Common Concerns About Staffing Agencies (And How the Right Partner Addresses Them)

Hotels have good reasons to be skeptical of staffing agencies. Hidden fees, unreliable workers, cultural mismatches, and loss of control over hiring are real problems that hotel managers deal with regularly. And when your housekeeping team is short-staffed during a sold-out weekend, the last thing you need is a staffing partner that makes things harder.

At TUMI Hospitality, we’ve spent 20 years working with hotels across the country, and we hear these concerns in nearly every first conversation with a new client. The good news: each one has a straightforward solution when you know what to look for. This guide breaks down the most common objections to staffing agencies and explains what separates a reliable partner from one that creates more problems than it solves.

“Staffing Agencies Are Too Expensive”

This is the most frequent concern we hear, and it makes sense on the surface. When you compare an agency’s hourly bill rate to what you’d pay an employee directly, the agency rate looks higher.

But that comparison leaves out most of the actual cost of employing someone. Direct hiring comes with payroll taxes, workers’ compensation insurance, health and dental insurance, PTO, recruiting expenses, training overhead, and turnover costs. A SHRM report estimates that a bad hire can cost up to 30% of that employee’s first-year earnings, and when you factor in lost productivity, re-hiring, and retraining, that figure climbs fast.

Here’s a clearer picture of what you’re actually comparing:

 

When hotels calculate the true cost of employment rather than just the hourly wage, the math often favors a staffing partnership. Our clients typically see a 12-18% reduction in hard employment costs annually once all those factors are accounted for.

The key thing to look for: face-value billing. The invoice you receive should be all you pay. No hidden fees, no separate charges for taxes or insurance, no surprise line items. If an agency can’t give you a clear, predictable billing structure, that’s a red flag.

“The Staff Won’t Be Qualified”

This is a valid concern. Some agencies prioritize filling positions quickly over filling them well. The result is workers who show up without the skills, attitude, or reliability your property needs.

A quality staffing partner should be able to walk you through exactly how they screen candidates. At minimum, you should expect a multi-stage vetting process that goes beyond a basic application review. That means phone interviews assessing experience and communication skills, in-person interviews with operations management, and a final interview where your team makes the decision.

That last part matters. A good agency should never take hiring control away from you. As Nick, a General Manager at a Hyatt property and a long-time client of ours, put it: the staff should come in with “a hard work demeanor… they came here to work and they came here with a job to do and they seek it out.”

You should also ask about training. Placing someone at your property without investing time in learning your specific standards, systems, and culture is a recipe for poor performance. The best agencies build in a dedicated training period at each property, not just a generic orientation.

According to SHRM research, the average cost per hire is around $4,700, and that doesn’t account for the time managers spend supervising underperformers. Top agencies address this by maintaining pre-screened talent pipelines, using skills assessments, reference checks, and detailed interviews to present better-fit candidates in days rather than weeks.

“Temporary Workers Won’t Fit Our Culture”

The word “temporary” is part of the problem here. If an agency treats every placement as a short-term transaction, then yes, those workers are unlikely to invest in your property’s culture.

But not every staffing model works that way. The distinction worth paying attention to is how an agency classifies its employees. W-2 employees who receive benefits, structured raises, and long-term job stability behave very differently than 1099 contractors bouncing between short gigs.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association has consistently found that housekeeping is the top hiring need for hotels experiencing shortages. When staffing this critical role through an agency, hotels should communicate their mission, values, and day-to-day expectations so recruiters can screen for cultural alignment. The right agency will take this seriously and build it into their process.

Andrew, an Assistant Director of Rooms at an Indianapolis hotel that has worked with us for over eight years, described the integration this way: TUMI staff members “have put years into this property, and it’s really great to see what those kind of impacts can result in when you have dedicated staff members who really care about their work and about the place that they do their work.” He noted that “their puzzle pieces fit in very well to the overall picture.”

That kind of integration doesn’t happen with a revolving door of temporary contractors. It happens when employees are treated as long-term team members with a stake in the property’s success.

Questions to Ask a Staffing Agency About Cultural Fit

When evaluating a staffing agency, these questions will tell you a lot:

• How do you classify your employees (W-2 or 1099)?
• What benefits do your employees receive?
• What is your average employee tenure at client properties?
• Do you provide property-specific training, or just general orientation?
• Who makes the final hiring decision for placements at my property?

If the answers are vague or the agency can’t provide specifics, proceed with caution.

