Hotels in U.S. Vacation Markets Scramble for Workers Ahead of Booming Summer

From southern Maine to southern California, hotel bookings are up and employee counts are down heading into what most expect to be one of the busiest U.S. summer travel seasons on record. Seasonal markets stand to be even more impacted by the swelling labor crunch across the entire industry. These smaller towns and cities like Key West and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, have reported some of the highest occupancy rates in the U.S. during the pandemic while top 25 markets like New York City and San Francisco floundered. Hotel owners point to a combination of slow approvals with international worker visas, pandemic health concerns, and federal benefits keeping staffers away from what should be the busiest months of the year. But many of these vacation markets have dealt with smaller staff counts while accommodating near-normal demand levels. It’s a problem that was already a headwind for hoteliers before the pandemic and one unlikely to solve itself anytime soon. “It’s going to be a longer issue than the easy response of saying employees will come back once the [extra federal unemployment benefits] go away,” said Justin Grimes, managing director of the Kennebunkport Resort Collection in southern Maine. “Covid kicked some people out of the industry or gave people a chance to transition to a new industry, whether it was by necessity or they just realized this is not something they want to be doing an