The newly released “2022 Women in Hospitality Industry Leadership” report tracks some positive changes in the area of female leadership, but challenges remain. The report, in its fifth year, is produced by Castell Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the careers of women professionals in the hospitality industry.
“As the hospitality industry rebuilds the jobs it has lost since the start of the pandemic, developing career opportunities for women and minorities is even more vital in the hotel sector,” said Peggy Berg, chair, Castell Project. “This report tracks progress and we are seeing more women in senior executive roles, successfully advancing every aspect of their companies. There are more women on the podium, building their own careers and inspiring others. There are more women owners, including women of color. Recognition of the value and importance of diverse leadership is now widespread, so we expect these trends to accelerate.”
Highlights from the report include:
- Women are gaining representation in hotel company leadership roles (CEO, president, founder, etc.). Although still skewed in favor of men, women now hold 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. Broker representation went from one woman to 10.1 men in 2017 to one woman to 7.2 men in 2021. Hospitality brokerage competes with general commercial real estate for talent. CREW Network reports that more women occupy brokerage positions than ever before (29 percent), a 6 percent increase from 2015.
- Women speak at 22 percent of hospitality investment conference podiums, up from 16 percent in 2017. This is important because women’s visibility on the podium accelerates careers and inspires other women.
“I feel like the awareness of this opportunity to bring women into leadership is so much stronger and the benefits of it are accepted now,” Berg said. “We feel like we’ve crossed over that hurdle a little bit—it’s not gone away but we’ve mostly crossed over it. And now it’s the implementation and it takes a little while because it’s around hiring and promotion. I feel like we’ve made a really big soft progress and now we’re starting to see statistical progress.”
Challenges
While the advances are encouraging, the industry is also seeing new challenges, Berg said.
“Enrollment at college and university hospitality programs is declining among men as well as women,” she said. “Hospitality advanced education is the industry’s talent pipeline. Our Castell@College initiative inspires students by showing them desirable futures through the hospitality industry. However, broader work to upgrade the industry’s reputation as an employer and career option is critical for women and the industry.”
Code of Conduct
In addition to the report, Berg and her group also developed a code of conduct for meetings and events to set the tone in terms of expectations. The group recommends that the official code should be displayed when someone is registering for a conference, as well as someone reading the code on the main stage at the beginning of the conference. There’s also a piece that is directed at more vulnerable staff people to make sure they understand what is correct behavior for their protection.
“We put our code of conduct together with the hotel investment conferences,” Berg said. “Coming to conferences—I'm sure all of us have had our moments [dealing with inappropriate behavior]. So it's something that the conferences have recognized as maybe a barrier to how women interact with conferences and want to help.”
The first conference to share the statement onstage was this year’s Americas Lodging Investment Conference, and the code will appear in registration materials going forward. The upcoming Hunter Hotel Investment Conference also is including the code in its registration materials.
ALIS Award
At January’s ALIS, Berg was presented with the International Society of Hospitality Consultants Pioneer Award. Established in 1996, ISHC Pioneer Award winners are selected on a basis of three criteria: active involvement in the hospitality industry; contribution to the industry; and personal/organizational attributes and qualities adhering to professional standards recognized and respected by industry peers.
During the presentation, Berg recounted life experiences that led her to that moment, including the lifting of legal restrictions preventing women from accessing birth control; the Equal Employment Opportunity Act; being hired as the first woman employee at PKF under the promise of not getting pregnant for two years; launching the Highland Group with her personal savings; and the Women’s Business Ownership Act lifting restrictions on women borrowing money for businesses, which enabled her to become a hotel owner.
“We as an industry, we as a country, we still have social restrictions affecting women's ability to take advantage of creating their own opportunity, social restrictions that are built into the fabric of our companies and social restrictions that are built into the assumptions that we women make about ourselves,” Berg said during her acceptance speech. “That's been what the Castell Project is about—lifting those social restrictions so that a new generation of pioneers can access opportunity for themselves.”
Berg highlighted the help she has received from others in the hotel industry.
“The work of the Castell Project has been supported by the men and women in this room and at this conference and at the companies that drive this industry and that's a great thing,” she said. “It's a testament to how this industry makes the pie bigger.”