Hotel needed for staff, not guests

Monday 16 December 2019

A major Jersey hotel says its staffing situation has become so "desperate" that it has put in plans to transform another hotel into lodgings, to help it attract employees.

Lodestar Group, which owns the Royal Yacht Hotel and Spa, is aiming to covert the Mountview Hotel building into staff accommodation.

In its application to the planning department, the hotel owner spoke of industry-wide hospitality staff shortages, and disclosed its own struggles to recruit without sufficient accommodation for workers.

The plans don’t involve making many changes to the Mountview itself, which is based on St. John’s Road.

In the design statement outlining the application to turn the 33 hotel rooms into staff accommodation, the applicants’ architects state: “The Royal Yacht Hotel and Spa has some properties that they use for staff accommodation, but given the high number of staff required to keep the hotel running (240+) and the cost of privately available rooms, they desperately need to find more accommodation to ensure affordability and longevity of staff members.

“It is publicly known that there is a major shortfall in staffing levels across the tourism industry and the company need to take measures to keep the staff they have.”

This follows a recent recruitment push to hire graduates from Nairobi to plug gaps in Jersey’s struggling hospitality industry.

The statement continues by stating that the Mountview Hotel building “would go a long way to helping this issue, without the need for any structural or major physical works, with only cosmetic works in removing part of the kitchen, bart, etc".

The Royal Yacht has applied to the Planning Office for permission to change the use of the site in this fashion so that the hotel can be used to house their staff.

Pictured: Almost 100 Kenyan professionals were recently approved to work in Jersey's hospitality industry on short-term contracts.

It’s proposed that the only changes they will make to the Mountview will be stripping out the kitchen – due to the fact that all Royal Yacht staff are fed for free at their work – and refitting the laundry room to make it suitable for the staff’s personal use. 

Bringing the application to a close, the hotel’s statement concludes: “The Royal Yacht Hotel have been extensively searching for a property to suit their needs for providing staff accommodation, the Mountview Hotel provides them with this accommodation without any alterations to the layout, yet providing the facilities required and it is within easy walking or cycling distance to work. We therefore believe this ‘change of use’ should be supported by the Planning Department.”

The outcome of the application is still pending.