Hotels Open Doors to Women for Ownership and Leadership

25.08.2023 - 13:53 / skift.com / Carley Thornell

Gender diversity in hotel leadership was boosted this week when Wyndham said its year-old program “Women Own the Room” had signed more than 30 hotels, with 10 already open. But the effort is an exception, not the rule — and efforts have faltered in the past few years.

Women make 85 percent of all travel decisions and 54 percent of travel and tourism employment worldwide. Yet, they only account for 30 percent of leaders in hospitality, say researchers at the Castell Project, a diversity, equity, and inclusion program funded by a hotel lobby.

“While there is parity for women at the director level, gains for women in higher level hotel company leadership are minimal,” researchers said.

When it comes to hotel ownership, those numbers are even lower. Women hold less than 10 percent of hotel development and development leadership roles.

Last week, Choice Hotels kicked off its inaugural HERtels by Choice development seminar, connecting women owners with industry veterans and Choice executives. Jyoti Sarolia, president & CEO of Ellis Hospitality, says that such programs go a long way in encouraging her and others like her. “One of the most significant barriers to hotel ownership is a lack of industry connections, and as a program built for women, by women, HERtels serves as an important link in closing this gap,” Sarolia said. 

Yet more needs to be done. In other words, you’ve come a long way, baby — just not far enough. 

Combined with an ongoing decline in enrollment in college hospitality programs (enrollment that was primarily female), a higher rate of workforce burnout reported by women compared to men, and trouble securing development financing, myriad factors might continue to engender inequality in hotel leadership in the short term. 

Beyond financial concerns, women still get an unfair share of personal and professional obligations. The pandemic created a childcare crisis, one in which mothers typically have borne more of the burden. Three in 10 women quit their jobs, noted the Kaiser Foundation. That reduced the percentage of American women working for pay to its lowest level since 1986.

These findings align with Barbara Zubiria’s experiences before starting as Selina hotels’ global chief financial officer two years ago. Zubiria said that more women are studying accounting and finance, so entering the workforce as a certified professional accountant raised no eyebrows. 

Then there comes a tipping point. 

“I think it’s at a point where fewer women are making it to a higher level, and that’s often a product of personal choices and possibly having to give up other things in life to make it there,” Zubiria said.

Women account for 50 percent of Selina’s workforce, 43 percent of the brand’s management