NEW YORK — Growing market share is always top of mind for businesses in any industry. For hoteliers, it's a constant challenge, according to hotel executives who participated in a roundtable of the Lodging Industry Investment Council.
One of the obstacles U.S. hoteliers have always had to face is that the nation has no centralized effort to attract tourism into the country.
"We're one of the only countries that does not have a ministry of tourism on a national level," said Ferit Ferhangil, CEO of Waramaug, a national private hotel investment firm.
Other hoteliers agreed that this puts their businesses at a disadvantage.
"In every other country, ... when you go to the international airport, you there are ads in the airport, ads on TV, ads online. They're like 'Come visit Portugal. Come do this. Come to that," said Greg O'Stean, chief development officer at hospitality operator and developer Hotel Equities. "Not only are we not saying 'Come visit the U.S,' we're actually saying the opposite."
Considering the pullback of international inbound travelers to the U.S. following the Trump administration's trade and immigration policies, this lack of a unified tourism group is just one of the challenges and opportunities discussed at the roundtable hosted ahead of the 2025 NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum.
Investing in digital marketing, AI and more
The advancement of new technologies provides the hospitality industry with new challenges — but also new opportunities. More travelers are engaging with generative artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT to research and book travel.
"I was just looking at a list of referral [web traffic] sites," said Charles Oswald, president and CEO of Aperture Hotels, a third party hotel management company. "If you look just a few months ago, there was no AI search in the top referrals for hotels, but I just saw that number seven now this last month is ChatGPT. The fact that it's creeped up so quickly tells us we've got to think really hard about how does SEO work in an AI world."
Oswald added his company is talking to some digital marketing groups to help navigate this trend, but ultimately it all comes down to what information is on your website.
"ChatGPT is not that mysterious," said David Duncan, president and CEO at First Hospitality, a hotel development and management firm. "If you had a robust, deep website with lots of wording, lots of pictures, lots of things, lots of themes, it shows up way more frequently than a super simple website that somebody cheaped out on."
But how AI works with traditional search engine optimization is still a bit of a mystery. The metadata best practices for SEO might need evolve to be effective for AI searches, Oswald said.
Hotel Equities had digital marketing top of mind when merging with Springboard Hospitality earlier this year, O'Stean said. Springboard's Ben Rafter, who was named the CEO of the combined company, started his career in tech. Hotel Equities was looking for a merger opportunity with a company that was different from them to create more of a value for the combined company.
While hoteliers have to think about the user experience of AI, another aspect to consider is how hotel companies can use the technology to improve internal efficiency. One way to do that is to use AI for chatting with customers.
"We've set up Facebook Messenger channels for most of our hotels, and we're starting to engage with Margaritaville promotions," said Chris Flagg, chief investment officer at TPI Hospitality, a hotel owner and operator. He added that Margaritaville concepts have a particular skill of engaging its userbase.
Ferhangil said Four Seasons is an example of a hotel brand that has mastered optimizing AI for communications.
"Initially it's a bot that engages you, and then, once you're [at a] high-enough level of engagement, it goes to the real human being," he said. "Whatever their bot is, it's very good."
Another opportunity to grow revenue for hotels is to expand its experiences and offerings in new ways.
"I would say excursion or experiences and trip protection are probably two [things] that we should be able to monetize," Oswald said. "Over 20% of guests say that if trip protection was available to them, they would book it."
For now, Oswald said he's only seen Marriott International offer trip protection, but it's too soon to know what the breakdown of that revenue is for owners. However, since the consumer has interest in it, "it's essentially free money" for hoteliers who offer it.
Maintaining a stable labor environment
A recent bright spot for the hotel industry is the stability of the labor market.
"The turnover is lower overall — from top to bottom — and productivity is up," Oswald said, adding that 100% of his positions across general management and sales are filled.
When executives were asked about how increased raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have affected business, so far it has depended on regionality. The markets or businesses likely to be most affected are probably South Texas or contract labor companies in a major city, Oswald said.
"It's a conversation in Florida. It's not a conversation in Minnesota," Flagg said.
In general, the macroeconomic trends are affecting traveler trends, but the dust might be settling.
"There's just a lot of wait and see," O'Stean said about traveler sentiment affected by wavering tariff policies. "But what was crazy a month ago has now become normalized."
While it may sound counterintuitive, now is the time to make sure your employee base is ready, Duncan said.
"One of the things [we can do] is to make sure that all of our sales teams are fully staffed," he said. "Each time we can get the best salesperson in the market, it's worth it — even more so than it has been before."