A greater number of women are entering finance roles within the hospitality industry today, but work must still be done to ease the intimidation some women feel, leaders say.
Speaking during a panel at the recent virtual and in-person She Has a Deal event, founder Tracy Prigmore said “a lot of the women I meet [through] She Has a Deal, they say, ‘Oh, I’m not good with the numbers … the numbers scare me.’”
Overcoming those fears can lead to a rewarding career path, she said.
On the panel, Prigmore asked Marriott International Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Development Leeny Oberg and Hyatt Hotels Corp. Senior Vice President of Finance, Americas, Liz Bauer for advice on navigating the finance world within the hospitality industry.
How did you enter finance?
Bauer: Not only did I fall in love with finance, I fell in love with accounting. I started my career in public accounting. I joined [accounting company] Arthur Andersen … and a couple months into my career with this great company, it started becoming clear that they weren’t going to survive. That was sort of eye-opening for me and set me off on my path, that life wasn’t always going to go according to my plan. I’m in finance; I love things to go according to plan.
I joined KPMG … for about 10 years, and knew I wanted to do something different. Hospitality always felt like a really good fit. I met with people from Hyatt, and I just really sensed it was like a family. I’ve been with Hyatt for about 12 years, and it’s been a fantastic journey. I spent most of that time in the corporate finance space. Prior to this role, I was chief accounting officer, and then had the opportunity about two years ago to move into our Americas finance group, and I’m absolutely loving it, getting to partner more closely with operations.
On a personal note, I have two girls, [ages] 6 and 4, and a wonderful husband. Frankly, it takes us all to make it possible for me [to be in this position] and frankly was one of the questions that I had when I started down this path. Was it possible for me to have a family and be sitting here today? I can tell you it is possible, but for me I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do that. I didn’t see a lot of people that looked like me as a female, or if they did maybe they didn’t have a family. I knew what I wanted but didn’t know how to get there. I know we all face different challenges but know that it’s possible.
Oberg: I went to college thinking that I was going to be a doctor, something in health care. First thing you do is you’ve got to go take one of those chemistry classes when you’re a freshman in college, and I realized very quickly that I did not like it. I could do it, but I didn’t enjoy it.
I took a finance class in the spring of my first year in college, and I loved it. I really believe this, and this is one of the best pieces of advice [my dad said] ‘Just make sure you love what you do.’ Frankly, whether you’re a bus driver, whether you are a dog walker, lawyer, doctor — you’re going to do it for a long time. I ended up going into the undergraduate business program at [University of Virginia] then started in banking. [I] pretty quickly realized that … at the end of the day, there is nothing I like better than being part of a team that takes a strategy and then figures out how do we get the resources to make this strategy as successful as we can.
For me, that’s exactly where finance lives. You can have all the great business ideas in the world, but at the end of the day you need capital to turn that into a reality. The intersection of the resources and the ideas and the strategy have fascinated me and made my work really fun. I was fortunate enough to end up at Marriott 24 years ago, and I just really love what I do.
Why do you feel women should pursue a career in finance?
Bauer: You shouldn’t be afraid of the numbers. In our company, finance is all about being that business partner, making those connections, providing insights to enable decisions. If you’re lucky enough to work at a company where that is truly valued, I think personally there’s no better place to bring value to an organization than finance. But it can be a little bit intimidating, it can be a little bit daunting for people who are not maybe naturally drawn to finance. I think it really starts with that curiosity, partnering with someone that you trust, that you can ask questions and see if it’s something that clicks with you.
It can be so powerful, especially as a female, to have that financial background. The camaraderie that we have in finance, particularly with women, we’ve seen tremendous growth. If you look at college graduates and how many are coming out of school with a finance degree, it is pretty powerful. There’s a lot of support there to also give you what you need to develop and grow in your career.
Oberg: The good news is once you’ve figured out the basics of a cash flow and understand the way a discounted cash flow works, if you're trying to figure out value, honestly it’s all the same. It is happily not rocket science. The rocket science part is the people part. When you’re figuring out the pieces to your deal puzzle or your job puzzle, it’s all about how you work with people, how you take problems and solve them. Yes, finance is critical, really important, and you’ve got to make sure that equation works, because you need the resources to make your project work. But honestly, it is something that you shouldn’t be afraid of. It takes someone being willing to ask the basic questions; but after that, it frankly is mostly then looking at all of these assumptions over and over again and tweaking them as situations change.
What should potential hotel owners be thinking about as the industry faces tailwinds?
Oberg: Our business is a cyclical business, I’m not going to try to tell you that we don’t feel the impact of economic cycles. We rent out our rooms every night. There are businesses, there are leisure guests, there are groups coming to stay, and all of us everywhere are impacted by economic cycles. But we are also in a business that is in the long term extremely attractive.
If you think about the fundamentals under our business about people loving to travel, and if there’s anything that everybody realized during COVID, it's that travel is not a nice to have, people really came to say ‘I’ve got to be able to get out and get around.’ In the long run, this is an amazing place to be and hotel investments from a classic lending perspective are performing extremely well. So you are not hearing banks go, ‘Oh, I have all these non-performing loans and they’re doing terribly.’
Do we have a situation right now that has meaningfully more uncertainty than we had, say, right before COVID? Absolutely. But at the same time, you’ve got an industry that’s very healthy. The advice I have is to recognize that these are long-lived assets. You may need to do financing that at first seems a little tough to bear. But loans get refinanced, business is performing well and the returns will be there.
The strong brand companies are going to be the best friend for you to take to the bank. I really mean that, and I don’t think that I’m being totally biased here. You’ve also got to be willing to knock, knock, knock and knock again. It is like many things in life, that if you really want it, you’ve got to go after it and knock on that door a lot of times.
There are opportunities, particularly now as we think about greater emphasis on diversity, sustainability, opportunity for all. A lot of this is about getting out there, finding who you can talk to and knocking on the door, and of course building a good project. If you don’t have a good project to start with, you’re going to very quickly find a door closed.
For women who have deals under contract or in letter of intent status and are worried about financing, what tips can you offer as they consider term sheets from lenders?
Bauer: A big brand right now is going to be your friend. We have access to some capital; we have relationships that can be leveraged. If I’m being honest, we make investments in people. Of course the deal has to be sound, but it really starts with those relationships and those connections. Talk to the big brands about, ‘Hey, would you be willing to invest in me? Let me tell you my story.’ Have that conversation because I will tell you that we are all committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and really want to use our dollars and put something behind it. Don’t be shy in your asks and build those relationships.
Fill in the blank. When more women are owning and developing hotels, the hospitality industry will…
Oberg: There’s no doubt, the industry will perform better. That’s just the way it is, because the way products become their best selves is when they’ve got the full breadth of their consumer base giving input on what their product could be. So whether it’s service, whether it’s amenities or the design of the food and beverage, all of those things we should be having all kinds of people of color, all kinds of cultures, all [genders]; you need as many people involved in that. It’s going to make your product as successful as it can be.