Lodging Leaders

Lera Covington is captain of Datcher, a three-member team named for Jane Eleanor Datcher, who in 1890 was the first African American woman to earn an advanced degree from Cornell University.

Lera is 34 and will graduate in December with dual master degrees in real estate and in regional planning. Her teammates are 27-year-old Joanne Angbazo and Kristen Collins, who’s 25. They’re graduates of Cornell and, along with Lera, are members of Cornell Real Estate Women.

Lera describes the project they plan to pitch.

Heaven Douglas is a 24-year-old honors graduate of Howard University and a financial analyst at RLJ Lodging Trust. Heaven has teamed up with Chelsea Lawson, 21 and a senior at University of Houston’s Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. Their team is called Phoenix Capital.

Heaven and Chelsea met at Hospitality Leaders Today 100, an organization dedicated to creating a pipeline of minority business executives.

Heaven is a native of New Orleans. She explains she decided to pursue a career in hospitality finance to gain an early foothold in the industry.

Since the coronavirus pandemic crippled the U.S. lodging industry beginning in mid-March, tens of thousands of hotels have struggled to keep their lights on and attract business.

However, a new group of hoteliers this week hopes to disrupt third-party booking channels with a blackout campaign to protest the commissions charged by online travel agencies during the COVID-19 crisis.

Reform Lodging is asking its nearly 2,000 members to shut off their branded room inventory from Expedia Group and Booking Holdings on Friday and Saturday in what it calls a “symbolic” act of defiance.

In this episode of Lodging Leaders podcast, we report on the “Lights Out, OTA!” campaign and explore the financial implications of OTA commissions and franchiser’s reservation fees on owners of branded hotels.

We feature Sagar Shah of Philadelphia, co-founder and president of Reform Lodging and managing principal at Yatra Capital Group; Parth Patel, president of VIPA Hospitality in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and a member of Reform Lodging; and Robert Cole of Dallas, Texas, a senior research analyst in lodging and leisure for Phocuswright. We also include sound bites from second-quarter earnings calls with CEOs of Expedia Group and Booking Holdings.

On average, staffing levels in U.S. hotels are half of what they were in mid-March, when the federal government declared the new-coronavirus outbreak a national emergency and travel came to an abrupt halt.

Hotel Effectiveness recently reported that re-hiring in recent months is a mixed bag. *Economy-segmented hotels are almost back to full staff while staffing at hotels from midscale to luxury tiers ranges from 75 percent to 45 percent, respectively.

However, at the end of summer, hiring had slowed across the board.

In this episode of Lodging Leaders, we take a look at how hotels are managing their workforces in the COVID-19 era, from staying in touch with remote employees to deciding when to bring back laid-off workers and in what roles.

One little-talked-about reality happening in hotels? The changing job description of the general manager. The job is really hard right now and many are not up to the task.

*Over the past six months, employers and employees have had many other rude awakenings. Many hotel owners and operators are taking this time to re-evaluate their hiring and retention practices in the dual shadows of the pandemic and the reckoning of racial inequality.

We talk to Del Ross, chief revenue officer at Hotel Effectiveness in Atlanta, Georgia, and Bryan DeCort, chief operations officer at Hotel Equities, also in Atlanta, about workforce changes brought about by the coronavirus crisis.

We also feature Douglas Tutt, CEO of Hcareers in Chicago, Illinois, who reminds us that the virus of racism continues to impact American workplaces, including hospitality. He talks about how the industry can seriously address the issue through revised hiring and retention practices.

Extended Stay America lost money in the second quarter of this year, but in the COVID-19 age the company found reasons to celebrate.

It was able to keep its 636 hotels open since the pandemic struck in mid-March. It furloughed few of its 8,000 employees. And, at the end of June, its hotels had an average across-the-board occupancy of 80 percent, up from a low of 50 percent in mid-April.

The story is not Extended Stay America’s alone. The U.S. extended-stay hotel sector has proven to be the most resilient of the lodging segments amid the coronavirus crisis – especially those in the economy and mid-price tiers.

In this episode of Lodging Leaders podcast, we explore how extended-stay hotels have fared better than their transient cousins during the coronavirus crisis and what the future holds for the sector. We feature Bruce Haase, president and CEO of Extended Stay America in Charlotte, North Carolina; Matt McElhare, director of extended-stay brand strategy and operations at Choice Hotels International in Rockville, Maryland; Andrew Alexander, president of Red Roof in Columbus, Ohio; and Mark Skinner, partner of The Highland Group of Atlanta, Georgia, which tracks the business performance of extended-stay hotels.

