Career Opportunities in Hospitality Today - Chip Rogers, AHLA

Josiah: 0:00

What's going on in the hotel industry and how might that inform the way we recruit talented people into our businesses today? To unpack this, we're joined today by Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and in this episode we cover the state of the industry, reasons for optimism and set the record straight on what a career in hospitality can provide today.

Josiah: Chip, thanks so much for taking some time to join us today. There's always a lot going on in the hotel industry. The reason I wanted to talk with you was a research project I've been working on the last couple of months around how are people viewing jobs in hospitality, and so I'm really excited about diving into some of the career and employment opportunities in hospitality today. But maybe before we get into it, I wonder what you're seeing and hearing - we're recording this in the middle of 2023 - what you're seeing and hearing about the state of the hotel industry today.

Chip: 1:17

Look, cautious optimism. We've been riding a high because of this incredible surge of people who just want to get out and see their friends and their family and travel and see the world again, which is a wonderful thing. I was not one of those people that locked down, so I never really stopped traveling, but I recognized there were a lot who spent an enormous amount of time really in their own home - great place to be, but any single place can get to be too much after time, and humans are meant to be with each other. That's the beauty of our industry, and so when people question what is the long-term viability of travel, and hotels that are related to that always remind them look, humans are built to be with other humans, and what we've seen over the last couple of years is people exercising that, and so this incredible surge of leisure travel continues and I think it will continue for quite some time. Look, as much as we all like to complain about the problems that we might experience during traveling, I am one of those folks. I'm sitting in a hotel room. I'm not going to tell you where. I'm in a hotel room a lot, but just two days ago actually yesterday I had a plan that got diverted and had to get on a bus and travel two hours actually, and even with challenges like that, people are continuing to travel at record levels and we're going to continue to see that. So you have that on one hand. On the other hand pre-pandemic we kind of looked at our life of travel over here and work over here. They're completely intermeshed now, and so so many people can travel for work and then they can also travel to do things that they want to do in their life and work at the same time, and so that's kind of the difference it used to be you would travel for work, you would come home. Now you can travel for enjoyment and also do your job, and so that change is obviously going to stick with us. The technology that we're using right now is very commonplace to everybody now. How many people even knew what Zoom was or Microsoft Teams or any of this pre-pandemic? And now everyone's pretty comfortable with it, and so what that affords us is the opportunity to go to a lot of places and continue to still do our jobs and not be tethered to a specific location or a specific desk for five days a week, and so I think that's all really good stuff in the long term. Now, as we think about short-term, look, we all have to worry about things that are outside of our control. What's going to happen with the economy? Are we ever going to have that promised recession that everybody talks about? And even if we do, is that going to hit the travel industry the same way it hits other parts of our economy? I can't answer that. I don't think many people can answer that. The experts say it's coming, it's gonna be here. How deep, how long, we don't know. And will that impact us? Probably a little bit, but I don't spend my time too much worrying about things I can't control, but the things that we do control and we can control. It looks pretty bright on the horizon.

Josiah: 4:14

Well, it's awesome to hear that, and I think it's very exciting to think about these way additional waves of demand coming online. It's not just about a post-pandemic bounce if you. I think there was some extra demand there, but now, with more meetings with different countries, having more people traveling from them, all means more demand, and so I think if you're a hospitality provider, that's exciting, but also if you're someone who's thinking about career planning, I think it's important to kind of think about those long-term tailwinds because you wanna get involved in something that's not necessarily just gonna be hot for a couple years but has long-term potential. It feels like that's what hospitality is right.

Chip: 4:50

Oh, there's no question. I would ask anybody here that's, let's say, age 35 and above to think back to when you were a kid and then, if you yourself have kids, do your kids travel more than you did? I mean, I think every generation can say yes to that, but I think that we've almost seen exponential growth in the last 40 years. I mean people used to. They were born somewhere, they went to school there. They sometimes didn't travel too much outside of their own region. Now, most families I know not only do they travel all over the place, they take their kids everywhere. I mean I think about my own kids and what they've experienced. Travel is something we all yearn for and it has become much more commonplace.

Josiah: 5:31

Yeah, and it's great to experience that on a personal level, but also for our organizations. And I have to give AHLA a shout-out because I was at an event a couple of months ago that AHLA participated in and hosted in San Francisco and it was really cool to see the energy in the room. And I think back to what you're mentioning earlier we're meant to be face-to-face and video conferencing and digital communication afford some level of connection, but it's just you can't top that feeling of being in the room, right, and you're just crisscrossing the country. It feels like these days, listening to hoteliers from coast to coast, and it's a pretty cool perspective I'm sure that you have because of that.

