It’s no secret that the hospitality industry has been dealing with staffing shortages over the last two years in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. A recent article from the travel news site, Skift, caught the entire industry’s attention by acknowledging an honest truth: these staffing shortages likely aren’t going away anytime soon and in many cases, they actually preceded the pandemic.
The hotel industry has been hit much harder by staffing shortages than other sectors – we have nearly triple the unemployment rate of the U.S. national average. Currently, the hospitality sector is down approximately 1.4 million jobs from pre-pandemic levels. With the advent of vaccines and the fast-approaching holiday season, travel is bouncing back at a very healthy rate: “Business travel is going to shock us all to the upside in 2022,” said Marriott International CEO Tony Capuano. “It will roar back in a way that will defy some really dour prognostications.”
While the increase in travel demand is great for the industry and the economy, many chronically understaffed hotels are struggling to keep up. Guests were more forgiving of understaffed and underserviced hotels back when the pandemic was more novel, but their expectations are rising in kind with demand, which is resulting in lower satisfaction levels. Keith Barr, the CEO of IHG Hotels & Resorts, recently stated: “We’re all seeing our customer satisfaction scores in this industry, across the board, go down. We have to get people back into the workforce. Fundamentally, we just don’t have enough people in the workforce.”
There are no easy answers on how to fix hospitality’s staffing shortages, but there are solutions to alleviate some of the burden from overworked hotel staff. It’s widely agreed upon that technology is revolutionizing the hospitality industry. Out with the walkie-talkies and in with the smartphones. According to TravelDailyNews.com, hospitality technology provides better communication among hotel staff and guests, eliminates the chances for mistakes, and allows staff to complete their daily tasks.
Hope on the Horizon For Understaffed Hotels!
While the hospitality industry is certainly going through a difficult time, it’s not all doom and gloom out there! Here at Quore, we have always strived to make life easier for our end users, across all hotel departments. From engineers to housekeepers to front desk agents and beyond, we are passionate about helping them do their jobs more efficiently, which is more important now than ever before. Quore allows hotel staff to communicate seamlessly, even through language barriers, with our in-app messaging features. We make it easier to schedule preventative maintenance, which saves hotels money in the long run by fixing problems before they can happen.
Quore also helps increase customer satisfaction by prioritizing guest requests and automatically scheduling callbacks, so staff can ensure that all guest’s needs are met. Housekeeping is a department with notoriously high turnover rates, but with our Cleanings and Cleanings Plus apps, it’s easier for housekeepers to schedule their breakout boards and estimate their daily workloads. With Quore, hotel staff are able to do more with less and if Skift is correct in its assertion that staffing shortages are here to stay, then every hotel stands to benefit from implementing operations technology for their staff. Quore is here to help when hotels need help most. Reach out to our Sales team today for more details!
