Kinnick Stadium, two Iowa City hotels ready for Iowa football games despite labor shortage challenges

With seven University of Iowa home football games slated for the season, Iowa City and neighboring towns like Coralville or University Heights will see an influx of short-term visitors.

Amid continuing labor shortages plaguing the hospitality industry and staffing challenges at Kinnick Stadium last fall, the Press-Citizen spoke with UI athletics officials and local hotels to determine if they were ready to handle the big crowds.

Kinnick Stadium is fully equipped for the first game of the season against South Dakota State on Saturday, according to Marcus Wilson, executive senior associate athletics director at UI.

Last year, the stadium was short about 200 workers and sought volunteers to help fill positions, the Gazette reported.

“We do not have the same staffing concerns that we had last year,” Wilson told the Press-Citizen.

The UI Athletics ticket office told the Press-Citizen that Kinnick Stadium is expecting 69,000 attendees Saturday, making it a sold-out game. Wilson said all seven home games are sold out for the first time since 2011.

“The good news this year (is) staffing is much improved and I’m confident we’ll be in a position to handle the large crowds that we will see for all seven home games,” Wilson said

Wilson said this year there is more delegation of staff instead of using one group of staff to handle various jobs, which is what the stadium did last year to make up for the lack of staffers.

“Last year, we utilized a number of our staff out in the parking lots pregame, but when it came closer to game time ... we would move some of those staff to the stadium to handle the pressure at the gates,” Wilson said. “Then after kickoff, those staff would move from the gates to the interior of the stadium to address issues."

This year, the interior of the stadium, gates, concession stands and parking are all fully staffed to handle crowds.

Mark Bullock, UI director of public safety, said he has no security concerns ahead of the game.

“While a sold-out season certainly creates a pretty exciting environment, we prepare for sellout crowds and it's just a function of how we prepare for any football game," Bullock said.

Two Iowa City-area hotels see busy season as Iowa hospitality industry continues to face labor shortage

Jessica Dunker, president of the Iowa Restaurant Association and the Iowa Hotel & Lodging Association, said in an email to the Press-Citizen that every sector of the hospitality and leisure industry, including hotels, is in need of more workers.

“We were the industries whose employees were hardest hit during the pandemic,” she said. “Many opted to find work and build careers elsewhere.  As a result, we find ourselves having to do more with fewer people and to rebuild from entry-level up. Ultimately, we need more people living in the state to fill all of the available positions.”

In April 2019, 144,100 people were employed in the leisure and hospitality sector in Iowa, according to the Iowa Workforce Development. That number dropped to nearly half that in 2020. As of July this year, 141,200 were employed in these sectors.

Nearly 3,000 workers are required to return to 2019’s employment levels in these sectors, and according to Dunker, in 2019, these industries were already in need of more workers.

For guests staying at a hotel, the labor shortage can be seen in services that are no longer performed as frequently, such as daily cleaning services or food services.

Restaurants in Iowa City told the Press-Citizen in April about their staffing-related challenges. Bluebird Diner in Iowa City had to operate with fewer cooks and cut back on the hours the restaurant was open. Freddy’s in Iowa City increased wages and sign-on bonuses for new hires, while Crêpes de Luxe Café owner Hicham Chehouani found himself working in his restaurant every day due to lack of staffing.

The need for more workers is still seen in Iowa City.

Recently Cambus, the UI’s public transit system that also provides shuttle services for folks attending a Hawkeye game at Kinnick, began offering a $1,000 hiring bonus and upped its starting pay to $17.50 an hour. Cambus advertises flexible schedules for students and raises every six months, according to UI Parking and Transportation.

Cambus started the 2022-23 academic year 60 drivers short, according to the Daily Iowan.

Though hotels across Iowa are still experiencing labor shortages, The Highlander Hotel and Hyatt Regency Coralville Hotel & Conference Center are prepared for the busy weekend.

Angela Harrington, owner of The Highlander Hotel in Iowa City, told the Press-Citizen in an email that the hotel is “near sold out or sold out Friday and Saturday nights” no matter what weekend or season.

Her team of about 25 full-time staff are cross-trained, with back of house staff doing housekeeping, maintenance, banquet set-up, cooking and prep work. Front of house crew tend to the bar, front desk, staff the pool and soon will attend to the retro cocktail arcade.

She said she has little turnover back of house, but front of house she is always hiring, though Harrington makes sure they are never understaffed during the weekends.

Harrington said since the pandemic, she has to compete with jobs that offer work from home as an option.

“In hospitality, work from home is not an option — you can't care for a guest from home,” she said.

Jobs that are the hardest to fill, Harrington said, are positions that require lots of experience and time in a leadership position. But the folks qualified for those positions often can’t, or don’t want to, work a position that requires weekends, she said.

In April, Dunker told the Press-Citizen the industries struggling to find workers tend to be ones that can’t offer work from home.

Matt Traetow, general manager at the Hyatt Regency Coralville Hotel & Conference Center, told the Press-Citizen that the hotel has been “very busy” throughout the summer.

“We could always use additional staff members but we have been fortunate and the way that football games actually set up … when a lot of the guests and travelers come in for two days, it's a lot easier to handle than say all the guests checkout on Saturday and then you have a whole new group on Saturday nights so you have to flip those rooms,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Kinnick Stadium, Iowa City hotels staffed to handle UI Hawkeyes crowds