Every week at the Great Wolf Lodge in South Florida, General Manager Jason Bays meets with the executive team on the property. As leadership gathers around the table in the boardroom, two seats are left vacant to represent an employee, known as a Pack Member, and a guest.
“It starts with the mentality, it’s people-focused,” Bays, who has worked for the resort since 2018 at four locations, told Newsweek. “We’re not making decisions without that focus.”
At Great Wolf Lodge, Bays said, each Pack Member has a personal relationship with their supervisor, which empowers employees to “be their whole person and their most authentic selves.”
Eleven hospitality companies were included on Newsweek’s recent ranking of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Mental Well-Being 2025. Companies are evaluated by an online survey of recommendations, social media reviews, company KPIs, mental health initiative programs and monitoring of lawsuits or claims of workplace harassment or discrimination. Key metrics to measure each company include compensation and benefits, career progression, diversity and inclusion, work-life balance and corporate culture.
Hospitality is about taking care of people: serving guests and creating memorable experiences are at the core of hotel and resorts’ missions. But to be successful, these companies must also prioritize their staff.
Great Wolf Lodge, the indoor waterpark chain with 20 locations across the country, received a five-star rating on Newsweek’s ranking.
“Guests are coming here because they want to have a good time, and, as Pack Members, we want to have a great time with them,” Bays said. “And so being at Great Wolf for all this time, we have really focused in on our training [and] how we help our Pack Members succeed.”
The best way to ensure a positive guest experience is to ensure that interactions with staff at every level of the trip, from booking to checkout, make each guest feel like a VIP. And that starts with building a solid company culture that trains, supports and protects employees, so they can bring their best efforts to work.
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts encompasses over 9,000 hotels from 25 brands across 95 countries, including Days Inn, Ramada and La Quinta. Chief Human Resource Officer Monica Melancon said Wyndham’s people-first culture, rooted in safety, inclusion and respect, drives everything the company does.
“We go above and beyond to serve our guests; we believe in showing the same level of care and commitment to the people who make it all possible—our team,” she told Newsweek in an emailed statement. “We strive to create a workplace that is supportive and empowering for all—that starts at our core values. Integrity, accountability, inclusivity, caring and fun, as well as our Count on Me service culture, are at the heart of what drives our growth and inspires the experiences we create for team members, owners and guests.”
Melancon said the Count on Me culture means responding to the needs of everyone with care and consideration, being courteous and engaged and delivering great guest experiences.
“Team members are supported with regular training and open lines of communication to ensure a safe and empowering environment,” she said. “Through a range of Enterprise Resource Groups, we create space for connection, innovation and personal growth, while dedicated programs and training modules help strengthen our Count on Me culture.”
As travel bounces back from the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality industry still is struggling to hire and retain its workforce.
A Deloitte report showed there was a 73.8 percent employee turnover rate in hospitality in 2024, and a survey from the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) found that three-quarters of hotels reported staffing shortages last year. The AHLA said the nationwide labor shortage has led to hotel companies responding with increased wages, more flexibility with work hours and expanded benefits.
This instability can add stress on employees both in corporate offices and on the frontline, affecting their job performance, the guest experience and overall company success.
Cass Shum, a professor of hospitality organization behavior at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has worked in the industry her whole life. After numerous experiences with “not-so-pleasant” managers, she was inspired to research the major challenges hospitality workers face, like discrimination, sexual harassment, industry turnover and automation.
“You have your typical stress in a hospitality workplace—we work too much because there’s always the labor shortage, so we need each person to do more than what each person is supposed to do because we don’t have enough manpower,” she told Newsweek in an interview. “Labor shortages cause exhaustion.”
The nature of shift work can be taxing—working longer or atypical hours compared to nine-to-five workers can “damage your psychological and physical well-being,” Shum said.
In addition to pay, flexibility and benefits, one of the biggest concerns for hospitality workers is safety in the work environment. Harassment from coworkers and superiors as well as guests remains one of the most prevalent challenges hospitality workers face.
“We always talk about customers as kings and queens—but that allows customers to be hostile when treating employees,” Shum said. “We need to go beyond thinking of employees as labor and start thinking they are family members. We don’t want anyone to be yelling at our family, the same way we should not allow customer mistreatment to be directed to employees.”
Compensation and making a livable wage are important, Shum said, “but at the same time, so is support.”
So how can hotel and resort companies make their staff feel safer and more supported? Creating a positive workplace for employees starts with understanding what people need, in both the corporate and guest-facing roles.
