Where the Hospitality Industry Lost its Talent
Corporate HR has no place in an asset-light business model
I have spent 19 years in the hotel industry, worked at property level and at corporate. Worked for owned hotels and managed hotels. Opened all three types, managed, owned, and franchised so I think I have a grasp of things. I've been reflecting on where things really started to fall apart for the hotel industry when it comes to talent. It's complicated, sure—but here's the core of it.
Contrary to the data, these massive hotel brands don’t actually employ hundreds of thousands of people. At most, they have a couple of thousand working in corporate offices and in a small number of owned properties. The rest? They're operating under an asset-light model—meaning up to 98% of their properties are either managed or franchised.
So what does that mean for the workforce? Simple: they don’t work for the hotel company. They work for the owners.
And where does that leave corporate HR and all its carefully built frameworks? Well... truthfully, if corporate HR shut down tomorrow, most properties wouldn’t even notice it. They do their own thing and most things pushed down on them has zero value. Annual appraisal? Engagement surveys? Talent development? They literally make no sense for the properties. These exercises are only keeping corporate staff busy with no outcome at all. Because employees work for thousands of different owners, concepts like transfers or tenure don’t really exist anymore. And without that, loyalty disappears too. Succession planning? Forget it! How would you be able to do a succession plan with other people’s staff?
Corporate HR has no real authority over the workforce. Those people aren’t their employees. They're trying to manage people who technically belong to someone else. It’s like trying to run someone else's household—you just can’t. The HR model was built on the same logic as corporate sales: plug into our global sales (GDS) system and let us make your life easier. That’s a great value proposition for sales. For HR? Not so much.
In reality, it's the owners who call the shots—whether it’s about paying a well-earned bonus, investing in training and development, or deciding what happens when serious complaints are raised through whistleblower platforms.
So, how did we ever think we could manage other companies' employees? Truth is—we can’t. What really bothers me is that nobody at any point when we at Accor for example started to sell our properties, sat down and thought, okay, the business model has significantly changed so maybe our back of house HR process make no longer sense? Of course not! We doubled down on the nonsense and introduced even more HR frameworks that doesn’t work anyways let alone when you are trying to manage other people’s staff.
Another big issue with this setup is that it leaves no real HR budget for the properties themselves. Why? Because corporate HR has become a money-making machine, not a people-focused one. Properties are charged for everything—management fees, training programs, surveys, development initiatives—you name it. And even though these services often offer little to no real value on the ground, properties are still forced to pay. The bulk of their HR budget gets funneled upwards, leaving property HR teams with nothing but pennies, popcorn, and cupcakes to work with—while still being expected to support hundreds, sometimes thousands, of employees.
Meanwhile, corporate HR folks are off attending conferences, proudly sharing their KPIs, and posting selfies with frontline staff for their LinkedIn feed. Honestly, nothing grates on me more than those posts that say, “We gathered to shape the culture of 300,000 employees and inspire them to thrive.” Really? You have zero direct influence on those employees—so maybe let’s cool it with the grand declarations.
I used to hear things like, “Accor isn’t helping me to find a job” or “Accor isn’t helping to sort out my HR related dispute”. And I’d always say “That’s because you don’t actually work for Accor.” Or, when people complained about Accor when they had a fall out with the leadership in the property that it is not Accor that is bad but the management of the owning company. Which begs another question: can you even list these big brands on your CV? Unless you're in corporate or at a company-owned hotel... you're technically not one of their employees.
Going asset-light makes perfect sense from a business perspective—but when it comes to people, it may have come at a cost.
The solution? Honestly, I’m not sure there’s a perfect one—but what I do know is this: with a business model like this, maybe we don’t actually need corporate HR. That might just be the solution. We certainly don’t need HR VPs and CHROs posting “We’re hiring!” on LinkedIn—because that’s literally what my HR coordinator does. And no, we don’t need CHROs running around on recruitment tours either. These roles have literally no purpose when you don’t have employees.
Maybe the real fix is letting properties choose whether they want to be part of the corporate HR programs. And if they don’t? Fine—give them back their budget and the freedom to manage their people their own way. After all, they’re already operating independently, just without the resources they actually need.
Maybe it’s time to stop pretending corporate HR is the answer, and instead start building strong, in-house HR teams at the property level—the ones who are actually there, day in and day out, doing the real work with real people. But you would say, “Nothing is stopping properties to do that.” Well, the management contract that outlines HR support and services does. Owners will not provide additional budget because from their point of view corporate HR is there to do HR stuff.
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