Developing an Integer Linear Programming Model for Hotel Shift Scheduling: Empirical Insights from a Central Java Hotel

Employee shift scheduling in the hospitality industry remains a critical yet complex task due to fluctuating operational demands, fairness requirements, and labour regulations. Many hotels still rely on manual scheduling methods, which are time-consuming and prone to biases, particularly in ensuring fair workload distribution across employees. Despite numerous studies on workforce scheduling, limited attention has been given to integer linear programming (ILP) models that address gender-based restrictions and operational fairness simultaneously in real-world hotel contexts, especially in developing regions such as Central Java. This study proposes an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model to generate optimal shift schedules for hotel staff over a 31-day planning horizon. The model incorporates operational constraints, including one shift per day, gender-based restrictions (which prevent female staff from working night shifts), availability, minimum staffing levels, and fairness in workload distribution. Key parameters and binary decision variables were defined to ensure compliance with the hotel's specific requirements. Empirical data were collected from a hotel in Central Java involving 20 employees, and the model was implemented using Python with a Gurobi solver. The ILP model successfully generated optimal schedules in under 10 seconds, significantly outperforming the manual method, which required over 4 hours. While the manual schedule resulted in an imbalance where some employees worked over 27 days and others only 22, the ILP approach enforced a strict maximum of 26 working days for all staff. Furthermore, the fairness index (FI) improved from 19.2% in the manual method to 0% in the ILP-generated schedule, indicating complete equity in workload allocation. The proposed ILP model demonstrates its effectiveness in improving scheduling fairness, operational efficiency, and compliance with labour policies. This work not only addresses a critical research gap in hospitality scheduling practices in Indonesia but also offers a replicable framework for other labour-intensive service sectors. Future research may explore multi-objective extensions incorporating employee preferences, satisfaction, and dynamic demand fluctuations.