More than 300 hotel owners, operators, general managers and suppliers visited Washington, D.C., this week to urge congressional leaders to support and strengthen the hotel industry. American Hotel & Lodging Association members addressed the industry’s top concerns regarding the mounting challenges that continue to impact U.S. hospitality—from regulatory uncertainty around franchising to staffing shortages and rising operating costs.
“America's hoteliers checked-in to Washington this week with a clear message: our industry is vital to the U.S. economy, supporting more than nine million jobs, but we need partners in Congress who understand the challenges we face and are ready to work with us to deliver travel-friendly policies,” AHLA President & CEO Rosanna Maietta said in a statement. “From franchising to workforce to global competitiveness, the policies we discussed with U.S. leaders are good for hotels, the communities they operate in, and underpin the broader economy."
AHLA urged Congress to pass the American Franchise Act (H.R. 5267/S. 3525), which would codify the traditional joint employer standard to preserve the franchise business model. AHLA members also advocated for measures to modernize the H-2B visa program in order to provide a predictable workforce shortage solution for hotels struggling to reach necessary staffing levels during peak seasons.
Participants further discussed measures to bolster travel demand, including restoring full funding to Brand USA to ensure robust global marketing and supporting the reauthorization of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to strengthen cross-border travel.
New York Legislation
While members were on Capitol Hill, Brett Horton, AHLA's chief advocacy officer, joined up with several other industry representatives for a virtual press conference discussing proposed legislation that would limit the number of square feet hotel housekeepers in New York can clean during a shift. “What we're hearing is that the limit will be around 3,500 square feet, which is the equivalent of six to 10 hotel rooms,” Horton said.
While Horton acknowledged that the legislation “may be presented as a worker-friendly policy on the surface,” he argued that it would, in reality, “jeopardize jobs” and serve as “a threat to the entire ecosystem of businesses that depend on the thriving hotel industry.” Decisions about hotel operations, he continued, “must be made at the property level by the people who understand the workload, the staffing and the needs of each hotel, not dictated arbitrarily by the City Council.”
Aran Ryan, director of industry studies at Oxford Economics, quantified the potential economic impacts the proposed ordinance could have, including a possible 3 percent increase in average daily rate, a 2.6 percent decrease in rooms sold, a loss of $500 million in visitor spending and an overall reduction in hotel capital investment of more than $280 million per year.
Arelia Taveras, executive director of the Long Island Latino Restaurant Association, said that hospitality is “the first field” the Latin American community comes to when they seek employment. “If this legislation goes through, there will be less employment for our community,” she said. “We are here opposing this square footage law because it affects our small businesses as well as all businesses. … When hotels are strong, the entire hospitality ecosystem is strong.”
Other Priorities
In an email to the association’s members, AHLA leadership outlined other legislative priorities for members:
- Seeking the Inclusion of a “Certified Seasonal Employer” provision in FY27 Department of Homeland Security appropriations that would allow trusted, repeat H-2B employers with a proven record of compliance to access visas outside the annual H-2B cap.
- Building support for the VISIT USA Act (H.R. 6128/S. 3220), which would restore full funding for Brand USA to ensure robust global tourism marketing.
- Seeking the reauthorization of U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement to preserve duty-free treatment for key hotel supply inputs, protect cross-border travel and trade, and reinforce competitiveness.
- Pushing for the use of timely, market-based data and transparent methodologies when setting federal per diem rates to ensure they reflect current lodging costs and broader economic conditions.