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Independent boutique hotels recovered business faster than their branded counterparts and managed to increase RevPAR by holding rate even during the darkest days of the coronavirus crisis. Lodging Leaders podcast Episode 325 is the third and final installment in a series on independent hotels doing business amid the pandemic. We feature analysts and the founder of an organization that is the voice for independent owners and operators around the world.

Independent hotels struggled just as much as their franchised cousins when the coronavirus pandemic first struck the U.S. in spring 2020. Hundreds of independent properties temporarily closed amid the downturn in business and government shutdowns. Among those that reopened the soonest were independent hotels that are part of soft-branded collections.

Remington Hotels named Sloan Dean president and CEO just a few months before the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S. and decimated its hospitality industry. Dean, a self-described millennial, said the lodging sector is taking on a new look as companies restructure their executive and line-level ranks and leisure travelers hit the road. The post-pandemic world requires new ways of doing business, Dean said, noting new labor models and the emergence of a chief commercial role to oversee all aspects of revenue. Episode 3 of Lodging Luminaries features host Jason Freed and Dean in a thought-provoking conversation about what’s ahead for hospitality.

The coronavirus crisis hit independent hotels just as hard as their branded counterparts but many of the unaffiliated assets were able to quickly shift to survival mode, cut costs and generate revenue by implementing creative business strategies. Independent hoteliers featured in Episode 323 of Lodging Leaders podcast say being unencumbered from brand mandates and rules allow them to make crucial decisions that enable their businesses to survive and in some cases thrive.

The hotel labor shortage dominated the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference last week as panelists and attendees commiserated and shared ideas on how to recruit and retain workers. While hoteliers blame extended unemployment-benefit programs, other experts said the problem is more complex than that. The coronavirus pandemic is far from over and recovery is uneven across the lodging industry. Episode 322 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores the labor challenges facing hoteliers and what experts are advising, including totally rethinking traditional employment models now and post-pandemic.

Daniel Del Olmo has led a storied career in hospitality leadership. Today, Del Olmo is president and COO at Sage Hospitality Group, a third-party manager. He joined the company just a couple months before the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S. and gave the hospitality industry its biggest crisis and comeback challenge ever. In Episode 2 of Lodging Luminaries, host Jason Freed talks with Del Olmo about what keeps him up at night as Sage Hospitality crafts its recovery strategy in an era of uncertainty. Key ingredients, says Del Olmo, are passion for the industry and care for its people.

Hotel owners and operators who believed they could go it alone before the coronavirus pandemic devastated the hotel industry are having another think and turning to third-party managers to work their way back to profitability in the post-pandemic recovery. Another trend contributing to the growth in third-party managers’ business is more commercial real estate investors armed with cash entering the hotel sector and in need to an experienced operations team. Episode 321 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores the growth of third-party management companies over the past 12 months. This report is part of Lodging Leaders’ coverage of the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the hospitality industry.

Hotel owners and developers are growing eager to refresh their properties in preparation for a post-pandemic business revival. But capital improvement might be delayed by breaks in the global supply chain. Shipping companies in Asia and Europe are contending with a boatload of challenges, including a lack of containers, traffic jams at West Coast ports and increased costs. Episode 320 of Lodging Leaders podcast features logistics and procurement specialists who relate what the problems mean to the U.S. hotel industry.

Raul Leal had been in leadership roles in the boutique lodging sector for 15 years when he first met Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, which includes Virgin Hotels. In a conversation with Lodging Luminaries host Jason Freed, Leal shares his first meeting with Branson more than a decade ago when the business magnate asked him to manage the hotel brand that was just a molecule of an idea at the time. Leal also talks about the future of hospitality industry, how the coronavirus crisis threatens the survival of branded legacy hotels and why everybody wants to work at Virgin Hotels, even during the coronavirus pandemic. Long Live Lodging produces Lodging Luminaries in conjunction with Hotel Recovery, a website and daily newsletter providing resources for hoteliers to get back on their feet.

The phrase “stronger together” has been used throughout the coronavirus crisis to encourage businesses and employees to join forces in thought and deed to keep economies afloat. The concept also has taken on new meaning in the hotel industry as companies form joint ventures – either by creating new partnerships or redefining what collaboration looks like. Episode 319 of Lodging Leaders podcast features hotel companies that have formed strategic partnerships to survive and thrive through the pandemic recession.

Amanda Joiner has worked for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. for 25 years. Starting in housekeeping, Joiner has been general manager of The Ritz-Carlton St. Louis for more than five years. Her career trajectory is not unique, she says, as anyone can apply The Ritz-Carlton’s tenets of customer service to clear a path to leadership in the hospitality industry. Episode 318 of Lodging Leaders podcast spotlights Joiner and her story.

{caption}NEW MEETING MIXER: The hotel industry is seeing small meetings begin their return, with most planners booking for the second half of 2021. More planners are organizing hybrid events that feature live streaming of in-person events to attendees that cannot or do not want to travel or meet face-to-face in the age of COVID-19.{/caption} Corporate business makes up majority of events, say experts who anticipate an unleashing of pent-up demand As public health agencies expand COVID-19 vaccination programs across the U.S. and states ease up on public-gathering restrictions designed to keep the virus at bay, the hotel industry is seeing small meetings begin a comeback. On March 10, Knowland reported meetings in the U.S. increased 110 percent from January to February. That’s a significant uptick, even though the first month of the year typically sees the fewest meetings, said Kristi White, vice president of product management at Knowland. “January is always a little bit slower of a month, but this was a significant pickup,” White said. “It’s the biggest pickup we’ve seen month over month since the very beginning of tracking it back at the beginning of the summer.” That’s when Knowland noticed markets closed because of the COVID-19 outbreak began to reopen. “That brought some different volume back in,” White said, adding meetings “are not coming back in dribs and drabs. They came roaring back.” “It was almost as if companies knew that meetings were going to be allowed the next week, and they all called and booked a meeting,” she said. “There wasn’t that sense of hesitancy.” {caption}TOGETHER AGAIN: The U.S. hotel industry is beginning to see a comeback in small meetings more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic put a stop to public gatherings. Episode 317 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores the state of the small meeting sector and how hotels can grab their share of the market resurgence.{/caption} Knowland’s report also noted that in February the average number of meeting attendees was 39. It was the same number reported in February 2020. Thirty-nine people makes for a small meeting, but that’s not unusual in the meeting-planning world. White said it’s a “fallacy” that most meetings are large conventions when, in fact, the majority of meetings in the U.S. are small. “Sixty percent of the meetings that occur fall under the 100-person mark,” she said. “The vast majority of meetings that are physically occurring aren’t the behemoths that we’re all thinking about. They’re in that smaller space. The behemoth meetings, the ones above 500 people, actually make up less than 4 percent of the meetings in the United States.” {caption}MEETINGS BUSINESS: Knowland’s latest report shows corporate meetings account for the majority of small meetings booked in February. Kristi White, vice president of product management at the analytics company, said this is a sign that pent-up demand for meetings is beginning to unleash and hotels should start to promote their spaces.{/caption} With regard to the event space, Knowland noted that in February meetings’ square footage increased year over year, largely because of social distancing protocols created during the coronavirus pandemic. Though, most meetings in 2020 were leisure-driven and included events such as weddings and family reunions, Knowland reported that in February corporate business accounted for nearly 62 percent of meetings. White said although the term “revenge travel” usually refers to leisure bookings, she believes businesses are part of the pent-up demand hotel-industry forecasters expect to be unleashed in the last half of this year. “I think we’re going to see the same thing in the meeting space,” she said. “The minute companies start seeing some of their competitors or their vertical contemporaries start to meet, then it’s going to become this keeping-up-with-the-Joneses moment where, ‘Well, hey. If they’re over there meeting, I’ve got to be out having a meeting as well.’ “I think we’re going to see a little bit of that toward the back half of the year, but seeing those markets rebounds instantly did that nice gut check for me that I’m not off in thinking we’re going to see this pickup fairly quickly.” Northstar Meetings Group on March 30 reported its PULSE Survey revealed 81 percent of meeting planners will hold their next in-person event sometime this year. Fifty-nine percent of that business will occur in the second half of this year while a quarter of the 900 respondents plan to hold events by end of June. {caption}MORE HYBRID EVENTS: In Episode 316 of Lodging Leaders podcast, Lee Hunter, chair of the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, said organizers are crafting the industry’s first large hybrid event that will include in-person sessions as well as live streaming and recording of the same sessions. NorthStar Meetings Group on March 30 reported its PULSE Survey of more than 900 planners shows the growth in hybrid meetings.{/caption} Hoteliers, Get Busy Realizing that most meetings are small and corporate-meeting demand on a growth trajectory, Knowland’s White said hoteliers need to get pro-active in selling space and rooms. “Let’s get our people out there talking to these companies because the companies that are meeting now are the companies that are going to continue to meet,” she said. “If you have an insurance company meeting in your hotel, chances are there other insurance companies that are meeting in other hotels. Your salespeople can start tapping into that insurance market, dive into that particular vertical and start to maximize wallet share there.” Other hot prospects are local companies that have not reopened their offices. “Some are getting to the point where they need to have client meetings but they don’t want to open the office and do all the deep cleanse to bring strangers in,” White said. It costs $500 to $1,000 to have an office deep cleaned before and after a meeting, she said. So why not book at a hotel where the clean-and-save protocols have become part and parcel of doing business. Increase in Millions Ginny Morrison has worked for Spire Hospitality for 33 years. She’s had a lot of leadership roles with the third-party hotel manager. In her current position, she’s leading the effort to make sure the hotels in Spire’s nationwide portfolio grab their fair share of the revival in meetings during and post-pandemic. Morrison has seen some promising signs of a return to business as bookings for small meetings began to come in the first quarter of this year. “We’ve seen a tremendous turnaround in the group bookings, the meeting segment,” Morrison said, noting $4 million in meetings booked in the first quarter of 2021, a 70 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2020 when $1.5 million in meetings were booked. Small-Booking Windows Both White and Morrison say meeting planners are booking close to the meetings’ dates. It’s a trend they say is a result of the pandemic and a sense of uncertainty that lingers in planning activities. White said businesses are booking less than 30 days in advance and groups are within the 60-day window. Anecdotally, she said, Knowland’s hotel clients say customers are calling Friday for a meeting on Tuesday. “Those may not be a lot of meetings with guest rooms, but it’s law firms needing to do a deposition or accounting firms that have got to get their people together to do a training because tax codes changed and things like that. So that is definitely coming back very, very quickly.” Morrison sees a difference in booking activity as well as the types of meetings taking place in markets that have stringent COVID-19 restrictions in place versus those that do not. “Everything’s last minute more so now than ever,” she said. Most of Spire’s meetings have been social, including small weddings of about 10 people. In states where coronavirus restrictions have eased the gatherings are larger such as sports teams in tournaments. Spire has also booked some government and health-care business meetings. Pandemic Clauses The pandemic crisis has changed the request for proposal or RFP process at hotels seeking to win meetings with businesses and associations. White said in some cases meeting planners are not putting out RFPs because of short booking windows and the small size of meetings. Morrison said for planners who do want a contract, the agreement has a detailed force majeure clause specific to the coronavirus threat. Force majeure was an oft-spoken phrase when the coronavirus outbreak began to impact the hotel and convention business in March 2020. The term is French for “superior force” and it’s a contract provision that relieves the parties from performing their contractual obligations when certain circumstances beyond their control arise. In the case of 2020, that would the COVID-19 outbreak. Morrison said meeting planners want very flexible contract terms. “I don’t think I’ve read as many contracts in my entire career as I have in the last year,” she said. “Everybody has a COVID-impossibility or a force majeure clause that they’d like to insert.” Spire Hospitality remains flexible with meeting contracts, Morrison said, including allowing customers to cancel meetings without stiff penalties up to June 30. “That has helped us close a lot of business, especially small meetings.” White said hotels that have reduced staff because of a downturn in business in 2020 should have a sales team back in place to answer those out-of-the-blue calls from planners wanting to book a meeting in mere days. Morrison echoes that advice, noting Spire has retained as many salespeople as it could over the past 12 months. It helped to chart the pulse of prospective clients as well as maintain relationships. “We’ve been able to attract and make sure that we’re top of mind with people. So responding quickly and having a sales team in place to be able to respond quickly and identify opportunities within the market” has paid off for Spire. Resources and Links Download the full transcript for this episode Kristi White at Knowland Ginny Morrison at Spire Hospitality Hunter Hotel Investment Conference The post 317 | Together Again: U.S. hotel industry begins to see return of small meetings first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

