CLEVELAND — As the city of Cleveland braces for big events coming this year, hotels say they need workers to get back to full staffing levels, and they hope to find those employees — including those often overlooked — at a first-of-its-kind hiring event next Thursday.
“When you look at those big events that are coming to Cleveland this year in 2024, we need to staff up,” said Robert Hill, the area general manager for three IHG properties on the Cleveland Clinic campus.
Hill also serves as the chair of the Cleveland Hotel Association. He said in 2019, hotels had 3% of their job positions open. During that year, the city welcomed 19.6 million visitors, according to Destination Cleveland, a nonprofit tasked with promoting the region.
“We need to promote what’s great about working in our industry, and we need to staff to be able to continue to care for the guests and visitors who are coming to our great city,” Hill said.
The hope was for the city to break 20 million visitors in 2020, but of course the pandemic hit. Demand at hotels slowly returned and all along staffing was a concern and sometimes a struggle.
“People ghosting those interviews. Not showing up. People showing up for the first two or three days on the job and then deciding that wasn’t for them,” Hill remembers in the years following the pandemic.
He said in 2022, about 24% of hotel positions were open.
In 2023, things turned around as more events returned to Cleveland. But staffing concerns remained. The Intercontinental Hotel still has not reopened its restaurant during lunch hour because of it.
The need for workers was urgent enough that for the first time, hotel managers in Cleveland met in May last year to figure out how they could work together.
“We’re all competitors. We compete for the same business, but we came together and understood that we need to collaborate,” Hill said.
The result is a hiring fair next Thursday on Feb. 22, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland with hotels and other organizations listed below. The event also looks to tap into a pool of candidates often overlooked.
“I think one of the biggest ones is probably bias, right? We just have some perceptions of people with disabilities and what they can and maybe can’t do,” said Jared Daly.
Daly is the regional coordinator of workforce development at the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities. He’s been working with the group of hotels to make accommodations at the job fair and help connect them people with disabilities who are three times more likely to be unemployed.
“Businesses are starting to think about, where can we find that hidden talent? That untapped workforce? And a lot of that untapped workforce is in some of those populations, like people with disabilities, veterans, immigrants. Those are the groups that still have a lot of hidden gems of people that can be great employees. So, we’re trying to make it really simple and easy for companies to tap into that,” Daly said.
Destination Cleveland is helping to promote the job hiring event and to prepare the city for more visitors in 2024.
“The pandemic is behind us now and we’re looking forward to some great business levels,” Hill said.
Open positions include:
- Administration/human resources
- Maintenance/engineering
- Food preparation/dishwasher
- Server/bartender
- Restaurant management
- Housekeeping/laundry
- Front desk/customer service
- Security
As of Feb. 6, the following organizations will be on-site with available positions:
- Cleveland Guardians
- Cleveland Marriott Downtown
- Great Lakes Science Center
- Hilton Cleveland Downtown
- Holiday Inn Cleveland Clinic
- Huntington Convention Center / Levy Restaurants
- Hyatt Regency at the Arcade
- InterContinental Suites Hotel Cleveland
- InterContinental Cleveland Conference Center
- Jack Entertainment
- Renaissance Cleveland Hotel
- Residence Inn by Marriott Cleveland University Circle/Medical Center
- Ritz-Carlton Cleveland