Latest / PCMA Convene Podcast / Talk: How Immigration Policy Is Reshaping Hospitality, Travel, and Meetings in the U.S.
Transcript
- Convene Talk, ep. 95/May 8, 2026 *Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies Magdalina Atanassova: This is the Convene Podcast. Welcome to another Convene talk. Kate, you're picking the topic today, so over to you to introduce it. Kate Mulcrone: Thanks, Maggie. So today I would like to dive into a report that we covered in Convene in our last issue in a little bit more detail. First of all, just a little bit of background. This report is titled Inhospitable, and it is about challenges that North American hospitality workers are facing in 2025, but also bigger picture how this is going to impact the hospitality industry as a whole. Just for some context, unite here is the largest union of hospitality workers in North America with more than 300,000 members in the US and Canada. And this report came out in February and clarifies three major trends that we really do need to keep an eye on. And those trends are, first, there are fewer people traveling to the U.S. the report cited a 2.5 million drop in international visitors last year. Second, the U.S. is seeing lower employment across tourism and hospitality. There are nearly 100,000 fewer people employed in the industry at the end of 2025 than at the same time the previous year. And then third, hotel revenue is flat. We're seeing a 5.5% decline. And that's equivalent to about $1.2 billion when you compare September 2025 data to the previous September. And that was the latest data that was available when the report was published. And so digging into both the data here and the testimonies from individual employees, I think it's a way for us to take a close look at what is shaping something that is bigger than all of us. So in the report, I want to start just with this big statistic that wowed me, and that is that travel supported the jobs of 15 million US workers in 2024, and it directly created 8 million jobs. So that is the before of this landscape. And the report is looking at how the Trump administration immigration policies, specifically what's been happening with ice, is causing a superstorm effect that is taking away jobs, but also sidelining the way that meetings are conducted and held. And so I think looking at this, it's a bit of a canary in the coal mine effect to see what the person who works at the airport or the convention center or the convention center hotel is seeing on the ground that we might not be seeing because we're just flying into the destination for a three day meeting. And so this is from the report. And I feel like this really sets the stage for the conversations that the report includes across the board. The US Hospitality industry is suffering because of Trump's immigration policies and ongoing political vitriol. These have upended the industry on multiple fronts, resulting in fewer visitors, fewer available workers, and a hotel industry in which only luxury properties can thrive. Together, this is a recipe for a disaster for a critical economic sector. While this report focuses on the hospitality and tourism industry, it is undoubtedly not only the US industry that has been and will be negatively impacted by immigration policies that scare away visitors and and target both immigrant and US born workers alike. So as long as these policies persist, or if newer, harsher versions of them are put into effect, which unfortunately has happened since this report was published, the viability of critical industries and of the US economy at large remain at risk. That's a pretty broad statement. So let's actually look at both one Data point and one worker's experience in Washington, D.C. to really illustrate what they're saying. And this is on page 10 of the report, if you would like to follow along. Data from the online reservation platform OpenTable shows a roughly 30% drop in reservations and in the days following the announcement of the federal takeover, after 11 consecutive months of year over year increases in reservation numbers. So the trend of reverses immediately. Axios reported in August that business following the crackdown held steady in suburban locations but fell dramatically in DC. A restaurant owner in the 14th street neighborhood, which has seen high levels of aggressive immigration enforcement, said his Saturday business was harmed by detention and a checkpoint in the area. And so then the report pairs this data with the experience of Greg Varney, who is a line cook at St. Anselm in DC's NoMA neighborhood, and he's worked there for about a year after four years in the hotel, sorry, in the restaurant industry. And here is what Greg said A year ago our weekends would have 450 to 500 covers per night. Now at best we do around 250 as mass layoffs of federal employees and fear of federal agents discourage diners eating out. This has made my own job doubly hard and stressful, especially during the occupation. There was an intense and palpable fear that in the kitchen people had family members who were taken. We all now jerk our heads up whenever we hear sirens, even in a city like D.C. where it's common. I've had to come in when I wasn't scheduled because of the increase of callouts among staff. We're all trying to watch out for each other, but it feels like we've basically taken on a second shift due to this occupation and raids in D.C. streets. So I really think the way that the report pairs one person's experience and how it has sort of this knock on effect. One person gets taken by ice, it affects everybody in that kitchen. Thirty people get laid off from the Fed, a restaurant closes. And putting the human stories with the data. Part of what I loved about this report is that that's what we do here. And it's really easy to like, look at statistics and be like, okay, ICE arrested this many people and whatever, whatever. But when you hear from the people who are directly and indirectly impacted, it's just not as easy to shrug that off. Especially because the hospitality industry is all about connection. Another example that I really liked from the report is about Miami. And so if you want