ATLANTA—Third-party hotel management company HHM retained all of its existing management contracts in 2020 and added 25 hotels and 4,000 rooms to its management portfolio during that tumultuous year. HHM President and CEO Naveen Kakarla said the company kept on course thanks to communication and transparency, two traits that will help guide it moving forward.
As a third-party management company on a fast growth trajectory, HHM continues to view labor as a top challenge. Kakarla explains in the video above how he anticipates cross-training, innovative technology and more focus on connecting with employees will help his company and the industry at large “attract and retain people for the right reasons.”
“The biggest silver lining [to 2020] is that the people who helped us get through this are undoubtedly the future leaders in our industry,” he said while speaking with Hotel News Now during the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference held in May. “I hope that the steepness of this drop and the quickness of this rise actually creates that many more opportunities.”
When Kakarla looks back, however, he acknowledges last March was "the hardest time any of us had been through."
“Our approach, frankly, was just to be on the phone with all of our owners every few days, and we allowed all of our operating team to speak with any owners as often as they could. Fast-forward a year and we’re certainly closer to all of our owners than we ever have been.”
Kakarla said that focus on what the owners were going through kept his team sympathetic and able to approach any problems together.
“In a situation like that, either you get closer or you start to question the relationship,” he said of the dynamic between the hotel owner and manager. “Our rallying cry was about being communicative and transparent, and helping owners get through a really hard time. And it helps when you think less about yourself and be more in service to the group that got you there in the first place.”
HHM’s portfolio includes 140 hotels the company operates on behalf of more than 20 institutional and long-term owners. Kakarla said he is particularly proud that with the 25 new management contracts added in 2020, the company started working with new owners.
“We were able to grow about 10 new relationships, and now we’re working with partners we didn’t work with before and they’re new to our family and new to our future growth plans,” he said.
HHM’s portfolio is spread across resort, full-service and urban and select-service hotels. Now about one-third of the company’s portfolio are lifestyle and independent hotels. The company opened three properties in 2020: Sanctuary Beach Resort in Monterey, California; the Envoy Hotel and Rooftop in Boston; and the Cadillac Hotel & Beach Club on Miami Beach.
Opening a hotel during a pandemic was particularly challenging, Kakarla said, because the company needed to find ways to do it economically while still projecting the same levels of high quality and reputation inherent in the company.
“It was a real balancing act because you needed to establish yourself with authenticity and DNA and positioning, but also manage costs,” he said. “What we decided to do is that what we did launch we launched really well, and we pruned … by not launching parts of the hotel, which was a better decision than perhaps launching all of it and showing people what halfway looks like.”
Video was recorded on May 11, 2021, by HNN’s Stephanie Ricca.