How to hire seasonal workers for hospitality (before the competition does)

Seasonal workers in hospitality are in highest demand across four key windows: summer, Christmas and New Year, school holiday periods, and major events and festivals. Each one has its own timeline, its own competition for candidates, and its own planning requirements. 

Summer season  

Summer is the biggest seasonal staffing window for most hospitality operators. Outdoor activity venues, hotels, holiday parks, theme parks and resorts all see demand surge from late spring, and the numbers confirm it. Hospitality recorded 117,777 active vacancies in June 2026 alone, a 36% increase on the month before.  

When to start hiring for summer: By June, the strongest candidates are already booked in. Operators who consistently fill their rotas before the bank holidays start hiring in April, three months before most businesses have even posted a job ad. 

Holiday seasons  

Christmas markets, city tourism, and festive events drive a significant uplift in demand. You're also competing with retailers for the same pool of seasonal workers, which tightens the candidate pool further. 

When to start hiring for Christmas: Earlier than you'd think. For country house hotels, restaurants and venues running Christmas programmes, the advice from operators is to have your core team locked in by August or September, four months before the season begins. Venues that leave it later find themselves competing for a much thinner pool of candidates, often at higher cost. 

School holidays  

UK school holidays vary by region. The big breaks at Christmas, Easter and summer are obvious, but half-term periods, roughly every six weeks, can also affect footfall and workforce needs, even if they don't require a full recruitment drive. 

When to start hiring for school holidays: For Easter and summer, treat them like a mini version of your main peak - four to six weeks of lead time minimum for front-of-house roles, longer for anything specialist. 

Special events and festivals  

Local events, festivals, conferences, and sports tournaments create sharp, short-term demand spikes. In 2025, over 1,000 UK festivals created 85,000 temporary roles and that's before you factor in the bars, restaurants and hotels serving the crowds around them. Major sports events like World Cup or Wimbledon but the ripple effect goes further than that - pubs showing the 2025 Six Nations saw revenue rise 17% and pint sales rise 26% on non-match weekends, wherever they were located. That kind of surge means extra hands on deck, not just in host cities, but anywhere showing the game. 

When to start hiring for events: For recurring annual events, build recruitment into your calendar as soon as dates are confirmed, ideally six to eight weeks out. One-off events need even more lead time, as you'll be competing with every other operator in the area simultaneously. 

What seasonal workers want: key factors to consider for successful recruitment   

Attracting good candidates starts with understanding what they're looking for.   

Flexibility  

Seasonal contracts offer something many candidates actively want: the ability to work during specific periods and step back in between. For students, that might mean working through summer and returning to study in autumn.  

Skills development  

Training and development sessions are the third most important benefit for hospitality workers overall, cited by 52% of employees in the Hospitality People Survey. For candidates early in their careers, hospitality offers a broad, transferable skill set: customer service, event management, and team leadership.  

Experience and the role itself 

For candidates who want to work in different environments: a beachfront hotel, a ski resort, or a festival site, the role itself is the draw. Accommodation and meals as part of the package are a genuine selling point for this group, and food and drink discounts rank as the second most used benefit in the sector. 

Perks and benefits  

Some candidates will be motivated by the benefits your business offers: discounted stays, complimentary meals, access to facilities, or the chance to attend the event they're working at.  

10 tips for getting seasonal hiring right 

1. Start recruiting before the shortage peaks 

The hospitality labour market tightens sharply as peak season approaches —- and it doesn't tighten evenly. Coastal counties, the South West and East Anglia are seeing the deepest candidate shortages this year, with some areas reporting vacancy rates well above the national average. If your business is in one of these regions, start your recruitment campaign at least four to six weeks earlier than you otherwise would. 

The practical fix is to build your recruitment timeline backwards from your opening or peak date. Allow time to advertise, screen, complete right-to-work checks and run onboarding before the first busy weekend. For summer, that means starting in April. For Christmas - August or September. Waiting until the shortage is visible means competing for whoever is left. 

2. Build a seasonal talent pool, not a one-off hiring push 

Treating seasonal recruitment as a fresh start every year is one of the most expensive habits in hospitality. Recruiting, onboarding and training a single new hire typically costs between £3,000 and £6,000 when done in-house, and up to 20% of first-year salary if you're using an agency. 

Operators who maintain an active pool of seasonal workers have more chances to fill vacancies faster and at lower cost per hire than those starting from scratch each time. 

3. Lead with pay transparency, not just pay level 

Minimum wage increases and rising Employer National Insurance contributions are squeezing margins across the sector, and most operators know they can't simply out-bid competitors on hourly rate. What they can do, and what many don't, is be completely upfront about pay and hours from the first touchpoint. 

