It’s International Women’s Day, and the staff of Hotel Management is celebrating the women who keep the hospitality industry moving.
And though there are many women involved in the day-to-day business of hotels, the top levels of hospitality companies are still predominantly vacant of them. It's well past time for the C-suite to look different.
Improving Numbers
According to the Castell Project’s “2022 Women in Hospitality Industry Leadership” report released last month, women are gaining representation in hotel company leadership roles (CEO, president, founder, etc.), holding one leadership spot for every 10.3 men, an improvement from one to 11.2 in 2019. At the manager/director levels, women now hold 1 in 3 hospitality brokerage positions and 1 in 6 at the VP/SVP/EVP level. The number of male VP/SVP/EVPs at hotel investment conferences did not change materially while the number of women doubled.
Castell reported 3.4 male chief officers for each woman in hotel companies, and one to 3.9 at investment conferences. Though most female chiefs are in human resources, there is now participation across other chief roles, particularly marketing (CMO, CSO, CRO) and legal (general counsel or CLO).
Global hotel companies are taking steps to achieve better numbers. At the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference in November, Marriott International CEO Tony Capuano said that his company’s C-suite is 50 percent female, but acknowledged room for improvement. “At the VP and above level, which is about 800 people in our company, we're 44 percent female,” he said at the time, adding that the company is “wholly dissatisfied with that.”
A Change is Gonna Come
These gains are excellent news, but the fact remains that of the global hotel companies with the biggest pieces of the proverbial pie, only one has a woman as president, and none has a woman as CEO. The NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference recently announced the lineup for its CEOs Check In panel, and while CNBC’s Sara Eisen will be moderating, the four CEOs on the panel are all white men.
While the men in positions of leadership have undoubtedly earned their positions, the lack of opportunities for women to reach the highest positions should be of concern. A lack of diversity is a recipe for stagnation, and hotels cannot afford to languish after the challenges of the past two years.
At Best Western Hotels & Resorts' Women in Leadership Forum last October, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer Dorothy Dowling noted the so-called “broken rung” on the proverbial ladder—the lack of promotions beyond entry-level work—that prevents women from advancing into leadership positions. “For every 100 men that are promoted to that first level of management, only 86 women are promoted,” Dowling said at the time. During the conference, Dowling estimated that 35 percent of hotels are run by women. “Everybody wants that 50/50 goal to reflect what the population looks like,” she said. “But we have to build the bridges to allow women to get there.”
The time is ripe for hotel companies to make a bigger drive for C-suite equality. The industry is emerging from a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis with new opportunities for growth and change. One of those changes must include helping more women achieve the title of CEO in large-scale hotel companies—and there are many suitable candidates waiting for their chance. Women in hospitality represent a wide range of backgrounds, have solved any number of challenges, have made difficult choices and found ways to keep a number of plates spinning. Some of them have started their own businesses. Others have risen through the ranks of legacy companies. All of them have proven themselves capable of calling the shots, and deserve the opportunity to do so.
The kind words about women we inevitably hear on International Women’s Day are all very heartwarming, but as the suffragettes called out more than a century ago, “Deeds, not words.” We need the male CEOs to yield some of their power. We need men on the advisory boards to risk their discomfort and insist on true equality in corporate leadership. (For that matter, advisory boards should insist on equal representation of men and women among their membership—not to mention better racial and LGBTQ+ representation.)
Change is scary and difficult, but the hotel industry already has survived one of the scariest and most difficult two years in memory. If we could pull together to get through the pandemic and the travel downturn, we can pull together to get more women into top spots. It’s been a long, long time coming.