Pre-Opening Guide #3: How to Hire Hotel Staff Before Opening

When should a new hotel start hiring staff?

A hotel should begin hiring its key leadership and operational managers well before opening, then build the wider team progressively as the launch approaches. The earlier hires should help shape the operation, while later hires should focus on training and readiness.

A useful hiring sequence is:

• 6–9 months before opening: General Manager and other senior leadership where appropriate.
• 3–6 months before opening: Department heads and key supervisors.
• 1–3 months before opening: Front office, housekeeping, maintenance, food and beverage, security, and other operational employees.
• Final weeks: Temporary, casual, or additional staff required for the expected opening volume.

The exact timing depends on the hotel's size, service level, recruitment market, and opening date.

The important distinction is between hiring people and having an operating team.

Someone hired two weeks before opening may technically be an employee, but that does not mean they understand the property, their responsibilities, the hotel's standards, or how departments work together.

Which hotel employees should be hired first?

Hire the people who will be responsible for building the operation before hiring the full frontline team. Department leaders can help define procedures, recruit their teams, train employees, and identify problems before opening.

For many properties, early leadership may include:

• General Manager
• Front Office Manager
• Housekeeping Manager
• Operations Manager
• Finance or Accounts lead
• Maintenance or Engineering lead
• Food and Beverage Manager, where applicable
• Sales and Marketing lead

Not every hotel needs every position as a separate role.

A smaller property may combine responsibilities. A larger full-service hotel may need dedicated leadership for several departments.

The principle is simple: hire the people who will build and manage the system before hiring everyone who will operate inside it.

That gives management time to establish standards rather than expecting frontline employees to invent them.

How many employees does a new hotel need?

There is no reliable single staffing number that applies to every hotel. Staffing depends on room count, service level, operating hours, amenities, food and beverage operations, occupancy expectations, and how much work is handled internally or outsourced.

A 20-room limited-service hotel and a 100-room full-service property can have very different staffing requirements.

Instead of starting with an arbitrary employee-to-room ratio, calculate staffing from the work that actually needs to be performed.

For each department, ask:

• What tasks happen every day?
• What tasks happen only during certain shifts?
• How many people are required to perform them safely?
• What happens during peak periods?
• What happens when someone is absent?
• Which roles require 24-hour coverage?
• Which activities can be outsourced?

This produces a more useful staffing plan than simply multiplying the number of rooms by a generic industry ratio.

How should a hotel determine its staffing structure?

Build the staffing structure around the hotel's operating hours and workload. Start with departments, define responsibilities, then determine how many people are required to cover those responsibilities across shifts.

For example, the front office may require coverage across multiple shifts, while housekeeping may concentrate most of its work during the day.

Maintenance may need an on-site presence during operating hours with an escalation arrangement outside those hours.

Security requirements may be continuous.

Food and beverage staffing will depend heavily on whether the hotel operates a restaurant, bar, room service, events, or other facilities.

Create a simple responsibility map:

Department → Responsibilities → Operating hours → Required roles → Shift coverage → Supervisor

This makes gaps much easier to identify.

It also prevents a common mistake: hiring people because a department “should have” a certain number of employees rather than because the operation actually requires them.

What should a General Manager do before the hotel opens?

The General Manager should help turn the hotel from a physical property into an operating business. That includes coordinating departments, setting standards, reviewing staffing, preparing budgets, establishing procedures, and overseeing readiness.

The General Manager should not simply arrive when the hotel is ready to receive guests.

Before opening, they should be asking:

• Are department heads in place?
• Are responsibilities clear?
• Are staffing levels realistic?
• Are suppliers ready?
• Are procedures documented?
• Is training underway?
• Are rooms ready?
• Can departments communicate?
• Are financial controls set?
• Has the hotel been tested?

The GM becomes the person connecting these pieces.

This is especially important during pre-opening because individual departments can appear ready while the overall operation is not.

A front office team can be trained. Housekeeping can be trained. Maintenance can be trained. But someone still needs to test whether all three departments can operate together.

How early should department heads be involved?

Department heads should be involved early enough to build their departments rather than simply inherit them. Their responsibilities should include helping recruit staff, defining procedures, creating training plans, and identifying operational requirements.

A housekeeping manager, for example, should help determine:

• Staffing requirements
• Cleaning standards
• Inspection standards
• Linen requirements
• Cleaning schedules
• Room-readiness procedures

The front office manager should similarly help establish:

• Shift structures
• Reservation procedures
• Check-in standards
• Guest communication
• Cash & payment controls
• Escalation processes

This creates ownership.

When a manager is involved in building the department, they can also identify unrealistic assumptions before those assumptions become expensive operational problems.

When should frontline hotel staff be recruited?

Frontline employees should generally be recruited early enough to complete structured training and practical familiarization before opening. Hiring too early creates unnecessary payroll costs, while hiring too late leaves insufficient time to build competence.

The right timing depends on the role.

Front-desk staff need time to understand the reservation process, property layout, room categories, rates, guest policies, and escalation procedures.