{caption}THROWBACK TO 2019: A panel of hotel industry leaders was part of a general session during the 2019 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis. The 2021 conference is set for May 10-12 at the same venue with COVID-19 health-and-safety protocols in place.{/caption} Hospitality event will test COVID-19 boundaries as well as hybrid-meeting format The Hunter Hotel Investment Conference will be the industry’s first large meeting to be held during the coronavirus pandemic. The Atlanta event will be a hybrid format of in-person and virtual access, also an industry first. Lee Hunter, chief operating officer at Hunter Hotel Advisors and chairman of the conference, knows expectations are high among other conference planners as well as industry professionals eager to network after more than a yearlong hiatus. He tells what it takes to organize the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference despite the fact that COVID-19 is remains a threat, albeit mitigated by health and safety protocols as well as the nationwide rollout of a vaccine. {caption}PANDEMIC TRAILBLAZER: The registration area at the 2019 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis was a busy place. This year, when the conference convenes May 10-12 at the hotel in downtown Atlanta, the picture will be different amid the coronavirus crisis. Attendees will wear face masks and practice social distancing, says Lee Hunter, conference chair. Episode 316 of Lodging Leaders podcast features Lee Hunter, COO of Hunter Hotel Advisors, talking about the challenges of launching the U.S. lodging industry’s 2021 event circuit. He shares what it takes to organize a conference that will be both virtual and in-person while feeling the pressure to get it right amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the industry’s eagerness to get back to business.{/caption} Remembering When Lee Hunter vividly recalls the moment he and his team pulled the plug on the 2020 conference as the coronavirus crisis was emerging in the U.S. News of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China first surfaced in late January 2020 at the Americas Lodging and Investment Summit or ALIS in Los Angeles, which had a record turnout. Next on the calendar and 2,200 miles due east was the Hunter conference in mid-March and it looked like its 32nd year was going to break attendance records as well. Lee Hunter describes the mental tug of war when trying to decide in the very early days of the pandemic whether it was wise to cancel the conference. “The conference was scheduled to be Wednesday, March 18, to Friday, March 20, of 2020, and two weeks leading up to that I was on the phone with our advisory board members saying, ‘Hey, what do y’all think? Are we good? Are we not good?” Lee, his brother Teague Hunter, who is president and CEO of the brokerage firm, and conference team members also sought feedback from speakers, sponsors and vendors. Everyone contacted said they planned to attend. “I can distinctly remember on Wednesday, March 11, literally a week out from the conference, my son had his first baseball game of the spring season and it was a 5:30 (p.m.) game.” Before he left the office to attend the game, Lee called Chip Olson at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and David Pepper at Choice Hotels International, both friends and large sponsors of the conference. They assured him they would be there. “So, OK, I guess we’re having a conference next week. Heads down. Here we go,” Lee said. “And then within the next few hours, the world changed. “That evening was when President Trump said no more inbound international travel and the NBA indefinitely suspended its season. So I walked in the office Thursday morning, the 12th, and we’d gone from, ‘Yeah, we’re having a conference’ on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 a.m. Thursday, ‘We got to at least postpone this thing to see how it plays out. Ultimately, the postponement as we now know turned into cancellation.” Once the decision was made to pull the plug on the 2020 conference, Lee Hunter could take a deep breath. “Leading up to it was much more stressful. It’s like a lot of your major life decisions. Once you make the decision, you feel sort of relieved. And that’s what we felt.” In the months that followed all major industry conferences were canceled – AAHOA Convention and Trade Show, NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference, The Lodging Conference and HX: The Hotel Experience and BDNY. {caption}MORE LIKE FAMILY: Bob Hunter, center foreground, is the founder of Hunter Hotel Advisors in Atlanta and its Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, which debuted in 1989. In this photo taken in 2012 with conference staff at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, the business patriarch who is now retired is flanked by his sons, Lee Hunter, left, COO of the brokerage firm, and Teague Hunter, president and CEO. (Photo: Ben Rose Photography){/caption} Easing Back Out But just as with the 2021 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, these events will reconvene in the last half of this year. A report by the Professional Convention Management Association in October revealed more people are becoming open to attending large events as long as COVID-19 protocols are in place and practiced by participants. PCMA is a global organization and it is seeing green shoots of recovery in business events in Asia, which was the first region to report the coronavirus emergence in December 2019 and the first to begin to suppress its spread in 2020. The U.S. hovers in the middle of the pack when it comes to people’s willingness to attend events, reported the association. Both the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference and Hunter Hotel Advisors are a family affair. Bob Hunter, Lee’s father, founded the firm and the conference. He is now retired. As Lee Hunter tells it, the idea of the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference began more than 30 years ago at another industry event. In the mid-1980s, Bob Hunter was in the audience at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference in New York City listening to a panel discuss hotel transactions. Hunter asked about a $15-million single-transaction deal he was working on. He said he was rebuffed by panelists who commented they only concern themselves with deals $50 million and up. At that moment Bob Hunter decided the industry needed a conference that met the needs of owners, investors, developers, franchisers and financiers of relatively smaller transactions – the 80-room limited-service assets in the $20 million range. Bob Hunter enlisted the support of Georgia State University’s John Mack Robinson College of Business’s Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration, and in 1989 the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference debuted. Limited-Service Growth Little did industry leaders know at the time that in 20 years limited- and select-service branded hotels would dominate the lodging landscape in the U.S. To illustrate that, here’s a look at the two brands that launched the sector – Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express. When the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference was still a notion in Bob Hunter’s mind, Hampton Inn was becoming an established brand in the U.S. At the time, Hampton was an exterior-corridor budget brand and part of the Holiday Corp., owner of Holiday Inn. In 1989, the year the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference debuted, Hampton became part of Promus Hotel Corp. and by 1990 there were 220 Hampton Inns open. The chain had transitioned into a midscale brand and was the first to offer a free continental breakfast. In 1991, the first Holiday Inn Express opened in the U.S. when Holiday Corp. was owned by Bass Brewery in the U.K. The hospitality and travel conglomerate split into separate companies in 2003 and InterContinental Hotels Group was born. Today, there are more than 2,200 Holiday Inn Express hotels open in the U.S. and more than twenty-five hundred 2,500 Hampton Inns. In February, Lodging Econometrics reported Holiday Inn Express and Hampton Inn were among five select-service brands that have the largest U.S. pipelines with 326 projects and 281 projects, respectively. Of course, we all know there are thousands more limited- and select-service hotel brands open and operating today, even during the coronavirus crisis. But Bob Hunter’s prescience about the growth of the branded 80-room mid-priced hotel was spot on as was his idea for a conference that celebrated the segment. Hunter Hotel Investment Conference’s slogan of “Where Main Street meets Wall Street” sums up the current industry environment. Lee Hunter said when he attended graduated with a master’s degree from Cornell School of Hospitality Management in 1996, he talked about “this little known concept called a Hampton Inn and nobody knew what I was talking about. I said, ‘All due respect, I don’t want to own the Ritz Carlton; I’ll just own three or four Hampton Inns.’ “Back even in the mid to late ’90s, it was still all about large, big-box, full-service assets. And throughout the last several years select-service is getting its due.” Protocols in Place The Hunter team is also getting its due with the relaunch of its annual conference. It was the first industry conference to cancel in 2020 and it is the first to revive, albeit in a hybrid format with health and safety protocols in place. And, although the conference was borne out of a need to promote smaller hotel deals, investors, developers, franchisers and owners of all size hotels are welcomed to attend the event that focuses on education and networking. WATCH: RECAP 2019: To encourage attendance, Hunter Hotel Investment Conference planners created a video featuring industry professionals interviewed at the 2019 event. A greater challenge than canceling the conference last year is organizing a conference while the coronavirus pandemic is still with us. And greater still is the responsibility of having the first hotel industry conference since the pandemic shut down the event circuit more than a year ago. Having a nationwide vaccination program in the works is a plus as is the fact that most of us are used to having to wear a face mask and practice social distancing. “We understand the responsibility that we have on our shoulders to live up to making sure everyone who does attend stays safe,” said Lee Hunter. The COVID-19 protocols most Americans have gotten used to will be in place – face masks and social distancing required; hand sanitizing stations throughout the venue; and plated meals versus a buffet. “We’re working with the Marriott Marquis (staff) and following all the CDC protocols,” Lee Hunter said. “We’re hopeful that, as people who are not from Atlanta do arrive in town for the conference, they know they’re given a sense of calm, a sense of security, that everything’s going to be OK.” Virtual Visitors Conference organizers know many people still won’t be ready for face-to-face encounters for months to come. For that reason, the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference will be a hybrid event, meaning it will be in-person and streamed virtually over the internet. The general and breakout sessions will be live streamed for real time viewing and they’ll also be recorded so registered attendees can watch when it’s convenient. The virtual platform has opened a new avenue for students at Georgia State University’s Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration to attend. At past Hunter conferences, organizers faced a challenge of encouraging busy students to participate, despite GSU serving as a sponsor. The hybrid format should widen the opportunity for more emerging professionals at hospitality schools nationwide to listen and learn. “The hybrid format is also for those not comfortable getting on an airplane or even if they’re within driving distance, they’re not comfortable attending in person,” Lee Hunter said. Resources and Links Lee Hunter at Hunter Hotel Advisors and Hunter Hotel Investment Conference. The post 316 | Pandemic Trailblazer: Hunter Hotel Investment Conference leads lodging industry’s 2021 event circuit first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

