Experts report on the hospitality industry’s “sacred cows” and the need to conduct a careful evaluation of each to determine whether they should remain, be forced to evolve, or eliminated altogether.
The unemployment rate is low. Our industry still faces an ongoing labor shortage challenge. Many restaurants and hotels struggle to fill vacant positions.
Women face plenty of challenges in building a career. In this column, I'll address some common ones and provide some solutions.
Our drive to build and maintain interpersonal relationships is a major factor in human social behavior. It therefore comes at no surprise that this motivation also translates in the workplace, where employees form various bonds to satisfy their need for belonging. As the nature of the modern work environment often overlaps with our personal lives, this makes it hard to distinguish between work life and private life.
It’s something that virtually all humans have experienced in our lives, especially those who work in guest-facing jobs in the hospitality industry when we make an authentic, personalized, and heartfelt connection with another human. For me, it seems to happen more often with strangers, rather than with loved ones we routinely see.
In his recent TED Talk, fine-dining restauranteur Will Guidara claims “We are on the precipice of a becoming a hospitality economy” – a sentiment which I wholeheartedly share. It is based on the fact that since the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, the gateway to success is now via excelling at customer-service provider skills. The industry sectors seeking human-centric, interpersonal soft skills are ever growing. And yet if this is the case, who’s championing, supporting and, ultimately, investing in the training of these highly sought-after competences? Investing in an employee learning and development plan signals a human-centric company culture that not only nurtures growth but also a competitive advantage.
Technology is transforming our world in real-time, at an increasingly blistering pace – but at what cost? This question continues to percolate in the background as exciting new innovations enter the fold, quickly stirring up mainstream interest and adoption. It’s a rather interesting duality; human nature informs our relentless pursuit of evolution. Still, many of us fear a future shaped so overwhelmingly by technology. Will tools like ChatGPT disrupt – and then eventually replace – entire industries? Will technological influence supersede human influence? Will we lose sight of human connections and traditional touchpoints? Will we forget about the offline experience in pursuing a better online experience?
The discussion of employee rights vs labour shortage has taken a front seat in the industry. The topic was also a major point of discussion during HICSA 2023, where key industry players, including Anthony Capuano, President and CEO of Marriott International, Chris Nassetta, President and CEO of Hilton, Harshavardhan Neotia, Chairman of Ambuja Neotia Group and Sonica Malhotra, the Joint Managing Director of the MBD group agreed that labour shortage is industry's prime concern.
The relationship between team member engagement and job satisfaction is an intriguing one. Though it’s a chicken-and-egg conundrum, the answer is that engaging team members comes first. Studies have shown that job satisfaction hinges on how well the job meets a team member’s emotional needs, and engagement caters to precisely that.
One of the major challenges that is currently giving leaders in our hospitality industry a hard time is coping with the pressure coming from Gen Z work ethic and attitudes. Today's generation expect more engaging and meaningful jobs and are far less likely to adhere to the traditional, purely vertical, "chain-of-command" style of leadership that still characterizes many hospitality-related organizations (HROs). Not to mention the dimensions of ethics and social responsibility that many people of this new generation want to find in the very nature of their work. These challenges are now pushing leaders to rethink the siloed work model still too prevalent in our industry and reshape it into a more cross-functional, collaborative and human-centric way of working.
Just in the past few weeks, AutoGPT has emerged, which is AI that controls other AI to do increasingly complex tasks. AI will start coding itself, which makes formerly hot skills like software engineering far less valuable. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence like this are happening each week now, instead of over months or years as in previous technology innovation cycles.
The hospitality industry, despite being based on a premise of welcoming human-centricity, is not always known for its values of civility and mental serenity. Behind the scenes, the working environment is relentlessly fast-paced and demanding. Customer needs have to be met and services must be delivered within the shortest of time frames. The heat is always on. Is it any wonder that today's hospitality students perceive the industry as being in need of promoting better levels of psychological safety and mental well-being? At a time when attracting and retaining talent has become an urgent priority, hospitality managers would do well to look at what mental serenity procedures are in place in their organization.
Hotel managers have a thorny challenge to solve: they must ensure exceptional guest service, while dealing with staff scheduling challenges and punishing turnover. While other service businesses like restaurants and retail stores close after business hours, hotels are always open. That means managers need to schedule staff around the clock, ensure adequate coverage during peak hours and seasons, and accommodate staff requests for time off. That’s increasingly a difficult task as worker departures soar; in January 2023 alone, 5.4% of all accommodation and food service workers quit their jobs.
"Traveling thousands of miles is better than reading thousands of books."
Learning and speaking foreign languages opens doors to new cultures and countries, helps to work in international environments, and altogether, is an additional asset in life. In terms of employability, language proficiency constitutes a significant added value to your CV. But are there any languages in particular that might benefit a prospective hospitality industry employee?
There is no question that hotel operations have been one of the greatest casualties of the persistent labor shortage continuing to impact businesses everywhere. Not only are many of today’s hotel workers overwhelmed by daily operations, but many are also not engaged with their properties beyond the surface level. When your hotel’s workers don’t have a connection to the property, it reflects negatively on the guest experience.
Fifteen years ago, I decided to quit my corporate job and try my luck at being self-employed doing consulting work for hotels out of my new home base in Mexico. I found a like-minded business partner, who lived in Pennsylvania, and together we embarked on creating a 100% remote hotel consulting company. Today we have over 40 team members located across the world and we provide temporary staffing services to hundreds of hotel companies all over the US.
When COVID hit, who would expect that our industry must deal with the toughest labor shortage ever in just a few months?
The biggest line item for nearly every hotel’s operating costs is the housekeeping department. That isn’t going to change any time soon as rooms need to be cleaned in order for them to be resold. Yet, we strive to continuously optimize this expenditure, be it through overtime reduction, inflationary wage controls, automation or other smart labor management tools.
"Ecosystems are a group of interconnected and diverse actors, that complement each other and create added value" (John C. Moore, 1993). In the context of higher education, adopting an ecosystem framework can help expand the learning experience so that opportunities flourish and new, collaborative solutions are generated to respond to today's changing environments. By building ecosystems, the diverse participants increase their resources and disciplines thereby creating a greater pool of solutions, offers and innovation.