IHG Hotels & Resorts is one of the biggest hospitality companies in the world, with 19 hotel brands in over 6,000 destinations around the world. The company received a five-star rating on Newsweek‘s ranking.
“True hospitality for good is our overarching mantra,” Rani Hammond, senior vice president of global human resources at IHG Hotels, told Newsweek. “We’re committed to doing what it takes to create great experiences for our colleagues because we know by doing that, we’re going to create amazing experiences for our guests that walk through our doors every day.”
This includes an overarching code of conduct with clear expectations for how employees must behave toward one another to ensure a safe and supportive workplace. Hammond said IHG doesn’t “tolerate harassment of our staff in any circumstance” and notes that there is a “reciprocal obligation” for guest behavior that is “keeping within being a human.”
To offload some of the stress all employees feel, IHG offers mental health and exercise guides online for employees as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and “recharge days” throughout the year—on Fridays when the corporate office shuts down to take time to rest and relax. There are mentoring programs and promotion opportunities for frontline workers to move into hotel management.
“We want to make sure that we are laying out the work that is meeting their needs, that they’re fairly and equitably paid for that work, that they have the opportunity to avail themselves of development opportunities and can see that pathway, and then they are supported by their manager and their peers and their culture and the community in which they live,” Hammond said.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
Beyond benefits, compensation and other policies aimed at improving mental well-being, basic empathy, communication and a positive workplace culture supported by managers and senior leadership can make a significant impact on an employee’s work experience.
Last year, Great Wolf made the unique move of bringing on neurologist Dr. Romiw Mushtaq as the company’s first chief wellness officer.
She told Newsweek that taking time to practice compassion and empathetic listening toward everyone in the workplace can create a “moment of kindness” that stays with employees for the rest of their lives.
“What will keep people in a career or a company is not the bonus or promotion, it is a moment of compassion or empathy [when a boss] showed they cared and that they listened,” she said. “And if we can teach more leaders that, then we’re already promoting well-being and dampening the mental health crisis that is continuing to grow with a rapid change in hospitality.”
After working as a physician for years, Mushtaq experienced such severe burnout that she was hospitalized, thus launching her new mission to promote mental well-being in companies around the world.
She said that when she came to Great Wolf Lodge, she built on a culture already embedded in the company DNA. She said the “culture of caring” is not just a buzz term, it’s a business strategy. Mushtaq worked with senior leadership to build a “whole-person wellness program” using data-driven solutions called “Be Pack Positive.”
“It’s literally our ethos of what we are doing every day, based in science and positive psychology to ensure that we have a work environment where people can leave the stress of the outside world behind and be in a bubble to say, ‘I feel positive and cared for when I’m at Great Wolf. Yes, some days may be busy or challenging, but I am cared for here,'” she said. “And the way we have done this is top-down and bottom-up.”
This includes checking in with employees at daily meetings before each shift starts, opportunities for career growth through Great Wolf University, virtual therapy sessions and the introduction of positive psychology tools for frontline employees, like mindfulness or emotional intelligence-based exercises that rely on positive affirmations in the workplace.
“We’re having deliberate conversations—we’re peeling off the onion, so to speak, [and] are intentional about this so [mental well-being] is not left up to chance,” General Manager Bays said. “My Pack members rely on me to make sure that I am checking in with them as a whole person and understanding what they need. That’s part of our conversations every day—speaking openly about our Pack members’ well-being, their wellness and their mental health.”
Professor Shum said happy employees who feel supported and appreciated are willing to put more work into the organization because they have the resources to perform at their best level. That will translate to the service they provide for guests, and those happy guests will be more likely to return, leave positive reviews and recommend hotels—all of which boosts overall brand recognition and image. Being known as a choice brand also encourages qualified, passionate hospitality workers to apply to open jobs and add to the company culture.
Bays said the most important part of his job as a manager is “being able to unleash the enthusiasm and passion of our Pack Members” and “see them develop into their full potential.”
Creating memorable experiences for guests drives his employees and creates a positive energy that is contagious around the lodge.
“There is a direct correlation between Pack engagement and guest satisfaction,” Bay said. “If you’re stressed and overwhelmed or burnt out, you’re not going to be able to deliver joy. If [employees] feel supported, they’re focused, they’re genuinely happy. We can create authentic moments for our guests because it’s that extra smile that takes it above and beyond.”