The coronavirus crisis has altered the business models of many hotels. For that reason, the pandemic also is forcing hotel managers to reconsider their competitive sets and how to benchmark their hotel’s business performance. Episode 315 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores the genesis of the hotel industry comp set and how the COVID-19 outbreak has changed the strategic business tool.

{caption}SKEWED OUTCOMES: Many of the hotel rooms that have gone offline because of the coronavirus pandemic are in big-box hotels. For that reason, industry experts say measurements of average daily rate across the industry are skewed and, for the most part, hotels that remain open are managing to hold rate despite low occupancy during the COVID-19 crisis.{/caption} Industry watchers say decline in ADR is product of low occupancy, not weak business strategy Despite the steep drop in business in the U.S. hotel industry over the past year, one key performance metric that seems to have held its own, relatively speaking, is room rate. While average daily rate or ADR has plunged along with occupancy and overall revenue, the cause of the decline is different than in other economic downturns. The drop in rate has more to do with low occupancy and who is staying at hotels rather than hotel operators discounting to entice bookings, which is what they tried in previous economic crises. In a global pandemic, when fear and government mandates restrict travel, cheap rates will not attract more business, experts say. TRIPBAM tracks the corporate hotel market and helps businesses find the best rates for their travel programs. {caption}DOWNWARD TREND: TRIPBAM, a tech company that tracks hotel rates for corporate travel buyers, charts the decline in market and booking rates in its 2021 Quarterly Market Report. Steve Reynolds, founder and CEO, believes corporate rates will drop even further in the second quarter of this year.{/caption} The tech company recently released a 2021 first-quarter report that reveals shifts in corporate travel in the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic. Compared to January 2020, average market rate in January 2021 was down 41 percent, dropping from an average of $205 a night to $120. At the same time, corporations’ average booking rate dropped from $175 to $116, a 33.7 percent decline. Steve Reynolds, founder and CEO of TRIPBAM, which tracks hotel rates for about 2,000 corporate travel buyers, said hotel pricing in his niche has yet to hit bottom. “I think they’ve got another 3 or 4 percent to go,” he said. “Where our rate was about $189 on average, we’re now running probably $109, and it just keeps kind of trickling down.” Part of the reason for the decrease, Reynolds said, is the change in business travel trends. He listed several: Road warriors who typically stayed at upscale hotels have shifted to lowered-tiered properties. Reynolds expects the trend to continue during and immediate post-pandemic. Most business travel these days is “essential travelers” seeking lower-cost stays. Hotels are offering fewer discounts to business travel buyers. TRIPBAM’s quarterly report notes in January 2020 discounts averaged 25 percent compared to 16 percent this past January. Business travelers are staying longer. On average, about one day extra than pre-pandemic, which boosts RevPAR a bit. Business bookings are being made closer to check-in. {caption}ZERO DISCOUNTS: The U.S. hotel industry has seen rates decline over the past 12 months, but the numbers may not be telling the whole story. Industry rate watchers as well as asset managers say, for the most part, hotel owners and operators are being smart about pricing while other pandemic-related factors are skewing rate metrics. Episode 314 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores what is truly impacting hotel pricing during the coronavirus crisis.{/caption} Hotels are also in a bit of price war. “We also track by brand and by chain, so we can kind of see the pricing strategies by these different entities,” Reynolds said.  “You’ll see one month that a particular chain will kind of pop up as far as rates, but their volume starts to drop. Then they lower their rate and the other guy starts to pop up. So there’s this kind of a see-saw effect that’s occurring between the major brands and chains right now. But I think most of it is just this down market. It’s the Courtyard by Marriott. It’s the Holiday Inn Express winning the day versus the big box hotels.” Reynolds said the increased length of stay is driven by corporations becoming more mindful about environmental health as well as how to best economize on essential travel. Extended-stay hotels have long been the choice of long-term business travelers such as health-care professionals and construction workers. But the sector gained new favor by transient travelers during the pandemic. The Highland Group recently reported that while the extended-sector lost about a third of its room revenue in 2020, it was not as great a loss when compared to the nearly 50 percent decline in revenue in transient hotels. Mark Skinner, partner at The Highland Group, said extended-stay is expected to return to 2019 business levels before its transient cousins. To highlight the positive outlook of the sector, Extended Stay America, an economy brand, on March 15 announced it agreed to a $6 billion sale to Blackstone Group and Starwood Capital Group. Meantime, other lodging sectors continue to struggle. {caption}LUXURY LEVEL: Hotels in the luxury, upper-upscale and upscale chain scales make up less than a third of the 1,760 hotels closed in the U.S. as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but account for highest percentage of rooms offline, Kalibri Labs reported this month. Maxine Taylor, a hotel asset manager with CHMWarnick, says the closing of big-box hotels has skewed business performance metrics across the industry, including average daily rate or ADR.{/caption} Kalibri Labs this month reported more than 1,760 hotels or nearly 5 percent of hotel rooms in the U.S. have closed since March 30, 2020. When broken down by chain scale, luxury has the fewest hotels closed but the greatest number of rooms at 15.6 percent of all rooms off line. That’s followed by upper-upscale which has more than 9 percent of total rooms closed and upscale with 5 percent. It’s safe to say that most of the big box hotels are found in these segments, and they’ve fared the worst as the COVID-19 pandemic has seen conventions and large meetings come to a full stop. Maxine Taylor is with CHMWarnick, a hotel asset manager. She lives in California, which has experienced the longest and most-restrictive anti-virus measures in the country. Taylor has a 25-year tenure in the hospitality industry, four of those with CHMWarnick, and she is watching the undulations in hotel-business performance amid the COVID storm. “We have 70 hotels and we are largely focused on the big box hotels, which will skew the numbers in terms of what you’re seeing on a nationwide basis,” Taylor said. “But I think there’s a couple of interesting nuances to looking at ADR.” Hotel performance varies market to market and hotel to hotel. Government restrictions on travel and business openings vary from state to state and county to county, and can change every week. It’s a difficult task to vet nationwide hotel business performance to identify any real trends, Taylor said. Because a significant number of full-service, big-box hotels were closed throughout 2020, STR’s analysis of key performance metrics, including ADR, did not take these properties into account. As such, Taylor thinks hotels did not lower rate as much as STR and other analysts are reporting. STR reports on industry averages and its recent update on 2020 performance revealed average daily rate was $103, a decline of 21 percent from the year before and the lowest since 2011 in the trough of the Great Recession. Year-over-year declines were the worst on record across the three key performance metrics. Average occupancy was 44 percent, a 33 percent decrease. And RevPAR averaged $45, a 48 percent plunge. {caption}STR OUTLOOK: Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics at CoStar Group, gives a forecast for hotel performance in 2021 and in 2022. He expects RevPAR to begin to recover in April and pricing power to return in 2022.{/caption} “There’s a bit of an organic kind of decline happening here,” Taylor said. “If you simply take out your higher-rated demand segments without changing your transient rates at all the result is that you’re going to have a lower ADR, right? It’s just the organic growth. You didn’t necessarily change your rates at all. “I’m not saying people didn’t change their rates. I do think that there was some discounting, but I do think that we’ve been a lot more disciplined this time around in terms of not discounting.’ CHMWarnick asset manages a full-service luxury hotel in San Francisco which is among 11 hotels in its competitive set. Five of the hotels are closed, Taylor said. “To try and glean information from that is really distorting.” In late February, Taylor looked at the performance of the hotels in the comp set over the previous 28 days. It showed an average 7.3 percent occupancy. But if the five that were offline were added to the mix, the average-occupancy metric would have been halved. “The market is really running closer to 3 or 4 percent, but it’s showing 7 percent because half the hotels are temporarily suspended.” Though many hotels in destination markets and even suburban markets are offering staycations or work-from-hotel packages with special pricing, Taylor sees those programs as stop-gap measures to generate revenue rather than a move to reduce overall rate. She also takes into account the impact brand loyalty schemes have on ADR. Brands redeem to hotels the value of the points used by guests. The higher the occupancy, the greater the redemption rate. “Right now we’re at such low occupancy levels that our rates coming back and redemptions are so low, so low, that’s kind of organically or unnaturally skewing our ADRs.” In previous downturns, hoteliers got caught up in discounting as hotels competed for business. But the current recession is not caused by economic forces; it’s a public health crisis and no amount of price cutting can convince people to travel when fear of catching COVID-19 or government travel restrictions keep them away. “We absolutely normally see a race to the bottom. I’m not necessarily seeing that right now,” Taylor said.  “As a whole, the industry has been pretty disciplined this time around in terms of the rates.” After a year of weathering COVID-19’s assault on the hotel businesses, Taylor hopes the industry will emerge post-pandemic without having had to dramatically reduce rates. Her fingers remain crossed. “You never know. Somebody in your comp set starts doing it and you still need to get your piece of the pie and have to start playing in the game sometimes. But in this current pandemic-induced economic crisis, it’s not necessarily like the ones of the past or in 2008.” With national economists predicting GDP growth of 5 percent this year and next, Taylor expects hotel business performance to remain low for now. But once vaccines are widely administered, she anticipates an unleashing of pent-up travel demand. {caption}YEAR OVER YEAR: HotStats tracks hotels’ profit-and-loss trends. Its most recent analysis of U.S. hotels shows declines in GOPAR or gross operating profit per available room and TREVPAR or total revenue per available room from January 2020 to January 2021. David Eisen, director of intelligence for the Americas at HotStats, says the strongest driver of RevPAR is room rate. (Source: HotStats){/caption} For hoteliers wondering when rates will get on a growth trajectory, HotStats, a global benchmarking company with headquarters in London, offers some guidance based on history. David Eisen is HotStats’ director of hotel intelligence for the Americas. Though the company began to carve a business niche in the U.S. a few years ago, it’s been tracking hospitality profit-and-loss metrics in other countries for more than 10 years. For the hotel industry, the pandemic recession is worse than the downturns of 9-11 and the Great Recession combined, Eisen said. “It’s good to look back on past crises to see kind of what the fundamentals were back then and what the recovery and rebounds looked like.” With regard to the history of hotel rate recovery, HotStats has years of data on the U.K., and in particular London. Although the terrorist attacks of 9-11 occurred in the U.S., their impact reverberated around the world. In September 2001, average room rate in London was £97.30. ADR did not return to that level until October 2003, Eisen said. In regions outside of London, ADR was £68.50 in September 2001. It remained flat over the next year and rebounded to the 2001 level in 2003. At the start of the Great Recession in 2008, room rate in London averaged £97.44. In 2011, it was £99.72. “Basically, what we’re seeing is it takes about three years to get rates back to pre-crisis levels,” Eisen said. When it comes to regaining total revenue, hotels in London and the rest of the U.K. took more than three years to return to pre-crisis revenue performance. Overall, Eisen said, it took U.K. hotels more than six years to return to profitability. “From a profitability standpoint, it takes about 1.5 times longer than revenue to recover,” he said. “The biggest predictor of RevPAR success is never occupancy. It’s always rate.” Mike Chuma is vice president of global marketing at IDeaS, a software provider that uses artificial intelligence to manage hotel revenue, including setting rates for its 15,000 clients. Though its pricing programs are automatic, general managers and their teams maintain control over such business decisions. That’s important to note because, across the board, IDeaS has not seen room rates significantly decrease over the past year. “Traditionally, we haven’t seen rate drop as fast as it has in the past,” Chuma said. “What it means is our revenue managers and the hoteliers themselves understand that this is a dynamic that they’ve not seen before. That no matter how far their rate drops, where their rate erodes, it’s not going to stimulate demand.” IDeaS is advising its clients that by holding rate, they maintain the value of the property and its brand. “Protecting your brand and your rate integrity is more important now than ever,” Chuma said. In a few cases, the pricing behavior of competing hotels may force a hotelier to discount rates, but Chuma said it’s important to know why you want to follow suit. “Don’t just drop rate because you think you’re going to stimulate demand. Your demand is not a function of that price elasticity too much anymore. It’s a function of things that may be outside of your control.” Resources and Links Download the full transcript for this episode Steve Reynolds at TRIPBAM Maxine Taylor at CHMWarnick David Eisen at HotStats Mike Chuma at IDeaS The post 314 | No Discounts Available: Smart rate management keeps hotels afloat amid COVID-19 storm first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