McKinsey & Company’s COVID-19 U.S. Consumer Pulse Survey released in late August shows how consumer sentiment has changed over the six months since COVID-19 arrived in the U.S.

People are tuned into what researchers are calling the health-and-caring economy. And hotels are part of the mix.

The survey shows an increase since mid-March of consumers’ intent to book a hotel stay in the U.S.

The study also reveals more people are shopping and buying online.

But for consumers who plan to show up in person at a business, including hotels, most will base their buying decisions on whether the business treats its employees with care and whether staff members and customers wear face masks.

The message consumers are sending businesses is loud and clear – health and safety is their top concern. But if your hotel can expand that consumer sentiment with a caring message, you may have a fighting chance at surviving the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

In this episode of Lodging Leaders podcast we interview several hotel marketing experts about how the coronavirus crisis has reshaped the traditional sales-and-marketing funnel and what hotels need to do to attract the attention of prospective guests, many who are making travel decisions just a few hours in advance of booking.

We feature Susan Barry, founder and president of Hive Marketing in Atlanta; Glenda Lee, a consultant at TBT Hospitality in Washington, D.C.; and Theresa Hajko, director of revenue management at Spire Hospitality of Irving, Texas.

MMGY Travel Intelligence reported in August that most of the 1,200 would-be vacationers it surveyed plan to travel by car during the next six months. The 73 percent of respondents over 18 years of age who plan a road trip is up by 6 percent compared to a similar survey in July.

These days, travel consumers rank health and safety as the number-one guest amenity in the age of COVID-19. And they feel more in control behind the wheel versus on an airline or cruise ship.

“The road is king,” says Andrew Alexander, president of Red Roof, in a recent interview with Lodging Leaders.

What’s also hot are exterior corridor motels. The same road trippers who plan to drive to their vacation destinations this year favor the old-fashioned motels for the same health and safety reasons.

In this episode of Lodging Leaders, we explore trends in road travel that give lodging customers a greater sense of control during the coronavirus pandemic and how you can prepare your property to receive guests who value safety and certainty.

We feature Alexander and Matt Hostetler, chief development officer at Red Roof; Michael Mueller, president of Super 8 at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts; Harry Sladich, executive vice president of lodging development and franchise operations at Red Lion Hotels Corporation; and Bryan Tubaugh, executive vice president at Focus Hospitality Management, manager of the newly opened The Tuxon, a boutique motel in Tucson, Arizona.

The coronavirus pandemic and the resulting downturn in the travel industry will make it difficult for investors to find the capital they need to acquire and develop hotels.

That means minority investors, in particular Black Americans, might face an uphill climb in qualifying for bank loans unless they can close the ever-widening equity gap.

Several industry groups, including owners, are looking post-pandemic and reviving efforts to partner with Black investors in hotel development, including partially financing new projects.

Industry leaders also want to educate minority owners of other commercial real estate assets how to reap financial returns through investment in hotels.

Last week, Lodging Leaders reported on Black hoteliers introducing boutique concepts that celebrate Black heritage and culture. This week, we explore the state of Black hotel investment and how the coronavirus pandemic has strengthened industry leaders’ resolve to invite more minority investment into hospitality.

We feature John Lancaster, new regional vice president of emerging markets at Choice Hotels International in Rockville, Maryland; Omari Head, director at Paramount Lodging Advisors, a hotel brokerage in Washington, D.C.; and Navroz Saju and Azim Saju of Hotel Development and Management Group, a family-owned business in Ocala, Florida.

In a recent Zoom conference hosted by the African American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, hospitality entrepreneur Kristin Kitchen talked about her lodging company that showcases Black heritage and supports minority-owned companies.

Kitchen is part of a trend toward building hospitality ventures related to Black history and culture, a sub-sector of the $200 billion global Heritage Tourism movement, which also ranks as the fastest-growing travel trend in America.

As with most hospitality ventures, Kitchen and her company, Sojourn Heritage Accommodations, are struggling to do business amid the coronavirus pandemic, but the effort to increase the number of Black-owned hotels continues, albeit at a reduced pace.

During the business lull, two entrepreneurs new to the scene are developing fresh concepts that celebrate Black culture and cater to the next generation of travelers.

In this episode of Lodging Leaders we feature Damon Lawrence, founder of Homage Hospitality Group in Oakland, California, and Robin Staten, founder of Tiny Urban Escapes in Indianapolis, Indiana. They share their visions for independent boutique accommodations and how they’re preparing to capitalize on pent-up demand during and after the coronavirus crisis.