Candidates who can't quickly find out what a role pays, how many hours they'll get, or whether shifts are guaranteed will move on to an advert that tells them. Analysis of Reed.co.uk job adverts found listings showing salary details attracted 27% more applications than those without, and 8 in 10 jobseekers say they're less likely to apply for a role if the salary isn't displayed.  

Include the hourly rate, the expected weekly hours, and the contract type in the job title or the first line of the advert. If there's a pay range, state it. Clarity is a competitive advantage when the market is tight. 

4. Sell the shift pattern, not just the job 

Predictability has become a genuine differentiator for seasonal workers. Cost-of-living pressure is pushing candidates toward retail and warehousing roles specifically because the hours are more reliable - they can plan their finances, their childcare and their travel around a consistent schedule. Hospitality has historically struggled to compete on this front. 

Where you can offer consistent shift patterns, say so clearly in your adverts and at interview. Where you can't, be honest about it, and think about what you can offer instead. Advance notice of rotas, easy shift-swap processes and clear communication about changes all reduce the uncertainty that puts candidates off.  

Rotaready Evo gives managers the tools to publish rotas further in advance and handle shift changes without the back-and-forth, which makes it easier to deliver on the predictability candidates are looking for. 

5. Cut time-to-hire 

When candidates are fielding multiple offers simultaneously - which is the reality in a market with 130,000 unfilled roles, a slow recruitment process loses people to operators who can confirm a start date within days. Every unnecessary stage, every delayed response, every week spent waiting for a panel interview is a candidate who has accepted a job elsewhere. 

Audit your current process and remove anything that doesn't add value. Phone or video screening in the first stage, followed by a single face-to-face interview, is sufficient for most front-of-house seasonal roles. Automate what you can: application acknowledgements, interview scheduling, offer letters and right-to-work document requests can all be handled without manual intervention.  

Talent Funnel's automated workflows handle these steps in the background, so your managers spend time on decisions rather than admin. 

6. Fix the compliance and admin burden before it puts candidates off 

Right-to-work checks, holiday pay calculations, zero-hours contract documentation and the requirements introduced under recent employment legislation have all added to the administrative load of seasonal hiring.  

Candidates in 2026 expect the same frictionless digital experience from an employer that they get from every other app on their phone. A process that involves printing, scanning, chasing documents by email or waiting days for a contract to arrive signals that working here might be more hassle than it's worth. 

Get your compliance process digital and as frictionless as possible. Right-to-work checks should be completable remotely, before the first shift. Holiday pay should be calculated automatically, not manually at the end of a contract. Contracts should be issued and signed digitally, ideally within hours of an offer being accepted. The less friction there is between offer and first shift, the fewer candidates you lose to second thoughts.  

This is where an integrated people platform makes a real difference. The Access Hospitality People Suite handles right-to-work checks, contract generation, holiday pay calculations and onboarding documentation digitally, so candidates can complete everything on their phone before their first shift. 

7. Give people a genuine reason to come back next season 

A returning worker costs a fraction of a new hire to onboard, reaches full productivity faster and already understands your standards and your guests. 

The mechanics are straightforward: collect contact details and end-of-season feedback from every leaver, note who performed well, and reach out before you advertise publicly. A simple message to last year's team, sent in February or March, will often fill a significant proportion of your seasonal roles before a single job ad goes live. Talent Funnel's candidate database keeps your previous applicants searchable and ready to contact, so your alumni pool is a starting point each season, not a spreadsheet you have to rebuild from scratch. 

8. Use referral incentives from your existing team 

Your current employees are one of the most effective and underused recruitment channels available to you. They know your business, they know what the role involves, and they're likely to refer people who will fit in, which means lower dropout rates and faster time to productivity than candidates sourced through open advertising. 

A structured referral programme doesn't need to be complicated. A cash bonus paid after a referred candidate completes their first four weeks, communicated clearly to your existing team at the start of the hiring season, is enough to generate meaningful referrals. In a thin candidate market, particularly in coastal and rural areas where the pool is smaller, referrals from people who live locally can make a significant difference to fill rates. 

9. Recruit for fit as well as availability 

When the candidate market is tight, it's tempting to hire anyone who is free and available. The risk is that a team assembled purely on availability, without any assessment of attitude, reliability or alignment with your service standards, creates problems that are harder to fix once peak season is underway. 

A short, consistent screening process protects service quality without slowing down time-to-hire significantly. Define what good performance looks like for each role before you start advertising, and use that definition to guide your screening questions. For front-of-house roles, attitude and communication matter more than prior experience. For roles with compliance requirements like food safety and alcohol licensing, make those non-negotiable from the start. Being clear about expectations at the point of hire reduces the number of early leavers and protects the guest experience when the team is mostly new.