{caption}POSITION OF LEADERSHIP: Ron Vlasic, center, in November 2012 is flanked by Joseph McInerney, left, then president of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and John Fitzpatrick, president and CEO of the Fitzpatrick Hotel Group during AHLA’s annual event at the Plaza Hotel in New York City when Vlasic was inducted as chairman of the association and Fitzpatrick vice chairman. Today, Vlasic is COO at Hostmark Hospitality Group in Schaumburg, Illinois, and a new member of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board.{/caption} Lodging veteran continues to illuminate way through dark economic times Ron Vlasic practically embodies hospitality. As a young man in Chicago, Vlasic’s introduction to the hotel industry was made when he walked into the lobby of a grand historic hotel. Its aesthetic and ambience impacted him intellectually and emotionally and he knew he wanted to be part of it. More than 30 years later, Vlasic can tell of a storied career that has taken him coast to coast and led him to represent the industry in the U.S. and overseas. Over the next two years, however, Vlasic has the leadership role of a lifetime. He is among a select group of industry leaders tasked with guiding the U.S. hospitality industry back to post-pandemic health and wealth. Vlasic is chief operating officer at Hostmark Hospitality Group, a hotel and restaurant management company in Schaumburg, Illinois. In November, he was appointed by then U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to a term on the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. The board’s assignment is to craft a strategy to revive the hospitality industry both domestically and internationally. {caption}STAGING A COMEBACK: Ron Vlasic in April 2012 stands in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., while attending the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s Legislative Action Summit on behalf of Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association. Today, Vlasic is COO at Hostmark Hospitality Group and a new member of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, part of the U.S. Commerce Department. He tasked with helping the hospitality industry build a post-pandemic revival. Episode 313 of Lodging Leaders podcast features Vlasic sharing what it will take for the hospitality industry to return to profitability. The episode is the first of a new program by Long Live Lodging called Lodging Luminaries.{/caption} The U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board is a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in March assumed the role under the Biden Administration. The advisory board on March 4th shared with Raimondo its recommendations on how the nation can revive its travel and tourism sector that suffered unprecedented setbacks as a result of the coronavirus global pandemic. In the letter, the board first noted the health of the U.S. travel and tourism sector in 2019, when international travel alone added $234 billion to the U.S. economy, supported more than one million jobs, and represented 27 percent of trade in services and 9 percent of trade in goods and services each. In that year, domestic and international travel together supported 9.5 million jobs. The board then reminded Raimondo of the bad news. The U.S. leisure and hospitality sector accounted for 39 percent of the total jobs lost from January 2020 through February 2021. In that time period, international inbound arrivals to the U.S. fell 76 percent compared to the year before. The board noted conditions remain severely depressed. In total, the U.S. lost $493 billion in travel spending in 2020, a 42 percent decline. To revive the U.S. travel and tourism industry now and post-pandemic, the USTT advisory board presented the Commerce Department with 10 recommendations, including expanding federal relief programs to small- and medium-sized hospitality businesses, establishing grant programs for minority-owned and rural businesses; ramping up touchless technology throughout travel sectors; and elevating travel and tourism by creating a new U.S. Travel and Tourism Agency with authority to implement the recommendations as well as other comeback initiatives. {caption}DEAR MADAM SECRETARY: Ron Vlasic is a member of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, which on March 4 sent a 13-page letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo that includes 10 recommendations on how the federal government can lead the industry’s post-pandemic comeback. These first two pages are introductory in nature. The full letter can be viewed here.  {/caption} To tackle the scope of the revival, the USTT advisory board divided into subcommittees. Vlasic is a member of the committee on customer experience that examined what it’s going to take to get people traveling again. “What’s interesting in our country is the drive-in markets have fared pretty well and in 2020 and going into ’21,” Vlasic said. “People are, say from Chicago, but perhaps they want to do a little staycation and do a short drive to places in Michigan, Wisconsin or rural areas of Illinois. “Where we’re hurting the most is as our city centers, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, where the convention and corporate business has really been stymied. That’s where we need the most focus and attention right now.” Another recommendation by the USTT advisory board is to create a promotional campaign to help consumers feel safe and secure when traveling. Vlasic said he’s seen a stark difference in how guests respond to COVID-19 protocols and changes in hotel services from the beginning of the pandemic to today. “The lack of understanding from the beginning of all of this through today has really changed a lot,” he said. “In the beginning, it was extremely rough on our front office team members that had to deal with this. Guests wouldn’t understand why can’t I get this or that. And now it’s become the norm, the lack of services and people have accepted it. I think people are becoming a little bit more compassionate and showing more empathy toward these folks that are working the desk.” Vlasic is sad that hotels had to cut back on services as the decision does diminish the guest experience, but it’s also encouraged some hoteliers to think creatively. “There’s still people who get frustrated, but I think every hotel has figured out a rhythm of how to manage those expectations to the best way possible. Unfortunately there was no playbook really written for any of this, so people made it up as they went. I think that’s where the creativity and the resiliency of these hoteliers really come alive.” {caption}YOU’RE WELCOME HERE: The Gaia Hotel, Restaurant and Spa in Anderson, California, in fall 2020 housed firefighters who spent hours and days battling wildfires in the northern region of the state. The hotel in August let firefighters and other first responders know it was open to serve them in this message it on Facebook. The hotel is part of Choice Hotels International’s Ascend Collection and is managed by Hostmark Hospitality Group, where Ron Vlasic is chief operating officer.{/caption} In communicating with nationwide team, Hostmark Hospitality Group in the beginning of this year held a virtual three-day leadership conference to reconnect and to find out how hotel and restaurant operators were managing business challenges. “The overarching theme of our conference was Hostmark Strong,” Vlasic said. “We shared some of the examples of how strong and resilient all of us are and how it came alive through each hotel and restaurant. We have quite a variety of hotels in our company and everybody had a different theme, if you will, of how they approach guest service.” Vlasic gave the example of the Gaia Hotel, Restaurant and Spa in Anderson, California. The property is in the Shasta Cascade region in the northern part of the state and near to where communities last fall experienced forest fires. The hotel was filled with firefighters who would battle blazes for hours and hours and come back to the Gaia Hotel to rest and recover. “To really rethink how we serve them and what they need, it changed everything about the property,” Vlasic said. “Our general manager and the team created an experience for those men and women, making sure they got plenty of rest and that they got the food and fluids that they needed to stay fit. “A lot of it, too, they needed the fresh air. We’re fortunate where our property is spread among some nice acreage, and we were able to create some areas where a lot of them wanted to relax on the lawn, try to get some fresh air and spread out to trying to fix their gear and kind of go through things.” The hotel team opened the parking area for all of the rigs and the trucks and gave them room to service the vehicles and equipment. Vlasic said the acts of service by the hotel and its employees are what defines hospitality in a time of crisis. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to hammer U.S. travel and tourism sectors, Vlasic has another concern for the future of the industry – the education and training the young people who entered hospitality the same way he did. He wants the career trajectory to be just as strong if not stronger for the next generation. Vlasic is a native of the Chicago area. When he was 19 he was a sales clerk at Carson Pirie Scott & Co. department store in the city’s downtown. The store was across the street from the Palmer House Hotel, an historic landmark that’s now managed by Hilton. “I remember going there for lunch one day and it was probably the first time I’ve really been in a classic grand hotel such as that. And I was really taken aback by the grandeur of the place,” Vlasic said. “All of a sudden I realized this might be something I’d like to do. So I came home and talked to my mom about it. I said, ‘I think I may want to chase a career in hospitality.’ And she goes, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ And I said, ‘I’m not sure yet, but it looked pretty cool.’” {caption}CAREER PATH STARTS HERE: Ron Vlasic, chief operating officer at Hostmark Hospitality Group and a member of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, said it was a visit as a young man to the historic Palmer House Hotel in downtown Chicago that triggered his interest in a career in hospitality.{/caption} Vlasic went to a hospitality school in Chicago and landed a job as a traveling manager with the Lodgekeeper Group. For several years, he traveled all over the country surveying hotels in need of renovations and business upgrades with the goal to reposition and sell. “For a young man, it was a great experience,” he said. “I learned about redeveloping and repositioning assets that needed a little bit of love and care.” He then discovered the Grand Heritage Hotel Group in Annapolis, Maryland, that specialized in owning and operating historic boutique hotels. The opportunity harkened Vlasic back to his introduction to grand historic hotels via the Palmer House. He spent 10 years at Grand Heritage as a general manager, traveling coast to coast. “It was a wonderful ride, learning how to take care of these old historic hotels and in the care and feeding habits of them.” The boutique hotel business is a unique industry genre and Vlasic’s on-the-job education eventually led him to join Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group as general manager of its Sir Francis Drake Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Vlasic spent nearly 20 years with Kimpton, which in 2014 was acquired by InterContinental Hotels Group for $430 million in cash. When Vlasic started with the boutique developer it had about 12 hotels in its portfolio. When he left in 2019, as vice president of operations, the company had about 63 properties. Vlasic joined Hostmark Hospitality Group in 2019 as chief operating officer. Despite his many experiences, he never lost that sense of awe and wonder when in a grand hotel. And it’s that element of hospitality he hopes emerging hospitality professionals will latch onto because it’s what will carry them through challenging times. After all, the art of hospitality is more than checking people in and turning over rooms. “I think that a lot of it came down to these grand historic hotels that may not have been really affiliated with a major brand like Hilton Hyatt, Marriott, which have programs in place to help activate those experiences. “It really relies upon your crew, your own personal creativity in how can you make a place come alive. What type of persona can you help create at that property that kind of gives that special guests experience? “For example, when I was the general manager of the Allegro Hotel, the theme and story of the Allegro was all about the arts, about the theater district and how that came alive. And so we would recruit a lot of people that had that special talent. Perhaps they were an artist, a singer or a performer that needed a job. We bring them on board and then encourage them to bring that alive for us. “So if James at the front desk was a part-time dancer at a local theater troupe, we would encourage him to share his experiences and what was going on in the community to encourage people to witness what was coming alive in the neighborhoods. But it’s the spirit of James and he could bring that alive and share that wealth of information.” The experience worked both ways as employees like James would develop loyalty to the hotel and become vested in its success. That’s when “the magic happens” in guest experience, Vlasic said. “That customer comes back and says, ‘Oh, I remember James from the last visit. He turned me on to this great theater. I want to go see it again.’ Vlasic joined the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association in 2001, which led him to serve on an advisory committee at DePaul University in Chicago and help build its School of Hospitality Leadership. The coronavirus crisis forced Vlasic and other advisers to channel their creativity to position students to succeed in the industry post-pandemic. Rather than see its students graduate into an industry that offered few opportunities, the school created a tract that enables graduates to straightaway move on to obtain a master’s degree during the pandemic years. Vlasic noted that joining associations and finding mentors and like-minded colleagues who dedicate their lives to promoting and preserving the hospitality industry has been among the highlights of his career. Vlasic returned to Chicago in 2001 and joined the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association. At the time, Marc Gordon was president and CEO of the association. He retired in 2018 after 21 years in that role. Vlasic and Gordon became good friends. “He taught me a great deal,” Vlasic said. “He was a great mentor on how to get involved and really start to give back to our industry. I spent quite a bit of time with him learning what it meant to talk to our state legislators and promote what’s going on within Illinois.” Vlasic became chairman of the Illinois association in 2007. “With that position, I became more and more involved with the national campaign and going to Washington, D.C. and being a representative or the state of Illinois with the American Hotel & Lodging Association,” he said. “As I became more involved in understanding what AHLA offered, I was interested in learning more about what we could do on a national level.” Vlasic became an AHLA board member and in 2013 was inducted for a two-year term as chairman, where he represented the hospitality industry nationally and internationally. His activity caught the attention of the Australian government, which asked him to speak to its parliament about how tourism rebounded after the 2008 Great Recession and after the terrorist attacks of 9-11.  “The United States was pretty resilient and came back and they were very interested in knowing how we did that.” Vlasic continues to work with IH&LA as well as AH&L. His involvement put him on the U.S. Commerce Department’s radar and led to the appointment to the USTT advisory board. He is passionate about promoting and restoring the U.S. travel and tourism industry. “Obviously, with pandemic, I think that voice is probably needed now more than ever.” Resources and Links Ron Vlasic of Hostmark Hospitality Group The Department of Commerce’s U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board The post 313 | Staging a Comeback: Hospitality leader Ron Vlasic helps industry build post-pandemic revival first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

