Signs that tourists are returning to Hawaii are hard to miss: crowded beaches, queues at tourist eateries, increasing foot traffic along Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki.
The return is hardly an illusion: Data shows that there were significantly more tourists to Hawaii this March than the same month in 2020, when Hawaii tourism was just beginning to feel the impact of COVID-19.
But one thing is missing: jobs in tourism. Hotels and restaurants have certainly brought back workers, but nowhere near in proportion to visitor numbers. While figures show that March 2021 was better than March 2020 in terms of visitor numbers, March 2021 was significantly worse in terms of hotel and restaurant jobs – by almost 40,000.
Hotels and restaurants in Hawaii employed approximately 73,000 people in March 2021, compared to 112,000 in March 2020, despite an 8% increase in visitors per day in March 2021, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority‘s March visitor count.
The reason is simple, says Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization. Even if the tourists come back, there just isn’t enough to fill all the hotels.
“We know that businesses will not rush to restore full staffing when hotels are at 43% occupancy,” Bonham said, citing the recent statewide occupancy rate. “If you just look at March, they probably had more people than they needed.”
The problem is that Waikiki, which remains the state’s tourism leader, relies heavily on international travelers and no one knows when they’ll be back.
“If we had higher occupancy, there would be a lot more people working right now,” said Jeff Wagoner, president and chief executive of Outrigger Hospitality Group, speaking at a news conference organized by the American Hotel and Lodging Association last week.
The problem with big markets like Japan is that travelers returning from the US have to quarantine for two weeks when they get home. That makes a week-long trip to Hawaii impractical, if not impossible, for Asian visitors with limited vacation time.
Short-time workers are also stressed with fewer guests
The drop in passenger numbers isn’t the only problem, said Glenn Vergara, vice president and general manager of the Waikiki Resort Hotel, which is owned by Korean Air Lines. Things wouldn’t be the same even if the hotel were able to make up for lost business with U.S. visitors, who tend to be more budget-conscious, Vergara said.
“In the past, the international traveler was the one willing to open their wallet,” he said.
Without them, he said, there’s simply less demand for services. For example, the hotel has a Korean restaurant, but there is no demand to open it without visitors from Japan and Korea. And that means fewer jobs.
By midday on Thursday, the hotel lobby was mostly quiet, save for a few guests checking in at the front desk, asking questions, or leaving their bags with the porter at a corner station. Two receptionists and a doorman seemed to be enough for the time, but looks can be deceiving, said Jungmin “Coco” Kim, one of the receptionists on duty.
Kim, who is working with hotel workers’ union Unite HERE Local 5 to try to get more workers back into the hotel, said it can be overwhelming when more than a few tourists check in at the same time.
There’s often only one clerk on duty, she said, and sometimes not even a bellhop. This means that counter clerks sometimes have to deal with luggage.
Also, it takes longer than usual to check people in these days. Staff are required to review guest records to ensure the guest recently had a COVID-19 test, which is required to avoid the state’s 10-day quarantine, she said, and it gives them additional safety precautions and guidelines to discuss.
“Guests are starting to get frustrated,” she said. “You’re already tired from the airport.”
Vergara agreed that there was more work to do getting people checked in, but he said the hotel just can’t hire much more staff when occupancy is only 40% to 50%, the restaurant is closed, and group and banquet business does not exist.
“We would like to bring our employees back,” he said. “But as much as I want to bring them back, we can’t bring them back to just stand around.”
The situation could stay like this for a while. The Hotel and Lodging Association, for example, expects Hawaii’s hotel jobs to remain roughly where they are now — at about 24,300 jobs for the year versus about 44,300 for 2019.
Even before COVID-19, hotel managers were reducing the number of employees in certain positions due to tools like apps that allowed hotel guests to self-check into rooms instead of waiting in line. This trend is likely to accelerate in 2021.
A recent Washington Post article discussing this trend cited a conference call in which Hilton Hotels CEO Chris Nassetta shared his plan to reduce labor costs at the chain’s 6,400 hotels.
“The work we’re doing right now with each of our brands is making them higher-margin businesses and creating more work efficiencies,” he told investors in February. “When we emerge from the crisis, these companies will be higher-margin and require fewer workers than before the crisis.”
Meanwhile, restaurant workers face a similar challenge due to COVID-19 and consumer trends.
COVID-19 protocols have severely damaged restaurants. After full closures and takeout-only orders, restaurants are still facing capacity constraints due to government orders and social distancing protocols. The result is fewer seats, and therefore fewer customers — which means fewer staffing requirements, said Vergara, the Waikiki Resort Hotel’s general manager.
The good news is that it seems unlikely that hotel positions will go away completely any time soon. Even jobs that require contact with multiple people and objects in a short amount of time, like valet parking, can be done safely, said Louis Tripoli, a retired Navy rear admiral who now works as a consultant for the Hotel and Lodging Association.
“Some jobs require a little more modification than others depending on the risk,” he said.
Bonham, the UHERO economist, agreed that he doesn’t see COVID-19 causing some jobs to go the way of buggy whip makers and elevator operators.
“I’m not a big fan of the idea that some industries are gone forever,” he said.
Comments are closed.