Hotel
and Tax franchises
Minority
Matters
Major
Issues in Minority Franchising
THERE’S
ROOM AT THE INN FOR DIVERSITY
The American Hotel and Lodging
Association (AHLA) recently
convened a council of 25 hotel execs to
help develop an initiative that will promote
racial diversity within the industry.
The multicultural advisory council’s
members include reps from the U.S. Pan
Asian American Chamber of Commerce, the
NAACP, several universities and human
resource execs and diversity specialists
from some of the biggest names in the
hotel franchising industry including Wyndham
International, Accor North America, Carlson
Hospitality Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels, Hilton
Hotels, Best Western, Marriott International,
Cendant Hotel Group, Choice Hotels
and Starwood Hotels and Resorts.
Because so many hotel franchises are operated
by minority franchisees, the AHLA is committed
to making diversity hiring a priority
throughout the industry. In a recent interview
Tarun Kapoor, professor of hotel management
at the Collins School of Hospitality Management
at Cal Poly Pomona said, "Discrimination
today is no longer someone looking at
your brown skin and saying, I don't want
you. Today, it's more subtle. Would I
be invited to a management committee meeting?
If I speak with an accent, are my words
given the same credence?" Look for
more hotel chains to step up their recruitment
of minority franchisees. "We want
to see more diverse faces in management
and ownership," said Tia Gordon,
AH&LA's director of communications
and diversity initiatives. "We feel
the lodging industry is not representative
of their customer base."
Hilton
Hotels is just one of many hotel
franchises that incorporated a commitment
to diversity into its corporate philosophy.
According to a company statement, Hilton
“invests key resources
to ensure that its employees and suppliers
reflect the composition of the communities
in which they serve.” Through the
franchise development initiative at Hilton
the company reaches out to minority entrepreneurs
to gauge interest and educate this community
on hotel ownership opportunities within
the Hilton family of
hotels. Hilton nurtures
key relationships with organizations such
as the National Association of
Black Hotel Owners, Operators and Developers
(NABHOOD) and Tribal
Nation organizations to advance
its franchise development outreach efforts.
MAKING
TAX TIME LESS TAXING
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, North
Carolina had the fastest-growing foreign-born
population in the United States in the 1990s.
An influx of people means an influx of workers,
and an influx of workers means a whole lot
of tax forms. Understanding IRS forms is
hard enough in your native language, but
when English is a second language, those
forms can be next to impossible. To serve
the needs of their community, tax-preparation
franchises like Liberty Tax Service,
Jackson Hewitt and H&R
Block are reaching out, in particular,
to Latino immigrants, the people who need
their services the most. Liberty
has Spanish interpreters at all eight of
its offices in the Research Triangle Park
area and the franchise owner has hired a
Hispanic liaison to boost its profile in
the immigrant communities. Jackson
Hewitt’s Triangle franchisee
has set up satellite offices in two Hispanic
grocery stores. H&R Block
is offering scholarships to attract bilingual
student to its tax-preparation school which
must be attended before employees are hired
at H&R Block.
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