Employment in Orlando’s leisure and hospitality industry achieved full recovery to pre-pandemic levels in February 2023, more than a year after overall employment in Orlando reached pre-pandemic levels in November 2021.
While hospitality employment has been slower to recover, Orlando has experienced strong growth in office-using employment sectors, despite the structural change in office use that is impacting markets nationwide.
As of February 2023, professional, scientific and technical services employment was 122% of February 2020 levels, and a close look at office leases signed in the past three years shows that more than one in five of all deals totaling 10,000 square feet or more were in this business category. The recovery in finance and insurance employment has also outpaced hospitality employment locally and reached 112% of pre-pandemic employment in February.
Two of the three sectors that make up leisure and hospitality employment have fully recovered, but one component lags well behind. Food services and drinking places, known as restaurants and bars to everyone except economists, surpassed pre-pandemic peak employment in August 2022. The arts, entertainment and recreation component of leisure and hospitality employment followed one month later, in September 2022.
Conversely, in February 2023, accommodations employment was still not fully recovered, measuring 93% of the pre-pandemic levels.
The recovery in the accommodations employment sector has not kept pace with the growth in Orlando’s hotel industry.
Total inventory in the Orlando hospitality market has grown by more than 4,600 rooms since February 2020 and hotel demand has reached new highs. Twelve-month demand exceeded the pre-pandemic peak for the first time in February 2023, after setting new monthly highs several times in 2022.
The onset of the pandemic led to operational changes, such as the reduction in daily housekeeping and accelerated the adoption of technology solutions such as online check-in. Then, difficulties staffing up as travel rebounded from the initial impact of pandemic led many hotels to find more ways of operating with reduced staff.
The slow recovery in accommodations employment, three years after the onset of the pandemic and despite growth in the overall industry, suggests those gains in operational efficiencies are having long-lasting impacts on staffing levels.