The NAACP has launched a website, www.naacp.org/pages/hotels, providing advocacy tools aimed at improving diversity and inclusion practices in the country’s leading hotels.
The site features an interactive map highlighting diversity data for the top 100 tourism cities nationwide as well as an action guide for diversity advocacy.
St. Louis ranks 19 in the Top 100, with a reported 39 percent of African-American staff at regional hotels, though only 21 percent in management and 8 percent at the executive level.
The site builds on the data provided in the NAACP’s Opportunity & Diversity Report Card released in November 2012.
“Hotels must reflect the communities they serve,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, NAACP President & CEO. “The lodging industry has a notorious history of racial exclusion that must end now if all American children are to have equal opportunity in 21st century America.”
The NAACP is training its members in cities all over the country to utilize the guide and website to assess the diversity and inclusion practices of the hotel and lodging facilities in their communities. These efforts are part of NAACP’s strategy to increase the transparency of leading hotels’ hiring practices and to enforce the hotels’ collection of EEO-1 reports from all of the franchisees that fall under the hotels’ corporate umbrella.
Additionally, the NAACP is developing partnerships with local convention and visitors bureaus to collect hotels’ EE0-1 reports to assist meeting planners in determining which hotels to host meetings and events.
“If the hotel industry strengthens wages, affordable healthcare, job security, and other benefits, the industry can put the middle class within reach for disenfranchised communities,” said Dedrick Muhammad Sr., director of the NAACP Economic Department.
“In this 21st century, we must bridge racial economic inequality and the battle for full inclusion and diversity must be won before we can realize a strong economic future for all. Improving diversity and inclusion practices in the hotel industry, one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S., is a great step in that direction.”
As part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, private businesses with over 100 workers are required to complete an EEO-1 Form which records internal diversity data.
To access the advocacy web tools and read a copy of the report, visit www.naacp.org/pages/hotels.
