The Slow Cooking of the Hotel Industry

As we were recording our podcast, Mauricio Schuler asked me what are my predictions for the industry in ten years. I said, we either stay as we are or something drastic will happen and we will be forced to change.

Knowing my industry and watching it being slowly cooked to death my bet is that we will be forced to change but not one second before we would die. The threat of death will be in the form of a never seen labour shortage because younger generations are already staying away from the industry.

I view young generations or those who are new to the industry as the ones who jump into the boiling water but refuse to be cooked. They jump out of the pot, sit on the side and say, "Hey, these are the things that don't work. I don't want to leave, I want to solve it with you but I refuse to get back in the pot to acclimatise only to eventually die."

And this is where we go wrong because we know hoteliers' mentality:

- If you don't like it you can leave.

- We have always done things this way. This is what the industry is about. You must love it to stay in it.

- I have worked 12h a day for 20 years and waited for my turn to be a manager. This is the way, you need to be patient.

- It is not that bad we get room and F&B discount.

- As for the salary, it's ok, we have a 3% increase once a year. But we have free food on duty.

So yes, we are being cooked. We are already at the well-done stage.

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