HSMAI PERSPECTIVE: Continuing the Conversation
By Robert A. Gilbert, CHME, CHBA, President and CEO, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)
Last month, I committed HSMAI to the fight for diversity, inclusion, and antiracism in the hospitality industry. A new report from Castell Project — a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to see women in more than one of every three positions at all levels of hospitality industry leadership and ownership” — shows just how much work we have to do. According to Black Representation in Hospitality Industry Leadership 2020, while 18.8 percent of people working in hospitality are Black, just 1.5 percent of hospitality professionals in director positions or higher at the corporate/above-property level are Black. And the numbers get worse the farther up you go, with Black hospitality professionals representing just 0.9 percent of CEOs and 0.7 percent of c-suite positions.
Castell’s Peggy Berg broke things down for me further, tabulating the numbers for sales, marketing, and revenue optimization. Again, it’s grim. Among the 630 hotel companies that Castell reviewed, only 2.1 percent of all sales and marketing professionals at the corporate/above-property level are Black; 0.3 percent working at the director level or above are Black. Similarly, 3.4 percent of all revenue optimization professionals are Black, while 1.7 percent working at the director level or above are Black. Read more...
For more information contact:
Ellen Wilson, Managing Director
ewilson@hsmai.org
571-442-8489