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Hotels ARE Hiring Again!
After several years of cutting staff, hotels have begun to build up their workforces to keep up with modest growth in heads in beds.
Monday, April 12, 2010
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When the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released data in early April showing job openings increased during February within the category that includes hotels, the news may have come as a shock to many. After all, hasn’t lodging been one of the hardest hit sectors in the economy, with many hotel companies cutting management and hourly workers to compensate for the loss of revenue?
But the news wasn’t surprising to those within the hotel industry who are seeing forecasts predicting an occupancy increase (albeit a small one) and are now ramping up staffing levels accordingly.
“We are starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel,” says Joe McInerney, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association in Washington, D.C. “If they haven’t already experienced an uptick in occupancy, hoteliers anticipate occupancy will go up two or three points this year, so they want to be ready for that.”
PKF Hospitality Research, for one, projects that U.S. hotel occupancy will rise 0.3 percent in 2010 to 55.2 percent. Admittedly, not game-changing growth, but far better than the 8.7 percent dive the number took in 2009.
And if heads in beds were not projected to rise even in the slightest, there would be no new hirings. “Occupancy is the thing that is going to raise the number of jobs.” McInerney says. ‘It’s not going to be out of the goodness of somebody’s heart.”
According to the BLS, seasonally adjusted job openings in February within the leisure and hospitality category rose to 274,000 from 268,000 in January. In the accommodation and food services sector, job openings increased to 256,000 from 250,000.
Furthermore, the recently passed Travel Promotion Act could mean the addition of 40,000 jobs in the tourism industry in the first year, say pundits. (For more on the bill, see http://www.hotelinteractive.com/article.aspx?articleid=16365.)
An increase in openings and projections of additional jobs are always welcome. After all, they show an industry—and an economy—on an upswing. But statistics can be contradictory. For instance, actual current employment statistics indicate that the lodging industry has continued to shed workers, although the rate of loss may be leveling off. In the broader leisure and hospitality category, total employment stands at around 13 million.
Seasonally adjusted figures from the BLS show that there were 1,733,100 workers employed in the accommodation category in December, down from 1,735,000 in November. That number dropped to 1,726,100 in January, but inched up to 1,726,600 in February.
In fact, looking at the broader accommodation and food service sector, much of the hiring may come in food services. That’s not necessarily a bad trend, considering that if a retail category like restaurants is on the mend due to increased consumer spending, lodging may not be far behind.
Specifically, in the food services and drinking places category, employment stood at 9,371,400 in December, a number that rose to 9,391,600 in January and 9,399,200 in February, according to the BLS.
Statistics aside, several hotel company HR executives interviewed by Hotel Interactive say that, yes, they have begun to bring on a modest number of new workers to handle a commensurate rise in occupancy.
Since the beginning of the year, MHI Hotels Services LLC has added 47 staffers, mostly hourly hires in the rooms and F&B departments. The Greenbelt, MD-based company manages 14 hotels with a total of 1,600 staffers.
Several were new to the company. But the company also brought back some of the 141 workers it had previously laid off during the depth of the downturn between 2008-09, according MHI’s corporate director of human resources, Brenda McGregor.
“Our business levels certainly dictate [the new hires] and we want to get back to the level of customer service we are committed to and be able to provide all the services and amenities that are important to our guests,” McGregor says. The company is also beefing up its sales staff.
For its part, HEI Hotels and Resorts in Norwalk, CT is now looking to fill positions it left unfilled when its business stagnated, reports Stephanie Rhodes, its corporate director of talent acquisition.
“In 2009, there were quite a number of positions we didn’t fill due to the economy being a bit slow,” she says. Jobs left vacant were primarily in operations when room - as well as food and beverage - sales went south.
“To keep as many people employed as possible, as employees resigned, we may not have backfilled those positions as quickly as we normally would,” Rhodes says. “But looking into 2010 and hopefully a pick-up in the economy, we want to fill some of the positions that we held off on doing so in 2009.” HEI owns and operates 32 hotels in 16 states and employs approximately 4,500.
With plans to enlarge its portfolio, HEI anticipates that more workers will be needed. “As we acquire properties, if their staffing levels are not the same as HEI’s [guidelines], then we may need to add positions depending upon the needs of the business,” Rhodes says.
HEI is also revving up its manager-in-training initiative. This year, it plans to recruit 30 into the program from colleges and internal promotions, an increase from the 23 brought in during 2009, but below the 36 in 2008.
Daniel Vosotas, president and CEO of Trans Inn Management in Detroit, says that his company has experienced a modest rise in the hiring of hourly workers in F&B and housekeeping. At some hotels, Trans Inn is even looking for people to man the front desk. The company manages 22 hotels and has 1,200 workers on its payroll.
“We cut back dramatically in the past 12 months,” he says. “Now with a little uptick in business, we’re hiring to take care of this new demand.”
That new demand, he says, is being generated by corporate America, which is emerging ever so slowly from the economic fog.
“In the U.S., it’s been tough the past 12 to 18 months,” Vosotas says. “Now we are starting to see some growth, and it has a snowball effect. If somebody is building more widgets, they are hiring more people and they have more sales people. That translates into more sleeping rooms. Then we have to hire more hourly people to be able to handle that. We are optimistic that it will be able to continue.”
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