With the revival of travel as pandemic fears fade comes also a revival in the hotel industry, but if you’re looking for a complete return to pre-pandemic ‘normal,’ hold your breath. Some pandemic-era changes are looking permanent, including the loss of daily housecleaning.
Early on in the pandemic hotels adopted a variety of safety measures, which included intensive cleaning and sanitization between guests, sometimes even leaving rooms empty for a day or two, but also stopped sending housekeeping staff in to tidy and make beds each day to reduce unnecessary contact. They also canceled other high-contact amenities such as hot breakfasts.
While those measures undoubtedly made things safer for everyone, and made people feel more willing to stay at hotels, it was not lost on hotel executives that they also reduced costs, especially at hotels where guests stayed longer than one night. Executives of large hotel operators, including Hilton and Marriott, have been pointing that out to investment analysts since recovery started late last year.
Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta told investors in February that “The work we’re doing right now in every one of our brands… is about taking — making them higher margin businesses and taking — creating more labor efficiencies, particularly in the areas of housekeeping, food and beverage and other areas. When we get out of the crisis, those businesses will be higher-margin and require less labor than they did pre-covid.”
Since many low-wage industries are finding it hard to hire now, when demand for workers is high, that’s also a way for the hotel industry to avoid raising wages to attract new employees.
How will travelers take to the new post-pandemic trends? Time will tell. It is possible that hotels will sell daily housecleaning as an extra fee the way the airlines sell more footroom or a checked bag. It is possible that customers with more money might opt for a hotel with more of the traditional services. Jim Risoleo, CEO of Host Hotels sees that happening, telling investors “…it’s going to vary on, frankly, the type of property we have and the personal profile of the customer.”
