After years of driving historic levels of efficiency to cope with a unique operating environment, hoteliers are now tasked with finding innovative ways to maintain that efficiency during what feels like a return to normal.
At the 2024 Americas Lodging Summit, Russell Urban, CEO, principal and managing partner for Electra America Hospitality Group, said the big challenge is to preserve those benefits while keeping hotels from "becoming dull and boring."
"As a result, we've got to reinvigorate the hospitality and experiential aspects of our business back into hotels," he said during the "Boardroom Outlook: Leadership" session.
Sam Nazarian, founder and CEO of SBE Entertainment Group, said he's had more of a bird's-eye view after selling his company's hotel brands to Accor. SBE is launching a new lifestyle brand currently called Project HQ through a partnership with Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.
"The idea of innovation in any industry is crucial," he said. "I've been out of the hotel business for roughly three years, but kind of have a keen insight into what are the areas that are the most disruptive, the most scalable.
"And I think that's the connectivity to the next generation, the connectivity to the largest body of travelers that don't really have a brand they're connected to and understanding from some of the digital competitors like Airbnb that have really created a lot more scale in that business specifically talking to that demographic."
The key to reaching that goal might be balancing new technology with old-school hospitality, Nazarian said.
"How can we use AI to become more connected, smarter but also not lose the human factor of hospitality?" he asked.
Nazarian said it's vital that "the pleasure of serving others" doesn't leave the business.
Greg Juceam, president and CEO of Extended Stay America, said that might be particularly challenging just because of the institutional memory the industry has lost over the past few years.
"Due to no fault of our own, during COVID we lost a lot of lifelong hoteliers from our industry, and they went to places where perhaps they felt the grass was greener," he said.
The silver lining on a dark cloud for the hotel industry is that trend might be reversing somewhat, especially as the tech industry, which was a favored landing spot, has been consistently shedding jobs.
"Not a lot of them are available to come back to the industry, and they miss it," Juceam said. "It's incumbent on us, right now, to get people back to being excited about the thing that makes our industry so special, which is the variability of every day and the opportunity to interact and create amazing experiences for people no matter what segment you're in."
From a customer perspective, Asian American Hotel Owners Association CEO Laura Lee Blake said industry leaders need to be balancing that human interaction with the "seamless connectivity" offered by technology. Globally, hoteliers are also concerned about issues such as sustainability, which haven't gotten as much traction stateside. Ultimately, she said, these are issues the industry can tackle.
"I'm very optimistic that this industry can come together and really be stronger than ever," she said.