Hotel CEOs Expect Labor, Inflation Pressures on Profitability To Be Long Term
Bottom Line, Guest Satisfaction Remain in Focus for Hoteliers
The desires to deliver positive experiences for guests and maintain profits have never been more at odds in the hotel industry than they are now, and executives speaking at the 2022 Americas Lodging Investment Summit said there's a simple reason for that.
Asked during the "Boardroom Outlook: Operations — Increasing Profitability without Sacrificing Quality" panel about the biggest issue facing the industry, BWH Hotel Group President and CEO Larry Cuculic said, "Overwhelmingly the answer to that question is labor."
Sloan Dean, president and CEO of Remington Hotels, said it's not a short-term problem, either.
"There's no one solution," he said. "And I think it's going to be a problem for many years."
Dean said the labor issue is felt across his company's portfolio, but it is "slightly better" in Southern U.S. states, where wage pressures aren't as severe.