Seasonal Employment in Tourism

This chapter addresses the specific relationship between seasonality in tourism and employment in the sector. Consumer demand for tourism products and services fluctuates hugely in temporal terms across the day, week and season and in response to planned and unexpected events such as economic downturn, natural disasters and, as we witnessed so dramatically in 2020, as a consequence of a global health crisis. This variability is known as stochastic demand and has a very significant impact on the lives of those who work in tourism, on who they are, where they come from and what opportunities tourism is able to offer them. In this chapter, we will discuss how the consequences of one particular dimension of stochastic demand, seasonality, impacts on work and the workforce in tourism. We will illustrate what tourism employment in relatively seasonal destinations looks like and how such employment fits into the local community and its economy by drawing on two case examples from the summer destination of Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada and the winter visitor area of Sälen in mid Sweden.