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Huron Tourism operators still dealing with staffing issues

Huron County's Tourism Development Officer says tourism operators in the county, generally, reported a fairly strong season this summer.

But Rick Sickinger says the problem almost all of them are dealing with is staff shortages.

"Most of our tourism operators are especially hospitality, restaurants, hotels, report a lot of challenges around finding staff and retaining staff and then the other challenge on top of that is certainly to do with affordable housing for staff."

Sickinger says the problem isn't limited to the tourism industry, he's hearing the same thing from most other sectors, but he says it's particularly exasperated in tourism.

"That's especially exasperated by the tourism industry because they have to staff up for the tourism season from June till the end of September and, as you can imagine, vacancy rates are even lower during the summer than they are any other time of year."

Sickinger adds, they're still dealing with issues around capacity as well as being fully staffed and able to welcome more people and have longer hours and meet the demand that's out there.

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