How Hotel Leaders Build Relationships at The Lodging Conference

Glenn: [00:00:00] Everybody. It’s your hospitality friend Glenn in Arizona. At the lodging conference, I found my friend Wayne West over here. But wait, I still got to introduce our friends over at Actabl. Actabl, they give you the power to profit. I’m excited because we are at the lodging conference, one of my most fun events of the year, and I said, we got to speak to the president of Newport Hospitality Group over here. How are you doing?

Wayne: [00:00:21] I’m well, man, good to see you as always.

Glenn: [00:00:22] Great to see you. So I thought being that this is the first video of more than you guys are going to have the patience for videos at the lodging conference. Let’s set the stage for the event. Right. Your management company, you’re trying to connect with people, I suppose. What are you thinking about when you come to an event like the lodging conference before, and how do you kind of approach it?

Wayne: [00:00:41] Well, I’ll tell you what I do before the event. I write down everybody that I may run into, right? And think about, okay, what I want to talk to them about, but this is a great opportunity to sit down with the brand leaders, right? And our management company friends, my peers in the group, my competitors in the group, the carrier, the carriers of the world. I could need the bugsy’s of the world. I could name hundreds of them. Totally. You get to sit down and talk to them and engage with them and see how they’re succeeding. And it’s a fun event. It’s a casual event where you can sit down. There’s lots of time to do that. And then the sessions are great. You know, they’ve done a nice job of really bringing in folks like yourself, you know, people on panels and engaging topics. You know, we have a crisis every time we have one of these events, regardless of the venue, there’s a crisis. I’m not sure if there’s a crisis this year other than AI. I’m not sure if there’s a crisis. You know.

Glenn: [00:01:26] I don’t know, but my predictions are I’m going to be hosting one of the general session panels. I’m very excited about that. Thank you for the honor of doing that. One of the things I one of the cliches that I hear at all of these events are, well, we can’t really do anything until after the election. We’re going to hear that one. I think my other favorite cliche is what inning are we in of the cycle? I don’t think that’s a really a fun one as well. But you said you meet with the brands just to kind of get a better idea of what their expectations are. If they’re going in the right direction that you’re going in.

Wayne: [00:01:56] A lot of it is fine tuning that, but more of us building the relationship is seeing the folks you’re sitting down and having a cocktail or dinner with them is sitting down and talking to them. You know, we’re in such a transient world where you get on a Zoom call, but we don’t have but half a dozen opportunities a year to go to the conferences, the conferences or these major conferences. So it’s nice to be able to sit down and talk. Nine times out of ten, we don’t have an issue. It’s more about, you know, understanding maybe where they’re heading. They may give you a hint of something going on, but they’re not going to disclose anything that’s secret. But it’s great building that relationship. And this event does it really well.

Glenn: [00:02:27] Yeah, that’s what I that’s what I really like about this, this particular event that everybody’s more casual. It’s kind of me the unofficial kickoff of conference season, depending on on when it is and everybody seems refreshed and ready to go. Any advice for first timers?

Wayne: [00:02:41] No, I would say take full advantage of the sessions, take full advantage of the breaks and finding people to talk to. You meet great people at lunch that maybe you’ve never met before. I sat down with some folks last night at dinner and sat down beside someone that has one of my dearest friends working for him, and I never met the owners of the company, so that was another. It’s just a nice thing that you run into those kind of opportunities.

Glenn: [00:03:01] Yeah. And be open and ready for potentially meaningful bump ins. That’s what I like about this. Yeah. Everybody’s ready to say hello. You never know what’s going to happen. Just keep an open mind and have a good time.

Wayne: [00:03:11] Yeah. And you look at the venue. I know you know this is fabulous. We were talking about all the places we go. And this is certainly one of the favorite settings.

Glenn: [00:03:18] All right. So before we wrap up, I want to talk about your business. You said there’s no really big issues. So that means you’re feeling pretty good about business in general.

Wayne: [00:03:26] I think this year surprised us a bit. You know it started off a bit slow, but in the summer was really good. We have a lot of transient markets, a lot of travel markets, and it had a really good year. Now the fall with the election, we can use any excuse, right? You could pick any.

Glenn: [00:03:40] It’s kind of why I tease because I think that’s an excuse not to make decisions.

Wayne: [00:03:43] Yeah. And I think, you know, you got to build your business plan. You got to adapt. You got to be nimble, right. And whichever side wins or loses, we’re going to have hotels. And I was with someone the other day that said, it doesn’t matter. There’s always something going on in the hotel business. You know, just adapt and do the best you can for your owners, your team members and the brands.

Glenn: [00:03:59] And one of the messages that I’m giving in speeches all over the country right now is I really firmly believe the travel economy has become separated from the overall general economy. So don’t confuse yourself by seeing what’s going on in retail, for example, or car sales, for example, because people want to travel. And I’ve got a lot of evidence, including the LA saying this is going to be an overall record year for dollars spent in the travel industry.

Wayne: [00:04:23] The $4 gasoline didn’t hurt us a bit up and down highway 95 and at our resorts, and it didn’t hurt us a bit.

Glenn: [00:04:29] For 30 years of my career, I’ve always been saying that if people are going to cancel a trip because of what the tank of gas costs, they weren’t really serious about traveling anyway. Doesn’t make any sense to me.

Wayne: [00:04:38] And they may make different decisions. They may come right here and there, but they’re going to travel. They’re going to go to hotels, they’re going to eat out. They’re going to take their family somewhere and enjoy the.

Glenn: [00:04:45] That’s right. They may go closer to home. They may bring some meals with them. They may trade down on meals, but they will stay in your hotel.

Wayne: [00:04:52] Yes, they will wait.

Glenn: [00:04:53] Great talking to you today.

Wayne: [00:04:54] Good to be with you again. Thank you.

Glenn: [00:04:55] This is awesome. Thank you. Please like, share and subscribe. And thanks again to our friends over at Activebeat. We’ll see you here at the lodging conference. I’ll be the guy in the corner stuffing sushi down his throat by.