How to Hire Safely in a Growing Hospitality Industry

Hospitality in Australia and New Zealand is growing. The problem is that the workforce isn’t keeping pace and that gap is where hiring risk lives. 

Revenue across New Zealand’s cafés, restaurants, bars, private clubs, luxury lodges, and tourism experiences now exceeds NZ$21 billion annually, employing nearly 200,000 people nationwide. In Australia, the accommodation and food services industry contributes $63.4 billion to the economy and employs over 1.2 million workers with job vacancies sitting at historic highs. Growth is real. But so is the pressure on every operator trying to staff for it.  

The temptation in a tight market is to hire fast and hope. The risk is that a rushed hire in hospitality doesn’t just affect one role, it affects every shift, every table, and every guest interaction that person touches. 

The Market Pressure Is Structural, Not Seasonal 

This isn’t a temporary post-pandemic blip. As of early 2025, 65% of hotels across Australia and New Zealand reported staffing shortages, with 71% unable to fill vacancies despite offering higher wages. Chefs, front-of-house leads, and experienced kitchen staff are among the hardest roles to fill across both markets.  

In New Zealand, rising input costs, wage pressures, and skill shortages continue to constrain profitability and staffing demand is strong for senior front-of-house, event, and kitchen leadership roles. In Australia, accommodation and food services growth forecasts have been revised upward to 2.5% for 2026 but that opportunity only translates into revenue if businesses have the people to deliver it.  

When candidates are scarce and pressure is high, even experienced operators start cutting corners: relaxing reference checks, skipping proper inductions, hiring on gut feel over genuine suitability. That’s when the real costs start to accumulate. 

What a Bad Hire Actually Costs a Hospitality Business 

The number that gets cited most often is somewhere between 50 and 150% of annual salary. Australian HR surveys consistently put the real cost of a bad hire at between 50 and 200 per cent of first-year salary, depending on role seniority and how long before the poor fit is addressed. For a head chef or venue manager, that figure is material.  

But in hospitality, the damage runs deeper than the direct financial cost. A poor hire in a customer-facing role affects reviews, repeat business, and team morale often simultaneously. Twenty-three percent of Australian HR leaders report that a bad hire leads to a significant drop in staff morale, and in an industry already dealing with burnout and high turnover, losing a strong performer who couldn’t tolerate working alongside a poor one is a compounding loss.  

From 1 January 2025, intentional underpayment became a criminal offence in Australia which means misclassifying a role or applying the wrong award rate during a hurried hire carries consequences that go well beyond an HR headache.  

From our conversations with hospitality operators across both countries, the pattern is consistent: the hires that cause the most damage is almost never made deliberately. They’re made under pressure, with incomplete information, because the next service starts in two weeks and someone has to be in the role. 

What Hiring Safely Actually Looks Like 

Safe hiring in a fast-moving hospitality market isn’t about slowing down it’s about running the right process at pace. 

That means thorough reference checks on every hire, not just the senior ones. It means being clear about what the role requires on a busy Saturday night, not just what looks good in a job description. It means understanding the difference between a candidate who is available and a candidate who is genuinely suited to your venue’s pace, culture, and expectations. 

It also means knowing who is in the candidate pool right now not who posted a résumé six months ago. Gen Z now represents 64% of hospitality shift workers in Australia, up from 61% in 2024, and their expectations around scheduling transparency, communication, and workplace culture are reshaping what a compelling role looks like. An offer that would have secured someone two years ago may not be competitive today.  

Why a Specialist Recruiter Changes the Equation 

The value of working with a specialist hospitality recruiter isn’t access to a database it’s access to informed judgment at the point where you need it most. 

A recruiter who knows the market knows what realistic expectations look like for a floor manager in Auckland versus a venue manager in Brisbane. They know which candidates genuinely passive and which ones are quietly looking. They’ve had the conversations that don’t happen on a formal application about what someone is leaving, what they’re moving toward, and whether the fit is real. 

That context is what turns a fast hire into a safe one. 

At Frontline Hospitality, we recruit across Australia and New Zealand for venues where staffing decisions directly affect the guest experience and the business’s ability to trade. If the current market is making every hire feel like a gamble, let’s talk about how to change that. 

 

Sources: Pomeroy Group, Hospitality Outlook in Aotearoa New Zealand 2026, October 2025 · Accommodation Australia, Pre-Budget Submission 2026-27 · Switch Hotel Solutions, Labour Shortages Impact on Hotel Operations, November 2025 · ScaleSuite, Cost of a Bad Hire in Australia, March 2026 · Wise Recruitments, Cost of a Bad Hire vs Labour Hire, May 2026 · SMS Personnel, Real Cost of a Bad Hire in Australia, November 2025 · Deputy, Big Shift Report 2026 · Torrens University, Hotel Career and Industry Trends 2026, February 2026