Expert Views (7)

Hospitality’s growing role as a talent pipeline for luxury retail, private healthcare, wealth management and the wider experience economy reflects not a failure to produce people, but the opposite: the industry develops highly transferable capabilities that many other sectors now actively seek. Hospitality managers and employees are trained in a demanding service environment where soft skills and emotional intelligence are essential (e.g., empathy, communication, resilience, teamwork, cultural awareness, problem-solving) and the ability to stay calm under pressure. They also learn how to manage customer relationships, recover service failures, anticipate needs and deliver consistent experiences in fast-moving operational settings. These capabilities translate easily into other service industries because the fundamentals are remarkably similar: frontline interaction, brand representation, personalisation, coordination across teams and the ability to create trust and loyalty through high-quality service. The real problem, therefore, is not that hospitality is losing talent, but that it continues to bear the cost of developing these valuable skills while often undervaluing the people who possess them.

The hospitality industry and its education arm have been fighting the battle for business credibility for many years. We “hospitality” has typically been seen as offering jobs on the way to something better, a specialty function that anyone can do. I think not!

Young management professionals have been lured away by other service sectors across business. If the pandemic taught us anything hospitality graduates remained employed. If a hospitality business closed young bright managers were and continue to be hired in retail, grocery, healthcare, human resources, financial services and other sectors because they possess the optimal combination of business education, experience and communication that is applicable in any business, preparing young professional for any career they want to pursue in any business.

The mind set of many hospitality companies is that employees need to work their way up, starting in the dish room and as indicated are paid less than other professions. Recruitment and compensation need to be skills based to attract the best and brightest as the industry continues to evolve. It is all about service management and hospitality is a business and leadership academy that needs to be positioned as an industry of choice for recruiters.

This is proof that human connection - critical to a guest experience in a hotel or resort - is everlasting. Neither AI nor Covid 19 can take down the power of the "emotional human touch" of welcoming people into our establishments. The person who inherently knows how to "welcome" leads by example and will lead others towards the hospitality promised land - a land of genuine care where we exist to enrich the lives of our guests and our employees. The bottom line is that hospitality professionals have something others do not innately possess. They have a spirit that drives them to take care of others. What industry would not want that kind of approach to business?

When Apple Inc. developed the Genius Bar concept for its retail stores, it focused on delivering exceptional customer service and looked to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company as a model. Employees selected to work at the Genius Bar attended training sessions at the five-star luxury hotel. This example highlights a broader reality: hospitality management schools are often more successful than traditional business schools at developing customer-centric skills. As a result, many luxury brands actively recruit graduates from these programs.

While the hospitality industry offers the attraction of working in prestigious properties, it increasingly struggles to compete with luxury brands for talent with strong customer service capabilities. To stem the loss of skilled employees, hospitality employers should benchmark the compensation and benefits packages offered by luxury brands and adapt their own accordingly. This includes salary levels, working hours, career development opportunities, and timely promotions.

Hospitality management schools continue to supply the industry with qualified graduates, yet many leave during the early stages of their careers, creating significant consequences for service quality and organizational performance. An industry-wide effort to rethink careers in hospitality is required, focusing on improving retention among customer-centric professionals. Without such changes, hospitality employee turnover will continue to rise, favoring luxury brands.

The hospitality industry has long been recognized for developing exceptional professionals. Hospitality graduates learn to make decisions under pressure, communicate across cultures, solve problems in real time, and create memorable customer experiences. These are highly transferable leadership competencies that many other industries increasingly value, especially in the AI-mediated economy.

I also view the movement of hospitality graduates into other sectors not as a failure but as a strong demonstration of the broad applicability of hospitality education and professional training. The real challenge is that the industry has not consistently rewarded or communicated the long-term value of hospitality careers.

Many graduates leave not because they dislike hospitality, but because they perceive greater career stability, work-life balance, compensation, or advancement opportunities elsewhere. This is both a perception and a structural issue. If hospitality wants to retain more of its future leaders, organizations must align career promises with employees’ actual experiences.

Hospitality education and industry experience will continue to produce outstanding leaders. As AI is reshaping labor markets, we should view this disruption as an opportunity to invest in and reimagine career development, leadership pathways, and workplace cultures that make talented professionals want to build long-term careers within the hospitality industry.

Colin has teed up a great topic here, but actually I think it is two questions. One is why are we losing hospitality graduates to other industries right out of the gate. That may be a failure of recruiting and/or entry-level salaries and outdated management training tracks. The other question is why are we losing up-and-coming superstars to other industries, which is something I have seen a lot lately. Indeed, it may be in part that other industries offer more "normal" work and vacation schedules. Yet most seasoned veterans I know of agree that once the hotel industry gets "in your blood," it is hard to leave! From my view as a hotel trainer who peeks behind the scenes of about 70 hotels a year, I think the biggest problem with retention is a lack of leaders who take time to mentor and guide others. Perhaps it is because leaders are trapped at their desks by excessive data feeds, enslaved by emails and texts. It's hard to practice "MBWA" when the asset manager just got the CoStar report and scheduled a pop-up call. For me, the solution is fewer meetings and more mentoring!

My view comes down to four core industry realities:

Commoditization at Scale: Representing roughly 10% of the global workforce, we treat talent as an interchangeable commodity under the lazy assumption that someone else will always come along.

Erosion of Career Paths: We are actively reducing manpower and limiting long-term career growth through a global drive for short-term efficiency and diminished delivery models.

The COVID Aftermath: We treated our workforce poorly during the pandemic, and people have not forgotten.

Devaluation of Skill: We systematically discount the value of tertiary hospitality education, operating on the flawed belief that we can "turn anyone" into a great hotelier.

Conversely, outside industries lack native university pipelines that skill and educate specifically for human engagement. Given our sheer scale and foundational focus on service quality, hospitality is an ideal hunting ground for sectors offering better conditions, higher treatment, and greater value.

We do these things to ourselves—much like short-sighted minibar and room service price gouging.

To stop acting as a free finishing school, our industry requires an urgent executive mentality shift that recognizes, prices, and protects a high-value, educated workforce.