ABSTRACT
The issue of unacceptably high rates of labour turnover within the hospitality industry has been a recurring theme in this book in terms of the detriment to successful human resource management caused by the lack of workforce stability created by frequent incidence of labour turnover. Indeed, the challenge to retain more skilled employees within the industry has been a much-researched topic within every report or study conducted into the hospitality workforce characteristics, not just in the UK, but worldwide (see Lucas, 2004: 32–34). Too often, the hospitality and tourism sectors have topped the ‘league table’ of labour turnover rates. However, there are reasons to be more cheerful than in the last edition of this book, when it was reported that the industry norm in 2000 was 48 per cent per annum (according to government statistics) and this was compared to a 2003 report by the CIPD that the UK's national, all-sector average was 16 per cent per annum. More recently, however, the hospitality industry labour turnover rate for the UK industry has been reported as declining to 31 per cent in 2009 and down again to 23 per cent in 2011 (People 1st, 2011: 62).
