More than 3 out of 4 hotels remain mired in a post-pandemic staffing shortage after hiking wages to record highs, an industry survey shows.
The American Hotel and Lodging Association reported that 76% of hoteliers surveyed May 16-24 were short on staff, with half identifying housekeepers as their top need.
That’s up from 67% of operators who said the same in January, reflecting what the industry group described as a “worsening workforce situation for hoteliers over the last few months.”
“Hotels are ready to grow and create more jobs, but the nationwide workforce shortage that has persisted in the post-pandemic economy is preventing that from happening,” said Kevin Carey, AHLA’s interim president and CEO.
The latest survey found that 86% of operators had increased wages, 52% offered more flexible work hours and 33% expanded benefits over the past six months to fill openings.
According to AHLA, hotels remain 190,000 jobs short of pre-pandemic levels after adding 700 in May. The most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show average hotel wages hit $23.69 an hour in April, down slightly from an all-time high of $23.91 in December.
To fill the job vacancies, Mr. Carey called on Congress to pass legislation that would add 65,000 workers to the pool of legal immigrants and asylum seekers eligible for seasonal jobs.
The survey comes as the Biden administration has moved to restrict asylum seekers from crossing the southern border. Polls show the issue has become a top concern for voters in the upcoming election.
Meanwhile, the hotel industry has struggled to replace frontline hospitality and food service workers who did not return from furloughs during pandemic quarantines. Some properties have “hired” robots and installed automated kiosks to replace human housekeepers, front desk workers and servers who switched to work-from-home careers.
In 2020, COVID quarantines drove hotel revenues to a record-low $85.5 billion, a 50% drop from 2019. Although revenues have recovered, leading hotel market researcher STR reported that occupancy rates in April remained short of pre-pandemic levels, with 79,191 fewer rooms sold than the 109.96 million it tracked in April 2019.
The group’s preliminary estimate shows the average hotel room cost $160.25 a night in May, up 2.7% from a year ago, while revenue per available room rose by 4.2% to $105.78 over the same period.
Jan Freitang, the national director of hospitality analytics for STR’s parent company CoStar Group, said steady increases in corporate bookings at high-end properties have helped offset a decline in economy-leisure travel over the past year.
“Remote and virtual work has enticed more group meetings to build workplace culture, because employees aren’t gathering around the office water cooler anymore,” Mr. Freitang said.
Despite the surge in corporate conferences at hotels, he noted that sharp declines in economy-leisure travel drove down demand at all hotels in 10 of the 12 months ending in April.
“It’s the American leisure traveler who is choosing between paying off car insurance bills and credit card debt or making a weekend trip,” Mr. Freitang added. “The weekend trip is losing, because everything is getting more expensive.”
Even though average hotel wages have increased faster than other industries since the pandemic, the AHLA noted on Monday that there are nearly 2 million more jobs in the United States than unemployed adults to fill them.
The problem is that immigrants have better job options in a “historically tight” labor market, said Sean Higgins, an analyst at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. He said those options include server and bartending jobs that allow them to collect tips.
“Just because they’re coming over the border doesn’t mean they’re coming for these jobs,” Mr. Higgins said. “Traditionally, the hotel industry used a lot of immigrant labor for drudgery because they were more willing to put up with longer hours and more unpleasant working conditions, but they have more options now.”
Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of Idaho-based jobs board RedBalloon, said another challenge for hoteliers is that recent college graduates have snubbed service industry jobs as “somehow inferior.”
In a survey that RedBalloon and Public Square released last month, 91% of small business owners agreed that colleges are“creating unrealistic expectations of what job and work life will be like post-graduation.”
“Gen Z college educated job seekers are demanding pristine jobs with high salaries, right out of college,” Mr. Crapuchettes said. “So, we have an extreme shortage of job seekers willing to be laborers working at hotels, serving as auto mechanics, or working in any number of service-related jobs.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.