Washington - Tourism is thriving in the nation's capital,
with the District of Columbia's visitors bureau declaring a record year for US foot
traffic in 2016. But at Washington's hotels, hiring has been more or less flat
for two decades.
The region's hotel industry employs only about 5 400 more
people today than it did in 1990, a tiny increase for a region the size of the Washington area. When
calculated as a percent of the metropolitan area's total employment base, the
industry's employment footprint here is actually getting smaller.
"We have a very vibrant, financially successful
industry, but it's just not throwing off a lot of employment," said John
Boardman, executive chairman of local hotel union Unite Here Local 25.
According to data maintained by the Bureau of Labour
Statistics and analyzed by economists at the Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason
University, the hotel
industry's share of the local job market has been steadily trending downward
for 17 years. In 1990, about 1.9 percent of the regions gainfully employed
worked at a hotel. Today that number is down to 1.6 percent.
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Industry experts say the slowdown has been caused by shifts
in the way hotels serve customers and run their businesses. The move to more
limited-service options at many hotels means fewer job openings for busboys,
doormen and food runners. Other job functions are being automated out as hotels
rely more on apps and websites.
"There are places where you can walk into and out of a
hotel without ever having to interact with a human being anymore," said
Mark White, an economist at George Mason who studies the local job market.
Despite new competition from Airbnb, hotels are not
struggling financially. Hotels in the Washington
region took in $4.4 billion last year, a 6.6 percent growth rate over 2015,
according to industry data maintained by hospitality data and analytics firm
STR.
STR estimates the industry adds a few hundred rooms every
year as new hotels open in and around the city, such as the new Marriott
International convention centre hotel that opened in DCs Mount Vernon Square neighbourhood
in 2014, or more recently, the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
Each ribbon-cutting ceremony typically comes with an
announcement that hundreds of jobs will be created.
So why is the
industry's labour force growing so slowly?
It could be a result of a drawdown in service in some parts
of the industry. "Limited service" options like at Cambria Suites,
Comfort Inn and Red Roof Inn, as classified by market research firm US Hotel Appraisals,
offer cheaper rooms with abbreviated service offerings. Guests who stay at such
hotels are willing to forego a full room service menu in favour of more
narrowly defined "grab and go" options, lessening the need for a
fully staffed kitchen.
Technological change may also be contributing to the
slowdown. The hotels of the 1950s employed rooms full of switchboard operators
just to enable guests to book rooms and make calls. More recently, robotic
answering services mean hotels need fewer service representatives.
Things like ordering room service, booking a room and even
checking into the hotel are increasingly done through apps and websites rather
than the front desk.
Lackluster hiring "is a common trend we're seeing
industry-wide, and the reason for that is technology," said Solomon Keene
Jr., president and chief executive of the Hotel Association of Washington.
"For services that customers would historically rely on an individual for,
technology can offset that."
Customer service is a long way away from being automated
completely, but that could change as a more smartphone-obsessed generation
comes of age.
The world's biggest hotel companies are already preparing
for that day: At a hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia, for example, Hilton
Worldwide has been testing guest-greeting robots that could take the place of
doormen.
Still, it's unlikely that hotels will ever be run completely
by robots. Automation "will probably affect the hotel industry in ways we
can't even imagine right now," said Boardman, the hotel union director,
"but hospitality is not only bricks-and-mortar; it's the human
interaction. It's the feeling you get when somebody makes you feel at home."
WASHINGTON POST