Why More Women Aren’t Becoming Hotel General Managers

Glenn: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. It’s your hospitality friend Glenn here on the show floor at the hospitality show. I found my new friend Rachel Moniz over here with HEI Hotels and resorts. But first, I want to thank my friends over here at Entegra. EntegraPS.com, your GPO partner in hospitality. It’s so great to see you.

Rachel: [00:00:16] It’s great to see you too.

Glenn: [00:00:17] So I’ve been in this business for many, many, many, many, many years. See all the gray hair over here? But we never had a chance to talk before on camera. So I’m particularly excited. And before we went and I said, hey, what are you passionate about?

Rachel: [00:00:29] People, people.

Glenn: [00:00:30] People, which is so important. Obviously in hospitality.

Rachel: [00:00:33] The most important.

Glenn: [00:00:34] Thing. Yeah, it would really suck if you’re not into people in hospitality, right? Right. So how are you thinking about developing your people, bringing people up and making sure that they continue to love our business and find success within our business?

Rachel: [00:00:46] Yeah. Well, I think, you know, even so appropriate for today, we have three general managers that we nominated for stars of the industry award that came to the hospitality show for the first time. And really what the strong red thread was for all of those general managers was their ability to build culture and to anchor their hotels into the community and develop people. Yeah. And so I think each general manager plays that part and that’s really key and critical in our hotels. I would say on a corporate level, what I’ve been personally, one of my personal missions has been women in hospitality and women in leadership. If you look at our portfolio, it’s mainly upper upscale luxury lifestyle. So kind of complicated, complex assets that require, you know, a real great business leader, culture builder, all of those things. And when you look at this industry, men and women come in pretty much equal. But then as they start to rise, many women actually leave the general manager or they leave that path to become a general manager and go into they leave the industry or they go into.

Glenn: [00:01:48] Sales.

Rachel: [00:01:49] Or human resources. And those are great.

Glenn: [00:01:51] No, there’s nothing there’s nothing wrong with that. And I think as human beings the gender thing does lead us towards certain roles. And I think, I don’t know if it’s culturally or gender specific that more women want to do sales and marketing and public relations versus operations and the finance side of the business. But over the last ten years or so, I’ve kind of seen that going the other direction. Well, we have.

Rachel: [00:02:17] Parity actually in the finance aspect of our business directors of finance. We have many, many women directors of finance in our hotels. So I think that it’s the general manager role. And I think it’s the grind. And it’s, you know, just so we started a women in leadership organization. And I talked to many women leaders that are either rising up and thinking about what they want to do with their career and trying to keep them on the track to become a general manager. And they do bring that up. They bring up this idea of like, well, what if I want to have a family? How do I, how do I operate this 24 over seven business as a general manager?

Glenn: [00:02:48] I’m glad you said that because as much equality we have in society, I still think parenting really falls back on women much more, which could be deleterious to their career, particularly if they want to be a high performer general manager, which requires a lot of time and effort.

Rachel: [00:03:02] Right. And so my message is that you can have it all. Yeah. And like, you have to align yourself with a company like HHI that will, you know, sort of foster this idea that you can have a whole life. Right. So I tell our general managers, whether they’re men or women that, you know, you need to say, if you’re going to go to Johnny’s baseball game, say you’re going to Johnny’s baseball game. Don’t, don’t, don’t say you’re going to a meeting like, like, you know, be honest. Everybody else knows that this is what’s important to you because it’s important to the company that we take care of our families as well as our families at work.

Glenn: [00:03:32] It really is. And that’s what I love about culture, generally speaking, in 2026 versus when I started my career. Right. Because you were probably expected to always be there. Yes. And have no other life. No. Right. Yeah. And it’s really nice now to have that other thing. But also when you were young and upcoming, you probably did not have other female leaders to rely on and learn the ropes. Right. I, as a guy always had that because men have always been in those positions and.

Rachel: [00:03:57] People hire in their own reflection.

Glenn: [00:03:59] That’s exactly.

Rachel: [00:04:00] That’s just human nature.

Glenn: [00:04:01] Exactly. And I work really hard to try to not do that. But you have to be very conscious.

Rachel: [00:04:08] Intentional. Yeah. So that’s really important.

Glenn: [00:04:10] You know, when we think about these, all these organizations that have popped up about women in hospitality, it’s easy to take the negative approach, but I’m going to take the other side, right? We are all equal, but we’re equal differently. And women have a different set of rules that they have to follow. And you people like you are the best ones, I think, to be able to give them the tools to be more successful than ever before.

Rachel: [00:04:31] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we’re not going to change everybody’s perception or point of view, because that goes back to the dark ages and the way people are raised and everybody’s imprint on it. But I think absolutely making sure that people are equipped with the tools, like you said, giving them task force opportunities, partnering with owners to give people first time GM roles, and then using all the corporate resources to help them rise. That’s something that we’re really proud of, and we’ve been really successful in promoting women leaders as a result.

Glenn: [00:04:57] Yeah. All right. So that makes sense. But I want to know that when you get a new person to be the general manager for the first time. Yes, that’s probably a really, really critical time because they’re probably freaked out, right? And you don’t want to lose them, but you also want them to be successful. So how do you think about making sure that they feel comfortable not knowing a lot of stuff?

Rachel: [00:05:16] Well, well, we make sure that they know a lot of stuff. Yeah. And one of the ways that we do that is that before somebody becomes a general manager and takes that role, they task force as a general manager for long lengths of time, 2 or 3 months here or four months there. And they realize from doing the task force role that I can do this. And so we and we train them in all of those.

Glenn: [00:05:37] So you start to build the confidence, and then you put them in a position where they feel a much higher level of comfort, not 100%. Because if you’re if you’re doing your career right, you never feel 100% right.

Rachel: [00:05:46] Right. Right. Because then you’re overqualified, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And there is a stat out there that men will go for the promotion when they’re about 40% ready. And women do tend to wait until they’re 100% ready. And we always say, don’t do that. Just go for it. And you can learn.

Glenn: [00:05:58] So one thing that I’ve been saying that I’m going to keep talking about is if you wait till you’re ready, you’re too late.

Rachel: [00:06:05] Too late. Yes. Right. Yeah.

Glenn: [00:06:07] You’ve got to take chances on yourself, right, Rachel?

Rachel: [00:06:10] Yes, 100%. And I know I did that and I had people that I believed in. And, you know, hopefully we can create that opportunity and pay it forward as we continue this business.

Glenn: [00:06:19] Listen to me. I spent too many years not because I was scared, but that shouldn’t stop you. You got to jump in with both feet and find success. Work with people like Rachel over here at AGI because they’re going to help you. They’re going to mentor you, and they’re going to make sure you’re as successful as possible. Before we wrap up today, right. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you a question about like procurement and stuff like that. How are you thinking about it changing, particularly with all the new technologies that are out?

Rachel: [00:06:44] Yeah. Well, I think that we’re at a critical inflection point now with all the new technologies that are out there. And so we’re doing our due diligence now to look at our current procurement provider, looking at the brands. You know, obviously just had a great conversation with these guys. And I was like, gosh, I didn’t even know that you existed. And actually, we got into a conversation about technology and about how visibility can help you make better, obviously, purchasing decisions. And so yeah, I’m curious and I’m going to stay curious for the rest of this conference.

Glenn: [00:07:10] I like.

Rachel: [00:07:10] It.

Glenn: [00:07:11] Yeah, that’s the greatest thing. And not to sound too much like the. Was it the most entertaining man in the world or something like that? Stay curious, my friends. Stay curious for Rachel, myself, and our friends over at Integra. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you right back here next time on No Vacancy.