Spring weather in the Ozarks proved unusually cold this year, but at Big Cedar Lodge the course maintenance team had reason not to mind.
“We completed construction of two new golf courses right as the coronavirus golf boom kicked off and the labor market really tightened up,” said Matt McQueary, the director of sales and marketing for the resort. “When the weather this April stayed chilly, it gave us a chance to finish hiring our mowing crews.”
The reputation of this 4,600-acre luxury retreat has grown along with its golf amenity, which brings pressure to maintain or even refine its level of guest service. When the pandemic hit, golfers demonstrated patience and adaptability; they were grateful just to be on the fairways. As life works its way back toward normalcy, high-end resorts want to once again wow their guests. That’s hardly possible if they’re chronically understaffed.
“We’re looking to hire – just like everyone else – but things seem to be getting better,” McQueary said. “Golf services has been relatively problem-free compared to other departments. I think our reputation in the golf community brings the people who want those jobs coming to us first.”
With no sign of a magic-bullet solution to labor challenges at golf resorts, what’s left is to improvise. One tool that’s worked nicely for operators is the so-called hiring event, whether billed as a “job fair,” an “interview week” or some other term. Pinehurst Resort went that route in spring of 2021, devoting four consecutive Tuesdays to the effort, which it billed as “open interviews.” For the job-seeker, it means arriving without an appointment and very likely finding interviewers waiting to speak with you.
In northern Michigan, the award-winning Boyne Resorts uses a twist on hiring events by recruiting at college job fairs. “The events we host on-property have been effective, but over the past few years we’ve seen a better success rate going out to the colleges."
Ken Griffin
The famed North Carolina resort also has used cash bonuses to meet its personnel needs. Ads this spring for a golf course maintenance technician on the historic No. 2 course show hourly pay of $20 to $28 plus a lump sum of $500 at sign-on. It makes sense, when you think about how critical it is to keep that marquee asset in five-star condition.
Also going the job-fair route is Bandon Dunes, which last July teamed up with neighboring businesses in Coos County, Oregon, to meet-and-greet potential new hires. Similar to Big Cedar, Bandon Dunes has been expanding infrastructure – most recently a new lodging amenity – and in turn has needed to increase its workforce, not just maintain it. “Hiring and recruiting is top of mind for all managers,” said the resort’s general manager, Don Crowe. “We’re facing unprecedented demand and a challenging labor market. We’re also recruiting for the future as we build the foundation for rapid resort growth with the addition of new courses, new restaurants and new lodging.”
Bandon is no exception to the pattern of golf resorts being built amid dramatic scenery in remote locales. In fact, it helped pioneer the trend. With that, however, comes housing challenges for hourly workers and thus an excellent recruiting tool for any resort with dedicated employee housing. Full-time employees at Lajitas Golf Resort in the Big Bend region of west Texas live in resort-owned units at the extremely low monthly rent of $42 to $142. With that comes complimentary laundry, swimming and fitness facilities, plus medical insurance.
In northern Michigan, the award-winning Boyne Resorts uses a twist on hiring events by recruiting at college job fairs. “The events we host on-property have been effective, but over the past few years we’ve seen a better success rate going out to the colleges,” said Ken Griffin, director of golf sales and marketing at the Petoskey, Michigan, company. “In general, our personnel picture has been improving, thanks to getting the H-2B and J-1 programs back in place,” said Griffin, referring to recent Department of Labor increases in temporary work visas for foreign nationals.
That move by the DOL has aligned nicely with an employee housing construction project at the fabled Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. “We’ve got a new, 96-adult complex that primarily serves workers who are with us on visas,” said Cynthia Rivera, director of human resources at Sea Pines. “Every hospitality employer on Hilton Head has to address the worker-housing challenge, and we decided it was worth the investment to get those accommodations under our own direct control.”
According to IbisWorld, a publisher of global industry information, the category of Golf Courses and Country Clubs employs about 303,000 in the United States. Annualized employment growth in this category from 2017 through 2021 is 0.1 percent, but the projection for 2022 actually shows a marginal shrinkage in the golf facility workforce, down 0.5 percent. U.S. golf facilities’ payrolls are down 1,515 workers this year compared with 2021. Though the number of unfilled U.S. golf jobs is not readily apparent, the number of unfilled jobs in the entire U.S. economy rose sharply from March 2021 to March 2022, from 7,857,000 to 11,392,000.
“We continue to reduce both member and guest culinary offerings due to staffing shortages, primarily in food and beverage.”
Jeff Geisler
At Desert Mountain, a seven-course golf property with personnel needs akin to those of a major golf resort, worker shortages sparked unconventional recruiting. An effort was mounted by the Scottsdale, Arizona, community to hire kids as young as 15, as long as their parents were current Desert Mountain employees. It was a twist on take-your-kids-to-work that proved successful, especially when the COVID scourge was requiring schools to stick completely to remote learning.
Resort management is a science in which people earn doctorates, studying the guest experience in fine detail. One of the top three customer complaints any research will identify is long waits for service – to the point at which operators are better off limiting hours or capacity versus keeping everything open when understaffed. That calculus was weighed carefully by Jeff Geisler, general manager of the upscale, 36-hole Rumbling Bald resort on Lake Lure in western North Carolina.
“We continue to reduce both member and guest culinary offerings due to staffing shortages, primarily in food and beverage,” said Geisler, who is also using overtime pay in some areas to deliver proper service.
The playbook at Bandon Dunes has gone toward high-quality product that is relatively simple to deliver. “We’ve leaned on more grab-and-go options and narrowed our menu selections to ensure that all items are prepared and delivered at the high level of consistency and quality our guests expect,” Crowe said. “We’ve also expanded our outdoor dining options. We’re launching a new outdoor BBQ offering at the resort later this summer at the practice range. The new outlet, called Charlotte’s, will be a walk-up dining experience.”
Front-of-house dining employees are statistically in a class by themselves, when it comes to the hiring pitfalls faced by resort managers. Last November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 4.5 million Americans who quit their jobs – more than 1 million of them were restaurant and hotel workers, equal to 6.4 percent of the industry’s workforce. If you could work from home during COVID, you generally got along well. If your job couldn’t be done remotely, you faced an often-onerous set of working conditions. If your job was serving meals and drinks to restaurant patrons, the combination of COVID-related miseries sent you heading for the exits.
For Rumbling Bald, the investment in new Champion Bermuda greens on its Apple Valley course has been a powerful customer-pleaser, one that highlights the guest experience in many cases. From there, it’s a matter of reminding all customer-facing personnel that a warm and caring attitude goes a long way toward smoothing over inconveniences.
“People are experiencing the problems of short-staffing just about everywhere they go, especially in the restaurants back home where they’re from,” Geisler said he tells his team. “Communication is key when it comes to staffing levels. If you politely relay to guests their table will be ready in just a minute, or their food should be out shortly, you can head off any heartburn.”