High hotel staff turnover is poison when the same jobs keep reopening and nobody addresses why. The hotel spends another month recruiting, teaching and rebuilding relationships. The people who remain carry the gaps while new colleagues learn.

The person leaving may have a perfectly good reason. A promotion, a move or a better fit can be a healthy next step. I am concerned about preventable churn that the hotel has learned to treat as ordinary.

Guests need consistency. So do planners deciding whether to trust the property with another event. Constant rebuilding makes that harder.

What hotel staff turnover takes from the operation

An experienced banquet captain may understand how the room behaves during service and where a setup usually needs adjustment. A cook may know what preparation keeps a particular menu moving. A sales coordinator may know where an unusual client commitment is recorded.

Those are illustrative examples, but they describe a practical problem. A replacement can be capable and still need time to learn the building and the people around it. The hotel needs to support that learning without expecting the remaining team to absorb it indefinitely.

In their 2006 study of turnover costs at 33 U.S. hotels, J. B. Tracey and Timothy Hinkin identified productivity lost through new employees’ inexperience as the largest contributor to overall turnover costs. The study is historical; it explains a mechanism rather than supplying a current dollar estimate for your property.

Find out which departures could have been prevented

An annual turnover number cannot tell a GM whether a department has become difficult to work in. Separate voluntary departures from other exits and account for seasonal positions. Look at tenure and roles, with enough care that small groups do not expose individual employees.

Then listen while people are still there. Are schedules repeatedly changing at the last minute? Does equipment stay broken? Can someone see a path to development? Are experienced staff teaching new hires without any time set aside to do it?

Pay belongs in that conversation. So do workload, respect and the behavior of supervisors. An employee lunch is pleasant. It cannot resolve a persistent problem with how the work is managed.

Make the cost visible without blaming the team

Cornell’s research across 98 full-service hotels at one company examined turnover alongside operating profit. Its 2001 findings are sample-specific and should not become a universal calculator. They do support taking turnover seriously in a financial conversation.

For your property, record actual recruiting expense, paid training time and the overtime or temporary labor used to cover a vacancy. Keep estimated disruption separate. Time spent helping a new colleague is real work, but it is not automatically a cash expense reduction if turnover falls.

Review the findings with department leaders and Finance. Ask which condition can be changed and what evidence would show the change helped. Be careful with attribution: business volume, seasonality and staffing changes can also affect the result.

Give people a reason to build a future here

Choose one department with repeated departures. Have a confidential conversation about the job, agree on one concrete improvement and tell the team what happened. Continue supporting the new people who have already arrived.

Keep knowledge available, too. Training notes and current procedures help the next colleague start well. They should sit alongside time with experienced people, whose judgment deserves recognition.

I want good people to be able to grow in a hotel without paying for that growth with their health or their entire life outside work. Hotel staff turnover deserves attention to the conditions that make staying worthwhile and give guests the continuity they rely on.

Find more practical hotel references in Hospitality Intelligence and continue the series in Hospitality Field Notes.