Black employees comprised 18.8 percent of traveler accommodation workers in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, but only 1.5 percent of hospitality industry executives at the director level or above, per a report released by the Castell Project, a non-profit organization.
The report, Black Representation in Hospitality Industry Leadership 2020, also found that just 0.9 percent of CEOs or presidents are Black, with Black men holding 86 percent of those jobs compared with 14 percent for Black women.
"I think in the back of all of our minds, we knew there was an issue," Castell Project co-founder and president Peggy Berg told BTN. "I don’t think anyone knew the size of the elephant [in the room], which is the whole point in counting. To see exactly what is there—or not there in this case. I think the social and business structure and habits and biases that set this situation in the hospitality industry have been in place for a long, long time, and we really need to get out from under that burden."
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Castell Project started the research in January and completed it in March, just as Covid-19 became a global pandemic and greatly affected the hospitality industry. The organization, which holds a goal for women to hold more than one in three positions at all levels of hospitality leadership and ownership, plans to update its findings in late fall and release them in January as a way to compare the industry before and after the shutdown.
"There is a concern that Covid is disproportionally affecting women and people of color, professionally," Berg said. "We hope that is not true, but we are going to look."
Three analysts completed the research by reviewing the websites of 630 hotels out of 971 listed in the STR Directory of Hotel & Lodging Companies, twice. Each company had to have a minimum of five hotels or at least 700 rooms. The dataset includes 6,302 people, ranging from the director level through CEO. The report's methodology states that not all executives are listed on their company websites, and there could be some under-representation, particularly for the larger hotel companies. Still, Berg stands by the numbers, and thinks it's a larger number than what could have been retrieved if using a survey.
"What this study does is, it's the public face of the hospitality industry," she said. "If you're a parent and your son or daughter says, 'I want to go to school to study hotels,' and you're Black, this is what the industry is showing you. That if your child shows you this, they don’t have an opportunity to get ahead. If you're advancing in your career and have a choice of staying in another industry or moving into hospitality and you're wondering if it's a good career move, this is what the industry is showing you. I believe we should be an industry that offers tremendous opportunity to all kinds of people. That is what I say we are, and I want that to be true."