‘Our core customer’: Why Wyndham is betting big on $1.5T in infrastructure work

ANAHEIM, California – Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is pinning much of its growth on the $1.5 trillion infrastructure spending happening in the United States.

Wyndham believes the work that will come from that legislation represents a $3.3 billion opportunity in additional room revenue for its franchisees over the next eight years. It also believes most of that spending will come in the economy, midscale and extended-stay segments.

Lisa Checchio, EVP and chief marketing officer at Wyndham, said the confidence in those segments being the winners is because they know those customers very well.

“[The legislation] is unprecedented in terms of the spend that’s coming in from an incremental perspective… but the reason why we are so bullish and so confident in it is this has always been our guest,” Checchio said. “Our hotels are in all of the places where these types of workers always need to be: oil and gas, long haul truckers, construction, infrastructure, traveling nurses, traveling manufacturers... That is our core customer.”

Wyndham is among the U.S. leaders in the economy and midscale segments and is aggressively expanding into the economy extended-stay segments with its new Echo Suites brand.

Congress passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 and the $280-billion CHIPS and Science Act in 2022. There are currently 3,350 infrastructure projects within 10 miles of a Wyndham hotel in the U.S.”

Our hotels are in all of the places where these types of workers always need to be: oil and gas, long haul truckers, construction, infrastructure, traveling nurses, traveling manufacturers... that is our core customer.

Lisa Checchio

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Wyndham has expanded its sales team by 25% to help capture this potential revenue.

“We already have the relationships, the hotels have relationships,” Checchio said. “Price and proximity always come into play because they’re staying for long periods. They want to stay close to where they want to be.

And this work also showed a need for Wyndham to develop a new brand in the extended-stay space.

“[For Echo Suites] they also have different needs than our traditional business guests,” Checchio said. “They’re not white collar, they don’t need the city center, they’re staying for long periods of time.”

Checchio said Wyndham is focused on projects that have already broken ground. “The hotel has built a proprietary tool (GSO IQ) that allows its sales team to know when something has been released,” she said.

These projects also require a lot of 'boots on the ground' work to find the subcontractors who are actually doing the infrastructure work. “We’ve learned by going out and visiting sites… And because we have our sales team out there, validating some of the things that we’re seeing in the data, it’s actually helping us to get there first and being able to tell the hotels this company is getting this contract.” 

Checchio said that intelligence can also come in reverse because their franchiees can tell them what companies are staying there.

“A lot of the times, it’s those small- and medium-sized businesses that are doing a lot of the work,” she said. “There is real power in just knowing what trucks are in the area, going out, and having a conversation about what they are building. And then where else are they building because a lot of them are not just in that one city, but multiple cities across the country.”