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Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check-in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree, welcome and we’ve got a great guest, a guest that needs little to no introduction. He’s checked in with us several times on the Suite Spot. Chip Rogers, President & CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Chip, thank you so much for being on Suite Spot.

Chip Rogers:
Yeah, always glad to be with you, Ryan. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, and last time we were together Chip, was before the new year, so Happy New Year by the way. Very, very busy time for hoteliers. They’re getting their budgets together, they’re looking at data projections, all that good stuff. I wanna give a little bit of insight to our audience on maybe the planning process from the AHLA team. You guys have, have started off just really, really quickly. Lots of events. Obviously, every issue is important, but how do you kind of prioritize that, put your calendar in place, you know, around this time of year?

Chip Rogers:
Yeah, the biggest priority for us is always advocacy. I mean that’s the core of what we do at AHLA is we’re the voice of the hotel industry to make sure that policymakers are doing things that help the hotel industry not hurt the industry. And so this is a critical time of year for us because while we do a lot in Washington D.C., that just kind of keeps churning at a, at a steady pace again and again and again. It’s the state and local level that is hyperactive at this very moment because most state legislatures go into session at the beginning of the year, and then most of them are done with session by early spring. And so this is really prime time for us when working on state and local legislation. And again, this year we’ve got a whole host of issues that we’re dealing with at the state level. I’m in Atlanta, Georgia right now, probably two blocks from the capitol. We had a really big event here yesterday, about 300 hotels for our Georgia Hotel conference that we share with the Georgia Hotel Lodging Association. We had the Attorney General, we had one of the key members of the Georgia Senate join us. And we talked a lot about the policies that are impacting people. And we do these type of events really all around the country. We have 20 of these on the road events this year. And so yesterday was the second one we had. The first one was in Honolulu last week, which was wonderful, but we’ve got 18 more to go. And then of course we have our really big show, the Hospitality Show, which will be happening October 28th through the 30th in San Antonio, Texas.

Ryan Embree:
I’m sure it’s so important, Chip to kind of hear, you know, get feet on the ground and talk to hoteliers face-to-face about some of these pressing issues in our industry. You get a unique perspective there. One of the things that AHLA just released recently, which should be good and and exciting news for everyone, is 72% of American travelers are likely to increase or at least maintain their level of hotel stays in 2024. So excellent news there, right? But there’s always those looming, some inflation, economic uncertainty, obviously we got an election year. What can hoteliers do to make sure when they look back at the end of this year that it’s a successful and profitable one, especially with these factors looming?

Chip Rogers:
You know, Ryan, you really hit it on the good news, which is that people are back out traveling again. Business travel will be back close to where it was in 2019, and we’re able to maintain a lot of this leisure travel. And of course now you have bleisure travel where you mix the two. I’ll be doing that later today as we head into a holiday weekend. But the big part is, is that people are spending money on hotels. And so this year, hotel revenue will be at an all time high. Now, the other side of the ledger shows that inflation is clearly having an impact. You have major labor inflation. The hotel wages have gone up faster than wages for the rest of the US economy. And so you’ve got problems with getting goods and services. There’s, there’s a lot of challenges that hotels are facing. Insurance costs are through the roof. But I think the biggest one right now, if you’re facing any type of refinancing of your property, are interest rates. Interest rates are really keeping transactions near an all time low. But if you’re having to refinance that property, you’re gonna face a much, much higher payment, most likely than what you were paying. And that takes a big chunk outta your profitability. And so high interest rates are not good for the hotel industry.

Ryan Embree:
No, not at all. And we’d love to see a healthy kind of hotel ecosystem, transaction ecosystem there. That means business owners are definitely feeling good. But you know, again, I know over the last couple years we’ve been really searching for some good news. So it’s great to hear that Americans are still out there traveling, trying to spend their hard earned dollar on experiences, hopefully at our hotels. So I wanna touch on staffing though, which seems to again be a big, big headwind. We touched on it last time. Listen, the hotel industry is doing some incredible things. I think the statistic that AHLA put out is something like 80% of hoteliers are having increased wages, which is fantastic. They’re offering more flexible hours. Some of the tips and tricks that, that we actually were talking about last episode here. What are you hearing? I know you’ve been on the event circuit on the ground level from some of these hoteliers and the staffing situation right now.

