The Russian invasion of Ukraine is now into its third sorry month, and the images of it in the media grow ever more alarming, so alarming that most of those images feature blurred patches to cover up the grisliest of detail.
My email inbox continues to receive irate correspondence from contacts suggesting the hotel industry, among other industries, could do so much more, most definitely to exit from Russia, but that it prefers to let each day pass, hoping the problem is resolved.
One note I received came from a hotel consultant familiar with Russian hotel contracts, who asked to remain anonymous due to the very real threat of potential imprisonment.
I have known this person for almost a decade.
This writer’s main critique is that international hotel companies are positioning themselves as somehow different from other industries — retail, fast food, et cetera — that have more or less successfully exited.
“What makes hospitality different from these other industries?” my correspondent asked.
“So far, we have seen from the all the major hotel players some pretty standardized and ill-thought-through 'talking points' on how hospitality is 'different' from other businesses. Firstly, they passed the buck (read, blame) to their Russian hotel owners by claiming [the branded-hotel firms] don’t actually operate the hotels; we are merely franchisors,” the email continued.
“Really? That is not what is says on the very first page of their hotel management agreements,” it added.
According to the writer, virtually all HMA contracts will have very clear “non-interference” provisions providing that the brand operator has “the exclusive, undisturbed and uninterrupted right and authority to direct and operate the hotel” and “without any owner interference whatsoever.”
In addition, contracts nearly always state that “any such owner interference in operator’s management of the hotel shall be deemed a material breach by owner.”
That “sounds like management,” the contact said.
If the hotel brands still plead inability to do much, is that because they now fully admit that they do little in the way of management in this asset-light world and merely are in charge of marketing and branding?
“Does this concession, of itself, not call for a revaluation of all HMA agreements given that the brand operators admit they don’t really do all of what they say they do?” the email pondered.
The email also took umbrage at the suggestion hotels provide a unique and necessary service to groups of guests who need a home in Russia when the Russian state is on an emergency footing.
The hole in that argument, the email writer suggested, is that Russia is safe. It is Ukraine that is not.
Also, it said, much of the foreign media is not in Russia anymore, as perhaps are not representatives from aid organizations and non-governmental offices.
Keeping a hotel open “can prove very profitable, so long as your hotel is not in the line of shelling. Just ask [hoteliers] in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Baghdad and elsewhere who remained open in war zones,” the email said.
“As if profitability is the measure of moral rectitude!” was the email writer’s final and most-damning statement.
From where I sit looking daily at the European hotel industry, I do not hear a groundswell of distaste for hotel companies continuing to operate in Russia.
Maybe future guests just assume these hotels are closed, that no one is coming to them and that there are larger things to worry about.
The media has not had a tizzy fit either, so it seems to me.
It remains the most emotive subject since I started jotting down my thoughts and observations.
What will happen, a cynic would say, is once the killing has stopped, there will be a huge sense of relief, the world will start to heal and travelers will eventually go back to Russia.
It seems impossible right now to think that will happen, but of course it will.
I use the example of Colombia, as I have been there three times and adore the place, but who would have thought in the 1980s and 1990s anyone would go there of their own self will?
But they do now.
Please tell me what you feel?
The idea of Hotel News Now’s blog and opinion pieces is to foster calm, reasoned debate.
As a journalist, I can ask lots of open-ended questions without it being obvious as to what side of the fence I am standing.
The invasion in Ukraine, though, probably has no space for anyone to sit on the fence.
If you think hotels should remain open in Russia, are you on one side of the fence? I’d love to hear from you.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.