Chip: 6:11

You know, look, I'll use a sports analogy, which I do a lot. My favorite team in the NFL is the Miami Dolphins, and I dream of the day the Dolphins will be back in the Super Bowl. Right, but if they were playing in the Super Bowl and someone asked me do you wanna watch the dolphins playing in the Super Bowl at home? That's a great experience, especially with the technology we have today the audio, the visual, and just how they frame the entire event that's great. But if they asked me, or would you rather be in the stands? Even if you're in the nosebleed seats, you wanna be there because you can feel it, you can experience it, and that's what person-to-person interaction is like. We're human beings, we're meant to have that. Technology can take us places we've never dreamed of before, and it's wonderful. No one wants to go backward, but we cannot replicate that human interaction.

Josiah: 6:59

Couldn't agree more, and I wonder if we could shift our conversation a little bit to talking about some of the implications for career opportunities in hospitality. It's going to be no shock to anyone listening that there have been challenges across the industry for a variety of reasons in terms of hiring, and you and I were talking a little bit about. Maybe some of this is a perception issue, right, and it would be good to level set around what Are the actual opportunities for working in hospitality today. So if we could, I'd like to spend a few moments kind of running through some of the findings of the survey that I've conducted over the past couple of months For people outside of the hotel industry that don't work in hotels, but what they think working in hotels is and how they make career decisions, and so the first thing that I found was money is the top factor for, for those I surveyed, choosing career opportunities Today, and I guess you know. My question for you is how have you seen the industry respond to become competitive in this area? Do you still feel that we are we're kind of not able to offer the same things as other industries, or have things changed and we're in a competitive place now as an industry?

Chip: 8:15

things are definitely changed. You know, when you look at the problem in our economy right now, finding workers is enormous, and it's been with us for quite some time. This is not just a blip. We have been at this place where there's been about 10 million open jobs for a long time somewhere between 8-10 million and there's been somewhere between 4 and 6 million people that are on the quote unemployment list of people that are looking for work. So that gap of anywhere between 4 to 6 million has been with us for a long, long long time. What that means is everybody is out there competing for the same people. So you're trying to get people that are employed to come to work for you, or, probably more often than I, try to steal people from other jobs. Well, at the end of the day, no one's going to lose. I can't imagine this happening too much, but it's very difficult to get someone to leave a job to come to work for you and get paid significantly last. So you're going to have to compensate people. You have to continue to raise those wages in a highly competitive environment, and that is exactly what the hotel industry is done. If you look at the numbers, you see that our wages are higher than they've ever been before. If you look at our wage increases. What is the percentage wage increase since the middle of the pandemic will say, let's say, start of 21? If you take it from there until now, the entire US economy because of a lack of workers, a lack of supply of workers, which means the demand is going to outweigh the supply, which means pricing has to go up. It has gone up across the economy, but in the hotel industry, it's gone up by about 50% more. So the entire economy wages have gone up in the hotels 50% more as a percentage increase from where you started, and so we're seeing the hotel industry respond in that way saying look, you have to have workers. We know that we're going to have to raise wages and that has absolutely happened and they're at their highest level ever Now. In addition to that, you probably saw some of this in your study. When I talk to owners and operators, at the end of the day they recognize, look, paying more for labor. No question about it. I still can't find everybody that I need, but I've got to operate this business like think the doors have to stay open, we got to pay our debt service, we have to serve our customers, and so they're finding ways to do that with fewer people that puts some extra pressure on the actual people, but it also creates an environment where people find new ways to do things. You know necessity is the mother of innovation. We've always seen that as human beings and we will always see that. And the necessity right now to deliver that product and service with fewer people means people are finding ways to be more efficient.

Josiah: 10:50

Interesting. So there's an opportunity for people that are, you know, innovative and want to make their mark on a business, to enter the hospitality business. And so you talked about this, this kind of old perception that hotels are going to make less money. They've caught up. So if I'm just starting my career, let's say, is it fair to say that if I look at a job opportunity in a hotel versus another industry it's going to be competitive now, or maybe it was different before?

