Hotels, restaurants, and event venues touch nearly every corner of American economic life. With roughly 17 million employees in the U.S. and hotel guest spending projected to hit $805 billion in 2026, the leisure and hospitality sector is one of the nation’s largest and most visible.
But behind those numbers, a leadership crisis is quietly taking shape.
“There’s no secret that there’s a massive shortage of junior-level candidates in the culinary world,” says Evan Kaplan, an executive recruiter and sommelier at Gecko Hospitality who specializes in placing talent at hotels, resorts, and private clubs.
Ben Campbell, president and CEO of Hospitality America, has a similar concern.
“What keeps me up at night a lot of times,” Campbell told CoStar News, “is what the future looks like for our industry for growing the next leader.”
Despite the sheer number of talented workers in hospitality, the industry struggles to develop them into GMs, directors, and senior operators. Why has that pipeline narrowed, who tends to get left out of it, and what can employers do to start building it?
Several theories explain why hospitality’s leadership pipeline has worn so thin. In reality, the deficit stems from a combination of factors, some documented, others more elusive. What’s clear is that the gap didn’t emerge from one bad hiring cycle or a single rough year.
Writing in Strategic CHRO 360, a leadership platform for HR executives, hospitality veteran Alexander Mirza argued that sales managers and directors have pivoted toward hybrid industries like technology and pharmaceuticals for better pay.
The pandemic and the freelance economy have accelerated that departure, Mirza wrote. The people closest to GM-readiness, who would have stepped into director and senior operator roles, were the ones who left, and unfortunately, replacing that tier through internal hiring takes years.
Part of what allowed the pipeline to stay shallow is a cultural pattern Mirza describes as the “labor mindset,” or the assumption that churn is inevitable. Under this view, management is rarely held accountable for turnover, employee development, or the health of their talent bench.
The scale of this challenge is reflected in current metrics: the hotel industry carries a 97.6% annual turnover rate. Furthermore, research published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that more than 30% of early-career hospitality employees leave the sector within their first five to six years, with career commitment among that group tending to decline over time rather than build.
When churn is treated as inevitable rather than addressable, people continue to leave, and the investment already made in them disappears, too.
Investment in leadership development hasn’t yet repaired the underlying issues. Globally, organizations invest an estimated $60 billion annually in leadership development programs—workshops, seminars, one-time training events—yet research suggests as few as 5% of program participants successfully apply their learning to their work. Without continuous reinforcement and a clear link to daily responsibilities, these programs fail to create lasting change.
Meanwhile, demand for management talent has grown steadily. More than 500,000 new management roles are projected across all industries over the next decade. In hospitality specifically, lodging manager openings are expected to hit roughly 5,400 per year through 2034. With demand outpacing the supply of well-prepared candidates, employers are often left choosing between leaving roles unfilled or promoting people before they’re fully ready.
Up to 80% of employees say they’re interested in pursuing education while working, but only 40% know their employer offers education perks, and only 2% ultimately enroll.
Here are some steps you can take to close this gap:
Women make up nearly 59% of the hospitality workforce and graduate from hospitality management programs at higher rates than men. Yet a 2025 Penn State benchmarking report found they hold only about a quarter of C-suite positions and only 13% of partner/principal roles. For Black hospitality executives, the disparity is even starker, with just 2.1% holding director-to-CEO positions.
To address implicit bias in who gets tapped for advancement, leadership can focus on making development opportunities broadly available rather than leaving individual managers to identify who seems ready.
The people best positioned to become the next generation of GMs and directors are, in many cases, already in the building. The hotel sector alone employs nearly 2 million workers, and according to Lightcast data, the senior leadership roles in hospitality are most commonly filled by people who worked their way up from within, not recruited from outside the industry. So why aren’t more of them making it to GM?
In lower-level roles, on-the-job development can do much of the heavy lifting.
