Welcoming Strangers 24/7: Hotel Industry Offers Stable Employment

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"PEOPLE ALWAYS TRAVEL," says Larry Yu, professor of hospitality management at George Washington University. "Travel is such a part of American culture."

Yu and his colleagues in hospitality training programs across the country are noticing the same thing: Stocks are tanking, factories are shuttering, businesses are imploding — yet the hotel industry soldiers on.

This is true both on paper (the industry grows about 3 percent annually, notwithstanding minor bumps) and in practice: For those working at a hotel, the world literally never sleeps.

"Operating in that environment is very different from an organization that can shut down on weekends. Try a hotel shutdown for a couple of months and see what happens," says professor A. Kobina Armoo, who teaches in Strayer University's hospitality management program. Even when hotels are renovating, they remain open because, he says, starting up again is so difficult. So, though it may make sense to close when rooms are sitting empty, the lights stay on. And for the people who run the hotels of the world, therein lies the challenge and the excitement.

"You are like a mayor," Yu says. As general manager of a hotel, "you run all kinds of services, utilities, food, dealing with vendors, dealing with government agencies." Who wouldn't want to run their own little universe, one where you can experience the world without even leaving the building?

That's what gets many students interested. Donte Johnson went to school in New Jersey for a communications degree but decided once he graduated that he'd rather be close to his family in D.C. While he tried to find a communications job in the District, he took a job as a desk agent at the Kimpton Hotel chain's Topaz, which was just opening.

"The plan was, 'I'll do this for a while and get myself sorted out, and then transition out of it,'" says Johnson, 29. Instead, he liked the work so much — meeting cultured, worldly travelers, being exposed to people from all over — that he stuck with it.

After bouncing from hotel to hotel and working his way up the ladder, he's now the general manager at the hotel he helped open and the youngest Kimpton GM in Washington.

Today, he works directly with guests, sits in on all meetings (revenue, sales and so on) and tries to check in with every department in the hotel over the course of the day, especially the housekeeping staff ("who have the toughest job in the hotel as far as I'm concerned," he says).

Communication is just another aspect of the field hospitality workers love. "If you're a manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, you might never deal with a human being," Armoo says.

Yet long working hours can be a source of frustration, which is part of what causes the typically high turnover in hospitality and lodging (up to 75 percent for front-line employees, sometimes as high as 25 percent for back-of-house and corporate positions, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Johnson's day starts at 7:30 a.m. and doesn't end until 10 to 12 hours later, at which point he's wrapped up most of the day's behind-the-scenes work and spends his time mingling in the lobby and hotel bar, checking in with guests. But, he says, "that stuff doesn't even feel like work to me. I'd much rather be at the bar talking to guests having dinner, asking them how their day is going, than sitting in traffic."

The money (not bad: median income is about $100,000 per year for D.C.-area managers) and the feeling of being in charge of a fast-paced, multifaceted operation are other reasons many are heading into the lodging industry even in the midst of the recession. And with Hilton Hotels Corporation's announcement earlier this year that it would move its corporate headquarters from California to Tysons Corner, the industry has nowhere to go but up.

That's not necessarily because Hilton will be hiring gobs of fresh talent — a spokeswoman for Hilton was unable to confirm how many jobs would be created in Virginia. She explained that some or most of Hilton's corporate employees would be making the move from California, thus reducing the need to hire here. (As of press time, only 66 job openings — in everything from marketing to HR to "Director of Spas" — were posted on Careers.hilton.com for Hilton's new McLean, Va., headquarters.) However, lower-level corporate jobs might be opening, too.

More importantly: With corporate headquarters right around the corner, the pressure's on individual hotels to perform b etter. "[Corporate managers] can walk right in," Armoo says. So, if a motivated would-be employee shows up, who knows what could happen?

And careers in D.C., at least for now, are booming. Maryam Khan, who directs the hospitality program at Howard University, receives so many calls from local hotels with openings that she doesn't have enough students to fill them.

Meanwhile, Johnson and others like him are busy working their way up. "My immediate goal is to be the best GM in Kimpton," he says. "It starts with taking over D.C."

BY THE NUMBERS
Hospitality: High Growth Industry
The Department of Labor counts hospitality as a "high growth" industry, and it's not hard to see why.
» 14: The percentage growth of jobs in hotels and other accommodations between 2006 and 2016.
» 11: The percentage growth of jobs in all industries combined.
» 48,062: The number of hotels in the United States.
» $1.4: The amount, in millions, spent in American hotels a minute.
» 420: The number of hotel rooms planned to be built or added in downtown D.C.
» 7,324: The number of hotel rooms added in D.C. from 2001 to 2008.
» $5.9: The amount, in millions, the Employment Training Administration has invested in the hospitality industry.
Sources: BLS, American Hotel and Lodging Association, DC BID, WDCEP.com

Written by Express contributor Rachel Kaufman
Photos by Lawrence Luk for Express