Nothing will determine the success or failure of commercial strategy teams at hotels more than their ability to foster and retain talent, said Horwath HTL Managing Director Dorothy Dowling.
Speaking about the HSMAI Foundation's 2025 State of Hotel Commercial Talent Report she authored, which focuses on the revenue, sales and marketing disciplines, Dowling noted there are some "frightening" trends.
"On a macro level, we're at the lowest level of employee engagement that we've ever had in our history," she said on the latest episode of the CoStar News Hotels podcast. "And a lot of it is trust. It's that employees don't necessarily trust their employer, and they don't necessarily trust their first-line leaders. ... It is the leader's responsibility to bridge some of that trust and to invest in relationship engagement, but we have to re-earn a lot of that trust from employees."
She said this is as important of a challenge for hotel companies as anything, and a big part of that will be finding ways to connect with the best employees.
"We do have to meet them where they're at because they come with a different mindset," she said. "We do have to understand that talent is a key differentiator in success, and they are a market to be cultivated. The real winners are those that are going to win talent, grow talent and retain talent."
In all, the report outlines nine trends hoteliers should keep top of mind about talent and labor:
- The role of artificial intelligence in managing or improving the workforce.
- Investment in skill development.
- Managing across multiple generations.
- Leadership's role in defining culture.
- The importance of mental well-being.
- The balance of hybrid work models.
- Flexibility with gig work and fractional staffing.
- Improving employee engagement.
- Growing cross-functional work across commercial disciplines.
Brian Hicks, president and CEO of HSMAI, said the hotel industry could soon be in much better footing when it comes to training opportunities, as artificial intelligence will be a key tool in employee development.
"I think AI is going to provide an even greater platform for faster [training] as they go through education," he said. "I think it's going to land a lot better, and they're going to have a resource that they can fall back on should they need to for a refresher."
For more from the interview with Hicks and Dowling, listen to the podcast interview embedded above. You can find the full report here.