More than two-thirds of U.S. hotels have experienced staff shortages in 2024 despite raising wages to an all-time high since the COVID-19 pandemic, an industry survey shows.
The findings come as union negotiations in recent weeks have ended threatened walkouts by hospitality workers at several hotel-and-casino properties in Las Vegas, where Super Bowl LVIII will be played Sunday.
The American Hotel and Lodging Association reported Monday that 67% of hoteliers surveyed Jan. 8-18 were short on staff. The survey found that 82% of operators had increased wages, 59% offered more flexible work hours and 33% expanded benefits to fill the openings.
“The hotel workforce situation is slowly improving thanks to record-high average wages and better benefits and upward mobility than ever before,” said Chip Rogers, AHLA president and CEO. “But nationwide labor shortages are preventing hoteliers from filling tens of thousands of jobs, and that problem will weigh heavily on our members until Congress takes action.”
According to AHLA, the average of nine unfilled positions per hotel last month was up from seven a year ago, as more than 70,000 hotel jobs remain unfilled nationwide. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows hotel wages rose to an all-time high of $23.91 per hour in December.
To fill the openings, Mr. Rogers noted that his group has lobbied Congress to pass legislation that would expand the pool of legal immigrants and asylum seekers eligible for jobs.
The industry has struggled to replace frontline hospitality and food service workers who did not return from furloughs during pandemic quarantines. Some hotels have employed robots and installed automated kiosks to replace housekeepers, front desk workers and servers who switched to work-from-home careers.
In 2020, COVID quarantines drove U.S. hotel revenues to a record-low $85.5 billion in revenues, a 50% drop from 2019. Although profits later recovered, hotel unions have taken advantage of a tight labor market to demand better contracts.
In Las Vegas on Monday, gaming news site Casino.org reported that Culinary Union representatives backed down over the weekend after agreeing tentatively to five-year contracts with the Downtown Grand Hotel and Casino and the Golden Nugget Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.
Another property, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, was still in negotiations.
Even though average hotel wages have increased faster than wages in other industries since the pandemic, the AHLA noted on Monday that there are nearly 3 million more jobs in the U.S. economy than unemployed adults to fill them.
That’s why hotels want looser immigration restrictions, said Yannis Moati, CEO of the New York City-based online booking agency Hotels By Day.
“As far as our industry goes, we need a massive campaign in legalizing immigrants, as they’re traditionally the cohort that takes the hardest work available,” Mr. Moati told The Washington Times. “Regretfully, politicians don’t see it as such and are choking our economy, making every sector tougher to operate and raising prices on everyone.”
However, Sean Higgins, an analyst at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, said increasing the immigrant workforce would undermine union pushes for higher wages among employees who currently have alternatives to the “tiring physical labor” of hotel employment.
“Allowing more immigrant workers to come to the United States legally would benefit the employers as well as the immigrants,” Mr. Higgins said. “But remember that labor itself is a resource. The basic law of supply and demand says that the more we bring in, the less leverage domestic workers have to demand higher wages, benefits and flexibility.”
Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of Idaho-based recruitment agency RedBalloon, said hotels have struggled to compete with other industries that pay well without requiring a college degree.
“These hotels are competing for the same kind of talent that many other industries are competing for,” Mr. Crapuchettes said. “It isn’t just the hospitality industry looking for workers, it is also construction, automotive, and transportation.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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