Hotel Staff Shortages Threaten to Push Travel Costs Even Higher
Room rates look poised to rise as owners pass on escalating wage costs
ccording to an article from The Wall Street Journal, shortages in hotel staff and increases in their wages may pressure hotels to pass those increases costs on to the consumer. As inflation continues to strain consumers, will they remain resilient or find alternatives?
Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer, Alexandra Canal, and Brooke DiPalma break down the report and what it could mean for hotel chains and consumers going forward.
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Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino
Video Transcript
JOSH SCHAFER: Room rates are expected to go up in the next year as hotels try to lure staff back after the pandemic and keep up with wage inflation. And so guests could be maybe footing this bill, guys. We've seen wages for hotel and hospitality significantly increase. You're looking at the chart right there, that's hotel worker wages sitting at record highs. You see a significant move up to about $24 an hour. Previously, it was about $18 per hour before the pandemic there.So a significant move up there. And the Wall Street Journal sort of highlighting today in a story that if wages are going up for workers, at some point that probably gets passed on to the consumer. And it's sort of interesting, because there's a little bit also getting deeper in that article talking back and forth about if consumers are willing to foot that bill and if consumers are willing to take a step down in service. And you kind of wonder, at least I thought of a little bit of a chicken and the egg here of hotels have to pay people more to try and get the right amount of staff, and then people complain that their hotel costs more and they're still not the right amount of staff. And they're paying all this money.
It just seems like something that, I don't know, post-pandemic, how many years do we want to call ourselves maybe out of the reopening, but it feels like we haven't quite figured that out yet in terms of services, right? You can still go to a hotel today, and they don't have enough staff and the experience isn't what it was five years ago. And it just doesn't seem like they've figured out--