During the last economic boom period, more than half of Austria's hotels and restaurants laboured under staff shortages, and only 31 percent felt unaffected by any personnel deficit. The key factors determining recruiting problems were the growth rate and size of an operation and the share of occupational categories as a proportion of overall employment. The strategies pursued by operations to overcome their shortfalls spanned a wide range. Some 19 percent deployed specific recruiting and staff enhancement strategies. This group comprised mostly the large-scale quality operations that expected to achieve above-average growth. Twelve percent had very few specific expectations of their prospective employees and intended to fall back chiefly on foreign and seasonal workers and otherwise mostly failed to develop any proactive strategies to cope with staff bottlenecks. A disproportionate share of this group is made up of winter season operations of the medium quality segment. 22 percent of the operations had not developed any specific requirement profile for their potential staff nor drawn up any detailed strategy to overcome their staff shortage. They recruited mostly from the regional labour market, preferably from the pool of middle-aged workers. The majority of businesses in this group operated solely in the restaurant sector.