In this episode of Suite Spot, we combat one of the biggest problems facing hoteliers in 2019: recruiting and hiring quality hotel employees. In the What’s News segment, host Ryan Embree, shares some recent unemployment statistics as well as a survey of what experts in the hospitality industry feel the hotel industry needs to do to attract future employees. With historically low unemployment and an industry known for high turnover, hoteliers need to be more innovative than ever in their recruiting and hiring efforts. In the Suite Spot, Ryan shares some creative, cost-effective solutions to finding and retaining top hotel talent. If you have any feedback or tips on successful hiring practices at your hotel we would love to hear from you. You can reach us by either calling or texting us at 407-984-7455 or email us at info@travelmediagroup.com. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello, and welcome to all of our listeners out there. This is Ryan Embree the host of Suite Spot. Got another great and exciting episode of Suite Spot coming to you live from our Travel Media Group headquarters in Maitland, Florida. And, I am especially excited to be talking about this topic today because as hospitality experts, we travel nationwide to all of the top conferences to really dissect and examine, you know, "what are the hot topics going on in the hotel industry right now?" What's, what are going to be those trends that are going to be at the top of mind of hoteliers, so that we can do our best to facilitate you and helping you out with some of these topics. So the one topic that kept coming up, every single conference that we would attend is that of employment. So this episode today is going to be focused all around employment. Ryan Embree: How do we attract hospitality and hotel talent and not only attract them to our hotel, but how do we keep them. As we know the hotel industry is notorious for very low retention, lot of fast changing movements within, within our employees, jumping from hotel to hotel. So how do we right now in a time where unemployment is, is at a historical low, how can we keep that talent and how can we keep attracting to our talent pool to help better our business? So speaking of the employment rate, as of December 2018, the unemployment rate is down to 3.9 percent, so under 4 percent. So what is that telling employees of your hotel? Well, it's saying that there are probably a lot of employers out there that are looking for hospitality talent. So if they're not happy in their current position, they can easily switch to the next. Ryan Embree: So in our What's News today we're going to look at a survey that was done by the International Society of Hospitality Consultants and they asked more than 200 experienced hospitality professional worldwide asking what businesses in the industry need to do to attract future employees. Ryan Embree: Now, the first as you would have expected is compensation, and that was that was the top answer from those surveyed. Just under 45 percent compensation came in as the number one thing that businesses have to do in the industry to attract future employees, but they also had some other answers here within that survey that were a little surprising. Ryan Embree: Number two, not too far down at 30 percent was career advancement, benefits, flexibility, training, recruitment. These were the other answers that those that being surveyed were saying that attracts future employees. So what we're going to focus on today is for those hoteliers who might not have the wiggle room to give more compensation and they h...