Hospitality School 2020 Graduates Confront an Evaporated Hotel Jobs Market
Photo Credit: Graduating hospitality students in the class of 2020 have watched the hotel job market obliterate in a matter of weeks due to coronavirus. Wikimedia / Jonathan71
Skift Take
With extraordinarily bleak job prospects for the graduating class of 2020, hospitality students have to persevere and find any available opportunity until the travel industry recovers.
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For now, she is still in an enviable position compared to hospitality majors across the country in the class of 2020. In March, she signed her job contract only to have Four Seasons reach out requesting patience and flexibility due to most of their properties temporarily closing due to coronavirus. Four Seasons told Burge there would be an update on her job scenario sometime in April, she said. With an expected July start date, Burge is optimistic she’ll keep her job but potentially have to adjust to a later time. Others aren’t as lucky. Skift talked to students and faculty in hospitality programs at universities across the country, and all said internships had been cut short and job offers rescinded due to the coronavirus downturn in travel zapping the job market. “You can talk to anyone in this industry, and they’ll say they knew we were coming to the peak, but I didn’t expect it would come as soon as it did,” said Arden Townsend, another senior in the University of Denver’s Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality Management. “I really thought I’d graduate with a job and hop right in, but I don’t see it happening now. To see everything drop so suddenly was shocking, unexpected, and a little bit frustrating.” Even more frustrating to some students is the fact they now find
