Temporary staff leave with rights that belong in the winter cash plan.
The last guests have checked out. Terrace furniture is stacked, opening hours are reduced, and several temporary contracts reach their agreed end date. Revenue is already moving into its quieter rhythm.
Then payroll presents the closing costs: final wages, holiday pay, outstanding hours and transition payments. For many seasonal employers, none of these amounts is unusual on its own. The difficulty is that they fall due together, precisely as cash receipts weaken.
A temporary contract may end automatically. Its employment cost still needs a place in the winter cash plan.
Dutch rules generally require an employer to pay a transition payment when a temporary contract is not renewed. Entitlement starts on the first working day and includes temporary and on-call contracts. The standard calculation is one-third of qualifying gross monthly pay for each year worked, calculated proportionally for shorter periods.
For seasonal businesses, this is a recurring closing cost. It deserves the same attention as final payroll, VAT, suppliers and winter maintenance.
A short contract can carry a longer history
The first mistake is to look only at the current contract. Seasonal businesses often bring back familiar workers because they know the customers, systems and pace. That continuity has commercial value. It can also affect the transition-payment calculation.
Successive temporary contracts can count together when the interruption between them is no more than six months. The break itself is not treated as service, but earlier contracts may still shape the total. Employment with a predecessor employer can also count in certain circumstances.
The practical result depends on the employment history. A roster may describe someone as a summer worker. The contract record may show a recurring employment relationship with a larger accrued cost.
After decades around Dutch payroll, administration and employer decisions, I have learned to distrust the phrase, “we always do it this way”, when nobody has reconstructed the dates. Familiar routines often conceal a chain of earlier contracts, changing hours and small breaks between seasons.
The reliable starting point is the record: start dates, end dates, pay changes, hours, earlier contracts and breaks. The applicable collective labour agreement also deserves a close reading. A CAO can replace the statutory payment only in limited circumstances, so sector custom alone is not enough.
A promise to return is not an offer
Employers who genuinely intend to rehire someone have a specific route available. A transition payment is not yet due when, before the current contract ends, the employer guarantees a new temporary or permanent contract. That contract must start within six months and include an interim termination option.
This is more precise than saying, “We will probably call you in spring.” Dutch business relationships often run on trust and practical familiarity. Employment administration needs dates, terms and a clear commitment.
The timing of the offer matters. So do the proposed start date and the contractual conditions. A founder who decides informally that a worker will return next season may still leave payroll without the information needed to close the current contract properly.
That is where governance enters what first appears to be a payroll issue. Who decides which workers will return? When is that decision made? Does payroll receive the same information as the person drawing up next season’s roster?
If the answer remains in the founder’s head, the business has not made a controlled staffing decision. A written offer is also more than a device to manage a payment. It is a genuine commitment to continued employment, with consequences for the next season’s workload and cash.
The cost sits beyond the payment
CBS recorded 26,500 seasonally adjusted vacancies in hospitality and 5,200 in culture, sport and recreation at the end of the third quarter of 2026. Experienced seasonal workers remain valuable in a market where replacement is neither immediate nor free.
Repeatedly releasing a trained team can reduce fixed payroll during quiet months. It can also create recruitment, induction and service-quality costs before the next peak. Those costs rarely sit beside the transition payment in a cash forecast, yet they may weigh more heavily on the business.
Hospitality turnover rose 2.2 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2026, CBS reported. The sector picture was uneven. Accommodation turnover fell by 0.9 percent, while hospitality confidence remained negative in the third quarter.
Short-stay accommodation also moved from 9 percent to 21 percent VAT in January 2026, except for camping pitches. A holiday business can be busy and still have little room left after wages, VAT, rent, suppliers and maintenance.
Higher turnover is therefore not the same as easier margins. The transition payment belongs in the same full cash view.
Decide before final payroll
A seasonal employer should know well before closing week which contracts are ending, which workers may return and what each route means for cash. The estimate belongs beside final salary, holiday entitlements, variable hours and expected winter receipts.
Where a lump-sum transition payment creates an immediate operational strain, employer and employee may agree to payment in instalments over no more than six months. Interest is due on the unpaid balance from one month after employment ends.
That arrangement can ease timing. It leaves the underlying cost in place.
Government plans to simplify hundreds of rules leave the current transition-payment entitlement intact. The coalition has also set out an ambition to reshape transition payments towards training and movement between jobs. Those are policy directions. Seasonal payroll still follows the rules in force when the contract ends.
Back at the closed terrace or quiet holiday park, the choice is not simply to retain everyone or release everyone. The business needs to decide what it is accepting, what it is postponing, and what the result means for cash, people and next season’s service.
The end of the season is not an automatic administrative moment. It is a workforce decision, a cash decision and a test of whether the business knows the real cost of its own rhythm.
If seasonal staffing decisions are putting pressure on your winter cash plan, let us review the timing and consequences together.
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Linda Pavan Geraedts. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Linda Pavan Geraedts before publication.
References
- Ook transitievergoeding na tijdelijk contract voor seizoenswerk · Salaris Vanmorgen
- Rijksoverheid - Transition payment after non-renewal of a temporary contract
- Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid via Ondernemersplein - First-day entitlement and calculation basis
- Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland via Ondernemersplein - No current seasonal-sector exemption
- Rijksoverheid - Regulatory simplification does not itself change entitlement
- Rijksoverheid - Proposed reform of transition payments
- CBS - Seasonal hospitality trading pressure and staffing demand
