Leisure travel is back, and it is boosting the bottom lines of hotels across the country. But this doesn’t mean that the hospitality industry doesn’t face challenges. And the biggest? Finding enough employees to staff their front desks, clean their rooms and maintain their swimming pools and fitness centers.
According to a survey released June 5 by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, more than 80% of U.S. hotels are facing staffing shortages. To bring in more workers, hoteliers are offering hires a host of incentives.
According to the survey, 75% of respondents say that they are increasing the wages of their staffers while 64% say they are offering their workers greater flexibility when it comes to their hours. A total of 36% of survey respondents say that they are expanding the benefits they are offering.
But this hasn’t eased the staffing shortage yet. Of the 82% of hoteliers who say that they are experiencing a shortgage, 26% said that their labor shortage is a severe one. Hoteliers are struggling most frequently to hire enough housekeepers, with 40% of hoteliers ranking housekeeping as their top hiring need.
These numbers have risen slightly since January, when 79% of survey respondents said that were struggling to hire enough workers. The numbers are an improvement over May of 2022, though, when 97% of survey respondents said that they were facing a staffing shortage, with 49% of them facing a severe shortage.
Respondents to the most recent survey are attempting to fill almost nine positions per property, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, up from seven positions in January but still down from 12 vacancies per property in May of 2022.
There are more than 100,000 hotel jobs currently open across the nation, and as of April, national average hotel wages were at an all-time high of more than $23 an hour. Since the pandemic, average hotel wages have increased faster than average wages throughout the general economy.
“The need for workers throughout the lodging industry continues to drive historic career opportunities for hotel employees, who are enjoying record wages and better benefits and flexibility than ever before,” said American Hotel & Lodging president and chief executive officer Chip Rogers, in a statement.
