Hotel Operators Weekly Briefing
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Weekly briefing: Hospitality has a 'boring' problem

Weekly briefing: Hospitality has a 'boring' problem

with Donte Johnson and Jason Bass

Josiah Mackenzie
April 09, 2023

“Hospitality has a ‘boring’ problem more than a staffing problem.”

- Jason Bass, Director of Culture, Revival Baltimore

I’m not going to give you yet another article about staffing challenges today. Instead, let’s focus on the problems behind the problem, which include (the wrong) culture and structural ways the hotel industry has operated.

To do this, I want you to hear from Donte Johnson and Jason Bass at Revival Baltimore (a JDV by Hyatt hotel). You can listen to my conversations with them on Hospitality Daily - I replayed them over and over again this week as I was thinking about this - but if you only read one thing this week, I suggest it’s the article they shared below.

We need to rethink hotel culture to welcome, hire, and keep great people

with Donte Johnson and Jason Bass

In this article, you’ll learn about:

How the experience Donte had when applying for his first hotel job shaped the way he operates today
Ways to define culture
How to measure the impact of culture
Revisiting dress codes and grooming standards to welcome people to work in hotels
The problem with “polish”
What Donte and Jason look for when hiring

Read the article here

Quote of the week

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Just 12% of respondents want hotels to operate how they did before the pandemic.

Tom Ito, Principal at Gensler (at Mews Unfold last week)

Photo of the week

Last week, Sloan Dean shared his case study with us on rebuilding the culture at Remington Hotels. This week, my LinkedIn feed was full of photos from their Thrive conference which made me smile - including this one of the more than 26 new people inducted into their President’s Club.