NASHVILLE, Tennessee — A lifestyle hotel operator of more than 30 properties in the U.S. has seen the ebbs and flows of leisure demand this summer.
Harry Carr, senior vice president of revenue management at Pivot Hotels & Resorts, the lifestyle hotel operating vehicle of Davidson Hospitality Group, attributed the softness in U.S. leisure demand to U.S. consumers vacationing elsewhere this summer as well as other tourism and accommodations providers capturing that demand.
"We've seen actually a little bit of a pullback in pure leisure. I think that the cruise industry is going strong, and it depends on the market," Carr said in a video interview at the Hotel Data Conference. "We haven't seen the inbound international travel come back as strong, especially West Coast, with Asia-Pacific. And I think people are being a little bit more choosy with their time and their locations. ... Everyone's been to Florida, so now they're exploring new destinations. But in general, it's been just a little bit slower than last year."
Group bookings, meanwhile, are recovering across Pivot's portfolio, though the number of meeting attendees is lower, Carr said.
"The booking window is still very, very short. So we're seeing companies book a few weeks out for a regional or a sales meeting," he said. "Overall volume and our pace for 2025 is strong. Some of the larger pieces of business, we've seen a lower attendance. So even though the number of bookings may be up year over year in some markets, the volume of attendees is down."
So far in 2024, Pivot has added six hotels to its management portfolio. In June, Pivot signed a management contract with Goldenrod Companies to operate The Scarlet, Lincoln, a 154-room hotel in Lincoln, Nebraska, that's part of Marriott's Tribute Portfolio. The Scarlet is Pivot's second hotel in Nebraska; it also operates the Kimpton Cottonwood Hotel in Omaha.
In January, KHP Capital Partners chose Pivot to manage its Key West Historic Inns Collection, which includes the 85-room Winslow's Bungalows, the 45-room Lighthouse Hotel, the 23-room Ridley House, the 22-room Ella's Cottages and the 44-room Fitch Lodge. All five inns are located in the Old Town district of Key West, Florida. Pivot manages three other hotels and resorts in Florida.
When working with hotel owners, the Pivot team prioritizes understanding their goals for their properties and how Pivot's revenue strategists and operations managers can reach them.
"Being transparent, understanding what their goals are, whether it might be occupancy, looking at the volume, looking at a higher rate, making sure that we maintain the standards that they're looking for," Carr said. "But as long as we're aligned, and we can explain to them why a certain strategy might have a positive or negative impact, especially in the current environment, because renovations have been put off in some cases or there might be pressures from the lenders. And so as long as we understand that and have that partnership, it works well for us."
A key component of conversations with a hotel's owners, asset managers and other stakeholders is going over performance reports and breaking down the data into digestible action items. A big question for the hotel revenue management discipline is how much artificial intelligence tools will be a part of revenue strategy going forward.
AI is already a familiar tool for hotel revenue managers, Carr said.
"Can you use it to summarize a report that's coming out of one of your systems? Can it easily extract data and put it into plain English so that all the stakeholders, owners, general managers, directors of sales understand that and really free up the time for additional analysis?" Carr said. "Our directors of revenue really should be paid to dig in, and the more time we can give them that was spent on just pulling data, or working on menial reports that is going to be the key to how we beat the market."
For more of Hotel News Now's conversation with Pivot's Harry Carr, watch the video embedded above.