Chip: 11:15

Oh, it's clearly competitive. One of the problems we have to is when you see the actual government data, they lump us in. When you look at the wage rate, they lump us in with fast-service restaurants and no disrespect. As a kid I spent my time working in McDonald's and in Wendy's. You know that was my introduction to the workforce and I'm glad I did. It was tough work, very low. I think. My first job three, I want to say $3.35 an hour, something like that. It was low, right, but they lump us in with that. It creates this perception that we're low wage opportunities and that is just not the case among hourly workers. The wage in the US now for hotel workers is above $23 an hour, and so we have established ourselves as a good paying job, a good place to build a career and I know you're probably going to ask me about it and I'll wait a little bit but wow, there's never been a better time to build that hotel related career than there is right now.

Josiah: 12:10

Let's actually talk about that, because something that came up in the study was there were many that I surveyed that did not think the hotel industry would help them reach their career goals as quickly as working in other industries. I feel like maybe this is a perception problem as well. And so to your point of building that long-term career, what have you seen or hearing in terms of how hotel companies are providing that career development opportunity?

Chip: 12:36

What's across the board. I mean, everybody knows it and everyone has to fill that gap. Now, if you think about the industry, I'll separate into two categories. You have the at-property, the on-property category of people who work Physically at the hotel and people that work off-property, someone who may work for a brand, management of your supplier, that may be at a corporate office. Taking those two apart will start the on property. During the pandemic, what happened was a lot of people left. But it was a lot of people that left who created a lot of job openings, a lot of career opportunity openings. People that had years and years of experience that said, all right, now is the time making a life change to me, but they're retiring, I'm gonna move to another industry, I'm gonna go back to school. But these are people that not just at entry level, all the way through the organization. And so when you had that group of people that left by the millions, it created these opportunities not just at the bottom, not just at the entry level, but all the way up and down the scale for people to move into those. And so, when you're thinking about it from just purely a mathematical problem, if you had those many people leave and they were all up and down the change scale of positions inside of a hotel then you recognize that if you get in now, your chance to go to the top or to move up is gonna be much quicker than ever before, because those positions have to be filled by somebody, and so now you're competing with people that have similar experiences, which may be no experience at all, and so if you got in now or over the last year or so, you're really putting yourself in a position to move up the ladder faster than ever before. Now the same thing happens outside the property, above the property, with the corporate entities maybe not as much, but that opportunity clearly exists, and hotels are scooping up people from hotel schools as fast as they possibly can, not just hotel schools, business schools, anything related to hospitality. They're trying to get them into the business, and if you do that, if you take that opportunity, I think what you're going to find is enormous possibilities for building their career rather quickly.

Josiah: 14:41

Well, it's fascinating to watch this all in full. I was talking to someone yesterday who went to Stanford, has an MBA, worked for an investment firm, work for JP Morgan, and then took a job as a hotel general manager. She had a ton of fun doing it and crushed her numbers, and so I see people like her that are making these somewhat atypical moves. But I'm also seeing people that enter the industry in maybe a frontline position and I think, because of some of the reasons that you spoke to and others that I speak to, it seems that there's tremendous opportunity to rise up through the ranks pretty quickly, whether you want to be on property or in a corporate role.

Chip: 15:15

I stayed at a gosh a camera of which hotel it was, but it was in Phoenix, I think it was a Kempton, and this was within the last two months, and was talking to a young man and he was apparently a little older than I thought he seemed very young, but he started in high school working as a valet outside of parking cars at the hotels in downtown Phoenix property. He had just that week got promoted to general manager and that was about took him about six years six years to go from parking cars to parking cars, from parking cars to running the entire hotel. This is probably a 200 room hotel with a food outlets as well, and the young man was probably in his mid to late twenties at best and that's a pretty high paying job to run a hotel like that, and so it was quite impressive. I know not everyone's story is going to be exactly the same, but this industry does afford that opportunity.

Josiah: 16:13

It's very exciting and I guess, if I kind of pulled together some different findings throughout the study, what was interesting is to look at. That seemed to be different groups of people and kind of how interested they were in hospitality and how it affected other things they were looking for. So if you felt that hospitality was an opportunity for you, it seems that these people were less likely to want to get paid way more than others. And it seemed people coming from certain industries there's construction and retail and some of these industries actually could be a really good fit for a job in hospitality. And so I wonder if part of the trick for those listening to this that are looking to hire is maybe looking in some somewhat unconventional places, maybe looking at a different kind of stage, whether it's high school or college and recruiting. I'm curious. My question for you would just be you know, kind of what are you hearing and seeing in the sense of kind of what's working for people in recruiting that's a little unconventional or a little different than we've done in the past?

