The hotel industry will probably never have a shortage of overused clichés. First, we explained such gems as “runway” and “supply creep.” Now we’re back to explain three more overused hotel industry clichés.
Meat on the bone
This term is heavily favored by hotel brokers and refers to the need for the hotel to continue to grow profits after it sells. For example, if you buy a hotel at the peak of a cycle, there’s no room for it to increase value so you don’t have any true upside potential if you want to flip the hotel a couple years later. Some brokers would tell you, “We’re in the seventh inning and almost out of runway.” So, if you buy a hotel right now, it might not have any meat left on the bone for you to enjoy.
Black swan
The term dates back to 1867 and is used to describe something that is unexpected or not believed to exist, and its mere presence results in the would-be undoing of the logic of any system of thought. In modern usage, a black swan is an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact only with the benefit of hindsight.
In 2008, the failure of Wall Street’s banks—paving the road for the Great Recession—was truly a black swan event. Since then, black swan events for the hotel industry have included: Government sequesters; the euro prices; and debt-ceiling battles.
However, most pundits use the term black swan as something recognizably bad on the horizon. But black swans, by their nature, are a surprise and not always necessarily bad. The 50% decline in oil prices last year was a positive black swan for most U.S. markets.
Disruptor
Not a lot of explanation is needed here: A disruptor is something that disrupts. For the hotel industry, an example of a disruptor would be Airbnb. The only issue we have here is that the term “disruptors” is used so much it starts to sound like a villain from a movie or maybe the name of a Transformer.
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