Lee Ann PrescottIf you’ve ever worked, there’s a good chance you’ve had a job in the hospitality and leisure industry – at a hotel, amusement park, or one of their associated restaurants. With turnover rates of more than 70%, hiring is a constant activity for site managers. To meet staffing needs, hospitality recruiting teams need better tools and processes. SmartRecruiters’ latest report offers benchmark recruiting metrics that will help hospitality-driven organizations see where they fit into the bigger picture and determine whether their own metrics are leading or lagging.
Recruiting Benchmarks 2025 Report
For its landmark Recruiting Benchmarks 2025 Report, SmartRecruiters examined nearly 90 million applications for 1.5 million jobs across 95 countries. This blog post dives into the hospitality metrics, offering a starting place for organizations to see where they’re performing well and where they can improve.
Note that the hospitality industry is defined at the company level, not the job level. In other words, the data includes all roles offered by hospitality companies, from home office to on-site workers, including servers, cooks, receptionists, and housekeepers. Here are the top takeaways.
Hospitality applicant competition
- Hospitality employers receive 60% more applications per opening than the global average across all industries, at 117 applicants per hire. Therefore, interview and offer rates are 55% and 50% lower, respectively.
- Candidates who apply to hospitality roles have a 50% lower chance of receiving an offer than those in other industries. In other words, those looking for a job in hospitality need to apply to more roles than those looking for jobs in other industries, such as retail.
Time to hire
- At 39 median days to hire, hospitality comes in close to the global median of 38 days.
- To speed up hiring times and keep their hotels and restaurants staffed, hospitality employers could consider the use of AI-driving hiring tools; SmartRecruiters’ research found that time to hire for organizations using AI is typically 11 days faster than those that don’t use it.
Recruiter productivity
- Hospitality recruiters typically handle 21 hires per month, lower than the global average of 30. However, hosptilaity roles are often filled with little to no recruiter involvement; the hiring manager fills the role directly, with recruiting teams supporting only job posting and offer management.
- Hospitality teams that use hiring scorecards tend to use them, with 99% of interview teams filling out scorecards as they seek to identify the best-fit candidates from the large applicant pool.
Sources of hire
- Hospitality lags in its use of referrals and internal hires, which is no surprise given the high turnover. Still, with only 3% of hires from internal candidates, employers have an opportunity to promote staff from within.
The case for hospitality recruiting automation and AI
Supporting decentralized hiring teams with automated processes is a key way to promote efficiency for hospitality organizations. With candidate text messaging and customized workflows set up for each role type, hiring mangers are better equipped to provide a hospitable experience to candidates. Further use of AI for candidate screening, discovery, and conversations can empower local managers to succeed in keeping their sites staffed and building talent pools to fulfill seasonal hiring needs.
Get more recruiting benchmark metrics
Download the full report to get a global overview of hiring benchmarks plus insights on geographic differences in hiring.
