Latest / PCMA Convene Podcast / Convene Talk: Travel’s Talent Crunch: How Events Can Help Close a 43-Million Worker Gap
Transcript
- Convene Talk, ep. 84/October 24, 2025 *Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies Magdalina Atanassova: This is the Convene Podcast. Welcome to another Convene Talk. Today we are diving into one of the most paradoxical challenges facing the global economy. The travel industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, yet it's being held back by a critical shortage of workers. According to a recent World Travel and Tourism Council report presented at their global summit in Rome, the tourism industry could face a workforce gap of over 43 million people within the next decade. That's 16% below what's actually needed. While geopolitical tensions and conflicts often dominate headlines about threats to travel, the real bottleneck might be much closer to home, finding enough people to work in hotels, restaurants, airlines and tourism services. So I wonder how is this workforce shortage manifesting in the events industry? And maybe if either of you is already seeing, you know, hints about it when it comes to conference centers, maybe catering services or general event staffing, I don't know if you've heard, you both were recently at fam trip, so I'm curious if you've heard anything coming from these places. Jennifer N. Dienst: I did not on my most recent fam trips. What about you, Kate? Kate Mulcrone: One thing I'm noticing when I put together the Raise newsletter and it includes job postings from PCMA's job board, there are a whole lot of F and B jobs in there and they the ad stays up. I do think that this is already an area of pressure. So when I read this I really started thinking to myself, yes, this is a report about tourism, but this seems like an issue that's really about growing economic inequality and that's global and not really specific even to these countries. And then the article, it talks about how they need to have people to fill positions that rely heavily on human interaction and services that cannot be easily automated. So that's great but so we recognize there's a huge need for these people. These career paths need to offer an attractive wage and an opportunity for growth. Or if that isn't in the cards, if you don't want to make like really wonderful full time with benefits tourism industry jobs, then I think the industry needs to recognize, okay, we're going to staff from people who are really young, who are like pre university and with people who are retired and not looking for full time work, but maybe they would really enjoy working in tourism. And I think this just comes back to for me at least a lot of people who work in customer service are in a job where you rely on tips. They keep getting told to go out and get a better job and now we're seeing that shift. People who worked in the service industry are getting different kinds of roles and it's creating these labor shortages that, that were discussed at the conference. Jennifer N. Dienst: I think you touched on something, Kate, that is something we've known about for a while, specifically within the business events industry. And that is young people aren't necessarily aware that. And I'm really honing in on business events, that it's a viable career option. That's something that I had come up in a few conversations that I've had with, with people who are well established in our industry. And it seems like, you know, we need to invest more resources in making young people, whether they're in undergrad or in grad programs, more aware of the opportunities that are available in the business events industry and not entry level jobs, know, working like the front desk at a hotel. We're talking like bigger picture, like what a, what a career could look like in this industry. So I read a story last year or earlier this year about Merits and how they participated in a competition for business school students. It's called X Culture and it asked business school students to prove the economic, social and cultural impact a major event can bring to a city. So this program basically poses a different question to business school students, like every year in a competition. And this year or this past year focused on business events. So Merits participated as well as the Best Cities alliance. Ben G, who I got to chat with, as well as Eduardo Chayo, the global general manager for Latin America, they told me that, you know, this is something that we're always talking about. How do we get young people excited about our industry? And we, and Benji said that this for us was one of the things that people can get very excited about by creating something that was specifically for them, this competition. And according to Eduardo, engaging with students in this way piqued their curiosity more deeply about the industry. He said that they got that this wasn't only about transitions and logistics. This is an industry that is a lot more than that. They understood that it can benefit a lot of people, not only in an economic way. Speaking specifically about how meetings and events can impact a destination, but in the academic and the learning and the knowledge that is shared at events. So I think this is a really good example of how we can expose young people to kind of the broader effects of the business events industry. Not just that, okay, we're just like going to go and host an event. That's it, we're done. It can have a wider, more important impact. But having, demonstrating that to them in this competition was a lot more effective at convincing them to kind of entertain this idea of the business events industry as an interesting career option. So I thought that was, that was really cool. And it seems to me from speaking with them that we need to come up with more ways to do this and get young people at whatever stage they're in, in their career or in school, interested in the. Magdalina Atanassova: I cannot agree more. And actually something that happened to me last year at Convening EMEA, there were students volunteering. They were from a local school, you know, studying. I. I'm not even sure they were all profiling in meetings and events, but they were in tourism program. And one of them, I had an opportunity to be at a session with her. She was so excited to be at that event. It was her first event, and she said that she couldn't sleep after the first day that she got so overwhelmed with positive emotions. And she said, you know, it makes me feel like I belong here. I don't even know these people. So it's obviously her first event. She. It's not that she's connected to everyone like many of us are being a few years in the industry, but she felt very welcomed, very engaged in the program, helping out the team, team on site. She just felt all that energy that, you know, all the event planners are really obsessed about. And that's why everybody that does events, does events. And it was amazing to see the. Just the spark in her eyes. She was like, yes, that's my career. I know it now in this moment. If you ask me, I know what I will be doing for the rest of my life. It was such a, such a cool moment to experience because I feel a lot of us on that table. Listening to her share her story, we were like, oh, that makes me remember it know, 20 years ago when I was starting in the industry, that's how I felt. And it was just this very heartwarming moment. But in exactly. We need to expose younger professionals to the industry in this way. Not explain to them and not, you know, give them strange examples they can't relate to, which I feel sometimes we do. So it's very disconnected. And then we wonder why, you know, students or younger people don't have any interest. Like, no, no, that's not. Tell a story that people can relate to, show it, make