“I’ll Lose Control Over My Own Team”

This concern usually comes from managers who’ve had a bad experience with an agency that operated independently, making staffing decisions without input from the hotel’s leadership.

The reality is that a well-structured staffing partnership should give you more control, not less. A good agency functions as an extension of your HR team: you set the criteria, they do the legwork, and final decisions remain yours.

Here’s what “control” should look like in a good staffing partnership:

• You interview and approve every candidate before they start at your property
• Your department managers set performance standards and expectations
• You can request replacements if someone isn’t working out
• You have a direct line to an area manager who visits your property regularly, not someone in a call center across the country

That difference in on-site presence matters. Weekly visits from a dedicated area manager create accountability that phone calls and email check-ins simply can’t replicate.

“We’ll Become Too Dependent on the Agency”

Some hotel operators worry that bringing in outside staff will create a dependency, where they can’t function without the agency.

This concern is worth taking seriously, but the solution isn’t avoiding staffing partners altogether. It’s choosing a partner that complements your core team rather than replacing it. For large resort properties, for example, agency staff might represent roughly 20% of total headcount, providing a flexible buffer while your direct-hire team remains the foundation.

The real risk of dependency comes from agencies that encourage maximum headcount to increase their billing. A trustworthy partner will help you determine which roles are best suited for agency staffing and which should remain direct hires.

A well-run staffing agency should advise you on which roles work best as agency placements (seasonal, event-based, overnight coverage) and which should remain direct hires.

The staffing areas where hotels most commonly need outside support:

• Housekeeping: High turnover, physically demanding, and essential to guest satisfaction
• Overnight shifts: Difficult to fill internally and critical for property resets
• Seasonal surges: Peak occupancy periods where you need to scale up quickly
• Last-minute call-offs: Coverage gaps that otherwise force managers to work the floor

A good staffing partner handles the roles that are hardest to recruit and retain while your management team focuses on guest experience and operations.

“Billing and Administrative Headaches”

Anyone who has worked with a disorganized staffing agency knows this pain: chasing down invoices, correcting timecard errors, and dealing with billing surprises. These administrative problems erode trust fast.

Andrew, the Assistant Director of Rooms at an Indianapolis property, specifically cited this as something he valued about working with our team: “One of the things that I think I enjoy most is the accuracy and the cadence of our billing… the accuracy of the information on those invoices is 19 times out of 20 accurate to what took place throughout the week.”

Before partnering with any agency, ask about their administrative infrastructure. Do they have dedicated timekeeping specialists? What is their billing schedule? How quickly do they resolve discrepancies?

Transparent pricing is a growing expectation across the staffing industry. Agencies should provide line-item breakdowns of base pay, taxes, and administrative fees so you see exactly what you’re paying for.

The administrative red flags to watch for:

• No set billing schedule
• Invoices that require significant manual verification
• Separate charges for taxes, insurance, or benefits on top of the bill rate
• Slow or unresponsive billing support
• No dedicated point of contact for administrative questions

“How Do I Know Which Agency Is the Right Fit?”

Not all staffing agencies are built the same. A company that excels at placing warehouse workers or office staff won’t necessarily understand the nuances of hotel staffing.

Industry specialization matters. A hospitality-focused staffing agency understands seasonal demand patterns, the importance of quality assurance scores, the 24/7 nature of hotel operations, and why housekeeping is the operational backbone of any property.

Here’s a comparison of what to look for versus what to avoid:

Before committing to any agency, assess whether their approach aligns with your business goals and culture, and insist on clear, transparent contracts.

The best way to evaluate a potential partner is to look at their longest client relationships. An agency that retains clients for five, ten, or twenty years is demonstrating something that no sales pitch can manufacture: consistent value over time.

Turning a Staffing Concern into a Staffing Advantage

Every concern on this list is valid. Hotels have been burned by agencies that overpromise and underdeliver. The difference between a staffing headache and a staffing advantage comes down to the partner you choose.

According to BLS JOLTS data, leisure and hospitality job-opening rates have hovered around 5-6% throughout 2025. And AHLA survey data shows that 65% of hotels were still reporting staffing shortages at the end of 2024, down from 82% in mid-2023 but still well above pre-pandemic levels. These pressures aren’t going away. The question isn’t whether you need staffing support, but whether you’ve found the right partner to provide it.

If you’re evaluating your options and want to see what a long-term hospitality staffing partnership looks like in practice, reach out to our team at (512) 722-6000 or info@tumihospitality.com. We’re happy to walk you through our approach and answer any questions about how we work with hotel properties across the country.