{caption}SPACED OUT: Suzie Hall of The Cornerstone Collection, a consortium of hotel designers and programming experts, is seeing a lot of properties make more use of their outdoor spaces during the coronavirus crisis. The socially distanced outdoor dining concept is at The Residence Inn Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona, which Hall designed. Rethinking how traveling guests as well as local or nearby residents on staycations can use hotels during and after the pandemic can position a property for a comeback, say experts.{/caption} Collaboration among hotels, nearby restaurants and entertainment venues can help attract guests in search of a local respite, say experts Ashley Ewing Parrott’s life and career have changed a lot since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. She and her husband welcomed a daughter and moved from Chattanooga to Memphis while she launched a hospitality venture called AEP Consulting. Ewing Parrott has a background in hotel sales and marketing, but came into her own when she directed Vision Hospitality Group’s emerging boutique and lifestyle division that included opening independent properties designed and crafted to serve traveling guests as well as residents of the hotels’ surrounding communities. Ewing Parrott has seen growth in the staycation trend amid the pandemic as people seek getaways close to home. “We’ve all spent so much time cooped up in our homes with our immediate family. And I know everyone, at least speaking for myself and most of my friends and family, are itching to get out, itching for a change in scenery. And hotels present a unique experience and that we can create a home away from home,” Ewing Parrott said. {caption}SPRING BREAKS FOR HOMEBODIES: Staycations are a growing trend amid the coronavirus pandemic. Episode 312 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores the origin and evolution of the staycation and how hotels can capitalize on people’s desire to get away from it all, even if it’s just for one or two nights.{/caption} Merriam-Webster 12 years ago added the word “staycation” to its online dictionary. In doing so, the publisher said it traced the word to a 2005 article in the Huntsville Times in Alabama. The publisher noted that modern society might mistakenly think because the word is relatively new, the concept of a staycation is also novel. But Merriam-Webster also found the word in a July 1944 full-page ad selling beer in The Cincinnati Enquirer. Though many in the hospitality industry might have different opinions on when staycation became a component of travel, there’s no doubt the concept has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Staycations present both a tremendous opportunity and also a challenge to hotels because you have to assume a level of familiarity with your property on behalf of the guest,” said Ewing Parrott. “So if the guest is from the local market, they’re going to be fairly familiar with your property, with your offerings whether they visited you or not. Then you can always target that hour- or two-hour drive market that would technically be considered a staycation as well. “The challenge for staycations, especially during the pandemic, is ensuring the safety of your guests and building confidence around that safety,” Ewing Parrott said, noting the message of clean and safe can be shared through design, programming and service. “Implementing different elements of design to ensure and build guest confidence around safety and cleanliness is important,” she said. “But also, look at how can we rearrange spaces to make sure that guests feel comfortable – creating more distance in lobby seating, creating more distance between restaurant tables; all the kind of basics that most hoteliers with any experience have already embraced. “That said, it’s also about how can we market ourselves to those spring breakers specifically or to our neighbors to encourage them to really get that kind of break. “We have an opportunity to really lean into marketing the best of what you get at home with all of the unexpected and kind of luxuries of hotel stays.” Ewing Parrott advises hotels to add VIP turndown service, private dining options and wellness programs such as virtual fitness classes. For small groups, hotel can offer socially-distanced mixers. “I think there are opportunities to embrace programming in a new way.” Spring Breaks Cut Short Months before the phrase “spring break 2021” entered most people’s minds, Emory University in Atlanta in October announced it would not include the traditional vacation in this year’s school calendar. The university is not alone in making the decision. Many public and private schools from elementary through secondary have cut back on seasonal breaks as the coronavirus pandemic forces schools to go remote or offer a hybrid teaching format. Instead of the traditional weeklong family or group trip, many travelers might opt for staycations. The coronavirus pandemic has certainly given the staycation a new angle. Rather than spend a break at home, many Americans are escaping quarantine and road-tripping to a nearby destination. {caption}PEDAL PUSHERS: Chattanooga offers bicycle trails to residents and visitors alike. The city’s hotels would do well to connect travelers from faraway as well as staycationers to opportunities that expand and enrich their visit.{/caption} Hotel owners and operators would be wise to integrate design and programming to appeal to 2021 staycationers. Suzie Hall is founder of The Cornerstone Collective and a 30-year veteran of hospitality design and procurement. She restructured the company last year to make it more collaborative among industry providers and specialists – a sort of plug-and-play business model that can rally a team of experts to get a hotel built, renovated or designed. Hall has seen investors and developers go back to their drawing boards over the past 12 months to rethink hotel layout and design with the pandemic in mind. “One of my words throughout this pandemic from design and innovation is flexibility,” Hall said. “Knowing that the world isn’t always going to be as it is today, and then improvising with flexibility. And what I mean by that is offering a variety of options for different travelers, the different age groups, the different types of travelers.” Hall advises destination hotels that want to attract visitors who live a short drive away to bring in a popular entertainer for a weekend and offer different performance times so people can gather in small groups. When the pandemic struck the U.S. lodging industry in March 2020, Hall was working on hotel reconstruction projects. The dramatic shift in how hotels were to be used altered Hall’s design sensibilities and the renovation schematics. She said a lot of her work lately has been around re-creating F&B concepts “and understanding all the different areas of a property that can be utilized for events and offering these with as much safety as possible. “We were in the midst of designing five hotel renovations for branded hotels and the owner asked us to re-layout the FF&E so that they were more appropriate for social and physical distancing. We’ve been doing a lot of that. “We’ve seen a lot of properties really rethink their outdoor spaces,” she said. “By taking a look at it they’re realizing they have more opportunity to put more seating out there, more tables, smaller groupings of seating than just the big sofas and settees and lounge chairs that we’ve seen in the past.” Getting creative with large indoor spaces is important, too. Recently, Hall helped a hotel set up an indoor bowling alley in a ballroom. The lanes and related fixtures are temporary and do not alter the room or the property in anyway. Small groups and families have taken advantage of the pay-as-you-play option and hotels have generated some extra revenue. {caption}SET ‘EM UP: A portable bowling alley such as this one offered by AE&ES in Las Vegas is one way a hotel can generate extra revenue with its large meeting rooms, said Suzie Hall of The Cornerstone Collective. Creative programming and re-thinking how guests can use the hotel space will attract small groups and families in search of staycations. (Photo: AE&ES){/caption} She’s seen hotels offer physically distanced outdoor games, indoor arcades or bring in outside gaming. Properties have also provided mobile apps that inform guests of events and entertainment or sporting opportunities nearby. Though many resort destinations are known for being all-inclusive, Hall believes the pandemic has permanently altered how hotel teams go about designing food and beverage experiences and other types of programming and amenities. “I think the spirit of collaboration that has emerged during this pandemic is just a beautiful thing in our communities and people being very open to collaborating and creating new opportunities. Maximizing the use of outdoor and semi-enclosed spaces, even interior spaces, offering classes up to a certain size, whether it’s yoga, fitness, dance movement, croquet, live music, tours through a property, language lessons, wine tastings, book readings, outdoor games. By collaborating with other local restaurants and service companies, I really think the sky’s the limit. And I do think travelers will respond to that.” When Ewing Parrott was director of brand strategy boutique and lifestyle hotels for Vision Hospitality Group in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she focused mostly on developing and opening The Edwin, Vision Hospitality’s first luxury independent boutique hotel. She also helped launch the company’s new boutique brand called Kinley, which has opened in Cincinnati and is soon to open in Chattanooga. And she oversaw the development of The Grady, a luxury boutique in downtown Lexington, Kentucky. The hotels are members of Marriott International’s soft brands. More importantly, they’re each distinctively designed to attract guests from faraway as well as provide their local communities unique dining and entertainment options, including staycations. When Vision Hospitality’s hotels were in early planning, Ewing Parrott led a survey of community residents, asking them what they wanted in a neighboring hotel. The results helped Vision Hospitality design a property that the community would embrace, use and recommend. “The beautiful thing about a staycation is not only introducing your neighbor to your property, but partnerships with area businesses will truly be key to a successful and fulfilling guest experience over the next six to 12 months and throughout the future,” Ewing Parrott said. “Most hotels are still experiencing significantly lower demand, slower occupancy and the need for a reduced labor model. Full-service and select-service hotels should embrace the idea of pushing that guests out into the neighborhood to explore and have a kind of adventure.” {caption}LANDMARK DECISIONS: Vision Hospitality Group in October opened Kinley Downtown Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. The 94-room property is the first of Vision Hospitality’s new brand, which is part of Marriott International’s Tribute Collection, a licensing agreement for independent hotels. The hotel is in a redeveloped landmark building and has collaborated with nearby restaurants and a co-working facility to expand options for guests as well as locals planning a staycation.{/caption} As many full-service hotels have either closed their restaurants or are open with limited hours and fewer tables, Ewing Parrott suggests hotel staff encourage guests to seek dining experiences outside the hotel. That goes for other things including fitness options such as bicycling, walking tours, entertainment. “As hoteliers, we have to be ambassadors for our local community.” Hotels aren’t the only businesses to be negatively impacted by the coronavirus crisis. “These days, we really have to be willing to share our guests with our neighbors, because it will benefit everyone in the end, as far as the economic recovery. Vision Hospitality opened the Kinley Downtown Cincinnati in October. The 94-room hotel is an adaptive reuse of a landmark building. It integrates art by local muralists and artists, which has attracted local business. Ewing Parrott said using local creatives and artisans to build a brand will help hotels become embedded in community culture. Another way is to meet a community need. “I’m super excited to see that one come to life and find success. One of the main reasons they found success is that’s a hotel without meeting space, so they formed an early partnership with a coworking space to offer meeting space to guests when needed. “I’m sure as the pandemic kind of starts to disappear from focus, their plan is to engage the community in Cincinnati-specific events, whether it’s the design school or the sports teams or the culinary community, and rally the neighborhood with a gathering place in their lobby or in their spaces.” {caption}NEIGHBORHOOD BAR: Vision Hospitality Group this month opened its Kinley Chattanooga in the city’s Southside neighborhood. The soft-branded hotel, part of Marriott International’s Tribute Collection, is a full-service boutique property. The lobby features a bar that serves coffee in the morning and alcoholic beverages in the afternoons with small plates. The hotel’s F&B serves staying guests as well as residents of the Southside neighborhood.{/caption} Ewing Parrott this month also helped Vision Hospitality open its Kinley Chattanooga in the city’s southside neighborhood. The hotel adapted its programming from the same neighborhood-focused playbook. “This was really a testament to providing a hotel to the Southside community that was what the community wanted. At the time we started development, I was a resident of the Southside neighborhood so I felt it was incredibly necessary to speak to the community, to talk to the local businesses and to provide within the footprint of the hotel what the area needed, but none of the things that didn’t, essentially.” As a result, Kinley Chattanooga is a full-service hotel with a three-meal-a-day restaurant and a morning coffee bar that transitions into a cocktail lounge with small plates in the afternoon. In the back of the hotel is a speakeasy that’s accessible via a hidden bookcase door inside and a back-alley entrance outside. “We wanted to blur the line between community and hotel, and really just kind of encourage our guys to get out and explore all the beautiful, exciting and entertaining things that Southside had to offer.” Many hotels loath to rent rooms to local residents because of their sometimes blatant disregard for traveling guests’ comfort and privacy as well as the hotel’s property. Ewing Parrott said while that can be a challenge, hotels can spurn bad actors and attract good customers by managing their rates. “There is a subset of staycation guests that feel they can come to a hotel and do all of the ridiculous things they would never do in their own home. Having been in sales for years for hotels, I know that when you are suffering in the way of low occupancy, any revenue manager’s first instinct is to drop rate. “That said, I am a firm believer that there is a direct correlation between what a guest is willing to pay and how they are going to treat the associates, treat the property, the additional revenue that they may generate in food and beverage outlets or retail or things of that nature. “Instead of tanking rate in response to decreased demand, hold strong. Know the value of your property. Know the value of what you’re offering. I’m not saying increased rates for locals by any means, but remain consistent in your value proposition because that will dissuade some of it.” Resources and Links Download the full transcript for this episode Suzie Hall of The Cornerstone Collective Ashley Ewing Parrott of AEP Consulting The post 312 | Spring Breaks for Homebodies: Staycations are a growing trend amid the coronavirus pandemic first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

