Industries economy-wide are suffering a shortage of workers, as the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in December 2023 reported that there are nearly three million more job openings than unemployed people to fill them. The hotel industry, however, has been suffering from a dire shortage of workers since the end of the pandemic, as many hotel workers laid off during the Covid19 lockdown never returned.
“We probably have 80 percent of our workforce back,” affirmed Robert Rauch, chairman and chief strategist for Hotel Guru, a hotel management start-up and former co-founder and CEO of RAF Hospitality, which owned and operated 24 hotels in Southern California. He says that it’s still hard to find skilled, experienced staff, as many workers left the hospitality industry during the pandemic lockdown and took jobs in other industries. But the hiring situation is not as quite as difficult as it was two or three years ago.
“Less populated cities have higher unemployment levels, and hence there is more interest in hotel jobs,” Rauch continues, noting the unemployment is very low in Southern California, so it is more difficult to recruit workers.
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