Hoteliers across the U.S. are welcoming the increasing demand this year, but dampening that optimism is the ongoing labor shortage in the industry.
Starting 2020 with a shortage of 900,000 workers, employers in the hotel industry then had to lay off and furlough employees after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic due to travel restrictions and the overall loss of travel demand. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the leisure and hospitality segment lost 3.1 million jobs during the pandemic.
Here’s a roundup of some of Hotel News Now’s recent coverage on how the industry is handling the labor shortage.
The U.S. hotel industry has seen performance steadily improve along with vaccination rates and the return of warmer weather. While hoteliers hope to take advantage of this pent-up demand for travel, they continue to face a shortage of employees at all levels of operations.
With the expected rise of leisure travel during the summer, some U.S. hoteliers are redefining on-property roles. The Kimpton Sawyer Hotel is making positions more dynamic to fill voids, such as asking an associate to work in one department on weekends and in another department during the week.
Phil Baxter, founder of family-owned and run Baxter Hospitality said his company hired additional managers, creating a management-heavy staff, knowing they will need to fill multiple roles.
When looking to rehire laid off staff, some management companies are being careful about not rushing to hire everyone all at once by taking into account the needs for short-term and long-term demand.
“We wanted to be extremely thoughtful in making sure we were hiring the right number of people in the right number of positions for the long term,” said Dawna Comeaux, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Spire Hospitality. “We didn’t want to hire people just for the season and then just kind of whiplash lay them off again.”
"One of our hotels has three times as many people on payroll than they need, not all working simultaneously, but as a roster to pull from for just this reason. We may have a senior worker who only wants one or two days a month, or a stay-at-home parent that does not want to be tied to a shift but wants flexibility," said Tracy Kundey, managing director of hospitality at Everwood. "We kid with the general manager about it because she has enough available talent to staff three hotels. It works very well."
Everwood is also offering employees $20 an hour in markets where the hourly rage typically ranges between $11 and $15 in order to stand out among other companies looking to hire.
Another approach to changing up staffing models is Aimbridge Hospitality’s testing of gig pay. During the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, Aimbridge President and CEO Mike Deitemeyer said they are trying gig pay in several markets, paying employees at the end of their shift each day.
“That is something that we think will have an appeal to a certain demographic,” he said.
"She's a little young, but she's got something about herself that we want to invest in," TMC Hospitality CEO and founder Philip Bates said. "We made her the head of that bar and told her, 'You need to run this bar as if it's your bar. You run the social; you hire who you want to hire; you do all of these things.'"
Diversity and representation in hiring remain ongoing challenges and goals for the industry. The Castell Project’s Black Representation in Hospitality Leadership 2021 Report found Black employees lost share of employment in the hospitality industry in 2020 and Black executives continue to be underrepresented among company leadership roles.
Thomas Penny, president of Donohoe Hospitality Services, said there “needs to be a greater level of intentionality" in attracting Black employees to senior leadership positions.
Some Black mid-level managers who are considering leaving the industry might stay if they see "someone who looks like them in a position of senior leadership, and it may give them the confidence that if they stay in the business, things will come their way,” he said.