to, if you happen to be looking at this, this is on page 14. So whereas we talked about the restaurant industry in D.C. for South Florida, and like other hotspots around Miami, you have a higher percentage of the workforce who are immigrants. It says in the report, in 2023, 6% of all immigrants in the U.S. that's about 3 million people were living in South Florida. Immigrants make up nearly 42% of, of the total population there, the highest proportion in the country. Also, South Florida is home to the largest Haitian and Cuban diaspora communities in the world, as well as the largest Venezuelan community in the US and so the report talks about how these groups were among the most impacted by the revocation of TPS and CHNV parole. And these are temporary protective status that you might get if you're seeking human rights refuge in another country. And this isn't necessarily specific to the us this is how international human rights law works. You go to a sanctuary country and you get a temporary visa. So when this happened, the people living in South Florida were left with a near impossible choice to remain in the US without authorization and they can't work, or to go back to their native country, which they literally fled because they were being persecuted. And so this is from the report. The abrupt cancellation or threatened cancellation of certain TPS designations and CHNV parole likely led to near immediate impacts on the South Florida workforce. On a state level, Florida's labor participation rate, this is the percentage of the population who's currently working or looking for work saw a steady decline in the second half of 2025, falling to 57.5% in November. This is the lowest percentage since February 2021, when the world was still recovering from the devastating impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. So in D.C. we're seeing the fallout because of, like the government workers who are just not around anymore. Whereas in Miami, it's literally people are afraid to go to work and so the impact pushes off onto their coworkers. So on page 16 of the report, a worker named Filene Julianne, who works at the Miami International Airport, talks about how this is impacting her. So she's worked at the airport for seven years as a driver. She is, you know, you're sitting at the gate forever and you see those little carts zipping around. That's Filene. And she said, I know of many Sky Chefs workers who've lost their jobs recently because of changes to their immigration status. It's impacted all kinds of different departments for us, from drivers to precheck for the drivers. Losing some of our coworkers has meant that there aren't enough of us to cover all the international flights. Before this happened, we would only be assigned to work two flights per day, but now we have to do three, sometimes four flights. It used to be an eight hour shift, but now it can be 12 hours or more. There are times I've arrived at four in the morning and still haven't gone home by 10 at night. It's tiring work to load the heavy carts into the trucks, drive them to the plane, unload the dirty carts and trash, then load the full carts for a long distance flight of hundreds of passengers and crew members. Those of us who cater the international flights also have special customs and border patrol regulations that we have to follow to secure and properly dispose of trash that comes into the country on international flights. I love my job and also I do this extra work because I don't have a choice. I have six kids to support at home. But it's getting harder and harder as we lose coworkers. We're already working so hard to cover for being short staffed and we could lose even more if the administration is allowed to cancel TPS for Haitians. It's time for my coworkers with TPS to have a pathway to citizenship. No one should have to live in fear not knowing what is going to happen to them. And again, this is someone who is a US citizen. This doesn't directly impact her, but she can just see that the effect on the whole airport is a problem and that the solution is to simply restore these people's lawful status to be in this country and work at any job they want. This, this is a self inflicted injury as the report put it. I'm curious if anyone else had sort of a favorite anecdote or if any of the data was surprising. To anyone. BARBARA yeah. Barbara Palmer: Thanks, Kate. What really snapped my head back was that stat that 42% of South Florida's workforce were immigrants. And I was curious then to see I live in the Bay Area, I was curious about what percentage of the workers, the workers here in the Bay Area are immigrants. And 34% of population in San Francisco has at least one immigrant person in the household. And In Chicago, that's 22%. And your story that you wrote, your really wonderful story, I hope everyone goes and reads the story that was a lot of it was based on this report. You know, the story, it just talks about the amplification of one event, like tourism has recovered a lot in Northern California, but Southern California is really dragging. And that's where National Guard were on the streets in Los Angeles for a time. The National Guard was on the streets in Washington, D.C. and in Minneapolis. And even if a person does have protected status, even if they've been here legally in the United States for years working the same job, the examples of citizens that have been arrested, that has a chilling effect. It's like a hollowed out hospitality industry. I know lots of restaurants are closing. There's a lot of complicated reasons for that that stretch back to the pandemic. The report talked about a hotel recession right now. And I think on the other side, like the inbound travelers, that's another statistic that I was very taken aback by, which I didn't know that so many countries that we would figure wouldn't worry about coming here, like Belgium and Denmark and Ireland, that their countries have issued advisories about traveling here. So when you ask those statistics, it really is like what you said, a superstorm of reasons that would have just a very, very negative effect on tourism and travel in the U.S. what are you