Chip Rogers:
It’s getting much better now. It’s not back to where it needs to be. And you know, we’ve always, even before the pandemic kind of had this big challenge of getting all the jobs filled in the hotel industry. And so this is a long-term challenge. It’s only really gonna be solved by having more people willing to work, more Americans working. The workforce participation rate is at an all time low right now. Also being able to bring people legally into the country to fill some of these jobs. I mean, you look at the jobs report that comes out, there’s about little over 6 million people that are listed as unemployed, but there’s over 9 million open jobs. So if every single unemployed person went to work tomorrow, which we know is not going to happen, but if that miraculously happened, you still have almost 3 million jobs that are left unfilled. And many of those affect our industry or industries that are connected to the hotel industry. And so that is a long-term systemic problem. And, and at some point, policy makers really need to address it. We work with them on a regular basis. One of the programs that really works well is the guest worker program. And we try to convince politicians all the time, this is not immigration. These are people that are coming here as our guests. They work for a limited period of time, then they go back home and then they may want to come back again. It’s been a very successful program for decades. Problem is, is the cap on that hasn’t been raised since 1990. I mean, think about what the economy looked like in 1990 and recognize that our H-2B visa cap hasn’t been raised since that time. We have been urging policymakers to raise that we should reward the people who do it the right way. Come here legally, work in our hotels at our resorts, and then turn around and go back home. We want more of that to help solve some of these challenges.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, really great initiative there. And, you know, trying to look, trying to find these solutions. But, you know, certainly proud of our industry again, for adapting to this challenge right now. And doing some of the things like flexible hours, benefits, increasing wages to really help. And then obviously we talked about, we’re gonna talk about a little bit later is, you know, sharing some of the stories. Because this is such an incredible industry. I’m sure everybody, our audience, they don’t have to be sold on how amazing our industry is. Speaking of the industry, AHLA put out its annual state of the industry report. Fascinating. If you haven’t had the chance to check it out, go to AHLA.com, you can get that information. One of the most fascinating pieces for me being a digital marketing podcast is, you had in there a survey from EchoLab, which looked at guest sentiment trends, specifically around cleanliness and service. And the way that those patterns were showing up in guest sentiment data. We preach all the time, Chip, about how guest sentiment data really is a blueprint to improve guest experience. And that feedback really should be welcomed by our hoteliers so that we can prove that stay for the next traveler. Right? Can you talk about the importance of guest feedback and utilizing that data for everyday decision making for hoteliers?

Chip Rogers:
It should be driving what you’re doing. If your guests are telling you they like A or don’t like B, then you need to fix B and keep doing A even better. And so what we’re seeing is in a couple of areas, you mentioned technology a few times there, Ryan. The basic thing that guests have now beyond a bed, like the one that I have right over here, or a desk that is right here, or a television. In fact, I only know that they need television that much anymore. But they want consistent strong wifi. That is the thing that we saw happen during the pandemic that no longer is it acceptable to have spots in your hotel where you just don’t get good coverage. I mean, you have to have solid wifi coverage. The second thing is they want to clean room. I mean, that’s what happened during Covid is people said, look, cleanliness is king. We wanna make sure that my room is clean. And so if you have strong wifi and a clean room, everything else is kind of secondary after that. But you gotta check those two boxes. And if you don’t check those two boxes, expect that your reviews expect that, that when consumers go online and talk about your hotel, they’re not gonna do it in a very positive way. So check those two boxes and then take everything else from there and you’ll, you’ll be in a good position.

Ryan Embree:
Certainly important to that leisure traveler that you were talking about earlier, as well as as yourself there.

Chip Rogers:
I couldn’t be doing this interview right now if I didn’t have strong wifi. And so it’s important to me personally, but more important than that, it’s the number one thing that hotel guests are identifying as their need for their hotel room.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely. Travel Media Group, we put out our guest sentiment report and wifi consistently receives low scores. If travelers are feeling that wifi is not strong enough. They’re certainly gonna let you hear about it like you mentioned before. Let’s switch the topic to advocacy. You said it’s the most important mission for AHLA if not one of the most important, every issue, obviously small and big is important, Chip. But what are some of the most pressing issues right now that your team’s focused on?

