🎙️ How WorldHotels is Changing Luxury Travel in 2025

Speaker1: Hey, everybody. It’s your hospitality. Friend. Glenn here. Where am I? Alice, 2025, of course. And I found Greg Habeeb World Hotels. It is so exciting to talk to you. I turn on the camera, I’m like, I can’t believe it’s been five years since Best Western acquired this. It’s so great to see Time flies. Yeah, it’s been a great five years. We have so much going on with the world and having the backbone of hotels. It’s just been incredible. I know one of the things I like about this is it’s this soft brand part of it, it’s at the upper end of the market, and it’s really helped kind of give a lot of variety and filled in a lot of the gaps about what you can offer potential owners and franchisees. True. You know, if you look at our brand, it’s our whole brand hierarchy, you know, not only from the master collections but from all the smaller collections as well. It does give us because it gives us the choice for the customer. The customer may want to stay in a luxury hotel one time, and then they may be a road warrior, or stay in a premier collection or in one of our distinctive collections. So it gives them the choice. And that’s so important because a lot of us are finding it’s just easier to affiliate with a brand that we like.

Speaker1: And a lot of lot of times there’s a lot of different subbrands within that. And on that same kind of guy, if I’m alone, I might just want to stay at a traditional Best Western hotel. But if I’m with the family, hey, I’m going to maybe say the Crane Royale right here in Orlando because they just spent like $140 million to redo it, and they’re building another convention center because you got to check this place out. So anyway so I love that that you really thinking about how people want to travel differently every time. But what is what is your love of soft brands? What do you like this so much? What do you want to run this? You know, I think because each one tells a story and you know, if you’re staying at the Crib Royale, it’s going to be very different than staying at the Lauren in Austin, you know, or any of our other hotels. So I think it gives you the chance to create your own experience, your own indelible mark, whether it be for transient or whether you’re traveling with your family and different price points. Right. So you may want the full wellness spa and the pool, and you’re not going to leave the beach resort.

Speaker1: And sometimes you’re in and out quick. But we give choices and each of our hotels because it’s not cookie cutter. Two hotels are alike. And that’s really what I love. When you have the, you know, that world hotels are going to offer you a specific type of experience, but how that experience plays out is very dependent on the nature of the location and the property itself. Right. So what are you most excited about in 2025, in terms of bringing people? Is it a glamping and bringing that back or something? Absolutely. You know, you know there’s a lot of alternative hospitality. So are the safari camps glamping, you know, a-frames, you know, I’m talking to someone that’s doing the old airstreams and having them tricked out in Tennessee and putting 30 of them on a great piece of land. But I do think the choices are amazing and in luxury. You know, last year we had $1.7 trillion in luxury dollar spends. Yeah. And if you look at travel overall worldwide we’re close to 8.6 trillion. It’s about 9% GDP. So travel is not going anywhere. And what excites me is that all the choices that are out there right. And we’re doing that now. Travel isn’t going anywhere. But how people want to travel is always changing, right? So how are you thinking about staying ahead of the trends, so you’re always engaging with properties that can help everyone make the most profit.

Speaker1: That’s a good point. And we have a lot of different customers. So you know, you talked about glamping, for example. You know, one of the results of Covid and even the experience from Airbnb. People want space. They want to have an experience. And it’s all about creating unique experiences, whether it be city center or in the middle of the country, in the middle of nowhere. You’ve got to create that, and that’s what excites us, and we’re responding. You know, we have a need for that. And if you look at all the different generations, they’re not so loyal to some what their parents did. Right. So in fact, I would argue at least, no, this is based on personal experience that whatever mom and dad, like the kids, want to do the opposite. True. It’s true, it’s true. Yeah. My kids are very well behaved, by the way. Yeah. So you always have to figure out how to. But you’re not only just connecting with different generations. But going back to our original point, you’re connecting with individuals who have different personalities at different times. And that’s really tough to know, like how I’m going to want to travel and then address opportunities and offers to me depending on what what you know, costume I’m wearing of the day on how I want to experience travel, you know.

Speaker1: No. It’s true. And we have we listen, we do a lot of research. You know, we have a lot of great partners that we that share data with us. And at the end of the day, it’s look at our occupancies are strong, our ADR are strong. There’s a movement for a lot of independents because they want that uniqueness. But you also got to realize the trends. Mocktails are big, not just the fitness center but a wellness center. Right. So a full experience of wellness and maybe some procedures done even we have hotels that can you can get a procedure done. Really. Absolutely not that you need it Glenn. Oh no. It’s just helping me with my eyes a little bit. But it’s knowing the customer. Yeah. Right. Is there a procedure to actually make me a good podcast host? You’re doing just fine all these years. You’re doing brilliantly. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate you guys out there for supporting us and watching. Please like and Share and all of that kind of great stuff for this video. So Greg and myself, hey, thanks so much. And check out Unit focus.com. See you all later. Bye.