ATLANTA—Hotel Effectiveness is launching the hospitality industry’s first comprehensive Hotel Labor Cost Index and Housekeeping Analysis Report. The Spring 2022 edition of the Hotel Labor Cost Index and Housekeeping Labor Analysis Report revealed increasing labor per occupied room. This is a result of service levels increasing and moving closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Labor issues, including staffing shortages, rising wages, and worker productivity, are the biggest challenges in the industry today. Hotel Effectiveness provides hotel operators and managers with tools that help manage staffing, labor costs, and performance, which is especially critical for the impactful housekeeping position. One in five U.S. hotels, which includes more than 30,000 hotel managers, use Hotel Effectiveness software.
“We are proud to tap into our unprecedented level of data to support the hotel industry with the release of our Hotel Labor Index and Housekeeping Analysis Report,” says Del Ross, chief revenue officer, Hotel Effectiveness. “Our goal is to provide pivotal productivity information to enable timely, data-driven decisions, and help hotel operators improve labor efficiency and bottom-line operating profits.”
The Hotel Labor Index and Housekeeping Analysis Report provide details by hotel brand and segment, including full service, select service, extended-stay properties, and track key performance metrics.
- Increasing wages, especially in housekeeping: Wages across hotel roles increased by 7.6 percent year-over-year (YOY), with an average hourly rate of $16.51/hour in March 2022. The room attendant’s specific wage is now $14.63/hour, up 11.3 percent YOY.
- Continuing high turnover: Room attendant turnover is now over 103 percent annually. On average, each room attendant turns over more than one time per year. Turnover was always very high, but it now slightly exceeds pre-pandemic levels.
- Rising labor hours, especially for select-service hotels: Hours of labor per occupied room rose from 1.3 to 1.6 in March 2021 versus March 2022.
- Returning labor costs per room sold: The all hotels labor cost index shows that the cost of labor per occupied room has increased 26.8 percent for full-service hotels, 14.4 percent for extended stay hotels, and 31.1 percent for select-service hotels YOY from March 2021 to March 2022.
- Housekeeping labor management: 22 percent of guest stayovers were cleaned in February 2022 compared to 65 percent in pre-Covid February 2020. This rate is up 50 percent from early 2021 and has continued to rise month on month from late 2021 through today.
The Hotel Labor Cost Index and Housekeeping Labor Analysis show data to support the importance of continued hotel and team-member level actions needed to mitigate the impacts of turnover and productivity rates. One clear message is that setting a clear strategy of guest opt-in for service has massive implications for housekeeping labor costs.
Armed with the Hotel Effectiveness data, analytics, and automation, hotel operators are empowered to better optimize housekeeping hours, retain team members, staff according to demand, and improve profitability margins.
