Today’s guest found his passion for hospitality at a young age. He is a results driven global hospitality executive with extensive operational and development experience, as well as being a passionate, driven leader with a no-nonsense approach. Keith Pierce is the EVP, President Franchise & Development at Sonesta. Keith joins the host Dan Ryan to share his viewpoints on the benefits of franchising a hotel and Sonesta’s unbelievable climb to being the 8th largest hotel in the United States.

Takeaways: 

• At its core, hospitality is the business of caring. This means that you care for your employees, your guests, the development team and the community. Without that sense of caring it will be hard for your hotel to be genuine. 
• During the pandemic, Sonesta managed to create a truly remarkable feat by growing from just 50 hotels to over 1200 hotels that they own or operate. This growth happened when the reit that owned 300 hotels elected to take hotels from the brand they currently had and put them into the Sonesta brand.
• In 2019 the hospitality industry was thriving and seeing the best business it had seen in 40 years, but once 2020 came along that brought the industry down to the lowest it has ever been in 40 years. 
• Sonesta today has a franchise model, a management model and an ownership structure, all which are unique for the Sonesta brand.
• Having a culture of caring for your franchisees helps to sway independent hotels in the decision of who they want to partner with. 
• Sonesta Hotels acts as an owner and operator of a franchisee which helps to provide a comfort level to their franchisees.
• Creating a level of caring and a good culture at a company starts with hiring the right people and having everyone work in the office together. This will help to make sure that everyone has the same goal in mind and works together well.

Quote of the Show:

1:19 “I define hospitality as the business of caring.”

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-pierce/
• Website: https://www.sonesta.com/

Shout Outs:

0:33 Marriott Desert Ridge

3:26 John Murray

3:33 SVC

4:27 Adam Portnoy and the Portnoy Family

4:44 Marriott

4:45 IHG

4:47 Wyndham 

4:48 Radison

7:15 Candlewood

7:20 Residence Inn

7:55 Redline Hotel Company

11:48 MIT

31:55 Lodging Hospitality

32:01 New York Hotel Show

32:07 Mandarin Oriental 

32:09 Time Warner Center

33:05 Waldorf Astoria

33:30 Hawthorne Suites

33:32 Joe McInerney

Ways to Tune In: 

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386
• Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s
• Amazon Music: ​​https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8c904932-90fa-41c3-813e-1cb8f3c42419
• Podbean: https://www.defininghospitality.live/
• YouTube : https://youtu.be/P4pHq99wmMs