Barebones Hotel Staff Takes to Multitasking
With many hotel employees still laid off, members of senior management have taken on double roles, covering shifts and doing activities they would never have consistently done, including at front desk cubicles.
“Right now, it’s all hands-on-deck,” said Michael Ferrara, the director of operations at Arlo NoMad, a 249-room lifestyle hotel in midtown Manhattan. “We have to do whatever it takes to make sure the hotel stays opened. And operates. And makes money.”
Standing next to him behind a protective glass shield was the general manager of the hotel, as they both received guests queued up on social-distancing floor-stickers.
The situation reflects the reality of many senior management hotel employees across New York City, who have had to take on more customer-facing roles, at the lobby in many cases, since the economic fall-out induced by Covid-19. Of the city’s 138,000 hotel rooms, only 36% were occupied in December 2020, compared to 88% the previous year, according to STR, which provides market data on the industry. Some hotels have gone out of business; those that have stayed open are operating below capacity. Forty percent of the jobs lost in New York City last year were in the leisure and hospitality industry. Those employees who have remained, mostly those in senior roles, have had to double up on their duties.
“It’s been exhausting,” said Malika Franklin, the Director of Sales at Aloft Harlem in upper Manhattan, who was also at the Front Desk. The hotel has lost a third of its employees.
“As a director of sales, I have felt more stressed and pressured to find business so that our remaining employees could stay employed,” said Franklin.
At Arlo NoMad, about half of the hotel’s employees are still away, according to Ferrara, the Director of Operations. The biggest cost is labor, he said, so they put some cost-containment strategies in place. “We are running with the absolute bare minimum staff.”
The management at Hilton Garden Inn, in midtown Manhattan, also had to assume new tasks after laying off the majority of the workforce. Agnes Bukala, who used to supervise the front desk staff, now works the front desk herself. “It’s challenging. You have to reinvent the way you do hospitality. My biggest challenge is being conscious of the fact that the danger is still out there, but I’m also here to make people feel welcome and be accommodating as possible.”
A burden for the managers-turned-front-desk-officers has been figuring out how to smile behind their masks using “eyes and hand gestures” while receiving guests, said Bukala. They must also assure them “a million times” that it is a safe place to stay, said David Carter in between lunch at his front desk cubicle in Walker Hotel, midtown Manhattan, where he works as the Guest Reception Supervisor.
“I am still responsible to be Director of Operations on top of that,” said Michael Ferrara of Arlo NoMad Hotel. “I think that kind of goes unacknowledged. Because you know, people may see us working effortless when we are in front of them. But in reality, we just had a rough day and it’s because we are just understaffed right now.”
Despite picking up extra hours, and sometimes extra days, their pay has not changed. As employees that are higher up the chain, they are instead more concerned about a negative impact on wages. “We have to obviously make a certain amount of money for the hotel in order to make pay roll,” said Carter.
The hoteliers are not making the revenues they were making pre-pandemic. Not only is occupancy low, but “the room rates are a third of what they used to be,” said Bukala of Hilton Garden Inn. At Arlo NoMad, the usual $300 to $400 rooms per night are now $79 to $109 a night. “It’s a world of a difference,” said Michael Ferrara.
