Roundtable: Women in hospitality discuss a male-dominated industry

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Amid the #MeToo movement and an overall dearth of women in upper-echelon hospitality industry jobs, a bright bunch who currently are leaders participated in Hotel Management’s inaugural Women in Hospitality Roundtable, held at the Renaissance Times Square at the tail end of 2017. Participants discussed many of the myriad issues that women face in a business landscape still dominated by men.

Andrea Foster, SVP of development at Marcus Hotels & Resorts, pointed out that her company has two female members on their board and while that is something to celebrate, it’s hardly an ideal scenario. “When we show up [at conferences] we have two representatives, typically, and it’s a male and a female,” Foster said. “But other companies aren’t necessarily sending as many women, or maybe they don’t have that balance.”

Foster was quick to name her mentors—both men—as positive figures who helped elevate her career in the industry. She called on more men to provide advocacy for female employees, and she also said women should be seeking out these opportunities whenever possible.

"The mentoring concept is one that is crucial,” said Cindy Estis Green, CEO and co-founder of Kalibri Labs. “Whether your mentor is a male or a female, it really is what helps you move up. I was fortunate early in my career and had male mentors who really put me out there and let me do things that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, and accelerated my career tremendously.”

New Faces

An industry can’t have new leaders if it doesn’t have new applicants. Allison Reid, chief development officer at Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, said more women are coming into the hospitality industry with an eye on the business side of hotels, something that is reflected in the crowds attending trade shows.

“With the younger generation you see more women coming out, and… it just takes time to get women into more senior roles,” Reid said. “Most of our junior analysts… are women rather than men at this point.”

Once they get in the door, however, several of the women at the table said it is an uphill battle to be considered for promotion. Peggy Berg, director of The Castell Project, said it isn’t enough to change jobs and work hard. Traditionally, she said, women are not taught as they are growing up to have a skillset that is valued by the business community. Instead, they either rely on mentors to teach them, or they learn these skills autonomously.

“We have this funny thing where business is gender neutral, business has no gender, but every human being in business has a gender and we don’t have a way to talk about it,” Berg said. “We don’t have a way to admit it, and we don’t have a way to teach the skills that our gender needs if they want to succeed in development, or on the equity side or on the ownership side.”

True Equality