Travelodge is recruiting 2,500 long-term unemployed people as part of a pilot hospitality employment scheme being run in cooperation with the Mayor of London.

According to government research, staff turnover in the UK hospitality sector is twice the national average of 30 per cent, with 468,900 hospitality employees already forecasted to leave the industry in 2008.

In a bid to encourage hospitality businesses in London to help recruit new staff from among the unemployed, Ken Livingstone has launched a new Employer Offer scheme.

Under the new initiative, employment agencies will carry out initial candidate screening and train prospective employees, who are currently unemployed, in the specific skills required by hospitality employers in return for guaranteed job interviews.

Travelodge chief executive Grant Hearn said: “Travelodge wants to make hotels available to everyone and that means careers as well as customers. Too many barriers are preventing Londoners both in and out of work from getting the opportunities they deserve.

“We have a collective responsibility as London employers to help the more disadvantaged people in our communities find work – this proposal is a crucial step toward achieving that goal and reducing unemployment in the capital.

“I passionately endorse the London Skills & Employment Board’s proposed Skills blueprint and its call to all employers to help unlock the talent hidden away in their communities.”

The hotel chain carried out a pilot run at its London City Road Travelodge and is now collaborating with Job Centre Plus at its Euston and Southwark hotels to run pre-employment training schemes to enable disadvantaged people in London get on the job ladder.

BY 2008, Travelodge hotel managers across England, Wales and Scotland will also join Local Employment Partnerships with their respective Job Centre Plus offices to further support the work effort.

The company aims to recruit a quarter of the 10,000 new jobs it will create nationwide from its plans to build a further 500 hotels across the UK by 2020. Almost half of these new sites will be based in London.

Photograph: City Road Travelodge