Report on Salaries for IT Staff in Hotels 2013
The data on IT salaries was collected as part of this year's IT BENCHMARK REPORT, which is conducted annually and published at EHLPublications.
At the request of several CIOs from the major hotel groups in EMEA, we have collected data on the salaries of IT staff at property level i.e. how many IT FTEs are employed at property level, what are the salaries of FTEs and contracted workers and what is the balance of contract workers versus FTEs at property level. This is the first survey in EMEA that particularly investigates the salaries of IT staff in hotel properties. Preliminary results are presented here. All data reported is for financial year ending in April 2013 and data are reported by individual properties and are actual spend, not budgeted figures. Article authored by Hilary Catherine Murphy, PhD and Alexander Rappaz, Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne.
At the request of several CIOs from the major hotel groups in EMEA, we have collected data on the salaries of IT staff at property level i.e. how many IT FTEs are employed at property level, what are the salaries of FTEs and contracted workers and what is the balance of contract workers versus FTEs at property level. This is the first survey in EMEA that particularly investigates the salaries of IT staff in hotel properties. Preliminary results are presented here. All data reported is for financial year ending in April 2013 and data are reported by individual properties and are actual spend, not budgeted figures.
About 150 mid-scale and up-scale hotel properties responded to the survey investigating the salary levels of IT staff employed at property level. In this report the Gartner definitions of FTEs and Contract FTEs for IT staffing are used which are defined as:
" FTEs who are employed by the IT organization (excluding contractors and consultants). These include all full-time and part-time employees supporting the IT environment, as defined by IT budget/spending.
Contract FTEs (external contractors) are supplemental to your staff and are "operationally" managed by the in-house staff. These include all full-time, part-time and temporary contractors supporting the IT environment, as defined by IT budget/spending" (Gartner, 2011, p52).
In the Gartner reports we see that internal staff typically represents around 33% of the overall IT investment, which shows the considerable allocation of total IT spend for IT staff in all industry sectors (Gartner, 2011). In our survey and where FTEs are employed, that particular percentage for the hotel sector is 27%, i.e. the proportion of total IT spend that is composed of internal IT staff salaries.
The hotels in our sample show in Chart 1 that 18% of all hotels have NO in-house IT personnel and 29% of properties have between 0.6- 1.0 FTE designated IT staff with a small (5%) percentage of all properties reporting more than 3 FTE IT staff. Those properties that have higher FTEs (1.1 in-house IT Staff and above) are mostly Luxury/Upscale (5 stars) and in the Middle East region, whereas those that tend to have lower FTEs (0.6-1.0) are located in the Northern Europe and Mediterranean regions and mostly mid-scale.
Chart 2 shows that a large proportion, 63%, of all properties does not employ contracted IT staff. The 34% who have 1-2 FTEs of external contract staff and the 3% who those have 3-4 FTEs contracted IT staff, are spread over mid and upscale properties and all regions.
Finally, the overall average per property for total, annual IT salaries (FTEs + FTE contractors) is 42,352 euros with the majority of IT salaries allocated to FTEs. Chart 4 shows that the overall annual average salary for FTEs is 40,557euros, which is higher than "salary" for contracted IT staff at 36,896 euros. However, this must be viewed with some caution as contracted staff is not usually paid on a salary basis and salaried in-house staff will accrue additional costs and benefits which are allocated to IT budgets.
The data reported in the survey do not take account of the various job categories of IT employment and the results may be somewhat distorted by those larger properties having more IT staff, which may include more senior or specialised IT personnel or by new constructions/ IT upgrades.
Please note that this preliminary report from the data set is designed to be used as one source of comparative data by the hotel industry and the full data set of the IT BENCHMARK REPORT 2013 will be published at the end of September, 2013.
Reference: Gartner (2011 ), IT Metrics: IT Spending and Staffing Report, 2011 Published: 25 January 2011
This article is part of a wider project entitled " An investigation of proper usage (training, utilization, integration) of technology, with a focus on Property Management Systems (PMS), and its link to hotel performance" funded by the HES SO, Switzerland
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