Editor's note: This article will be updated over the coming weeks with new clips and links to interviews.

A global pandemic that killed millions, shut down countries and forced people to live mostly isolated lives doesn't go away without leaving a personal and societal mark.

Three years ago, the spread of COVID-19 had reached into every corner of the world. Lockdowns and quarantines became the norm. Those who could work from home did, while those considered essential workers continued to work their in-person jobs, putting their health and well-being on the line to serve others.

Following the sharp and sudden drop in travel demand, many hotel companies temporarily — or permanently — closed properties and furloughed or laid off employees to cut costs. As travel demand returned, hotels struggled to keep up due to an industrywide labor shortage and employee burnout.

Three years since the start of the pandemic, with most hotel performance metrics near, at or above recovery to 2019 levels, the industry is in many ways back to normal.

But the experiences people have had since March 2020 changed them, personally and professionally.

Hotel News Now reached out to hoteliers around the world to share their stories. Over the coming weeks, we will publish full interviews with hotel executives and managers on how their experiences through the pandemic affected them on a personal level and how that has influenced how they lead.

Sean Hehir, president and CEO of Trinity Investments, said the thing that sticks with him the most about the pandemic is the overall spirit of collaboration that arose from the collective difficulty.

Based in Hawaii, Hehir said it was hard to stay isolated in a community that values togetherness so much. He was impressed by the care and empathy the people around him exercised in keeping their friends, family, neighbors and colleagues safe.

Lori Kiel, chief commercial officer for The Kessler Collection, said the pandemic, along with mass shootings in recent years, have irreversibly changed how some people view and interact with the world around them. In some ways, change has been positive, with remote work and more efficiency resulting in less of a need for some business travel.

But she said she’s also more aware of perceived threats and has changed her own behavior because of that.

Sabine Schaffer, co-founder and CEO for Europe at Pro-invest Group, said hotel company leaders needed to lead with their hearts during the pandemic. Now that it looks as though the industry and world has come out on the other side, hotel leaders must inspire, train and nurture employees in the new realities of business, and that does require a certain level of attendance in the office.

She said there are concerns that by not being all together, groups will not function as well and some staff — perhaps the younger employees — might not receive vital life skills that have been taken for granted.

Joanna Kurowska, vice president and managing director of the United Kingdom and Ireland at IHG Hotels & Resorts, saw that the culture of IHG, among many businesses, would change dramatically due to the pandemic. She asked herself how that change would manifest in the makeup, effectiveness and cohesiveness of her teams.

She added she sympathized with the new generation of staff that came into the hotel industry in the months before the pandemic started, or even after it started.

The original way of doing things in the hotel industry was to set out a plan and then execute it, said Jens Mathiesen, president and CEO of Scandic Hotels Group. New variables now require leaders to be ready to change quickly and be humble and intelligent enough to know when that change is going to upset the original strategy, he said.

Employees have always been important in the hotel industry due to the layered nature of hotels — ownership, operations, properties — but managers simply cannot ignore just how important employees are going forward, Yotel CEO Hubert Viriot said.

Hotel industry leaders focused on the business effects of COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic, and then on strategies for the return of the business and engaging new staff, said Dimitris Manikis, president and managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Now he fears the industry has missed opportunities and might be doomed to repeat its mistakes.

Manikis added leaders now must focus on a sizable list of updated challenges.

Joseph Bojanowski, president and CEO of PM Hotel Group, said in the wake of the past three years, leaders at the company are more open-minded than ever. They’re less locked into processes, procedures and policies, and more interested in finding new ways to accomplish goals, both from a business and associate perspective.

PM Hotel Group is focused on the wellness of its associates, Bojanowski said, and that stems from having greater empathy for everyone at the company. It's critical not to just have empathy but to demonstrate it, he added.

Hazel Hagans, general manager of The Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C., said working through the pandemic felt overwhelming at times as it took its toll on everyone.

What helped carry her through those rough patches was her staff’s encouragement. Once demand started returning, there was a sense of collective relief.

The general uncertainty around the timetable of the pandemic left Priya Chandnani — vice president of revenue and distribution strategy at Benchmark, Pyramid Luxury & Lifestyle — and others in the revenue management field feeling a lack of control.

The resiliency and community formed brought the hospitality industry together during the tough times, she said.

Sloan Dean, CEO of Dallas-based third-party management company Remington Hotels, had a multitude of hats to wear, including being a father. As COVID-19 hit the U.S., Dean was finalizing a divorce and navigating how to best help his children through the pandemic. He was also worried about the liquidity of his company. The biggest lesson he took away from the valleys he and many others were facing at the time was to live in the moment and double-down on the perspective “this too shall pass.”

Remington has rolled out enhanced employee benefits that allow people to better balance family and work life, including four weeks of full-paid maternity and paternity leave. Dean said a majority of hotel companies do not offer a comprehensive full-paid maternity leave, and almost none offer paternity leave.

In a crisis such as the pandemic, Arbor Lodging Management CEO Sheenal Patel said he has learned to lean on people he can trust for stability. Those individuals were his executive and corporate team, he said.

Three years after the start of the pandemic, Patel said Arbor Lodging Management now has more corporate staff than it ever did pre-pandemic. He said many challenges arose that his team is still climbing out of.

Managing change is always on the agenda of human resources departments, but never was there so much change that needed to be managed at once, said Hilton’s Laura Fuentes, who at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was chief talent and diversity officer for Hilton and took on the chief human resources officer role in October 2020.

She recognized early on that “viewing vulnerability as a superpower” would be a key part of projecting a new dimension of leadership for a company that like others was forced to move quickly and decisively on the fly, despite its large size.

Finding ways to project some clarity amid uncertainty was a priority for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts President and CEO Geoff Ballotti throughout the early period of the pandemic, particularly with employees of the company’s headquarters in Parsippany, New Jersey.

Layoffs in early days were swift, which Ballotti said was the toughest thing he had to do, but he did it so people weren’t left “with a question mark” about whether or not their corporate jobs would ever return. He approached clarity around the company’s return to office in a similar way, establishing early on that the company’s hybrid office policy would be something employees could count on.

Thom Geshay, president and CEO of Davidson Hospitality Group, said it’s difficult to look back and say what he’d do differently to get through the pandemic simply because it was something that was almost impossible to prepare for.

Both from a business perspective and on a human level, the pandemic took a toll and presented challenges that he said he wouldn’t have believed possible just a few years ago.

At the same time, Geshay said the challenges of the last few years have given him a newfound appreciation for the people around him and the grace they showed in times of difficulty.

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