CHICAGO — Hyatt Hotels Corp. President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian is committed to “doubling Hyatt’s Black representation in the next five years, period, end of story.”
His plan for the Chicago-based global hotel company is to focus on leadership roles and typical management trajectories.
“We’re looking at VP and above in the corporate office and also are focused on general managers,” he said. “Above the GM level are people in roles like area VP or field VP and the candidates for those roles come from the GM ranks, so we must see Black representation at the GM level. And that means we have to back up and include the direct reports to the GM.”
In July, the company launched its "World of Care" initiative and released 2020 data that showed approximately 10% of Hyatt's entry-level managers in the U.S., 6.6% of all managers and 4.4% in leadership roles were Black.
Hoplamazian said while Hyatt also commits to advancing all minority groups, including women and other people of color, “the systemic aspects of racism in this country have been very acute around the Black community,” and for that reason, the company’s plan is designed specifically to plan, manage, track and deliver results around increasing Black representation specifically.
Along those lines, he said Hyatt’s initiatives also will apply to reexamining the company’s supply chain and community organizations it supports.
He’s also interested in boosting the numbers of Black hotel owners.
“I remember banks saying [last year] they were dedicating billions of dollars in capital to help support minority-owned and Black-owned businesses, but not once have I asked my treasury team to contact those banks to say we’re trying to put capital together for hotel development. You guys have made these commitments, so how can we as a company help you put this together?”
As companies address Black representation, Hoplamazian said it’s also important, especially now, to address the “serious reputation problem in our industry.”
Hoplamazian said higher wages are “a given, and that’s great” in efforts to attract workers to the industry, but he believes hoteliers must also change the narrative to make the industry appeal to all sorts of people beyond the “typical” cohort of potential hires.
“We must expand the entry points and bring more people of color and opportunity youths into this industry; that is where we need to look,” he said. “There are tremendous opportunities for people.”
Group Business’ Return
While Hoplamazian was confident the total volume of business travel — whether gauged by room nights sold or revenue earned — will come back, he said the composition will undoubtedly look different, and use cases will be different as well.
“Big service firms and tech companies were already downsizing their offices before the pandemic hit, and the company culture was being nurtured at client sites,” he said. “Companies may have sized their offices to accommodate 50% of the people they accommodated before and therefore have no meeting space in their offices. They now have to get people back together, so all of a sudden your hotels can serve a different function, with a use case that didn’t exist before. We’re seeing it all the time at our hotels.”
In addition to the business case for reconvening meetings, as executives are “desperate to have partner meetings and new-employee meetings to reinforce new cultures,” Hoplamazian said the hotel industry must recognize that pent-up demand for travel is driven by emotional experiences.
“Travel absolutely is coming back, and no matter whether it’s leisure or business, it’s because of that need for human connectivity,” he said.
Resort Front and Center
Hoplamazian acknowledged that leisure travel “has been the most durable segment of travel and the fastest to recover” for the Hyatt customer base throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and in past recessions as well.
He said leisure travel, plus the network effect of Hyatt’s loyalty program, drove the company’s August acquisition of Apple Leisure Group, which is expected to close by the end of the year. The deal would contribute approximately 100 properties and 33,000 rooms in 10 countries.
A big part of the attraction of the Apple Leisure Group portfolio was its distribution outside of the Americas, Hoplamazian said.
“They haven’t even scratched the surface," he said, adding that Europe, the Middle East and Asia are all primed for all-inclusive offerings.
Hoplamazian said that the United States is ripe for all-inclusive experiences that go beyond what he called a typical mindset that “all-inclusive is crummy, with cheap food, like herding cattle.”
Hyatt’s three Miraval resorts use the all-inclusive model, as does Ventana Big Sur, which Hyatt acquired in June.
“Those are just small examples. There’s no reason why the high-end, all-inclusive model should not be alive and well in the U.S.,” he said.