Chip Rogers:
Well, from an advocacy standpoint, this time of year we’re always dealing with the short-term rental issue. And so we know that there are obviously millions and millions and millions of short-term rentals. In fact, there’s been 2 million residential properties turned into short-term rentals across the U.S. Those are active right now today. What does that create at the local level? I mean, you go anywhere and they’re talking about housing challenges. I was in Hawaii last week, the single biggest issue that they’re facing there, because it’s very difficult to develop in Hawaii. And they already had housing challenges to begin with. And you begin taking these residential properties out of commission and turning them into commercial lodging units and the housing problems become even bigger. And so right now, legislatively we’re working in a number of states to make sure that short-term rentals are regulated in the same way that hotels are. So that local communities can determine where short-term rentals should be. How many short-term rentals there should be, what should that stock be so you’re not taking it out of the residential housing stock. And so that’s a huge issue that we’re facing right now. Immigration challenges, guest worker challenges at the federal level remain at the top of the list. I mean, we have this huge imbalance of having millions of jobs available across the U.S. economy and no one to fill them. And that’s not like, that’s not just a sudden spike. It’s been that way now for years. And so when we look at things like this, I mean these are what keeps hoteliers up at night. Organized labor challenges are really big. And then there’s one that, I don’t know if a lot of people understand it, but it is, it’s really scary. But a proposal put out by the National Labor Relations Board, a new rule, it’s called Joint Employer. And without getting too technical, basically what it means is that the franchisees employees would be jointly employed by the franchisor. So each hotel employee would essentially have two bosses. They’d be employed by the franchisor and the franchisee. Well, that’s an absolute nightmare for the franchise industry, not just hotels, all franchisees. And it is on the wishlist for organized labor because no longer would they have to organize hotel by hotel, they could organize an entire brand at once, which is their goal. And so if you’re operating a hotel somewhere where there’s not a lot of organized labor, you could get swept up in this if your brand gets organized all at once. And so joint employer is probably the biggest legislative slash legal challenge that we’re facing at the federal level. But there’s no shortage of issues impacting our industry. And that’s why we urge people to please get involved. The simplest way they can do that is go to AHLA and sign up for our hotels act. You can also just go to HotelsAct.org. It’s free, it’s simple. It makes you kind of part of the hotel industry team. And we’re able to send messages to you that we create that you just by clicking one button could send to your lawmakers. And so whether if it’s your state lawmaker, your federal lawmaker, we do all the work, all you have to do is click a button. But that type of messaging makes an enormous difference in pushing lawmakers towards the things we want them to do and away from the things we don’t want them to do.

Ryan Embree:
So critical in the work that you’re doing over there and really having an impact on almost every facet of hotels and hospitality and what they’re doing on their everyday lives. So important, thank you for what your team is doing over there at AHLA. We’ll wrap up the episode. We spoke last time about the power of storytelling and you gave some great quotes about some stories and how impactful telling stories can be versus just spitting out facts. You know, I’m curious, we’re still early in the year, but any impactful stories that you’ve run into just talking to hoteliers that you could share to maybe even again, just to share how special our industry truly is because there’s so many that happen every single day.

Chip Rogers:
Yeah, it is amazing. As I mentioned a moment ago, I had a chance to spend some time in Hawaii last week and, and got to see the devastation in Maui from the recent fires, like it was six months ago now, but they’re still struggling. I mean, these are people so many who just, they don’t have anywhere to live, unfortunately. Some of them are having to leave Hawaii and go to the mainland because there’s just no housing whatsoever. And then some of them have to live so far away. I heard a story of a man who had worked at a hotel there in Maui, had been there 26 years and lost his home. He was now taking a bus two hours each way to work at the hotel five days a week. That’s the type of commitment to our guests that our hotel workers have. They are literally the light, and the backbone of this industry. They make all the difference in the world. And just seeing it firsthand in Hawaii, all the efforts that local hotels did to help house the homeless people that had lost their homes because of the fire. And then to really stand up for their own employees and just try to find anything so that they can have housing. It’s, it’s really inspiring. But it also reminds us that, you know, this world we live in can be fragile at times and, and tragedy can occur. How are we gonna step up and respond to it? And I’m proud to say that the industry, particularly in Hawaii, stepped up in a big way.

Ryan Embree:
Thank you for sharing that story and shedding a light on that. Like I said, those types of stories are happening all over our industry and it’s a reason why people get into hospitality. And you know, I would encourage you, talk to your GM, talk to your regional, talk to even to front desk managers, people that have been in the industry long, they’re gonna have some sort of story of hospitality of why they got into it, whether they just fell into it or had a career path for it. But it’s always something that you can come back to and have that, that sense of togetherness with this industry. So Chip, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for being with me. Any final thoughts? We covered a lot of ground on today’s check-in with you.

Chip Rogers:
No final thoughts other than it’s always an honor to represent what I believe is the best industry in the world, and that is the hospitality industry, made up with the best people in the world. That’s what drives you each and every day. So thanks for having me. I’m honored to serve at AHLA and represent our industry, but really appreciate the time I get to spend with you.

Ryan Embree:
Perfect. Well thank you so much. Well said Chip. And thank you all for listening to the Suite Spot, we will talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.