In order to attract more personnel, the Austrian hotel industry association ÖHV (Österreichische Hoteliervereinigung) has signed a master contract with pension provider VBV Group.
Tourism is an important pillar of the Austrian economy with around 500,000 employees. Therefore, the industry is feeling the retirement wave paired with a shortage of young people and trainees willing to work in the field more than other industries. Furthermore, tourism also has still not fully recovered from the COVID pandemic, the association noted.
But the ÖHV is convinced that occupational pension offers – which are still rare in Austria in general and in the tourism industry in particular – will help attract more staff. The association has 1,700 members with a combined number of around 62,000 employees.
“With a pension fund – i.e. a company pension plan – companies are positioning themselves as attractive employees,” Markus Gratzer, secretary general of the ÖHV, noted in a press release.
VBV as partner
Not all of them will be joining the €15bn VBV Group – which runs a €8.5bn Pensionskasse (pension fund) and a €6.3bn Vorsorgekasse (provident fund) – but the master agreement signed with the ÖHV is aimed at making it easier for companies to set up occupational pension plans.
When the severance pay arrangements were changed in Austria in 2003 to create the provident funds for managing the money set aside for employees leaving companies, the ÖHV and the VBV Group had already joined forces. Now this cooperation on the level of the Vorsorgekasse was extended to the Pensionskasse.
No details of the master agreement (Rahmenvertrag) was made public, however, the ÖHV noted on its website that special arrangements are available for part-time employees. Seasonal workers are a common occurrence in the industry and the part-time working trend is noticeable too.
The agreement is to serve as a framework for hotels and similar businesses wanting to set up an occupational pension plan. It ensures that companies can still make individual arrangements for their pension plan but that some of the groundwork is already laid, according to the associaiton.
Additionally, the ÖHV and VBV Group agreed that companies taking the full package, i.e. switching to or staying with the VBV Vorsorgekasse as well as setting up a pension plan with VBV Pensionskasse, will get better terms – no matter how big the company is.
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