Holiday Staffing and Service When You’re Stretched Thin
When Reservations are Climbing
General managers know that feeling that often arrives in late October: reservations are climbing, holiday groups are on the books, and the schedule still has more holes than you’d like.
You can’t put the guest calendar on hold while you fill open shifts, but running on a lean staff doesn’t mean sacrificing quality or service. Instead, it requires thoughtful prioritization—focusing your team’s energy, making smart hiring choices, and keeping core operations consistent.
We’ve reviewed some practical ways Texas operators can get through the holiday stretch without burning out their teams.
First, take an honest look at the labor market, because you’re not imagining the competition. Leisure and hospitality led all private-sector industries in Texas job gains in August, adding roughly 159,000 jobs over the past year.* While that’s good for the economy, it also means other employers are competing for the same housekeepers, front desk agents, cooks, and other staff you are.
Hotel Online reports that demand for housekeepers and managers is climbing across Texas, with demand for hotel managers growing amid hotel expansions in several cities. If you haven’t launched your recruiting efforts yet, now is the time.
In a May survey by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, 76% of responding hotels reported a staffing shortage, and 13% said they were severely understaffed.** Many of these hotels have had to raise wages, offer more flexibility in hours, and expand benefits to retain and recruit staff.
Texas operators already see competitors adjusting pay and scheduling, so a holiday hiring pitch based on last year’s terms may not cut it. Sometimes the cheapest recruiting tool is a predictable schedule and a few more dollars an hour, especially compared with the cost of an empty shift on a sold-out Saturday.
Build Your Schedule Around Demand
Next, build your schedule around demand, not averages. Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, and AAA projects a record year for Thanksgiving travelers, most of whom will be driving. Drive-market travelers tend to arrive in waves, so your busiest hours may be a Wednesday afternoon rush or a Sunday-morning checkout surge rather than a flat all-day load.
Review your booking reports and group arrivals and departure patterns, then place your strongest people and extra hands at pinch points. Staffing every shift to the same level wastes labor on quiet hours and leaves you short when it counts.
When you do need to add people, look beyond the usual channels. Past seasonal employees are your best source, because they already know your property; a short, personal message offering first pick of shifts costs nothing.
Local partnerships help too, and THLA’s school and intern partnerships, along with the Hotel Short Course, aim to build exactly this kind of pipeline. For properties that rely on seasonal workers, the federal government announced 35,000 supplemental H-2B visas for fiscal year 2026, which AHLA said would make seasonal hiring easier for small and independent hoteliers (That program has real eligibility rules and timelines, so check with the Department of Labor and your counsel before you count on it for this season).
Cross-training can stretch your team further. Training more people to cover a task widens the pool of staff who can step in, but it can’t add hours to a shift or let one person do two full jobs at once. The research on cross-training is encouraging for performance, retention, and service quality, but it doesn’t guarantee results at every property.
Pick a handful of high-impact pairings, such as front desk to breakfast service or housekeeping supervisors to inspections, teach only the specific tasks that matter during the crunch, and write them down on a one-page checklist. Keep the training short and hands-on; long training sessions for housekeepers are a thing of the past.
Protect Your Team
Protecting your current team is just as important as hiring new people. Hotel retention programs sometimes fail because they focus on recognition and development before addressing unstable schedules and poor working conditions. The first 3 months are the most important window for keeping a new hire. That means posting schedules early, avoiding last-minute changes when you can, and giving new seasonal hires a real welcome: a point person, a clear first-week plan, and someone who checks in.
Then decide, before the rush starts, what great service looks like when you can’t do everything. List what guests would never forgive you for missing: a clean room, a fast, friendly check-in, working Wi-Fi, a hot breakfast, and a quick response when something goes wrong. Then list the nice-to-have touches, like extended turndown, extra amenities, and elaborate décor, and be ready to trim or simplify those first. Telling guests what to expect in your pre-arrival message, including breakfast hours and any housekeeping limits, can turn a potential complaint into a non-issue.
Daily communication keeps a thin team from stepping on one another. A ten-minute pre-shift huddle covering today’s arrivals, group events, VIPs, sold-out status, and any known issues gives everyone the same picture. It also gives frontline employees clear permission to fix small problems on the spot, within limits you set, so guests don’t have to wait for a manager to approve a replacement towel or a late checkout. Quick recovery is one of the cheapest ways to protect your review scores when things are busy.
Finally, watch the cost side and the people side together. Hotel profitability is under pressure this year as slowing revenue growth meets rising operating costs, so a month of uncontrolled overtime can erase a hard-won rate gain. Managers who fill every gap themselves also pose a risk because they burn out right when you need them most. Build a plan for who covers what, set an overtime threshold you review weekly, and make sure your leaders get at least a day off before the holiday weeks.
Being stretched thin isn’t a planning failure; it’s the reality of the season. Properties that come through it well usually decide early where their people matter most, hire and train in small, practical steps, protect their best employees, and tell guests honestly what to expect. If you do only three things this week, review your schedule against arrivals and departures, reach out to last year’s seasonal staff, and write down your non-negotiables for service. Your team and your guests will feel the difference.
**Hospitality Net. “76% of Surveyed Hotels Report Staffing Shortages” (AHLA May survey).