people part of the journey, and then they can relate. And also speaking about money, we recently spoke about the salary survey on the podcast. So that's also big, important thing we need to address because let's face it, especially when you start in the industry, your salary is. Jennifer N. Dienst: Yeah. Magdalina Atanassova: Hard to sustain yourself on. Jennifer N. Dienst: Yeah. And when there's, you know, and when you. There's other industries that you can go into and, you know, that don't necessarily require a ton of training or education and you could make a lot more money, like. Yeah, like going into AI or learning how to code or, you know, going into, you know, other industries. Yeah, it's kind of. Kate Mulcrone: It's kind of hard. Jennifer N. Dienst: I can see why it would be hard to convince people, I think. I think that you'd have to, you know, really convince them of the perks of the industry, which is travel. To me. I think if there's, you know, some of the things that. When I was younger and, like, first starting out in journalism and I was kind of deciding where I wanted to work and, like, bouncing around between different publications, I was really interested in, like, lifestyle, like women's lifestyle and, like, fashion and like, maybe, you know, a food magazine. And, you know, all of them seemed interesting. But then when I got my first job at meetings and conventions and realized, like, this is a really fun way to travel and meet people, that was like, the clincher for me. I think it probably, I'm guessing, applies to those working in the industry as well. Like, if. If travel's your thing, meeting people, being part of events which are exciting, then that's, you know, those are the things that we need. We need to emphasize a little bit more. Magdalina Atanassova: And I would urge the industry really as a whole to think about it, because if we don't find quickly a way to introduce more people into the industry soon, this will reflect on prices quite a bit, on availability, on the actual service that attendees will be getting. Because, let's face it, when you invest going into an event, you expect a certain level of service throughout, not only from the event planners and the event that they put together, but also when it comes to the hotel, convention center, the transportation, the location, the destination itself. Right. You expect the whole place to deliver. So it will be interesting how this will affect pricing, availability, lead times, if you may. Also, I'm thinking of the upcoming global events that are going to the U.S. like, what was it, the FIFA? The World cup is going to the U.S. and the Olympics. And correct me if I'm wrong, but they also rely on a lot of temporary stuff. And I mean, if there are no people, you want people that actually know how to care for others. You can't just randomly select people for service jobs. So this can be potentially an issue. Jennifer N. Dienst: Yeah, that's something I chatted with La tourism about. And they have quite a few programs designed to expose and help young people get into various aspects of the events and tourism industries there. And it's something that they said has really benefited them, but it's also really benefited young people. And one of the areas he said that has been really fruitful is helping kids, especially from junior and community colleges, which I don't know if that's a thing where you are, Maggie, but the, you know, kids at kids who are in junior and community colleges, a lot of times, like if you're, if you're going to one of those, you're going because not always, but, you know, you might not have the budget to go to a four year, like traditional university. So working with these kids to kind of give them an opportunity to explore this career path is kind of, you know, a, it's a win, win. That's something that they've been doing. They have something called the Career Academy and that's something that they've had for five years now. But they've also started a new pilot program, an apprenticeship program, and that's something that they've been doing, working with leaders in the community and providing internship opportunities that are actually paid. So that's something that's been working out really well for them. They kind of get to work in different, like, spaces to kind of explore like where they want to go. It seems like they've really kind of honed in on how can we tap into young people as a talent pipeline because they also see that it's a challenge. I'm interested to touch base with them again and talk to them as the Olympics come up to see if they're expanding that to the Olympics. I feel like that would be really cool as like a young person to get to work the Olympics, you know, and be exposed to the events industry in that way. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, for sure. I remember when I was young and we had the Olympics in Greece. I didn't want to go so bad, but I was too young, so go ahead. Jennifer N. Dienst: Oh, that would have been amazing. Greece where it started. Wow. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah. Yeah. But when I went to study there afterwards, we actually explored all the white elephants, or we call white elephants venues that are left behind. They're built for a purpose, but they, they're never reused. And that was many years ago. Now the Olympics are very strategic about what they build, and I think it's because of old additions like that that they had actually a lot of infrastructure built and not reused or utilized in any sensible way for the community. But luckily that's behind us. Thank you, Kate, for highlighting the fact that we can't bridge the gap with technology. I mean, some of those jobs are just not replaceable with technology. So we need to find human beings for service industry like ours and those adjacent to us. Because tourism touches all of the event. Kate Mulcrone: Aspects well into Jen's point. Show them that this is a career path where they can grow, not just you're a set of hands and a friendly smile. I think that you're good to spell that out with examples of destinations who are doing it right already. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, yeah. Because when you hear 43 million people that are not going to be working and we need them to be working in the industry, that's, I mean, in travel and tourism in general, it's quite a big number. And I love the fact that the article highlighted also the fact that we don't have an issue with over tourism, but a concentration of tourism in certain spots. So if we distribute this in general, and I think events can be quite helpful in that sense, showing different locations to audiences and to event planners so they can, you know, help disperse this kind of obsession with certain cities and destinations. Kate Mulcrone: Right. Plus events are a good excuse to build up your infrastructure for visitors. Magdalina Atanassova: Absolutely. Kate Mulcrone: Like the money for visitors might start with events and then it becomes also commercial tourism afterwards. Magdalina Atanassova: No white elephants. I actually, I feed these articles to AI and I am like, so give me a very nice way to end the podcast. And so it said, until next time, keep creating memorable experiences and let's hope we can find people to help bring them to life. Kate Mulcrone: I like it. Too bad the AI can't come to life and help us, right? Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah. I mean, it has some quirky lines, so why not? Awesome. Well, I hope we can, you know, come up as an industry together and be strategic about it because we need talent. We desperately need talent. Well, with that, thank you for the conversation. Jennifer N. Dienst: Thanks, Maggie. Magdalina Atanassova: Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.