Skift Take
The hotel industry is riding high on a summer surge of demand, but labor shortages and changing guest tastes mean this industry has to adapt fast as it looks to reignite revenue drivers beyond leisure travelers.
Accelerating vaccine efforts this year helped the travel sector turn a corner in major markets like the U.S., leading hotel companies to focus both on recovery and growth opportunities.
Hotel industry leaders at this week’s Skift Hospitality & Leisure Summit were largely bullish on an accelerating recovery momentum in the months and years ahead. Progress isn’t without its problems and growing pains, however.
The pandemic was a catastrophe for the global hospitality industry and remains so in many parts of the world. Labor shortages threaten how fast hotels can get back to normal. Extraordinary investor competition inflates hotel property values, and hotel owners and developers have to quickly adapt to changing customer tastes to capitalize on whatever revenue is out there during an uncertain recovery.
A Languishing Labor Pool
U.S. hotel owners have many reasons to rejoice heading into the summer. Major hotel companies like Hilton expect this to be the busiest summer travel season on record, and U.S. occupancy rates have outperformed China the last two weeks.
China has typically led the world in hotel occupancy recovery during the pandemic, but the country faced a setback in recent weeks in light of a spike in new cases around the city of Guangzhou.
The U.S. shouldn’t get too cocky. The labor shortage crisis was a talking point among most panelists at the hospitality summit, and it is a problem that puts a ceiling on how well the industry can recover.
Hotel owners aren’t able to call back furloughed workers fast enough to meet returning travel demand. MCR, the hotel owner and operator behind properties like the TWA Hotel in New York City, has between 600 and 700 open positions company leaders are grappling to fill for a
