Hot Type: Marriott, Gaw Capital, Pebblebrook

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We’ve had a lot of developer interest in clubs. It’s something we – and a lot our competitors – are looking into. What will that look like? How will that work? Where does it work? Where does it not work? It’s interesting because it’s not a one-and-done product. It’s quite regional or maybe even city specific. What’s right for New York City won’t necessarily be right for Tampa. Clubs have to get everything right to succeed but the potential is well worth examining.” – Tina Edmundson, Marriott International  Read story

“Without cash, or vendor finance, it really limits the number of deals you can do. We bought several hotels during COVID-19 in Portugal and Thailand with vendor finance, where we negotiated deferred payments to the vendors in order to get the deal done.” – Kenneth Gaw, Gaw Capital Partners  Read story

“The move leverages Marriott’s size, scale, and global distribution. The growth strategy is about adding more dots on the map and providing more earn and burn opportunities – not just in the form of hotel nights – for Bonvoy members.” – Michael Bellisario, R.W. Baird, on Marriott’s new marketing alliance with MGM Resorts  Read story

“There was proof of the brand value when it comes to the recovery, when it comes to how you drive business into the hotel and when it comes to avoiding the reliance on one source of business versus a more diversified base. A lot changed in terms of owners’ perception of brand value. That’s even carrying over into the lending side.” – Pablo Maturana, Hilton  Read story

“We’re reopening and finding a lot of those best practices are no longer around. We have to reinstitute them and get those back into the productivity measures. So, as expenses grow and productivity is less, how do we best attract those people to the new positions while considering demand for the second half of this year. It’s going to be about managing those expenses and we may be going through a period here of hyper-focus on the expense side if the demand side weakens over the next three, six, 12 months.” – Raymond Martz, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust  Read story

SNEAK PEEK (story coming Monday)
“In Europe today, especially in Italy, they are just putting in astronomical rate increases. We don’t think that’s sustainable. We don’t think that’s the right way. We have 30% to 40% regular clientele that come back all the time. So, we prefer to play the long game… Increasing rates 10%, 15%, 20% – it’s reasonable, and we’re very comfortable. But we’ve paid some crazy rates in Miami and Europe, for example, and we’re not feeling good about it.” – Nikheel Advani, Grace Bay Resorts