Understanding How Hotels Adapted To The Labor Challenges of 2025

Hotel leaders found themselves caught between revenue reductions and cost challenges in 2025, with both putting pressure on profit. Rising wage levels, higher headcounts, increased overtime, and pressure to improve productivity per occupied room all tested hotel operators. 

Entering 2026, many of these challenges look set to follow hotel leaders into the new year.

We caught up with Shanell Marinuzzi, Account Manager at Actabl, and a former hotel General Manager, to discover what she saw as the biggest challenges, and tap into her years of hotel operations experience to learn about her tactics for success. 

Here, she provides 4 tips for optimizing your labor strategies in 2026.

1. Make The Most of Your Hotel Team

Cross-training employees provides scheduling flexibility for hotel leaders and additional hours for staff willing to expand their skillset. It shows how much you appreciate your associates and helps them stay engaged with their work.

“We know that our employees are invaluable, and we want to make sure that we're retaining the top talent that we have, so that they don't move to the competition. Make sure that you're able to cross-train them to allow them the opportunity to have the hours that they need to support their family,” Shanell said.

One hotel group put cross-training to the test during a seasonal slowdown. Kitchen hours needed to be reduced, but the engineering team was short-staffed. Rather than cutting paychecks, the general manager offered kitchen staff the chance to train in basic room maintenance and pick up shifts there.

The result was steady hours for employees, stronger margins, improved room quality, and higher satisfaction for both staff and guests. The experience showed how flexible roles can protect morale while improving performance across the operation.

2. Put Labor Meetings On The Schedule

If you measure it, you can manage it. Shanell recommends putting a weekly labor meeting on the schedule in 2026. 

“If this is something that you're not currently doing as a GM, it's a blind spot that could be affecting you as a company,” she explained.

Shanell’s recommendations for holding a weekly labor meeting are:

• Host meetings on Wednesdays
• Keep them to 15–30 minutes
• Set up automatic reports 
• Review last week’s performance
• Review next week’s schedules
• Incentivise your top-performing teams

Also, consider if you have the right people in the right place at your hotel at the right time.

“You may have employees who are morning people. Are they in the morning shifts, or are they running your night shifts? That will affect your GSS. Make sure that you have the right people at the right place at the right time,” Shanell said.

Other topic items Shanell recommends get addressed at the weekly labor meeting include fixing missing or unpaired punches in the timekeeping system, considering the overtime risk for the week ahead, and considering housekeeping cleans by type.

• If you are a Hotel Effectiveness user and are not taking advantage of weekly labor meetings, reach out to your CSM to learn how to facilitate them in the tool.

3. Set Goals To Drive Productivity

Ensure everyone on your team knows the hotel’s goals and where their focus needs to be. 

“When I go in and train property leaders, I usually ask them to ask the front desk, 'What's the goal?’ Often, no one knows the goal. They just say, ‘We just have to sell more rooms’,” Shanell said. 

“I challenge you to develop a SMART goal as it pertains to your HPOR or your CPOR in 2026 and really focus on that as a team.

“Whether you’re the GM and you're meeting with your leadership team on property, or you're a regional leader reporting to the owner, challenge your team to create those SMART goals, and if you attach an incentive, it will help your team hit that goal.”

4. Invest in Technology to Avoid Blind Spots

Productivity per occupied room emerged as hoteliers’ toughest challenge in 2025. As such, technology that exposes operational blind spots has become essential to controlling costs and aligning labor with demand.

“When I was a GM, there were a few things that I did to reduce costs. One is to use technology to see your blind spots. There are a lot of times when you don't know what you don't know if you can't see it in front of you,” she said.

Technology such as Actabl’s Hotel Effectiveness enables hotels to see those blind spots by bringing data from the RMS and PMS, allowing hotel leaders to adjust schedules according to demand.

• Take control of your operations. Actabl gives you the tools to reduce expenses, plan with confidence, and build stronger teams. Request a Demo