South Florida hotels are bouncing back from COVID, but they can’t find enough workers

In a surprising conundrum, recovery-minded hoteliers are hoisting “Help Wanted” signs to replenish their staffs decimated by COVID-19, but they can’t find enough qualified people.

From Miami-Dade to Palm Beach County, hotels on the rebound and those that have opened for the first time are encountering trouble finding help, said Heiko Dobrikow, general manager of Fort Lauderdale’s Riverside Hotel, the oldest hotel in the city.

“All of the hotels are looking for labor currently,” he said Friday. “The last two months have been very good for the hotels. We have been growing exponentially. But the labor market has a shortage. We are not getting ample applicants. We are in somewhat of a hiring crisis right now.”

As the pandemic shredded South Florida’s vaunted hospitality industry last March, hotels furloughed and laid off thousands of workers as domestic and international air travelers stayed home and the cruise line industry came to an abrupt halt.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association counted 76,216 jobs lost in Florida through September.

Now, although the ships have not returned to South Florida ports, air and land travel is on an upswing.

Some furloughed South Florida hotel employees got some good news this week as a union that represents them said the venerable Fontainebleau Miami Beach has agreed to take back 1,000 people at an unspecified date. And a Hyatt in downtown Miami is also recalling an unspecified number of workers under an agreement with UniteHere! Local 355, union officials said Friday.

The Riverside, according to Dobrikow, slashed its workforce from 267 to slightly below 100 at the pandemic’s onset. Now, the hotel employs 160 people and is ready to add more than two dozen people as business bounces back.

“We saw a gradual increase last year with the kick-off of the boat show, which really gave us an injection to our business and a very busy Christmas and New Year’s business,” he said. “We did not anticipate the business for leisure travel would come back so fast and that we would be dealing with so many sold out weekends. It caught the hospitality business in South Florida off guard.”

Meanwhile. the recalls by Miami-Dade hotels, neither confirmed by their managements Friday, appear to reflect an increased confidence that a recovery, albeit gradual, is under way.

“If they are entering into plans like that, it is because they are anticipating an uptick coming, as we all are,” said Louis Terminello, who chairs the hospitality, alcohol and leisure industry practice at the Greenspoon Marder law firm in Miami. “It’s all a good sign.”

He cautioned that based on what he has heard from his clients and elsewhere in South Florida’s hospitality sector, “the industry is still below their break-even threshold, but is slowly coming back.”

“I’d like to see what happens here in South Florida after Spring Break and whether or not the bump that we’re experiencing now stays with us and becomes the new norm,” Terminello said. “That would be nice.”

No deal at the Diplomat

While many hotels search for talent, an irony unfolded in Hollywood on Friday. At least 75 furloughed workers at the still-closed Diplomat Beach Resort Hollywood took to the street to demand a written commitment from management to recall them.

Last March, the Diplomat furloughed 915 employees — most of them unionized — after business dramatically declined as the pandemic took hold. Around 650 of them are members of the Miami-based UniteHere! local.

Their sense of urgency is tied to the approach of March 20, which under their contract is the day a yearlong right of recall is set to expire, the union says. The hotel is scheduled to reopen June 1, according to union representatives and hotel booking websites.

With more than 1,000 rooms, the Diplomat is one of the biggest hotels in South Florida, managed by Hilton.

Many of the local’s workers have been on the hotel’s payroll for 20 years. Most have been collecting unemployment benefits. Some snagged jobs in restaurants and in other service industries.

Wendy Walsh, secretary-treasurer for Local 355, said the hotel has not made a commitment to recall the union’s members.

“They’re not guaranteeing us that they’ll open June 1,” she said. “The latest they have told us they will extend the right to return is May 31.”

On State Road A1A in front of the Diplomat’s main entrance, nervous workers said they fear they will lose the wage and benefits levels they’ve built up for years.

“If they go to work at a new job at a new hotel they are starting all over again,” Walsh said. “These are mostly women, they are mostly people of color. and overwhelmingly immigrants who have given their entire careers to the hotel.”

“People are really anxious to take care of the families,” said Harry East, 64, a banquet worker. “We want to make sure they hire us back. The Diplomat is us. We’re the ones who developed the relationship with our guests. We don’t want the Diplomat to go down. We want to raise it up again.”

Recalls at the Fontainebleau

Walsh said she signed an agreement Thursday with the Fontainebleau to recall its Local 355 workers,

“We got some good news and we hope to get some more,” said MJ Leira, a spokeswoman for the local, which represents 7,000 hotel, stadium and airport ground workers in South Florida.

She also said the union reached an agreement with the Hyatt in downtown Miami to bring back an unspecific number of workers.

Neither the Fontainebleau nor the Hyatt immediately responded to requests for comment.

But Walsh said negotiations haven’t progressed very far at the Diplomat, although she has conducted talks online with company lawyers.

Brookfield Properties of New York, which owns the complex, didn’t offer any certainty about when the hotel might reopen or when workers might be recalled. The Diplomat, it noted, is a convention-oriented resort, and experts say that sector of the industry will be the last to recover.

“Unfortunately, we do not know when we will be able to reopen the hotel,” Brookfield said in a statement released Friday. “Unlike smaller, tourist-supported hotels, group hotels like the Diplomat cannot function without conventions and events operating at full or near-full capacity. It is an unfortunate reality for the Diplomat community and its workforce, as well as all of the local restaurants and businesses that rely on conventions and the people they bring.”