As a former prison director, Trevor Wilson Smith spent much of his career dealing with teenagers who had committed a serious crime. Now he is solving the problems of hotel guests at a luxury country retreat in North Yorkshire.
The 68-year-old came out of retirement in 2022 to work as a concierge on the sprawling castle estate of the Swinton Park Hotel, joining the ranks of older people helping ease a critical staff shortage in the hospitality industry. Having previously managed a team of about 200, he now reports to a 24-year-old supervisor.
Research from HR management system Employment Hero has found a near 10 per cent increase in the baby boomer generation returning to casual hospitality roles to supplement their income and stay active. The sector has the second-highest employment growth for this age group after finance and insurance.
An earlier study from Caterer.com, based on ONS data, found the over-50s made up more than a third of the hospitality industry’s workforce, with 165,000 joining the sector in the past three years.
Their return partly reverses a trend seen in the early years of the pandemic, when many over-50s left the UK workforce to retire early.
Now, hospitality, once a long-hour, hard-graft, high-turnover culture, has evolved to be a more flexible working environment and as a result, is drawing more older workers back. Employers say they are attracted by the wide range of roles the industry offers as well as the social element. They have found hiring more in this age group boosts staff retention rates compared with, for example, more transient younger people and students.
Wilson Smith says he rejoined the labour market to stay mentally and physically active rather than for financial reasons. He typically works two eight-hour shifts a week, a flexible arrangement that benefits him and his employer. He is well-placed to accommodate last-minute rota requests that could be more problematic for an employee with other commitments.
Some of the UK’s biggest hospitality companies are now directly targeting older workers. Pub and hotel chain, Fuller’s, for example, has partnered with Rest Less, an over-50s digital community and job site and has adapted its recruitment strategy to attract this cohort. Measures including more age-inclusive recruitment material — depicting older workers and with tweaked wording — have helped double the number of over-50s across Fuller’s 185 managed venues. The age group now represents 12 per cent of the company’s workforce, according to people and talent director, Dawn Browne.
“I thought there may still be reticence about hiring, say, a 60-year-old for certain roles but [managers] have been totally on board,” she says. “A team of mainly very young people can actually be a lot to deal with; managers have to assume a parental role at times and having older team members with more life experience to support younger colleagues can be helpful.”
Previously “recruiters just looked straight at the date of birth on a CV,” says Clare Anna, the co-founder of hotel asset management business London Rock Partners. “Interviewees were always under 30 . . . Now it’s far more common to see a wider range of applicants across the different roles.”
Over-50s have been attracted to the sector partly because responsibilities have evolved to suit them better.
“It’s no longer just being on your feet all day waitressing; there’s more complexity and scope in hotel work, particularly as the operational model changes,” says Anna, citing how back-office roles are increasingly outnumbering front-of-house positions.
“We’re seeing older workers really excel in sales roles and areas such as facilities management because they appreciate it’s about building relationships; whether that’s with the suppliers or the customer. Ultimately, they tend to be calm heads and unfazed by the unexpected.”
At the hotels in London Rock Partners’ portfolio — including the Hilton Garden Inn in Abingdon, Oxford, where 10 per cent of the workforce are over 50 — older staff are more likely to be mentioned by name in a guest review, having taken the time to chat and make a connection with the customer, according to Anna. Like other industry professionals, she is finding that for the younger generation, customer engagement can be more of a challenge.
Employers have had to adapt. “It used to be that people were paid a fixed salary and expected to work however many extra hours were needed, which clearly isn’t fair,” says Ben Mayou, chair of the Lake District Hotels Association and manager of the Lakeside Hotel, a four-star venue in the area. “Why should people work for free? That’s the image we want to get away from and why we’re increasingly paying by the hour.”
A quarter of Mayou’s 120-strong team are aged over 50, including those who were retired and semi-retired and have returned to the workplace in roles spanning reception, porters and housekeeping.
Many are former professionals looking for less responsibility but who are drawn to the social nature of a busy environment. Mayou says his business has a 75 per cent retention rate against the average of 33 per cent in this sector.
This stability is proving to be a key benefit in an industry that has long struggled with retention. Added to this is an increasingly long holiday season that can no longer rely on students over the summer, he adds.
The Lake District Hotel Association has been targeting older workers more robustly by holding in-person recruitment events locally.
“We recognised that you have to get out there and shout about the opportunities because older people can still be deterred from applying for positions in a sector that has long been a young person’s game; it’s a confidence thing; sometimes they still need to be convinced,” says Mayou.
For Wilson Smith at Swinton Park Hotel, the benefits have included boosting fitness — he says he can walk up to five miles on a shift. Mentoring a 20-year-old colleague has been an unexpected perk.
“He was using language that was fine with his peers but less so with retirement-age guests, so it was about covering the basics,” he says. “But I’ve also learnt a lot . . . in terms of his views and perspective on life, it’s a reciprocal thing; with a good mix of young and older here that works very well.”
