Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in Hospitality

Hospitality is an international industry that welcomes everybody from all over the world. This "welcome" might be to an employee or to a guest. In this article, we are going to discuss about the importance of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in hospitality industry.

Kristin Moore et al., (2020) defined diversity as having a range of faces in the organization—people from different demographic groups, such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, religion, and nationality. Diversity is important in the hospitality because it increases productivity, sales revenue, creates more positive environment, brings diverse ideas for diverse guest platform and helps the hospitality to better understand customer needs (Les Roches, 2023; MN, 2023).

As I sketched in about DEI from my previous article, Invisible Beliefs Create Visible Facts: Women in the hospitality industry based on glass ceiling and work-life balance, you realized that hospitality industry is enormous, global, and diverse, it is also highly "gendered" (Dashpher, 2020).

The world has been changing and this change is unstoppable and inevitable. The only thing that we can do is to fit in that change. We may now define people according to their physical appearance, gender, language, and skin. However, this has already started to change. We have "non-binary", which doesn't define any gender. DEI and LGBT topics are very intertwined. Also, LGBT is a polemical topic for all gendered industries. The disputatious part was acceptance of it.

However, organizations are very well aware of the importance of DEI and also DEI is one of the hospitality marketing trend anymore. According to a study on The State of Inclusion in Meetings and Events by Meeting Professionals International, 56% of event planners already have diversity and inclusion policies, with 42% of respondents including DEI statements on their websites (CVENT, 2023). Many hospitality leaders focus on DEI and try to increase it since they've realized the importance of it. Having a diversity in hospitality is basically creating a unique experience for organizations for guest experience.

Imagine that you speak a different language than others but you stay at the hotel and front desk agent or housekeeper is also speak your language too. How nice to have somebody that you can speak the same language and also expressing your needs way better than you do. As an organization, you will have a chance to create that emotional connection or touch with your guest through your unique employee. Emotional connection is the first thing that makes your guest "returned". Once they resonate with their emotions or values, they always tend to choose same hotel. For example, the cornerstone of Ritz-Carlton's marketing strategy is creating unforgettable customer experience by touching guest's soul and building an emotional connection.

According to Diversity wins report's results:

• Most employees support diversity, with overall sentiment on diversity 52 percent positive and 31 percent negative.
• There are clear correlations between diversity and business performance. Analysis of 2019 data shows that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity within executive teams were 25 percent more likely than companies in the fourth quartile to have above-average profitability (up from 21 percent in 2017 and 15 percent in 2014).
• The greater the representation of gender diversity, the higher the likelihood of outperformance. For instance, companies where more than 30 percent of the executives are women were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from only 10 to 30. The most gender-diverse companies see a substantial differential likelihood of outperformance—48 percent—over the least gender-diverse companies.
• The business case for ethnic and cultural diversity is also strong: in 2019, companies in the top quartile bested those in the fourth quartile by 36 percent in profitability. Notably, the likelihood of outperformance continues to be higher for diversity in ethnicity than in gender.
• Progress in building diverse workforces remains stubbornly slow.
• Despite employees’ support of diversity, there are high levels of negative sentiment on inclusion—namely, equality, openness, and belonging—particularly around equality and fairness of opportunity.

Hospitality industry needs to adopt DEI practices to increase the awareness and embrace it as a organization culture. This will enable companies to establish an inclusive environment that accommodates and welcomes all customers and employees, resulting in increased customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and business success (Anoop Suri, 2023).

Written by B. Gizem Kunt