Comfy Hotel Chain

Insight

In the aftermath of COVID, the hospitality industry faced a structural disruption that traditional recruitment methods were not equipped to solve.

For this hotel group, the challenge was immediate and operationally critical.

A significant portion of their workforce — previously composed of international staff — had left the country and did not return. This created a sudden labour shortage across multiple locations, directly impacting the brand’s ability to operate at full capacity.

However, the issue extended beyond availability.

Even when potential candidates existed locally, they did not align with the expectations or motivations of the previous workforce. The traditional recruitment approach — job boards, generic listings, functional messaging — failed to resonate with a new generation of workers.

This reframed the problem entirely.

The challenge was not just to find workers — but to identify a new workforce segment and redefine how the role itself was perceived.

Execution

We approached the task as a combined workforce strategy and demand-generation challenge, rather than a standard hiring campaign.

What emerged was not a hiring campaign, but a perception shift — repositioning hospitality roles as desirable, social, and formative experiences.

The first step was analytical.

Targeting was built around student demographics with capacity for part-time work, supported by platform-native formats optimised for engagement and reach. The campaign structure prioritised both scale and frequency, ensuring consistent exposure across the relevant audience.

We studied the composition and behavioural patterns of the brand’s previous workforce to understand what had historically driven retention and performance. In parallel, we analysed the current labour landscape to identify segments with both availability and potential alignment.

This approach aligned the opportunity with the aspirations of the audience, rather than the needs of the employer.

This led to a clear opportunity: students.

Instead of focusing on tasks or requirements, messaging reframed the role as an entry point into independence, confidence, and real-world experience. Creative concepts centred around transformation — who individuals could become, the environments they could be part of, and the sense of belonging associated with working in hospitality.

This audience offered both flexibility and scale, but presented a new challenge. Unlike experienced hospitality workers, students were not actively seeking long-term roles in the industry, nor did they inherently see themselves within it.

Campaigns were designed not as job advertisements, but as identity-driven narratives.

To bridge this gap, the strategy shifted from recruitment to positioning.

Results

The strategy delivered both immediate operational impact and broader brand value.

Over the course of the campaign:

• 1,400+ roles were successfully filled
• Workforce capacity was restored across multiple locations
• Brand awareness increased significantly among younger audiences

Beyond hiring outcomes, the campaign achieved something more fundamental.

It introduced the brand to a new generation of workers — not as an employer of necessity, but as a place associated with growth, community, and experience.

This created a sustainable recruitment pipeline, reducing reliance on previous workforce structures and enabling future hiring to scale more efficiently.