Every year, millions of visitors flock to the Alps – with a correspondingly high demand for workers. Yet the tourist industry does not have the best reputation: low wages, long hours of overtime, seasonal work and a lack of career prospects all mean that up to a quarter of all employees leave the sector every year. Without workers from abroad, business in many localities would have ceased long ago.
Who are these people? What motivates them to go abroad to find work? What are the hopes, challenges and feelings that accompany them along the way?
Are you one of them? Then let us hear your story.
Staff at the Hotel Kurhaus in Bergün, 1912 and 2021
Today, the team has 54 members from eight nations: 33 from Switzerland, 10 from Portugal, four from Germany, three from Italy and the rest from other European countries.
Photography 1912: Archiv Hotel Kurhaus Bergün
Photography 2021: Ralph Feiner
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