Housekeeping employees need practical training in room standards, cleaning sequences, inspection requirements, linen handling, and safety.

Maintenance staff need to understand the building, equipment, emergency procedures, suppliers, and escalation structure.

Security staff need familiarity with access points, emergency procedures, surveillance systems, and property rules.

The training period should therefore be treated as part of the hotel's pre-opening project, not as an afterthought.

How should new hotel employees be trained?

Train employees around the work they will actually perform, using the hotel's own rooms, equipment, procedures, and guest scenarios. Classroom instruction is useful, but it should be followed by practical training.

For example, front-office staff should not only learn how the reservation system works. They should practice receiving a guest, handling a booking modification, responding to a complaint, processing a payment, and escalating an unusual situation.

Housekeeping employees should work inside actual rooms rather than learning only from written instructions.

Maintenance staff should become familiar with the property's equipment before an emergency occurs.

The objective is to move through three stages:

Understand → Practice → Perform

A new employee who can describe the procedure but cannot execute it during a busy shift is not fully trained.

How do you know whether hotel staff are ready for opening?

Staff are ready when they can perform their responsibilities consistently without depending on management to explain every step. Readiness should be demonstrated through practical exercises, not simply attendance at training sessions.

Run realistic scenarios.

For front office:

A guest arrives early, their room is not ready, and they are unhappy. What happens?

For housekeeping:

A room is cleaned but fails inspection. What happens next?

For maintenance:

A guest reports a problem in an occupied room. Who receives it and how is it escalated?

For management:

Two departments disagree about the status of a room. How is the issue resolved?

These exercises reveal gaps in knowledge and coordination.

Keep a record of the gaps discovered during training and assign someone to resolve each one before opening.

How should a hotel handle staff uniforms, identification, and basic readiness?

Employee-facing requirements should be completed before the final training period, so staff can practice operating as they will on opening day.

Depending on the hotel, this may include:

• Uniforms
• Name badges
• Identification
• Staff accommodation
• Meals or welfare
• Shift schedules
• Communication channels
• Department contacts
• Training materials
• Safety equipment

These details may appear minor compared with construction and technology, but they affect whether the team can operate smoothly.

The final training period should resemble the real working environment as closely as possible.

If staff will wear uniforms, use them during training. If departments communicate through a specific channel, use it during training. If managers have particular approval responsibilities, practice those responsibilities.

The closer training is to reality, the more useful it becomes.

How should a new hotel prepare for staff shortages?

Build contingency plans before opening rather than assuming every scheduled employee will always be available. Hotels operate through people, and sickness, resignation, emergencies, and unexpected demand can create immediate gaps.

Identify critical roles where a single absence could disrupt operations.

Then determine:

• Who can cover the role?
• Which employees can perform multiple functions?
• Can temporary staff be used?
• Which activities can be outsourced?
• Who approves emergency staffing changes?
• What minimum staffing level is required for safe operation?

Cross-training is particularly useful for smaller properties.

An employee does not need to become an expert in another department, but knowing enough to provide basic support can prevent one absence from becoming an operational crisis.

What should hotel owners avoid when hiring before opening?

Avoid hiring the entire workforce too early, hiring purely based on availability, and assuming that experience at another hotel automatically means someone will fit your operation.

Previous hotel experience is valuable, but every property has different standards, workflows, service levels, ownership structures, and technology.

Also avoid creating positions without defining their responsibilities.

A job title does not tell an employee what they are accountable for.

Before making a hire, the hotel should know:

What does this person own?

What decisions can they make?

Who do they report to?

What does success look like?

What happens when they cannot resolve an issue?

Clear answers make recruitment and performance management much easier.

What should the final week of staff preparation look like?

The final week should focus less on teaching new concepts and more on operating the hotel. Staff should be rehearsing the actual routines they will perform when guests arrive.

Run a simulated operating day.

Have people act as guests. Make reservations. Check guests in. Prepare rooms. Create maintenance issues. Handle payments. Process checkouts. Run shift handovers. Escalate complaints.

Then review what went wrong.

The objective is not to make the simulation look perfect.

It is to expose weaknesses while there is still time to fix them.

One of the most useful lessons from working with new hotel properties is that opening readiness is often less about whether employees have been hired and more about whether the team has had enough opportunity to work together before the pressure of real guests begins.

What should a hotel owner have in place before the first employee starts?

The hotel should have a clear organizational structure, job responsibilities, reporting lines, training plan, operating standards, and basic tools ready before employees arrive. Otherwise, employees spend their first weeks waiting for management to decide how the operation should work.

The hiring process should therefore be connected to the wider pre-opening plan.

Your sequence should look something like:

Design the operation → Define roles → Hire leadership → Build departments → Recruit frontline staff → Train → Simulate → Correct gaps → Open

The purpose is not to have the largest team possible on opening day.

It is to have a team that understands what it is responsible for and can work together when the first guest arrives.

That is the difference between staffing a hotel and preparing a hotel to operate.

If you are preparing a new hotel and want to ensure your operations are structured efficiently before opening, explore Oriald.

Talk to us about preparing your hotel for live operations →