Chip: 17:13

Yeah, people are looking at anywhere and everywhere. Now we don't get too many Stanford MBAs coming back into the industry to serve on property, but it's not unheard of, as you just illustrated a moment ago, and so there's really nothing off limits. I think people look. During the pandemic, we had a ton of folks leave the industry because, you know, at one point occupancy was down to 15%. Many of them went into other industries that were hiring at a rapid pace delivery services, warehousing jobs like that and those are respectful jobs, like I want to get my packages as well, right, I want to get my deliveries as well, and someone needs to do that, and I have the utmost respect for them. But as I think about what fulfills me and I think a lot of other people look at, look at life this way as well when you're doing your job, what is the impact you're making? What are you taking away from that? And there's a large segment of our society that really enjoys making other people happy, and so, as you think about the job that you're in, recognize that in the hotel industry, especially those jobs that come in contact with the guests, you're part of an environment that is touching the lives of people in a very special way, because when people come to a hotel, yes, a lot of them are coming there for business, but a lot are coming there for family reunions. Maybe they're there with their child on a little league baseball tour, maybe they're going for their first ever major job interview. There are so many reasons. A wedding, those type of things that are life moments that you always remember, that are associated with a hotel, and if you work in that hotel, you get to be part of that, and so you know, when I walk around hotels, which I do almost every day I'm always talking to the people who work there, ask them how they're doing, are they enjoying it? There's a lot of smiling faces. Now, I'm not trying to sugarcoat this thing and say it's not hard work. It is hard work, there's no question about that. But it's work that matters. It's work that impacts other people's lives in a very positive way, and it's something you can take out of your career that goes beyond just the compensation, the benefits that you're receiving in exchange for that work.

Josiah: 19:20

You got to look at the whole picture right and as you think about career moves, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about, you know, some of the things that you're doing at AHLA. I think kind of two things I'm especially interested in is what you're doing to help grow the talent pipeline. I know there's been various initiatives on that front and also in the legislation and getting people involved in communicating the importance of hospitality and travel to government. It's an area that I frankly haven't spent a lot of time and attention on, but as I kind of have watched you in your work and watched others engage in that work, it seems so important. So we can hit that in whatever order you would like. But I would love to hear a little bit more about your work at AHLA and how you're addressing this topic from these two angles.

Chip: 20:04

So let's split this again into two areas. You have AHLA and you have the AHLA Foundation. Now there's a lot that both entities do. We're all under the same umbrella, but the best way to describe it is AHLA serves as the advocacy voice for the industry, serves as kind of the research voice in many cases of the industry and the platform for bringing people together in the industry for best practices and just to have leaders get together with other leaders. Now, that's what AHLA does, and so when we advocate, it's a very simple message we're there to protect and to promote the hotel industry, and the better job that we do means that the industry is going to be more successful and the industry is more successful. More hotels are built, hotels are less expensive to the consumer, more people get to enter our industry, careers are made. The American dream is realized through hospitality and hotels specifically, and so we really take that job. Importantly because, at the end of the day, government policy impacts all of us in some way, whether it's our private lives or our public lives. Some industries say nuclear power are highly, highly, highly, highly regulated, for obvious reasons. Other industries, like the hotel industry, are less regulated for reasons that means we're not regulated, but we have to be the voice that tells lawmakers, based on our knowledge, our unique knowledge of the hotel industry, what works, what doesn't work. How can we provide the guests the best product and service, the safest, most affordable way possible so that the hotel industry can thrive, and it's our role to do that. There's no one else who's going to do that right. No one from the banking industry or the automobile industry is going to meet with their elected officials and say, hey, let me tell you how great the hotel industry is. That's not happening. So that's what we do on the advocacy side. The flip side of that that you mentioned a moment ago is what are we doing in and around people? And that is what we do through the AHLA foundation. And so the foundation hits in many ways. On one hand, in protecting people that are in hotels, we're always fighting for the protection of hotel workers. That's why we're so adamantly opposed to this crazy idea in Los Angeles of housing homeless people next to paying guests, which means hotel employees have to work with the population they're clearly not trained to work with. So we're there to protect employees. That's incredibly important. Protect our hotel guests. We work. There are no room for trafficking, to make sure human trafficking is not happening in hotels. All the way to the other end of that, and that is training and certification for hotel employees. We have an apprenticeship program that we work through a grant from the US Department of Labor to make sure we're providing hotel employees with additional skills so they can continue to build that career, and that program is free to hotel employers and, of course, it's free to the employees as well. And so all along the spectrum, we're always working to see how can we support the workforce, and one of the things that we've talked a lot about during this interview is how are we changing that narrative? One of the interesting things we just invested heavily into a new television show called Hotel All Stars, which hopefully will be coming to streaming the service near you. It's sponsored by AHLA. We have our good friend Anthony Melichore who is the host of this and it really focuses on just how cool it is to work in a hotel and it's kind of almost a reality show game show that takes some people through the process of getting that hotel job. But we're always trying to highlight how can we show people what building a career in the hotel industry means for them and how enjoyable and rewarding it will be. And so, on the foundation side, that's the message that we're pushing. We spent a lot of money on it millions of dollars each and every year to try to push that narrative, so people see what our industry is really about.

