Hotel leaders are optimistic about the industry's prospects in 2024 and recently shared their insights into how demand and the larger business environment might evolve this year.
Hotel News Now caught up with several of the top industry executives at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit and conducted a series of one-on-one video interviews to get their insights. Here are some of the top takeaways from those interviews.
Marriott International President and CEO Tony Capuano said he's seeing positive travel trends across the board, including continued strength in leisure along with a spike in groups and steady improvement in business travel.
He said large resorts are poised to benefit from both leisure and group demand and will be perhaps the best hotel assets in 2024.
“That's true with many of our resorts,” Capuano said. “They are very appealing group meeting and conference destinations, but you want to make sure you preserve the ability to drive high rate of transient business in the peak season as well, so it's trying to find that right balance and, really, the opportunity for our teams is to fill in those shoulder seasons with group.”
Chris Silcock, Hilton's president of global brands and commercial services, said even in a strong demand environment it's becoming more important to leverage personalization to lure leisure and business travelers. He added a big part of that is understanding travelers' stay occasions.
“Customers have quite a different set of requirements when they’re there for the weekend than they may have when they’re there in the week for business,” Silcock said. “We’re enabling them to customize that one single stay with different elements for the different business or leisure parts,” such as breakfast, early check-in or late check-out.
Gilda Perez-Alvarado, who recently took over as chief strategy officer for Accor and CEO of its Orient Express brand after a nearly two-decade tenure with JLL, said global travel demand trends vary.
"The world is a little bit incongruous. There are jurisdictions where travel is going up; there's others where we're now entering into a new stabilization phase. As a global company, we do have to take stock of what's going on," she said. "There's the very big, mature markets; there's the emerging markets; there are markets that have been transformed during the pandemic that don't look anything like they did before. ... Each market has its own individual strategy. For us, there's quite a bit of work to do."
Noble Investment Group's Mit Shah got retrospective thinking about his company's 30-year anniversary. He said the biggest difference between the hotel industry today and when Noble was founded in 1994 might be the growing sophistication among extended-stay and select-service hotels.
He added this trend mirrors other industries built around franchising.
"We've actually seen this in the quick-service restaurant business and others, where it used to be just McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's in that space," Shah said. "We can play this out as it relates to [hotels]."
Davidson Hospitality Group is similarly celebrating an anniversary this year, with 2024 marking the company's 50th year in operation. President and CEO Thom Geshay said he's hopeful it's not just a nostalgic year but an active one across the industry.
"I think 2024 is going to be a good year. I guess it's a year we get back to doing some transactions, and that's good for everybody," he said. "It's food for the whole ecosystem — lenders, owners, [private equity], operators. We all benefit when there's transactions going on."
Dan Hansen, global head of the Hyatt Studios brand for Hyatt Hotels Corp., said he expects significant positive momentum for the industry.
"I think 2024 is the inflection point," he said. "If I look back over my career, you know the deals I did — the renovations, the developments — the ones I did when times were tough all did well. The ones I did when times got better started to be a little more challenging."
Julie Arrowsmith, CEO of G6 Hospitality, said there continues to be significant opportunities at the lower end of the brand spectrum with even economy hotels gaining momentum in growing rate — if they're able to win business demand.
“There are decisions you make as an owner to take on business that, as we get further away from COVID, I think we can look at differently,” she said, citing business travelers in particular.
In terms of hotel investment and operations, Hospitality Ventures Management Group's President and CEO Robert Cole said his company has seen growth in operations, particularly among owners who want a greater bottom-line focus from their management partners.
“It was one of our most successful years from a growth standpoint,” he said. “All but one of those were related directly to owners making decisions around changing their operator based on underperforming hotels or consolidation of managers in their portfolio.”
BWH Hotel Group President and CEO Larry Cuculic said his company is poised for outsized growth after spending the past few years repositioning and broadening its brand portfolio.
“I look at Best Western kind of as this tree that has a tremendously strong root foundation and trunk that builds up,” he said. “Now we have 19 brands — we have boutique, we have luxury, upscale, premium economy — and those are the branches that have now grown out of our strong foundation.”