Originally Posted by
The Road Goes On Forever
Hotels are understaffed and commensurate to how they were staffed ten or twenty years ago that level will never return. What you're moving towards is the model where there is no front desk, everyone checks in on their device with the parent company's app and with the smart TV in your room you're be able to contact the staff member(s) on site who will be basically roving floats responding on their device to any questions or requests while they are taking out garbage, cleaning rooms/hallways or PM-ing a room, etc. Continued decreased staffing levels are very much by design from the franchisees and the parent company's are more than good with them going in that direction which is why they keep pushing/rolling out further "advances" in technology to help them get there. What can be done about this? Nothing and every major industry player are all moving to the same place.
Basically the system as comprised sets staff and to a degree potential guests up to fail. The parent company's do their little annual or bi-annual QA audits and preach standards except those cost money and have become a lot of lip service. The franchisee doesn't give a crap about standards as those are just extra expenses to incur and it's how far can we squeeze things until we get deflagged.
You get what you pay for in terms of staff. At most properties there are no benefits, pay hasn't moved much if it all during the pandemic while scheduling is all over the place. Why would anybody want to get into the hospitality industry and if you're older, why would you stay assuming that you made it through the great staffing purge of 2020? To a degree you would have to be an idiot.
You're working harder now then you did pre-pandemic to make the same money if you're lucky. It's not in the least that younger staff are annoyed at anything? They just see working conditions and pay rates for what they are...miserable. Will that make you salty quick? Damn right. The rub to that is the parent companies are well aware this is going on but they offer no assistance with hiring practices or pay rates and have no say in the handbook rules of their franchisees.
Can any of this overall be changed? Not likely. It's been trending this way for a long time. The pandemic just sped it up,
This sounds awful. Why should I pay $1,000/night for a luxury hotel when there are no staff to help me with anything, the rooms get smaller, they reduce closet space. It starts to become not at all worth it for luxury leisure travel. As things stand I feel like after almost every stay I feel ripped off due to the lousiness of the hotel. There are still some hotels that go above and beyond and remind you how things used to be, it's almost a cruel reminder of what once was and is unlikely to be in the future.