ATHENS — After nearly 16 months, COVID-19-related restrictions are being lifted across the nation, breathing life back into the hospitality industry as people return to dining out at restaurants and traveling for both business and pleasure.
In an industry hard hit by the pandemic — employment in the industry is down by 2.8 million, or 16.8%, since February 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau for Labor Statistics — this return to normal is a welcome trend. However, many businesses are struggling to fill essential positions to handle the increasing capacity.
“We’ve been hearing a lot in the general media that operators believe it is the stimulus funding, combined with unemployment benefits, keeping people at home, but that is a simplistic way of looking at the situation,” said John Salazar, associate professor and coordinator of the Hospitality and Food Industry Management program in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia. “It is a lot more complex than that and, while it is gaining a lot of attention, there is much more to the situation. There are a lot of layers here.”
While the worldwide impact of the COVID-19 crisis is beyond anything he said he has experienced before, Salazar said he is confident that the industry will recover, if slowly.
According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association 2021 State of the Hotel Industry report, the hotel industry experienced the most devastating year on record in 2020, resulting in historically low occupancy, massive job loss and hotel closures across the country after travel was forced to a virtual halt in early 2020. Travel is not expected to return to 2019 levels until 2024.
Salazar projects that improvement will come in fits and spurts until things eventually get back to normal. And while much attention has been given to increasing wages for service workers, pay is only a small part of the issue.
“When the pandemic started and businesses shuttered, a lot of employees in the hospitality industry were sidelined. Many of those people could not wait for things to recover to return to the industry, so many of those people found employment in other sectors,” Salazar explained.
While the hospitality industry saw declines, industries like electronic retail, technology and health care boomed during the pandemic.
“For example, the operations of the supply chain in the hotel industry are very similar to the operations of the supply chain in hospitals — they have the same laundry concerns, they have the same housekeeping concerns — and as the pandemic started to drag on, a segment of the population of workers found employment in other industries,” he said. “Many others just couldn’t wait to see when the restaurant…
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