I worked seasonal jobs(national parks ski resorts, etc) for 15ish years.
One of the tactics to tempt people to come out is that if you stay until your contract is completed then you get a $1 bonus for each hour you worked.
When HR knows that they won't be rehiring someone for the next season, they'll fire them a few days before they complete their contract for their bonus.
And it gets worse… since most areas that hire seasonal employees are remote the corporations provide housing(dorm style) and meals. They charge between 10-40 bucks a day and they take it directly out of your check. So when they fire these employees, the ex-employee usually has 12ish hours to pack their stuff and get off company property. Now the employee is literally homeless and some of them have inevitably already bought plane tickets… but the flight doesn't leave for awhile.
Xanterra is the worst, but Delaware North and Aramark get honorable mention in the “worst” category.
I could go on for days with all the crappy stuff those corporations do.
A few highlights
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Employees can't drink alcohol except in one designated crappy area
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They use agencies to get them foreign workers with J-1 visas and they can descriminate because they provide housing. The calls to the agencies sound something like this:
Manager: “We'd like 20 women please.
Agency: “We have Chinese, Jamaica, Moldova, Romania. Do you have a preference?”
Manager: “Jamaicans were terrible last year. Let's go with Moldova I guess.”
Agency: “Do they need to be fluent in English?”
Manager: “No, all of them will be housekeepers.”
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One company I worked for didn't allow women to be in the male dorms after 11pm… and they came around and checked. I was 29 when I worked there… and couldn't have females in my room, wtf.
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Food quality makes no difference to most places, so they serve crap. Why bother making good food when you're the only restaurant for miles? And they probably won't be coming back regularly, so who cares, right?
The only reason… and I do mean the absolute only reason they have consumers or employees at all is because of their location. People don't work there to improve their resume. They work there for the experience of getting to live in some of the most beautiful places in the world.
This turned into a wall of text… woops.
One last terrible fact – Phillip Anschutz, oil company billionaire, bought Xanterra in 2013. The entire East side of Glacier National Park is Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The Blackfeet have started to allow drilling on their land over the last 20 years or so. Guess who won a 16 year contract to operate all the GNP resorts and restaurants in 2016? Yup, Xanterra. So billionaire dude is now right next door to oil fields that aren't in America proper, so different regulations, etc. Quite the coincidence, right?
“As part of an ongoing campaign to retire what are arguably illegal oil and gas leases, it is critical that we are able to show others what the lease areas look like.” – Tony Bynum, Photojournalist – source
TL;DR – Giant corporate conglomerates that run seasonal resorts suck big donkey balls.