How to Overcome Staffing Shortages by Empowering Hotel Teams
The Covid pandemic amplified an existing challenge in hospitality: staffing shortages. When hotels shut down, many employees left the industry, finding better hours and pay elsewhere. As a result, hoteliers now face a staffing crisis, exacerbated by legacy systems and repetitive tasks that can deter new hires.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. By embracing innovative technology and redefining roles, hotels can attract and retain talent more effectively. This article explores how technology-driven solutions like Mews can address these challenges.
If you’d like to explore the content in more detail, check out episode five of Matt Talks, a video series where Mews CEO, Matt Welle, offers his advice and tips for hoteliers.
1. Moving from Specialists to Generalists
Rethink Your Hiring Criteria
In traditional hotels, front desk agents often need weeks of training to navigate complex systems. This turns employees into specialists, performing repetitive tasks like check-in and check-out rather than engaging meaningfully with guests. Modern property management systems (PMS) like Mews streamline these tasks, allowing staff to focus on hospitality rather than admin.
By automating up to 70% of administrative work, you can redefine roles, hiring for personality and customer service skills rather than technical know-how. This opens the door to a larger talent pool, as the focus shifts to “guest happiness officers” rather than system specialists.
Creating Multi-Functional Roles
A mobile-friendly PMS means job roles can be much more flexible. Staff can check guests in via tablets, combine reception and concierge roles, and move seamlessly around the property to enhance guest experience. This variety prevents burnout, making roles more dynamic and satisfying, encouraging team members to stay longer and contribute to a positive guest experience.
Reducing Admin for Enhanced Efficiency
Modern PMSs cut down the time-consuming end-of-shift admin by automating guest profile updates and payments. Less time on admin means staff can focus on engaging with guests and improving service, leading to greater job satisfaction and retention.
2: Leveraging Technology for Job Satisfaction
Embrace Automation for Less Admin
Streamline tasks like online check-in, check-out, and payment flows to reduce admin workload. By making these processes self-service where possible, teams have more time to interact with guests directly, turning each encounter into an opportunity to enhance their stay.
Train Staff to Connect with Guests
One small but impactful change is how staff engage with guests. Move beyond the narrow parameters of: “Was everything okay with your stay?” Instead, encourage open-ended questions that invite constructive feedback and create meaningful connections. “What could we have done differently to improve your stay?” will elicit much more constructive feedback that will help your hotel improve, and gives your team more opportunity to know your guests.
Empower Your Team with AI Tools
Asking these open questions also allows you to capture more valuable guest information. Your team should then be able to easily enter it into your system; not only more functional datapoints like pillow preferences and allergies, but whether they support a particular sports team or if they have plans to go to any events while in town.
Not every team member can hold all of this information about every guest in their head. But if it’s entered into Mews, they can use our AI-powered guest profiles to access quick summaries on guest preferences, enabling tailored service and deeper connections.
3: Building a Purpose-Driven Culture
Define and Communicate Your Hotel’s Purpose
Every hotel needs a clear purpose to drive team engagement. Define your mission and values, then integrate them into hiring, training and day-to-day interactions. This clarity helps team members understand their role within the bigger picture, fostering a sense of belonging.
Corporate Social Responsibility Matters
Today’s workforce wants to work for companies that give back. Partnering with initiatives like Hotels for Trees, where guests can opt out of housekeeping to have a tree planted, satisfies this desire while reducing labor needs. This initiative benefits the environment, your staffing budget, and your team – a win-win for everyone involved. Find a cause that fits in with your brand’s mission and commit to it; most people can sense when a brand is being inauthentic.
Offer Growth and Cross-Exposure Opportunities
Show team members there’s a growth path within your hotel. Outline potential career trajectories, offer cross-departmental experiences, and implement mentorship programs. By mapping out career paths, hotels can boost retention and attract employees eager for development.
Shift to Proactive Recruitment
Consider recruiting talent proactively instead of reactively, positioning your team to identify and attract standout candidates from the start. Investing in internal recruitment resources pays off in the long-term, resulting in higher-quality hires who are more likely to stay and contribute to a positive work environment.
Ongoing Training and Feedback
Training shouldn't stop after onboarding. Schedule regular training days where staff can upskill without interrupting their daily duties. Additionally, conducting engagement surveys every quarter helps measure employee satisfaction and identify areas for improvement, reinforcing a culture that values team input.
4: Setting Expectations for Exceptional Hospitality
Will Guidara’s book, Unreasonable Hospitality, explores the concept of going above and beyond for guests, inspiring hoteliers to train and encourage staff to exceed expectations. The Mews tagline, Make it Remarkable, embodies this approach. By setting high standards and empowering your team to make autonomous decisions, you foster a culture of exceptional service that guests will remember and share.
Elevating Everyday Interactions
Encourage your team to reimagine basic interactions with small, thoughtful touches like offering a refreshing drink at check-in or sharing a unique local tip. By collaboratively defining what outstanding service looks like, your team can identify and implement these small, meaningful gestures.
Empowering Team Members to Delight
Empower your team to make autonomous decisions that surprise and delight. Whether it’s recognizing an anniversary with a small gift or personalizing a guest experience, ensure they feel confident to act creatively without requiring lengthy approvals. This autonomy creates a hotel atmosphere that feels genuinely guest-centered.
Recognizing Exceptional Service
Regularly celebrate examples of outstanding service. By highlighting these moments, you reinforce a culture that values going the extra mile, motivating others to deliver similar experiences.
Personalized Experiences Over Standardized Service
Personalization makes guests feel uniquely welcomed. Instead of generic gestures, log guest preferences in your PMS to tailor experiences, such as providing a coffee lover with local beans or sharing insider tips with an explorer. Tools like Mews can help streamline this process, empowering staff to surprise guests with meaningful, personalized touches.
Experiencing the Hotel as a Guest
Have team members stay overnight so they really understand the guest journey. This helps identify areas for improvement and builds empathy, giving staff ownership of solutions to improve the experience for future guests.
Fostering a Culture of “Yes”
Encourage a “yes” mindset, where the team seeks solutions instead of seeing obstacles. Unreasonable hospitality isn’t about extravagance; it’s about thoughtful, unexpected gestures that make guests feel valued. By setting the expectation for extraordinary service and empowering staff, your hotel can stand out and inspire loyalty among guests.
Final Thoughts
As the hospitality landscape evolves, so should hotel operations. Embracing technology like Mews not only alleviates the pressure of staffing shortages but also enhances the guest experience, allowing staff to focus on what truly matters: connecting with guests.
By shifting from admin-heavy roles to dynamic, guest-centered positions, hoteliers can attract and retain a happier, more engaged workforce ready to deliver memorable guest experiences.
Want more help with hiring, retention and streamlining operations? 10 Ways to Manage Staffing Shortages provides tips on how to run a property with a reduced team, from smart technology that reduces your workload to better staff engagement.
About Mews
Mews is the leading platform for the new era of hospitality. Powering over 5,500 customers across more than 85 countries, Mews Hospitality Cloud is designed to streamline operations for modern hoteliers, transform the guest experience and create more profitable businesses. Customers include BWH Hotels, Strawberry, The Social Hub and Airelles Collection. Mews was named Best PMS (2024) and listed among the Best Places to Work in Hotel Tech (2021, 2022, 2024) by Hotel Tech Report, as well as World's Best Hotel PMS Provider (2023) and World's Best Independent Hotel PMS Provider (2022, 2023) by World Travel Tech Awards. Mews has raised $335 million from investors including Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Kinnevik and Notion to transform hospitality.
