I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
As you read this, on Monday, May 2, the European hotel industry will be starting to gather once again for its big annual shindig, the International Hotel Investment Forum.
Just a little more than two years ago I was having lunch with Francesca, my wife, at home, getting ready in another 10 minutes to go to the airport to fly to Berlin.
I checked my emails one last time and saw the email stating the March 2020 edition of IHIF was canceled due to a respiratory virus that we all knew very little about at the time.
Last year, I am sure you remember, there also was no March edition, the 2021 version being held in September.
That was the first time I had taken an airplane in 18 months, and I felt nerves at the airline check-in queue. Others attending the Berlin event, far more seasoned travelers than I, told me they felt similar emotions.
This year the event is in May, with the idea, I am sure, to revert to March in 2023.
Berlin in March can be chilly. I often walk the five or 10 minutes from my hotel of choice that year to the IHIF host hotel, the InterContinental Berlin, in a suit, and it is often just warm enough — just — to do that, rather than wearing a clunky coat.
That is the joy of going to Berlin in May.
There will be warmth.
Birds will be chirping.
That last sentence sums up my entire philosophy of staging industry events, although in the two decades I have been writing on hotels and travel, rarely if ever have the events I’ve attended coincide with peak bird migration, which is in May and October.
Events for the hotel industry and journalism in general often avoid peak seasons, because that is when hotel rooms are at a premium.
Our own conference, STR and Hotel News Now’s Hotel Data Conference is held in August, but August in Nashville can be a heatwave, so that is not peak season either, and in the U.S., birders pretty much spend all their time writing up notes and looking at avian photos between June 1 and Sept. 15.
I have often pleaded, to absolutely no gain, that HDC should be held in May so that I can then visit HNN’s editorial offices in Ohio and on the weekend drive to Magee Marsh, Ohio, in the hope of seeing a migrating Kirtland’s warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii), the only Eastern Seaboard U.S. warbler species I have yet to see.
Really, you would have thought hotel-industry event organizers would take such necessary requirements in mind when they scheduled calendars.
On the Sunday before IHIF this year, I will be birding somewhere in the Berlin metropolitan area, and I am hopeful of seeing some interesting things. Maybe I will post some photos on Twitter with the very weak argument that I can add #IHIF2022 to the tweet.
Apart from ornithological discoveries, I wonder what the talking points will be at IHIF this year?
HNN will be represented by myself, editorial director Stephanie Ricca and news editor Sean McCracken, as well as a videographer, so expect daily wrap-ups, news and panel coverage and video interviews.
Staffing, Russia, recovery, pricing strength, the return of corporate and where on Earth is all that pent-up capital going to be placed?
We look forward to chatting with you and picking the brains of the industry’s finest and mightiest.
We’ll see you tomorrow.
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