It’s not easy finding workers today. And that’s especially true in the hospitality industry, where a new survey finds that nearly all hotels are struggling to find enough workers to clean their rooms, check-in guests and maintain their properties.
In a member survey by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, 97% of respondents said that they are experiencing a staffing shortage. A total of 49% of respondents said that they are severely understaffed.
The most common staffing need is houekeeping, with 58% of survey respondents pointing to it as their biggest challenge today.
The association says that respondents are offering incentives to increase staffing, with nearly 90% of respondents saying that they have increased wages and 71% offering greating flexibilty in the hours that employees must work.
An additional 43% of respondents say they have increased the benefits they offer as a way to attract more staffers.
These efforts are working … somewhat. The survey found that respondents during the last three months have hired an average of 23 new employees per property. But these same respondents said that they are also trying to fill an additional 12 positions on average. A total of 97% of respondents said they have been unable to fill open positions.
According to the lodging association, hotels need to fill more than 130,000 open positions across the United States.
The American Hotel & Lodging Association conducted its survey of more than 500 hoteliers from May 16 to 24 of 2022.
