Marriott International ($MAR) has begun quietly adding job listings to its career recruiting websites. This makes it, in our estimation, the first hospitality company to show early signs of recovery from an international lockdown that's been devastating to the hotel industry.
In March, as the reality and depth of the Coronavirus pandemic set in, the hospitality industry put the brakes on virtually all activity, including hiring. In our real-time tracking dashboard, we showed how major chains like Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton had slashed hiring almost completely.
We did so as a way to see when industries like hospitality, education, and retail would begin slowly, quietly opening up in anticipation of humanity's eventual return to some semblance of normal.
And in the past two weeks, job listings at Marriott International saw their first spike since March. The jump in job listings is certainly telling, but the types of jobs Marriott is hiring for show early signs of international travel for an industry so dependent on such activity.
By May 25, 2020, Marriott's Careers website listed 2,031 openings. That's up from a low of 1,764 on May 19, or 267 additional job listings. A large majority of Marriott's hiring recovery appears to be in China, where front-of-house positions from everything including front-desk clerks to massage therapists have begun flooding the company's HR sites.
The company is hiring for as many as 90 new positions at the W Chengdu, 77 at the Shenzhen Renaissance, and another 60 at the Shenyang Marriott.
|
Location Text |
Job Listings |
|---|---|
|
CHN-51-Chengdu-W Chengdu |
90 |
|
CHN-44-Shenzhen-Renaissance Shenzhen Bay Hotel |
77 |
|
Morocco-Morocco-Rabat-The Ritz-Carlton Rabat Dar Es Salam |
64 |
|
CHN-21-Shenyang-Shenyang Marriott Hotel |
60 |
|
IDN-Indonesia-Batam City-Batam Marriott Hotel Harbour Bay |
47 |
|
CHN-35-Fuzhou-Fuzhou Riverside Marriott |
45 |
|
DZA-Algeria-Algiers-Algiers Marriott Hotel Bab Ezzouar |
44 |
|
CHN-42-Wuhan-Four Points by Sheraton Wuhan, Jiangxia |
44 |
|
SAU-Saudi Arabia-Riyadh-Courtyard Riyadh Northern Ring Road |
42 |
|
EGY-Egypt-Cairo-The St. Regis Cairo |
35 |
Interestingly, the Wuhan Four Points by Sheraton, in the same area where the Coronavirus made its way into the world population, is now hiring for 44 customer-facing openings.
The Wuhan Four Points by Sheraton, in the same area where the Coronavirus made its way into the world population, is now hiring for 44 customer-facing openings.
The newly opened positions make it very clear that Marriott International is spinning up operations. The most in-demand positions include guest-facing (and dependent) positions like Cooks, General Managers, and Housekeepers.
|
Title |
Job listings |
|---|---|
|
Cook |
14 |
|
Officer-Loss Prevention |
13 |
|
Chef de Partie |
13 |
|
General Manager-B |
12 |
|
Sales Manager |
12 |
|
Supervisor-Kitchen |
10 |
|
Agent-At Your Service |
9 |
|
Housekeeper |
8 |
|
Clerk-Reservations |
8 |
|
Supervisor-Housekeeping |
8 |
Until this week, Marriott had been keeping things quiet and cautious, selling gift cards to maintain some liquidity, donating rooms to medical workers, and even shuttering some locations including the much-hyped Edition Times Square. But as businesses in China get back to work, the hospitality company appears to be responding by getting its hotels ready for travelers.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.