Hotels in U.S. Vacation Markets Scramble for Workers Ahead of Booming Summer
Photo Credit: Hotels from Key West to Kennebunkport, Maine, report staffing shortages heading into the summer, largely due to stalled worker visa programs and slowed down recruiting. (pictured: Oceans Edge Resort & Marina in Key West) Oceans Edge Resort & Marina
Skift Take
Increasing the allotments to international worker visa programs like H-2B and J-1 will barely help the hotel labor shortage crisis in vacation markets. Longer-term solutions, like marketing hotel careers early to students, need to be implemented to achieve any real change.
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.
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