Research / Publications
Research / Publications
Welcome to the research/publications site of the Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council, which shares facts and figures regarding the tourism labour market, as well as tools and information about industry-specific human resource issues and trends. Discover the CTHRC’s upcoming and ongoing research projects and learn how to get involved.
The CTHRC assists the tourism sector in understanding the nature of its labour market. Tourism faces many challenges attracting labour to the sector. In order to effectively address this situation, businesses need to understand the demographic and employment characteristics of workers in the sector. It is also important to have access to information regarding the overall size of the labour market, the projected growth in demand for tourism labour, and the projected supply of labour in Canada over the coming years.
Accurate and credible compensation information is extremely important to tourism sector stakeholders, who need to make wage decisions that are reasonably consistent with the market while also dealing with misconceptions that affect the occupational attractiveness of the sector. In this section, the CTHRC is pleased to provide access to detailed national compensation and benefits information for more than thirty occupations within the tourism sector, and, where possible, information at provincial and sub-provincial levels.
In 2006, the CTHRC developed a generic tool to measure the Return on Training Investment (ROTI) for the tourism sector. The tool’s objective was to provide a means to identify the value of dollars invested in training related to the costs of training and the benefits achieved in increased sales, guest satisfaction, and productivity. The tool focuses on six performance measures: sales, upselling, staff turnover, customer satisfaction, employee competence, and cost savings. With access to the right metrics, this tool can be used by almost any tourism employer to measure the return on investment businesses receive from training their frontline staff.
As part of its credential recognition mandate, CTHRC conducts pilot projects and undertakes collaborative partnerships with a variety of organizations to bring about systemic change and increase labour and learner mobility, both nationally and internationally.
Debates about productivity are high on international agendas, yet this issue is virtually unexplored with respect to tourism businesses. The traditional concept of productivity has been developed for manufacturing industries, and it is well known that productivity rates can be impacted by many factors (new technology, training, sufficient availability of labour, more efficient work practices, etc.). However, in the case of a service sector such as tourism, the definition of productivity is complicated. As such, the Council is working with academics from various disciplines to analyze productivity trends in tourism using existing measurements for individual tourism industries, as well as reviewing research previously conducted on labour market and technology trends in tourism and other sectors.
Do you want to know…
- How many people work in the tourism sector?
- The age, gender, and geographic location of tourism employees?
- How much tourism employees are paid? What type of benefits they receive?
- How many people who work in tourism immigrated to Canada?
- Whether your business will face any labour shortage challenges in 10 years?
- How tourism employment compares to the overall Canadian economy?
Visit this section of the site for numerous facts about tourism employment in Canada, including who is employed, where, and in which industry, compensation levels, tourism labour supply and demand, and much, much more!
This section offers information about CTHRC’s ongoing and upcoming research initiatives. Visit this section to learn how YOU can get involved and/or to provide your suggestions and comments related to existing, upcoming, and new tourism employment research.
Our members are very important to us and we want to be able to communicate our work to them as quickly and effectively as possible. This section is dedicated to those members. Benefits of becoming a CTHRC member include free research reports and regular electronic updates focused on the latest news on the tourism labour market. Find out more about the benefits of CTHRC membership.