  Resources and Links Download the full transcript for this episode Darshan Patel at Hotel Investment Group Ben Seidel and Joseph Yi at Real Hospitality Group Sagar Shah and Rich Gandhi of Reform Lodging The post 311 | Shelters From the Norm: Hotels used for hospitals and housing face unexpected problems first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

{caption}Ridgemont Hospitality in Oakland, California, in October sold its 22-unit motel, The Inn at Temescal, to the city which is working with a local consortium of non-profit organizations developing affordable housing for vulnerable populations. The Inn at Temescal is being converted into apartments for military veterans at risk of homelessness. It was one of two hotels the city acquired for $17.5 million as part of its affordable housing mission.{/caption} Housing developers pay top dollar for certain kinds of lodging assets good for conversion, says Arizona hotel broker Dhruv Patel, president of Ridgemont Hospitality, shared a bittersweet moment with his parents, Pravin and Sima Patel, when their family business sold the first motel that Pravin had built from the ground up more than 30 years ago. But they rest assured knowing it was the right decision because the 22-room property is being converted into affordable housing for military veterans at risk of homelessness. The transaction is among hundreds taking place across the U.S. as state and local governments work with non-profit agencies to create affordable housing solutions for vulnerable populations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, organizations that serve low-income or homeless populations were buying and converting motels and hotels into stop-gap or permanent housing. The spread of COVID-19 dramatically accelerated the trend as the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act of 2020 earmarked $5 billion for state and local governments to provide temporary shelter for vulnerable populations during the pandemic. Many states are taking it farther and parlaying public funds to acquire lodging assets and turn them into permanent affordable housing options for those at risk of homelessness. For owners thinking of off-loading an underperforming hotel to such a cause, it’s important to realize that not every property qualifies as a long-term residence. {caption}HOTELS TO HOUSING: People living in a homeless encampment on the sidewalk near the Los Angeles City Hall are among the targets of California’s Project Homekey, which is working to develop affordable housing solutions for homeless and at-risk populations amid the coronavirus pandemic. Episode 310 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores the trend of housing developers acquiring hotels and motels to convert to apartments for underserved populations. (Photo: Shutterstock/Robert V. Schwemmer){/caption} Bittersweet Goodbye Several years ago, Ridgemont Hospitality renovated the Inn at Temescal into a boutique motel to attract younger travelers to downtown Oakland. Ridgemont Hospitality founders Pravin and Sima Patel built the hotel in the mid-1980s and called it the Regency Inn. It was their first ground-up development, said their son, Dhruv Patel, who is now president of the family business. As was typical for many Indian American hoteliers at the time, the Patels lived in a two-bedroom manager’s unit at the motel. Dhruv and his sister grew up at the property. They also were part of the operating team. “I check in my first guest when I was 7,” Dhruv Patel said. As Dhruv grew so did the family business and its investment strategy. Eventually, Ridgemont Hospitality outgrew the motel. As evidence of that, Ridgemont in 2019 opened a new eight-story concrete-and-steel build Hampton Inn next to Oakland’s convention center. WATCH: OPENING DAY: Ridgemont Hospitality in October 2019 celebrated the opening of its eight-story, 121-unit Hampton Inn Oakland Downtown-City Center. The hotel development is also significant because Bay Area is a high-barrier-to-entry market and the Hampton Inn was the first hotel to open in downtown Oakland in nearly 20 years. “So from a 21-unit, two-story exterior corridor to just being down the street next to the convention center with 121 units, I think that really speaks to the growth that we’ve had and how far we’ve come,” said Dhruv Patel. As Ridgemont was preparing to open the Hampton Inn, “the opportunity came to work with the state and the City of Oakland to look at acquiring the property. And it just all kind of made sense for us,” he said. In October, the Patel family business said a bittersweet goodbye to the property when Ridgemont Hospitality sold it to Operation Dignity and Danco Group, non-profits that provide housing and jobs for people at risk of homelessness. The Oakland property is transitioning into apartments for disadvantaged military veterans. The deal is part of Project Homekey, a California program that invests millions of dollars of public funds into housing solutions for low-income and homeless populations. Project Homekey was in place before the coronavirus pandemic struck, but the public health crisis and $750 million in federal pandemic-relief funds sped up the project. California Gov. Gavin Newsome’s administration kicked in another $100 million and marshalled local governments to fill in the funding gaps. All to provide shelter for society’s most vulnerable during the COVID-19 outbreak. Perfect Timing Transitioning the Inn at Temescal into affordable housing was initially Dhruv’s idea. He got the ball rolling by going to city leaders. “I had actually went to them and said, ‘You know, this is a perfect project for some sort of transitional housing.’ “It’s right in the middle of a major transit hub. Across the street, you’ve got the BART station that’s the main transit station that connects Berkeley to Oakland to San Francisco. You’re about a 10-minute train ride from any of those major metros. So in terms of geography and being in a job center, you’re very close. There’s some great restaurants and things up and down the street, which would provide great jobs for people trying to get back into the workforce. “As we got further in the conversation, we quickly found out that there was a nonprofit developer that wanted to partner with the city to do housing for veterans and that’s a concept close to our hearts. “My parents will talk about all the time about the opportunity that this country has given our family. And we feel that people that serve this country and protect the American Dream certainly we should prioritize. So when we heard it was veterans, we were all in.” The City of Oakland announced the deal in October, noting the state awarded the city $17.5 million to acquire the Inn at Temescal and another hotel, which has 82 rooms. The Inn at Temescal was profitable before the pandemic struck and, thanks to the recent renovation it was in good condition. For those reasons, and the fact that Ridgemont was not seeking to get rich off the sale, Patel believes the hotel was an attractive deal. “They caught us at the perfect time,” he said. “Some owners are very unrealistic or are not quite serious about selling.” {caption}BREAKING GROUND: An early drawing of the Hampton Inn Oakland Downtown-City Center was presented to the Oakland in 2016 as the Bay Area city deliberated on easing up on its strict hotel development stance. Ridgemont Hospitality opened the hotel in fall 2019. It is the first hotel to open in downtown Oakland in nearly 20 years.