NEW YORK — Driving revenue to owners and delivering experiences to guests are two chief — but competing — priorities for hotel brands, according to industry leaders.
During the "CEOs in Conversation: Examining the value of brands in the success of a hospitality property" session at the 2025 NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum, hotel brand executives said their businesses are driven by trying to fulfill a need for both owners and travelers.
"I use the phrase, 'promises made, promises kept,'" said Greg Juceam, president and CEO of Extended Stay America. "I think it applies as much as the guests who need to know what segment you're in, what they should expect from price points and products and services [as] the investors and the owners of the hotel. They need to know what they're signing up for."
John Cohlan, CEO of Margaritaville Holdings, said his company puts guest experience first and foremost in its priorities as a brand.
"I think the core role of brands really is to deliver on the emotional expectation people have about an experience," he said. "And I think consistency is very important because, as someone once said to me: The good news is you have a brand that resonates people with people. The bad news is you have a brand that resonates with people, because people have an expectation, right? So I think the hardest part is to continue to meet that expectation."
Larry Cuculic, president and CEO of BWH Hotels, took an owner-centric point of view.
"The role of a brand is to deliver revenue and to provide support to that hotel so it can operate efficiently and effectively meet guest expectations," he said. "What I'll add is it's easy to be a brand in good times, but when there's uncertainty in the market and consumer confidence wanes slightly, that's when brands are, I think, most important."
John Murray, president and CEO of Sonesta International Hotels Corporation, took a similar tact, saying a brand's primary function is "in delivering guests to the hotels."
"You need to create the expectation, and if you have multiple brands, as we do, it's different expectations for different levels of experience depending on the price point of the hotel," he said. "But at the end of the day, it's delivering on those expectations, so the guests show up and continue to show up."
Barbara Muckermann, CEO of Kempinski Group, said brands don't have as much value if they don't have a clear spot in the marketplace.
"The first thing is you need to know what you stand for," she said.
Having a more clear connection to guests and a clear understanding of the experience delivered has a financial benefit, she added.
"At the end of the day, that will increase the willingness to pay because it increases the differentiation. This is really the return of investment case to really spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that you need every year to be able to have your brand out there as one of the leading brands around the world," she said.
In a travel marketplace crowded with third parties, establishing a direct emotional connection can have big financial benefits, including more direct business, Cohlan said.
He said Margaritaville has observed a trend of guests using online travel agencies to find the brand's properties but then going to their direct channels to book.
"The whole idea of a brand is that people want to come and engage with you directly, so in a way, I think it's a very good scorecard to see how much direct booking you do because that does speak to engagement," he said.
And that's true across price points, Juceam said. On the low end of the spectrum where ESA's three brands operate, that means they have to show a strong value proposition to guests.
"For us, practicality is the name of the game," he said. "What we're trying to do for both our guests and our investors and hotel owners is to have the most practical, highest return-on-investment brand," he said.
Before coming to Kempinski, Muckermann worked in the cruise industry, which gave her a different perspective on the hotel brand landscape, she said. She believes there are too many brands and thus too much confusion among consumers on what individual hotel brands offer that is different than their competitors.
"It seems like everybody's launching a new hotel brand every day," she said. "And this is, I think, not going to work because in the modern world you need a certain scale to be able to create what we call the snowball effect of having enough awareness around the central brand to attract the right amount of addressable customers out of your niche."
Ultimately, the marketing spend required to communicate what each brand means to guests will become unsustainable, Muckermann said.
"I actually think there will be a bit of a reckoning because you can't really sustain it," she said. "If I'm confused and I'm paid to understand the market, imagine a consumer."