Brian Blum, a franchisee and recruiter at Gecko Hospitality with over 20 years of experience in restaurant operations, says, “Once you’re good at what you’re doing and you have a little bit of a relationship, (you say), ‘Hey, I noticed you’re purchasing produce today. Can you teach me how to do that?’ And learn how to do it. Then, ask, ‘Can I take that off your hands?’”
But operational fluency only gets someone so far.
“You’ve got to have the culinary chops, the leadership chops, and the financials,” Kaplan says. “If you don’t have all three, there’s always going to be a weakness — and there can’t be a weakness in that foundation.”
Formal education can help close that gap, giving experienced workers the financial management and leadership frameworks that can be hard to learn on the job.
Most lodging and hospitality managers say they believe a degree is needed to do the job well. But for hospitality workers earning an average of $23.48 an hour, getting one without support generally isn’t realistic.
Employers can help solve this by backing their team’s professional development. Initiatives like tuition reimbursement, loan repayment, or partnerships with educators can help make a degree attainable.
| Less than HS | HS Diploma | Some College | Associate’s | Bachelor’s or Higher | |
| Food Service Managers | 9.4% | 29.4% | 26.5% | 10.2% | 24.6% |
| Lodging Managers | 4.8% | 18.3% | 23.3% | 9.8% | 43.7% |
| Chefs & Head Cooks | 17.2% | 31.8% | 20.4% | 16.2% | 14.3% |
Source: Educational attainment for workers 25 years and older by detailed occupation, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
When development isn’t gatekept by a manager’s assumptions, employees can self-select based on their own drive and ambition. And the retention case is strong: first-time managers who receive structured development are 30% more likely to stay with their organization.
| Benefit | How Education Perks Can Deliver It |
| Significant Retention Gains | Offering structured education and development makes first-time managers 30% more likely to stay with your team. Ultimately, these growth initiatives drive a 19.3% boost in overall retention. |
| Stronger Internal Candidate Pools | Funding employee education helps you build a leadership pipeline from within, supporting team members who already deeply understand your culture, systems, and property operations. |
| Reduced Bias in Advancement | Making education perks broadly available opens up the promotion track. It allows motivated employees to step forward for training instead of relying on a manager’s subjective opinion. |
| Elevated Guest Satisfaction | Investing in your people directly impacts the guest experience. Properties with robust development programs see customer and guest satisfaction scores rise by 15.2%. |
| Closed Credential Gaps | Employer-sponsored education gives your frontline staff a clear path to earning the degrees and professional credentials they need to step into leadership roles. |
Sources: Why It’s So Hard to Fill New Manager Pipelines and What We Can Do About It, UVA Daren, Women Power Hospitality’s Workforce, but Leadership Gaps Remain, CoStar
For employers who recognize that developing talent from within is the key to solving labor shortages, programs like Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions can make continuing education highly manageable. Your team can grow without leaving their roles, while saving your business from having to build a training infrastructure from scratch.
Through the Work & Learn program, employees can enroll in online programs at the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts to earn a diploma or degree without having to relocate. To help team members manage the financial commitment, the program provides a $1,000 enrollment scholarship, alongside opportunities for employer-matched tuition assistance up to $5,250 per year.
These pathways lead directly to valuable credentials, including an online Associate of Occupational Studies in Hospitality & Restaurant Operations Management—allowing your employees to advance their careers while staying fully committed to their current roles.
For employers balancing outside hiring with internal development, EConnect offers a job board and resume tool built specifically for the hospitality and culinary space. It bridges the gap between businesses that invest in their people and candidates who are actively looking for that kind of supportive environment.
The employers most likely to close the leadership gap aren’t waiting for the right candidate to appear—they’re developing the people already working for them. Employer-supported education can provide a practical way to do that, giving employees a path to the credentials and skills that management roles require without asking them to step away from the job or absorb the cost on their own.
Get in touch with the Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions team if you’re thinking about how to build that kind of internal talent within your operation.
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