{/caption} What Developers Want Ryan Bodine of NewGen Advisory in Phoenix, Arizona, is a hotel broker who is seeing an increase in transactions between owners of lodging assets and housing developers since the pandemic struck. Like many cities in the U.S., Phoenix and other metro areas in Arizona were faced with affordable housing issues before the coronavirus pandemic. Over the past year, the state and local jurisdictions have been spending public funds to come up with solutions to protect the most vulnerable populations. Phoenix in 2020 reportedly saw its homeless population grow by more than 2,300 or 18 percent over the year before. In response, the city has dedicated nearly $50 million toward creating housing solutions. Other cities in Arizona such as Flagstaff and Tucson also earmarked federal pandemic relief money for housing. Bodine has been in hotel sales for about seven years. Many of his clients these days are mostly private-housing developers in search of hotels they can quickly transition to multifamily facilities. As a broker, Bodine said, he’s “been experiencing something new. Since March, I’ve been working with a wide range of buyers who have been focusing on positioning hotels through different uses, ranging from multifamily to affordable housing to homeless shelters. “What we realized was that hotels are ideal for these conversions because they have a lot of characteristics that conversion buyers are looking for.” {caption}AFFORDABLE CONVERSION: Vivo Investment Group, which specializes in converting hotels into affordable micro-apartments, plans to redevelop this Ramada Inn in Mesa, Arizona. Ryan Bodine of NewGen Advisory, a hotel broker in Phoenix, said transient hotels with large guest rooms such as Ramada Inns as well as extended-stay assets are attractive options for multifamily investors.{/caption} As with the Inn at Temescal, a property’s location is a selling point. Another attribute Bodine sees as a positive is a large footprint with a common area for community space. And most of all, he said, “Price per key is relatively low to compare to what was available pre-COVID. Value Pricing “Where hotels are struggling, these conversion buyers offer an opportunity for owners to sell their building at a price that’s higher than if they tried to sell it as a hotel. And when you couple the buyer’s interest in buying at a low price per key with the seller’s interest to sell at a value higher than what their business is currently worth, you start to see a lot of activity and that’s what we’re really experiencing today.” While for-profit investors that were buying pre-pandemic continue to look for conversion opportunities during the crisis, Bodine is seeing more non-profit and public agencies seeking to convert lodging assets to housing as millions of dollars in federal and state funds are earmarked for such programs. But multifamily developers continue to be the most active acquirer of hotels these days. The investment thesis behind each deal involves cost-efficiency. “For the apartment buyers specifically, the value add for them is if they can find the right property at the right price, they’ll be able to do all of the renovation necessary to change the hotel into an apartment building and still have a low enough basis where they’re able to own a stabilize asset at well below the cost,” Bodine said. Bodine has also worked with real estate developers who want to work with non-profit agencies to transition a hotel or motel into affordable housing for at-risk residents. These real estate buyers actually prefer to acquire a hotel rather than an established apartment building. “There are different levels of actors in affordable housing,” Bodine said. “For instance, a group will come in and they’ll buy a hotel and they’ll do a really bare-bones conversion. “The requirement for the conversion buyer isn’t as heavy of a lift as if you were working with an apartment buyer. An apartment buyer is going to require a full-on renovation, full kitchen, full on utilities. But for the affordable housing [project], they may have some top burners, a microwave oven, a mini fridge. Because of the scaled-down version, the lift isn’t as heavy; you won’t need to put in the extra capital expenditures to run all of these appliances because it’s a lot more basic.” Once the hotel-to-housing plan is completed, the new owners will seek out nonprofit agencies dedicated to placing families in affordable housing. Types of Assets Though the housing crisis is huge in many U.S. communities, not every hotel is a candidate for a conversion. Real estate buyers that want to convert hotels into housing seek certain types of buildings. “The lowest hanging fruit are the extended stay hotels in general,” Bodine said, noting the first generation Residence Inns are popular candidates. “These are garden-style hotels that looked like an apartment complex. They have different room types and sizes, and will have kitchenettes in each room. “Construction wise, they’re essentially turnkey. Buyers typically are paying more for these types because the cost to convert isn’t nearly as heavy.” The second type of property Bodine sees conversion buyers are favoring these days are two-story exterior-corridor hotels with swimming pools and a restaurant on site. Think Ramada Inns. “These types of buildings, the rooms are slightly larger than a hotel room, so they’ll be able to rent them out as mini studios or micro apartments,” Bodine said. The full-restaurant kitchen is a strong selling point because that signals the building’s infrastructure can handle the heavy utility demands of multifamily housing. Robust electrical power, HVAC systems and fire-retardant sprinkler systems are usually in place. As for using the actual restaurant space, Bodine has seen developers convert it into community rooms or storage areas for residents. The third tier of lodging assets Bodine is brokering to housing developers are 150-room or larger limited-service hotels. “These hotels have standard-size hotel rooms without a commercial kitchen on site,” he said. “This type of building will have the heaviest lift because more electrical power will be required, sprinkler systems will have to be installed throughout and rooms will have to be consolidated so the room sizes can be equal in size with the apartments that they’ll essentially be competing against.” If a hotel owner has a property that fits the various developer criteria another step to consider is whether the municipality has zoned the site for residential projects. If the property is in a planned community, it’s smart to check whether it has covenants, conditions and restrictions or CC&Rs regarding land use. “Zoning codes typically dictate how many resident residential units are allowed per acre. It’s what we call zoning density,” Bodine said. “For instance, if a 200-room hotel sits on five acres and the zoning density for a multifamily conversion is only 20 units per acre, then the building is only allowed to have 100 total units. “Knowing the amount of units allowed under the existing zoning is the very first step for the buyer to understand.” Often, the developer can request and be granted a zoning waiver, but the process can take up to a year. “If zoning is in alignment, the second major issue that needs to be addressed are the CC&Rs,” he said. “If there is a restriction in the CCNRs that will restrict the hotel from being turned into a residential use, the buyer will need plenty of time to work on getting an amendment passed by the [homeowners] association. As we reported in January, the pace of hotel transactions dramatically slowed in 2020. But Bodine is seeing an active seller’s market of hotel and motel owners looking to unload an asset that either no longer fits their post-pandemic business strategy or is costing them money to hold on to. For several reasons, transitioning lodging assets into housing might not be a negative outcome of the coronavirus crisis. “Owners are selling now because they’re able to get a price that they may not be able to get if they were to sell it as a hotel for the next few years,” Bodine said. “There’s obviously a lot of uncertainty on what our industry is going to look like and to what extent we’re going to recover. Having an offer at a strong price that’s typically more than what your hotel is worth now is a strong incentive.” And, it’s financeable, he added, as lenders are underwriting housing deals while shelving underwriting on lodging transactions. Resources and Links Download the full transcript for this episode Ryan Bodine of NewGen Advisory Dhruv Patel of Ridgemont Hospitality The post 310 | Hotels Convert to Housing: Federal COVID-19-relief funds fuel transactions first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

