ATLANTA — Partnering with the right franchisees is the most important aspect for hotel brand companies looking to make deals in a difficult environment.
Chip Ohlsson, executive vice president and chief development officer for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, said instead of worrying about the current environment, the focus should be on what it’ll look like when a hotel opens.
“Remember, a lot of times when you’re building a hotel, it’s not going to open tomorrow; it’s going to open a year, two years from now,” he said during an interview with Hotel News Now at the 2023 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference. “Look at the trends. Look what’s happening out there, look at more macro. And when you do that, you’ll open into a great environment.”
Ohlsson said key money is used as a tool to get hotels developed and built, but that money is irrelevant if a property is being built in a spot that doesn’t maximize the investment.
“If you build [a hotel] on the wrong location or you build the wrong brand in the wrong location, it doesn’t matter about the key money,” he said. “What matters is driving business at a hotel. If we as a franchise company go out there and tell you where the A sites are located, where the A markets are located, that’s so much more important.”
New Brand Development
Echo Suites, Wyndham’s newest extended-stay brand, launched a little more than a year ago and has grown at a fast pace since then, Ohlsson said.
“In a year’s time, we have signed 200 agreements and 200 deals in the pipeline, which is just unbelievable, phenomenal growth,” he said. “It shows that there was a segment out there that our owners were looking to drive growth into.”
Ohlsson said Wyndham Alltra, an all-inclusive resort brand that was launched in October 2021, has grown in the Caribbean and overseas, and there are plans for expansion in the U.S.
“We’ve got a huge pipeline for growth right now, all throughout Mexico and the Caribbean, and we’re going to continue to see that out there,” he said. “It is a segment that the mid-market consumer has wanted and requested for us, so for us to be in that space, it really excites them.”