Though the labor environment has eased somewhat in the hotel industry, recruitment of talent remains a pain point for many operators.
In the latest episode of the "Next Gen in Lodging" podcast, Adam Robinson, co-founder and CEO of recruiting platform Hireology spoke about how hoteliers can address their staffing challenges.
People are the product, Robinson said. Hotels are selling experiences and providing a service. Travelers are paying money for these experiences and services.
“You can’t automate it,” he said. “Our industry — I don’t care what anyone says, AI is not going to replace guest experiences delivered by human beings in this industry. I just don’t see it happening.”
In hospitality, there will always be demand for human beings providing great service, he said.
The growth rate of employment in hospitality, senior healthcare and senior living communities is faster than the growth rate on average across all industries in the U.S., Robinson said. His company is serving these industries as they have job creation greater than the baseline. In the second quarter of 2026 alone, the hospitality industry posted 232,000 unique hotel and full-service restaurant positions. For context, there are about 6 million unemployed people on average in the U.S. looking for work.
“No one can find enough good people, right?” he said. “I mean, there's not enough people to fill all these roles. …. It's just the supply-demand imbalance is so off.”
The turnover rate in the hotel industry can be incredibly high, he said. Keeping people on the job is difficult, particularly in housekeeping and back-of-house roles.
Software can help address these problems, but it doesn’t solve it, Robinson said. What actually does is people leveraging the technology they bought.
“The first misconception is if I buy some new technology, it’s going to solve my problem. That’s not true,” he said. “Hotels have lots of shelf-ware that they bought and don’t use. It takes real intention.”
Hotel general managers looking to turn around their staffing situations need to have a declared intention with their management team, Robinson said. The focus should be on getting it right, not just solving it by buying software.
Recruiting is a sales process, not an administrative process, he said. Oftentimes, though, the recruiting function is buried in the human resources office, which is a critical function built for risk management, benefits, time and attendance, compliance and labor regulations.
“But those are all administrative functions,” he said. “Recruiting then lives inside this administrative function at most hotels, and administrative functions are not built to be proactive.”
If recruiting is selling, then the job seeker is the customer and the employer is the buyer, Robinson said. If every hotel is selling a job, then the management team needs to know why a job seeker should buy this job opportunity from them instead of the hotel down the street.
“Why would I buy from you? You've got to have that answer, and the answer that is the right answer for the market changes over the years,” he said.
Three years ago, job-seekers were looking for the biggest possible pay increase amid pandemic-driven wage inflation, Robinson said. Today, it’s a little bit different.
“So, if I'm trying to create a recruiting program, I need to know my market,” he said. “I'm going to sell a product that market wants to buy, and my market wants to buy a stable role where they're paid fairly, they work with people they like, and they're part of something with the career path.”
For more from Hireology's Adam Robinson, listen to the podcast embedded above.