Hotels generally were more prepared for staffing requirements going into this summer travel season, largely due to lessons learned in the past two pandemic summers, but the lingering labor shortage means solutions also are limited.

In a roundtable discussion among members of the Lodging Industry Investment Council, First Hospitality President and CEO David Duncan said in the summer of 2021, his company's hotels were forced to constrain occupancy because there wasn’t enough staff available to clean rooms quickly enough. Revenue managers had to strategize around availability of housekeeping.

Strategy often developed on the fly has materialized into new models for hiring and staffing across the hospitality industry.