Every general manager eventually has this conversation with themselves, usually while staring at a roster with more gaps than names on it. Do you keep growing your own team, interview by interview, or do you lean on a hospitality recruitment agency to fill the roles you need, when you need them?
Neither answer is wrong. But they solve different problems, and a lot of properties end up using the wrong one for the situation they're actually in.
This isn't really a question with one correct answer for every hotel. It depends on the role, the timeframe, the budget, and how much internal capacity you have to manage recruitment properly. Here's how the two approaches actually compare.
What Internal Hiring Actually Involves
Building your own team sounds straightforward until you're the one doing it. Internal hiring means writing the job ad, screening applications, running interviews, checking references, handling the paperwork, and then training the person once they start.
For a role like a housekeeping supervisor or a duty manager, where you want someone who understands your property's specific standards and is likely to stay for years, this investment usually pays off. You get someone who knows your systems, your guests and your team, and who isn't starting from scratch every shift.
The trade-off is time and certainty. A thorough hiring process for a senior role can take weeks, sometimes longer if the first round of candidates doesn't work out. And even after all that effort, there's no guarantee the person you hire is still with you in six months. Hospitality has never been an industry where retention comes easily, and a bad hire in a supervisory role can cost more in disruption than the recruitment process itself.
What a Hospitality Recruitment Agency Offers
A hospitality recruitment agency exists to take that legwork off your plate. Instead of writing your own ad and sorting through applications, you describe the role and the agency draws from a pool of candidates who are already registered, often already interviewed, and in some cases already working in similar positions elsewhere.
This tends to suit roles where speed matters more than a long courtship. A night auditor who needs to start this week, a guest service agent covering a busy season, or waitstaff and banquet staff for an event calendar that's already locked in. An agency can usually move faster than an internal hire, because the search doesn't start from zero every time.
The trade-off here is cost and consistency. Agency placement fees or ongoing staffing charges add up, and unless you're working with the same agency repeatedly, you don't always get the same level of familiarity with your property that a long-term employee builds up.
Some agencies specialise narrowly, so it's worth checking whether the one you're considering actually covers the roles you need, whether that's front office, kitchen roles like a CDP chef or steward, or back-of-house positions such as a houseman or public area attendant.
Comparing the Real Costs
Cost comparisons between the two models often get oversimplified into "agencies are expensive" and "hiring yourself is free", and neither of those is quite right.
Internal hiring has costs that don't always show up on the same line item. Job board fees, the hours spent on interviews, onboarding and training time, and the cost of a role sitting vacant while the search drags on all add up, even though none of it looks like a single invoice. A vacant front desk shift or an understaffed kitchen has a real cost in lost service and stressed staff, even if nobody's tracking it that way.
Agency and staffing platform fees are more visible, since they arrive as an invoice, which makes them easier to compare but also easier to flinch at. The fairer comparison isn't the invoice against nothing. It's the invoice against the total cost of running your own search, including the cost of the role staying empty in the meantime.
For back-office functions like payroll or accounts, this comparison often tips toward outsourcing, since the specialist knowledge needed doesn't always justify a full-time internal hire for a smaller property. For a senior, guest-facing leadership role, the calculation usually goes the other way.
Compliance Sits Underneath Both Models
Whichever route you take, the employment side of things doesn't disappear. If you hire directly, you're responsible for getting the award classification, pay rates and entitlements right under the Hospitality Industry (General) Award. If you're using an agency or a labour hire arrangement instead, the responsibility doesn't vanish, it shifts.
Under Fair Work's rules on protected pay rates for labour hire employees, labour hire workers can be entitled to at least the rate that would apply under your own workplace instrument, not whatever the agency happens to pay its own staff.
It's worth asking any agency directly how they handle classification and pay rate compliance before signing on, rather than assuming it's sorted because they're the ones issuing the invoice. Getting this wrong isn't just a paperwork problem. It can end up costing considerably more than whatever you saved by not asking the question upfront.
A Simple Way to Decide
Rather than picking one model for the whole property, it usually makes more sense to match the approach to the role.
Long-term, guest-facing leadership roles (duty managers, housekeeping supervisors, F&B supervisors) generally justify the time investment of internal hiring, because continuity and property-specific knowledge matter more than speed.
High-turnover or seasonal roles (waitstaff, bar hand, barista, banquet staff) are often better served through a hospitality recruitment agency or on-demand platform, since these roles need to scale up and down with demand.
Specialist back-office functions (payroll, accounts payable, taxation support) are frequently more cost-effective outsourced entirely, rather than built as a full-time internal role.
Genuine last-minute gaps, regardless of role, are what staffing platforms and agencies exist to solve. Internal hiring simply isn't fast enough for a shift that starts in four hours.
Most well-run properties end up using a blend. A core internal team for the roles that define the guest experience, supplemented by agency or on-demand cover for the roles that fluctuate with occupancy and season.
Where Hotel Staffing Solutions Fit Into the Picture
For the roles that don't warrant a full internal recruitment process every time, a hotel staffing platform can sit alongside your existing team rather than replace it.
InfyWorx works across housekeeping, front office, food and beverage and kitchen roles, so a property can post a shift and draw on staff who are already screened, without running a full hiring process for a role that might only be needed for a few weeks. Getting in touch is a reasonable first step if you're weighing this up for a specific role rather than the whole roster.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a hospitality recruitment agency more expensive than hiring directly?
Not necessarily, once you account for the time and cost of running your own recruitment process, including job ads, interviews and the cost of a role sitting vacant. For roles you need filled quickly or only for a defined period, an agency or staffing platform is often the more cost-effective option overall, even though the fee is more visible than the hidden costs of an internal search.
Which hotel roles are best suited to internal hiring?
Senior, guest-facing positions where continuity matters, such as duty managers, housekeeping supervisors and F&B supervisors, tend to justify the time investment of a full internal hiring process, since the person is expected to stay with the property long term.
Who is responsible for pay compliance when staff come through an agency?
Both parties have obligations. The hotel should confirm that the agency correctly classifies staff and applies the right award or protected pay rates, since these requirements don't disappear simply because the staff member is employed by someone else.
Can a hotel use both internal hiring and a staffing agency at the same time?
Yes, and most properties do. A common approach is to build a core internal team for leadership and guest-facing roles, then use agency or on-demand staffing to cover seasonal peaks, events and unplanned gaps.
How quickly can a hospitality recruitment agency fill a role compared with hiring directly?
This depends on the role and the agency, but agencies typically move faster because they're drawing from candidates who are already registered and, in some cases, already available. A full internal hiring process for a senior role can reasonably take several weeks from ad to start date.