Maine's hospitality industry is launching a new effort to train workers and match them with jobs in the service sector. The hope is to make progress in time to avoid repeating the staffing crisis that accompanied a surge in tourism this year.
The most recent tax data indicate that despite the effects of the pandemic, gross revenues for Maine's restaurants, lodging and related businesses are on course to beat the $4 billion record year of 2019.
"We're going to surpass that in 2021 with 13,000 less employees, as of now," says Steve Hewins, executive director of the Hospitality Maine Education Foundation, a nonprofit recently formed by the industry trade group. He says that while demand and prices rose quickly in Maine this summer, that was accompanied by supply-line breakdowns, worker scarcity and burnout for staff and owners alike.
The plan, titled Dirigo 2025, aims to aggressively expand the pipeline of trained-up Maine hospitality workers. Hewins says it will build on culinary programs in the state's career and tech schools, provide credits for on-the-job experience, and create more certification programs at the college and continuing ed levels.
"In the end we’re going to employ fewer people, but they're going to be much more beneficial to business because they'll be more skilled and educated and able to do more. And consequently they'll be more valuable and they will make more money," Hewins says. "That's the recipe for removing old narratives and actually executing and not just talking about problems."
Hewins says metrics for success are still being developed, but he's looking to see many more Maine-trained workers in the field by high summer 2022.