“Invest in transparency and collaboration with hotel owners.”

As a management group, our goal is to optimize the revenue generated by an owner’s asset. Full stop. But there are quite a few ways to get from point A and point B. 

Some organizations take a very hard-line approach when it comes to how they work with their owners, adopting a mentality of “You know, you hired us to do the job. So let us do the job.” 

I’ve never found that approach particularly effective. I think one of the things that makes CoralTree Hospitality so unique is that we’re very collaborative and transparent with our owners. We want to keep our stakeholders fully in the know. 

Part of that is because we work with a diverse range of owners, from REITs to high-net-worth individuals to pension funds and more. The other part is that there’s just no one-size-fits-all approach. Success relies on everyone being aligned and building a trusting relationship. 

A great lesson: Nothing presented in a report or heard from someone else should ever come as a surprise to an owner, whether it’s something good or bad.  Because if it does, the relationship gets impacted.

One of the areas where we've gained a lot of ground and built a lot of trust is in education, specifically in the area of digital marketing. Our owners voice a lot of intellectual curiosity in this area. So we invest time in educating and discussing the many, many nuances and approaches to digital marketing. 

That kind of investment in education pays off in dividends when confronted with an economic downturn because you’ve hopefully already done a lot of the hard work of teaching and shifting that lens from marketing as an expense to marketing as an investment. And that totally changes the conversation. Owners are much less likely to have that gut reaction to cut, cut, cut. 

And of course, there’s always going to be times for cost reduction. But when there’s a strong foundation of trust and collaboration, you’re also able to gain support much easier when taking an offensive stance, which is often what puts you ahead of the competition.