Ritz-Carlton president and COO Simon Cooper said he thought it was unlikely hotels would get back to the same staffing volumes witnessed in 2007 and 2008.
Large numbers of redundancies last year due to the world financial crisis meant there was a growing need for recruitment in 2010, but only “to a degree”, according to Cooper.
“The challenge is you have in a recession that has lasted 18 months from a volume point of view and its still not over,” he asserted.
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“But you get smarter and you get more efficient, so I don’t think we will ever get back to the staffing levels that we had in 07/08 - you will be able to operate without it.”
According to the president, Ritz-Carlton made the majority of its cutbacks in “leaders”, as “you can’t cut the frontline”.
“You can’t cut any of those things that are the transactional related part of service. But you can go behind the scenes and ask ‘what are my options?’,” Cooper explained.
“Typically, in good times you hire a leader here and a leader there, managers and training managers - that is the area we had to make the most drastic cuts.”
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