Hospitality Workers Are Out of Work As Hotels Recover Without Them

[rcjordan]

https://www.businessinsider.com/hospitality-workers-out-of-work-as-hotels-recover-without-them-2021-8

[ergophobe]

I can attest to that. Some of it is cutting services, as the article says, and some of it is cutting chaff.

And some of it is just what happens when you lose 10-20 points of occupancy. The thing about hotels is that on most days, they are losing money. The profit comes from those relatively small number of days with high occupancy. So when your average occupancy as a hotel drops by 10 points, that doesn't mean profits go down by 10 points. It commonly means your profits drop by 100%.  Maybe more. You quickly go from black to red.

You can't save on debt service. There's a limit to how much you can save on utilities. The most elastic cost in a hotel is staff. I see it as a societal problem - as a society we want people to be there when we want to travel, but we don't want to pay what it costs to keep them there all year.

[rcjordan]

On the recent year-end trip, both the Marriott and Hilton were obviously running on the barest of staffing.