thinking, Michelle? Michelle Russell: Now, I was just going to refer to a story we published in News Junkie this week about how, you know, there was a time where everyone thought that we'd get a boon in international travel from the World cup, and that's in fact, more than 120 civil society organizations, including the ACLU and Amnesty International, have issued a travel advisory warning of safety risks for fans, players and journalists attending the World cup in the US which the US Travel association strongly condemned, calling it sabotage. But the advisory, which was released last week, highlights risks that the group say travelers may encounter, including arbitrary denial of entry and potential arrest or deportation, expanded travel restrictions, invasive social media screening and electronic device searches, violent immigration enforcement that may involve racial profiling, suppression of protest and speech, and potential mistreatment in ice detention. So the. There's just this whole list of things that would make somebody even the most, you know, passionate fan, soccer fan, think twice about coming to the U.S. i think the perception is very negative. Jennifer N. Dienst: You read my mind. And Barbara, you. You made some really good points. Like, when you think about all that we've watched the travel and meetings industries go through since the pandemic began. And I think if you look at like, like so many areas and types of workers have been really, really hard hit, but I really think that a certain group of workers have really received the brunt. And this would be this group that Kate has written about. And I think certain destinations just keep getting hit harder over and over again. Destinations like Minneapolis, destinations in Florida that have a huge immigrant population who work in hospitality. I'm from Florida. I've written about this a lot just because, you know, I come from a state whose politics is quite divisive. And I think a lot of times the group that ends up suffering the most are these. These workers. I mean, obviously, Florida is huge for tourism of all kinds, whether it's meetings, business, leisure. And we know that boycotts. When groups send a message like what they're sending about the World cup right now, when they send a message like that, it does more harm than good. So good on the USTA for, for calling, for pushing back. We know from research, from past stories that we've written, other stories that have been written by other outlets that those kind of boycotts and that kind of messages, it doesn't work. It doesn't do anything. What does make me, might make me feel good is, is in your story, Kate, where you talk about how I believe it was the library association that dug under heels and were like, no, we're going to come to Minneapolis regardless of what's happening. It's groups like that that understand that it's a more complicated situation. And bringing. Keeping their business there does so much more for the destination than pulling out their business to try to send a message. I think it shows the power of meetings and events and the power that planners and their teams have when they decide to go a route that's a little bit harder and keep their business in a place that's experiencing something like this. Barbara, what are you thinking? Barbara Palmer: It just made me think about Minneapolis and meet Minneapolis and how they shifted when there was so much unrest in the city and ice was everywhere and there were people getting shot on the street and how they shifted their strategy to their neighborhoods, protecting their neighbors. And it was so interesting to me because I know that they've been, they didn't shift when it happened. They had already built in these networks in Minneapolis. I know. Melvin Tennant they had started a citywide meet, Minneapolis included hotels. And they just had, they did book clubs and they really after in 2020 and in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, they really were very proactive in creating support networks. And those really held. And so I feel like that's a really great model for kind of One response and I know that those are the kinds of things that make American library associations feel confident in going there, that knowing that there's these strong networks there. I'm thinking about Alcatraz. Like Alcatraz island is like it's stopped being a prison because it's so expensive. But now there's this persistent plan to take it back from being. It's now it's just an attraction. I think it's one of the most visited attractions in San Francisco. To me, it just kind of underscores that there just hasn't been a very strong understanding of the, of the value of travel and group travel and meetings to the economy. And I feel like reports like this really underscore what's happening. As you said, Kate, the canary in the coal mine, which is maybe like much louder than a canary, I think right now. In the coal mine. Kate Mulcrone: Yeah, I agree. I think that the hospitality industry just in its like very international nature, is the first to feel the impact. And I would love to just close us out with a quote that I also used in my story from Eileen Higgins, who is now the mayor of Miami. She said, we have this politics of trickle down hatred that are coming from the federal government and in our case, sadly, our state government. And that has created a whole new environment here in Miami. Not only is this mean and cruel and inhumane, it's just simply bad for the economy. And it shows how the long tail effect of these discriminatory policies bites everyone, no matter who they voted for in the same place. We are behind where we want to be economically for no good reason at all. And so I'm glad we were able to give this report a little bit more oxygen. I think this was an amazing discussion and I will just turn it over to Maggie to close us out. Magdalina Atanassova: Well, thank you for leading the conversation and bringing such an important topic which already was quite viewed online. So I think it helps to give it a bit more breath and oxygen like you said. So thank you all for the discussion. Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.