together, every day, seven days a week? Or do we tone back the business a little bit?" he said.

"So it's a very fine line between managing the bottom line and managing the health and welfare of the associates."

Wyer says the hotel has now hired a recruiting firm to keep them stay fully staffed and they're also bringing in workers through the Northern Ontario Immigration Pilot, that matches new Canadians with employment. 

"COVID maybe shed a light on it a little bit, but I think it's an ongoing problem," he said. 

Just up Highway 17 in Batchewana Bay, Frank O'Connor and his wife run the Voyageur's Lodge and Cookhouse, which includes a motel, restaurant, gift shop and LCBO.

He says being out in the country, they've always struggled to recruit a full compliment of 50 workers and often work on it "all winter long."

O'Connor says they were surprisingly "packed" with southern Ontario visitors during the pandemic who "decided they were going to discover the north" and they realized they didn't have the staff to run a sit-down restaurant any more.

He says they've now switched to takeout only.

"And that certainly helped us with staffing, we probably ended up losing 10 staff because of that move, so that helped us in terms of the recruitment of staff," says O'Connor, who has been running the lodge for 21 years. 

Crane's Lochaven Wilderness Lodge has been running on an island in the French River for over 50 years.

But in the last few years, Susan Crane says they've had a hard time attracting the 11 staff they need to keep it going.

She says 2021 was "disastrous" with many potential workers receiving CERB during COVID. 

"It was so difficult to find people," she said. 

"That was the year my husband and I were working 18 hours a day, housekeeping, just doing whatever we could to keep going."

Crane says "it's getting a little better" thanks to government programs, including one that matches hospitality students with available jobs in the industry, and an agency that provides visas to international workers, which helped her hire a couple from Wales to work in the lodge for the next two years.