When Sloan Dean took over as president and CEO of Remington Hotels in late 2019, his immediate goal was to shake off the label of just being Ashford Inc.'s management arm and expand its presence as a third-party manager for other institutional ownership groups.

While those efforts took a hit during the pandemic, Dean ultimately expects the company's outperformance during the downturn will spur more owners to join the fold. He plans to add further fuel to the fire by acquiring smaller third-party management companies in the latter half of 2021.

"Remington is going to be very active in the [mergers and acquisitions] space," he said. "Aimbridge has gotten a lot of the headlines and Highgate, as well, in terms of putting their capital to work and buying competitors, doing some creative mergers and that kind of thing. I think you'll start to see Remington in those headlines, as well."

He described management companies with 15 to 40 properties under contract as the "sweet spot" for potential acquisitions. He said his company is well-capitalized with no debt on its books.

That runs contrary to the industry perspective of one of Remington's related companies: Ashford Hospitality Trust. That real estate investment trust has been dealing with significant debt issues of late as revenues dried up in a historically bad hotel demand environment. Remington is owned by Ashford Inc., which advises both Ashford Hospitality Trust and luxury hotel REIT Braemar Hotels & Resorts.

Despite general perceptions leaving some owners reticent to partner with Remington in the early days of the pandemic, Dean said those debt issues have been largely dealt with through a $200 million loan to Ashford Trust from Oaktree Capital Management with the option to draw $250 million more.

"Until the Oaktree deal, several people didn't want to hire us because the question mark was, 'Well is your largest owner going to have bankruptcy challenges or have to give back more assets that you potentially manage?'" he said. "So now that that's been completely solved for, we're now seeing the floodgates open."

Dean said Remington's early successes during the pandemic in finding alternative demand sources and reducing costs at hotels was integral for stabilizing Ashford Trust.

"We leased the Marriott Raleigh to the county to house homeless, and effectively got it to a point that it was NOI breakeven for three or four months, which was incredibly important," he said. "We then leased the Atlanta Indigo Midtown to Georgia Tech for the fall semester and actually got it to NOI-positive territory."

He said his company is now up to "10 capital partners that we manage for," which he described as "institutional, multi-unit owners."

Dean said his company is close to inking a deal with a hotel REIT other than Ashford and Braemar, which would be a first for the company, and overall is in conversations with three publicly traded companies.

A former revenue manager himself, Dean said one of the top issues the industry faces as it ramps back up from the pandemic downturn will be the a lack of talent, particularly among revenue managers. He said this is driven in part by the fact that the skill set for a successful revenue manager is industry-agnostic, so many of the people who could thrive in those roles have left for industries with more stability.

In addition to those with established careers who've decided to leave, the hotel industry is in a difficult place in terms of recruiting the next generation of revenue managers.

"If I graduated from, you know, [The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania] with an economics degree and maybe had a propensity for math and was drawn to revenue management, there's no way I'd want to go work in the travel vertical unless I had a passion for it because I just saw the industry go through World War III," he said.

Dean has seen this talent drain first hand at his company, and it has extended beyond the revenue-management discipline to skilled employees in various departments.

"It's true for every discipline within the industry that you could argue is a more agnostic skill set," he said. "I've lost several accountants who've gone and worked in senior living and other [sectors] and said 'Hey, screw this. I can do fixed asset accounting in another industry and not have to worry about my job.' I had an HR coordinator who went to go work for a publicly traded veterinary business because that business is recession-proof."

He said there's not necessarily any solution to this problem other than it getting better the further the industry eventually gets away from the pandemic, and knowing which types of people to target to work in the industry.

"We have to continue to recruit people that are passionate about travel and that don't feel like they want to leave because it's in their blood," he said.