HOW to Walk the Walk, Not Just
Talk the Talk
Visit Baltimore offers diversity, equity and inclusion training to the hospitality industry to help encourage a warm, welcoming environment.
MEET LOCAL
Lip service isn’ t worth much, for anything really. But action? That matters. And clearly there’ s a case for action when it comes to diversity and inclusion, particularly after the social and racial justice movements that unfurled across the country( and the world) in 2020.
Supporting these efforts, while important across the board, has special significance for the hospitality industry, which, by definition, seeks to optimize the experiences of people from various cultural environments as they move about their home regions and beyond.
Knowing this, Visit Baltimore introduced Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training for Baltimore tourism and hospitality leaders in fall 2020. The six trainings, sponsored by Atlas Restaurant Group, ran through the end of the year and served hundreds of participants from hotels, restaurants, nonprofits and various venues throughout the industry.
You may wonder why this training was necessary, particularly since Baltimore already is quite diverse. In fact, the city’ s standout and sometimes painful legacy stemming from its rich heritage is well-known, with its Black residents influencing everything from abolitionism, civil rights and the local economy to artistic culture and more. The city’ s immigration patterns from the last two centuries are still visible in neighborhoods like Greektown, Pennsylvania Avenue and Little Italy, with Baltimore also now including a growing population of Hispanic and Asian residents.
But diversity— which goes beyond just race and ethnicity and includes gender identity, sexual orientation, language, age, religious affiliation, economic status and more— isn’ t the same as inclusion. And, as humans, we can have our own unconscious and conscious bias to contend with, including in hospitality, where there can be issues with diversity and inclusion within the industry itself.
30 BALTIMORE. ORG