This summer, while pools and water parks cut back on hours because of a shortage of lifeguards, the hotel industry was soldiering through its own shortage – that of employees in housekeeping as well as in other areas. It's so bad that even the Wall Street Journal noticed and commented on it.
Overall, the WSJ noted, hotel staffing across America is down 16 percent from 2019. Even a rebound from the pandemic has not lured back the workers, nor has increasing their pay and benefits. In June, a survey performed by the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) indicated that (get this) 97 percent of hotels are experiencing worker shortages.
While the bulk of those shortages are found in the housekeeping area, other labor sectors in the industry, including front desk and back office staff, security, accounting, engineering and maintenance, as well as banquets and food service, have also been hit hard. And that means hotels, who are desperately trying to hit the comeback trail, are being hampered in their efforts to do so.
AHLA notes, “To help hotels fill more than 130,000 open positions nationwide and raise awareness of the hospitality industry’s 200+ career pathways, the AHLA Foundation has expanded its “A Place to Stay” multi-channel advertising campaign. After a successful pilot in 5 markets, the campaign is now active in 14 cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York, Orlando, Phoenix, San Diego, and Tampa.”
And that’s not all. In addition to doubling its financial investment in the campaign, the Foundation has also expanded its bilingual English/Spanish efforts and developed several enhanced digital strategies to further target prospective employees.
Meanwhile, some hotel execs have shared their ideas for staff recruitment and retention in this think-tank-style article.
While those projects are gaining traction, what can travelers do to help out (and avoid frustration)? One thing is to opt out of housekeeping services. After all, say the experts, if you don’t change your sheets and wash your towels every day, why should you expect it when traveling? In addition to being a waste of water (and detergent and labor), it is also a waste of gas, since many hotels, lacking housekeeping staff, have outsourced all laundry, which means new towels and sheets need to be taken out and brought in each day.
The Points Guy notes, “The reality is that unless you’re cliff diving into a swamp, your towel probably won’t get very dirty every day.”
If you really need more pods for your coffeemaker or soap refills for your bathroom – now that many chains have moved to refillable dispersers in place of those mini-bottles of shampoo and body wash – you can call the front desk or ask a housekeeping employee anywhere in the halls.
Many hotels have taken to asking guests, upon check-in, whether daily room housekeeping is needed during the stay. (Additionally, many who have health concerns like the idea of their room being available only to them, and not being entered by others during their stay).
Here’s hoping the employee recruitment campaign gains traction, however; Hotel Management notes that the total U.S. construction pipeline stands at 5,220 hotels with 621,268 rooms at the close of 2022’s second quarter, up 9 percent year over year by projects and 4 percent year over year by rooms.
Of course, it's not the only problem in the travel industry; airlines are losing luggage at an alarming rate. But that's a story you can read about here.
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