Josiah: 23:45

Well, I can't wait to watch that show, but I appreciate the efforts you're making across the spectrum. As you mentioned, I was talking with some of the leaders at Remington Hospitality earlier today and they were talking about the importance in the power of the apprenticeship program and saying that this is just a real pillar of what they're doing. So I'm hearing this on people within these companies. It just makes such a difference. I guess before we go Chip, we make a pitch for that because when you're working with government there's always funding.

Chip: 24:10

We actually have additional funding for more apprentices and for all of our hotel operators out there. This program is absolutely free to you. We have a hotel management apprenticeship program where you identify those on your team who might want to move into management and we do the full training of them Cost you nothing. We have a program in culinary and we just started on engineering and maintenance. So if you're having trouble holding on to your employees in those three areas, keep in mind that the folks who go through the apprentice program at AHLA that cost you nothing. Their retention rate is 90% 90%, 90%.

Josiah: 24:49

Wow, we'll have to link to that in the show notes where people can find out more. Seems like an amazing opportunity. Yeah, before we go, chip, I wonder if we could talk just a little bit about the future and what trends or things that you see happening or will happen that are most exciting for you. I think at the beginning of our conversation we talked a little bit about the tailwinds behind hospitality. Is there anything else that comes to mind, though, in terms of things that get you excited that our hospitality providers listening, should be aware of and communicate to people, maybe outside the industry, as part of their pitch on why you should work in hospitality?

Chip: 25:24

Well, look, one of the things that everyone had to do was find new ways over the last three years to get the job done in different ways. It was a tough process, but there are silver linings that come out of that, and I think hoteliers are in a better position now to provide a better product and service over the long term to people than ever before. We have a better understanding of what it is the guest wants, what it is that the guest needs, so the hotel industry will never look the way it did in the past even simple things like food and beverage. The reality is that Americans who were stuck in their home for three years figured out hey, I can pick up this thing right here, this phone, and I can order anything I want from that phone and I can order all the food I want from that phone. Well, they do that to hotels as well. Now, that does create some challenges on the housekeeping side, because people tend to be a little messier in the order of their food in, but it's the way that guests want to live their lives now, and so the industry is just in a much, much better place for you to work from a hotel. Stay at a hotel on a long-term basis, with extended-state properties are exploding everywhere. But I'll go back to the very core of this, and that is people. All the technology in the world can't replace the people that make hospitality very special, make it what it is. Think about when you go to a restaurant. Yeah, there's places now where you can order, but I like to ask the waiter or the waitress hey, what's the best thing on the menu, what's the most popular? Really, get an understanding from them. You're not going to get that through that digital app sitting at the table, and so we're always going to be a business where it's people touching people. We'll incorporate technology as we have to make the overall experience even better. But if you're thinking about it from a hey, I want to build a career there, go back to what I said about making memories for people, but also realize hotels are doing things much different than they've ever done before Instant pay, massive flexibility around schedules. If you want to work at a hotel two days a week, six hours each shift, you can almost walk in and pick your hours right now, and the jobs aren't just entry level, up and down the scale, those jobs are available. And then again the opportunity for advancement. To see the world, to travel the world when you have time off All of that is better than it's ever been.

Josiah: 27:38

It's exciting times for sure, chip. Thanks so much for taking some time to chat with us or your perspective. Appreciate all you're doing.

Chip: 27:45

Thank you so much.

Josiah: 27:46

Awesome. I will cut the episode there. I feel like that was amazing. A lot of people I interview we have to go through and do multiple takes. You're a pro, so is there anything there that we talked about you do not want me to use, or is it all?

Chip: 28:01

fine, to use All usable yeah.

Josiah: 28:03

Oh, awesome, I will.