{caption}Kathleen Bertrand, a jazz vocalist, performs in her hometown of Atlanta. Bertrand is a former executive of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, where she helped boost Black travel, mentored up-and-coming hospitality and tourism professionals and established diversity programs.{/caption} Music brings people together, leads to change, says jazz vocalist and arts supporter Despite the coronavirus pandemic that has crippled many business sectors, Georgia’s film industry in 2020 generated more than $2 billion in revenue and saved 40,000 jobs. Including wages, the overall economic impact of the state’s film industry is more than $9 billion. The state’s film industry feeds into the hospitality sector. In fiscal 2019, nearly 112 million visitors spent more than $66 billion in Georgia. The Peach State began to attract film makers in 2005 when it passed an industry tax incentive. It updated the law in 2008 and set off a business boom that has only gotten stronger over the decade that followed. A year later, Kathleen Bertrand of Atlanta took steps to make sure African Americans and other people of color were not left out of the entertainment gold rush. Bertrand founded the BronzeLens Film Festival, which honors and recognizes Black artists and other people of color in the film industry. Bertrand served at the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau for more than 30 years. She is among Georgia’s African American power brokers who positioned the state as a place where independent film makers of color can produce works worthy enough to compete for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Oscar awards. {caption}‘STAY THE COURSE’: Episode 309 of Lodging Leaders podcast features Kathleen Bertrand sharing from where she draws her courage, creativity and inspiration and her views of civil and human rights in the 21st century.{/caption} During her tenure at the Atlanta CVB, Bertrand developed other initiatives to promote diversity, inclusion and equality in the hospitality industry. In a conversation with Long Live Lodging, Bertrand shares her outlook about the state of civil rights and cultural affairs in Atlanta and the nation. She also talks about what it takes for Black women to succeed in hospitality, whom she looks to for inspiration and why she is always prepared to promote her hometown of Atlanta. Bertrand retired in 2015 as senior vice president of community and governmental affairs at the Atlanta CVB. In 2020 she was able to shelter in place with her husband, Andre Bertrand, and with plenty of time to think big thoughts. Last year, “was challenging and difficult in many ways. And in other ways it has been life changing and inspiring,” she said. “I think that the reckoning with racism in America is long overdue. The fact that this generation has to ask the same questions and be handled in much the same way as my generation or the generation before me is disgusting, disappointing and hurtful. “It’s hurtful to me as a parent. I have millennial children and I always thought when they were born in the ’80s, that life would be different for them somehow, some way.” The death of George Floyd last May at the hands of police in Minneapolis, as well as the March police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and the citizen’s arrest in Brunswick, Georgia, that led to the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020 are just a few of the shocking events that defined race relations in America in 2020. Though it does, indeed, seem like little has changed since the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s, Bertrand said she sees one significant difference now in the widespread public protests for reform – the multi-racial makeup of civil rights demonstrators. “From the standpoint of what happened this summer, I think it was overdue. But also it’s different in that the people that were marching in the street didn’t all look like me. And that’s the change that is needed,” she said. “Something needed to change when it came to how African Americans and the African American story is perceived and told in this country. “It is my hope that this grand coalition of millennials and boomers and everybody else of all hues and colors will hold together and will be committed to the work that it takes to make this country better.” {caption}Kathleen Bertrand attends the BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta, an event she founded to honor African American artists and other people of color who work in the film industry. The festival in 2017 was designated as an Academy Award qualifying event. As an executive with the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, Bertrand established several programs to promote the city as a mecca for Black travel and business.{/caption} Eventful Career Bertrand started at the bureau in 1983 as a membership account executive.  Her former boss, William Pate, president and CEO of the Atlanta CVB, credits Bertrand for positioning Atlanta as a top destination for Black travelers. She led the bureau’s diversity marketing program; the Diversity in Hospitality Industry Summit and founded Hospitality Industry Professionals, a mentorship program that promotes professional development and prepares minorities for leadership in the tourism and hospitality industries. She also created the Atlanta Heritage Guide, Atlanta CVB’s first African-American visitor publication. WATCH: HISTORY MAKER: In a biography about Kathleen Bertrand, The History Makers features videos of Bertrand sharing highlights of her career at the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau. In this video, Bertrand recalls the creation of the CVB’s Atlanta Heritage Guide. During her career at the CVB, Bertrand also fulfilled her calling as a jazz recording artist and composer, which entrenched her in Atlanta’s arts and culture scene. Music Heals Bertrand believes cultural arts, music and entertainment continue to break down barriers and bring people together to learn about each other and where they come from and thus generate love and respect for one another. Growing up, Bertrand had older brothers who listened to recordings of jazz artists such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. Every now and then they’d spin a vocalist such as Nancy Wilson. “It was Albert Ayler, another jazz musician of that age, who said music is the healing force of the universe,” Bertrand said. “I just fully embraced that long ago in my music career because music does heal; it crosses divides; and it brings people together.” Bertrand has performed throughout the country and the world for all-Black audiences; White listeners; and mixed audiences. “It really just comes down to the music and how people can appreciate a song.” Bertrand said she hopes the racial unity we’ve witnessed during the Black Lives Matter protests and other demonstrations means we’ve turned a corner in America. “The young people and the fever behind where they were this past summer is not letting up. “I think the whole election and the process there has been teaching them how you can have power in a different kind of way. And that power comes through your vote, which is the voice that you have when it comes to the local climate, as well as the national climate. “And so I think this summer helped to empower a number of people that had just let life pass them by and had not really paid attention to the writing on the wall as it related to the inequality and injustice in our country. “It is in unity that I think we affect change. Black people alone cannot affect the change that needs to happen in this country. I just hope that they will be inspired to stay the course.” {caption}Kathleen Bertrand is flanked by her children in May 2018 when Spelman College presented her with an honorary degree. Bertrand graduated from Spelman in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in English. Her children are Ikechi, Amichi, Chioma and Chinela.{/caption} Her Sheroes As one of few women of color in leadership in the Atlanta tourism industry in the 1980s, Bertrand looked to other women of color for inspiration. At industry conferences, she would be one of few women in the room and usually the only Black person. “Over the years, I started to see that change. I started to really see the changes at the top. Women that were heads of convention and visitors bureaus; women that were in executive positions within the industry and at the hotels and the facilities.” Bertrand remembers when the late Ahmeenah Young became director of the Philadelphia convention center and Brenda Scott rose to CEO of the CVB in Mobile, Alabama. She also points to her friends Erica Qualls-Battey and Valerie Ferguson. Qualls Battey is general manager at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis. In 2018, Marriott International also named her area general manager. Ferguson held senior executive roles with Loews Corp. before becoming director of lodging experience, planning and integration at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts in Orlando. Bertrand also draws inspiration from the young women she’s mentored. She mentioned Davonne Reaves, who served as president of Bertrand’s Hospitality Industry Professionals organization. Bertrand said Reaves is a good example of a Black woman who takes advantage of the opportunities the industry presents because that’s what it takes to move up. The women met when Reaves was a student at Georgia State University’s Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration. Today, Reaves is 33 and founder of The Vonne Group, a hotel consulting firm in Atlanta. In 2020, she was inducted as a member of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants and received its Lori Raleigh Award for Emerging Excellence in Hospitality Consulting.  And she recently became part owner of a hotel in Oklahoma. “She saw the path,” Bertrand said. “She didn’t say, ‘I can’t do this because I’m Black’ and ‘I can’t do this because I’m a woman.’ I’m so proud of what she’s done and the space that she’s making because now there will be people coming along that will look at her.” LISTEN: Check out the previous installments of Long Live Lodging’s Black History Month series. Episode 304, “This is Huge”: Choice Hotels International makes history with Black-owned multi-unit deal Episode 305, “Traveling on Hospitality”: Andrew Young remembers life on the road toward civil rights Episode 307, ‘A National Story’: Black travel in America evolved with the Civil Rights Movement Melting Pot Bertrand is a native of Atlanta, and a graduate of Grady High School and Spelman College, a liberal arts school for Black women. She recalled the people and events that shaped her world view, including Martin Luther King Sr., father of the slain Civil Rights leader. She talked about her entry into the tourism industry and how she participated in the city’s transition into the business and tourism hub of the South. “I came to the convention and visitors bureau and interviewed because of a dare from my friends. I was living in the Virgin islands at the time and they said, ‘Oh, you should go work for the tourist board because all you ever do is talk about Atlanta,’ which was true because to me there was just no other place like it. “I grew up having Martin Luther King (Sr.) come to my church. Our churches were a block apart and people called him M.L. When would come to the church, it was packed because, of course, he had something significant to say.” Grady High School in the 1970s was mostly white. Often, Bertrand was the only Black student in class. “Yet Grady was a wonderful experience for me. I had wonderful classmates. Grady was known as a melting pot. We had Blacks, whites, Jewish, Christian, Native Americans, Hispanic. “That formed my view of how we could work together. I’m a child of the ’60s and the civil unrest of the ’60s is part of my life. “Spelman shaped me and directed my critical thinking in a way that helped me navigate through the world. And because of those experiences, I was able to come to the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau and look at this new industry called hospitality that I had never had a part of, but I knew that the city that I was in was very special.” Maynard Jackson became the first Black mayor of Atlanta in 1990. Bertrand said that was the beginning of Atlanta transitioning into the “New South.” Jackson signed laws that required public service contracts and infrastructure projects include minority-owned businesses. {caption}Kathleen Bertrand, right, poses with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was elected the city’s 60th mayor in 2017.{/caption} Meanwhile, Bertrand advised her colleagues at the CVB that Black colleges such as Spelman held reunions in the city, so why not go after that business from other colleges? And target Black travelers through other programming. That led her to create the Atlanta Heritage Magazine to let people know Atlanta is a city that welcomes the melting pot of travelers, particularly African Americans in search of a cultural experience. “Atlanta has always been this place where African Americans can have great growth. You just had to know what industry it was going to be. And I happened to be in hospitality. It was a place of growth where dreams are possible.” Resources and Links Download the full transcript for this episode Kathleen Bertrand The post 309 | ‘Stay the Course’: Kathleen Bertrand recalls hospitality career focused on growth through diversity first appeared on Long Live Lodging.