LOS ANGELES — Even if only by one or two properties a year, every hotel company has a goal to grow its footprint.
During the 2026 Americas Lodging Investment Summit, a panel with hotel chief growth officers and chief financial officers shared their approaches to their roles and how they view the current landscape.
Company strategy
Vision Hospitality Group continues to grow organically each year, said Mary Beth Cutshall, chief growth officer. When she was offered the job of chief growth officer, she was stepping into the role of someone leading the strategy for not just short-term growth, but decades-long growth.
And growth is never purely additive; it’s about determining which hotels a company identifies as legacy properties to hold on to, and which hotels might benefit the company best by being sold, she said. Along with that, it was necessary to establish what will be the next growth trajectory.
“How will we go about doing it? Because the deals were getting bigger, the checks were getting bigger, and the ambition was getting bigger,” she said. “So, it was also about having one person accountable and leading that short-term, mid-term and long-term strategy, strategic partnerships, institutional capital. How can we maximize the properties that we have from a revenue perspective?”
A chief growth officer is a bespoke role, independent to each individual company for their own individual needs, said Kathleen Hollis, chief growth officer at First Hospitality. The company has been around for more than 40 years as a hotel developer, investor and operator. For the first 20 years of its existence, it wasn’t in the third-party hotel management space, only developing and buying hotels while building its own management platform to support the real estate.
“With me coming on board, the mandate was to focus on growth in the third-party management space, to take what we've been able to do for our own owned hotels and share that acumen with other hotel investors and owners in this space,” she said.
Hollis said her day-to-day focus is growing third-party management contracts through three main avenues: new hotel development, hotel acquisitions and management changes.
“So really, at the end of the day, it boils down to the team's ability to convince sophisticated, smart hotel owners that First Hospitality can add value to the bottom line, either at an asset that the investor currently owns or is thinking of buying,” she said.
The executive team at Apple Hospitality REIT thinks about growth as being bigger than just a hotel deal, said Liz Perkins, chief financial officer and senior vice president. The hotel real estate investment trust has long-term goals, and while they want to grow their portfolio, they’re focused on being best-in-class asset managers and operators with their third-party management teams to add value that way.
“I'd say our entire executive team knows the marching orders of growth,” she said. “It's not just property count: it's earnings per share, and it's for our investors. You can do that in many, many ways.”
Everyone is working toward a common goal, and the whole team is focused how to drive incremental value better than the year before and continue growing, she said.
Assessing the environment
Following the massive demand shock from the pandemic, it’s pleasing to see how resilient the desire to travel is, Perkins said. Obstacles — some of which have been policy-driven — have chipped away at the periphery of travel for the U.S., but underlying occupancy is strong.
“Universally, we'd love to see more growth as we enter the year, given some of the demand impacts from last year regarding policy and things of that sort,” she said. “We’re optimistic that we’ll lack some of the disruption, particularly on the government business side of things, but we’ll have to see.”
With the country’s 250th anniversary coming up and the 2026 World Cup games, there’s a lot to be excited about from an incremental demand perspective, she said. Apple REIT saw leisure business increase last year.
“I think that bodes well for World Cup,” she said. While hoteliers with properties in cities hosting matches want significant bumps in international travel to the U.S., she said that a good outcome also will come from people traveling from within the U.S. to matches.
"I think we’re all encouraged that we can see a more positive year than we did last year,” she said.
Business transient today is different than it was pre-pandemic, Perkins said. There’s been a steady, slow return of this segment, but all the sectors are performing differently and returned differently. Tech may never be what it was before, but other areas have outperformed pre-COVID-19 levels.
First Hospitality, which has a portfolio with many hotels in the Midwest, had seen a 7% year-to-date increase in business transient travel at that point in January, Hollis said. That gives the executive team the conviction in the strength of the corporate traveler for the rest of the year. They’re even more excited about group, particularly corporate group.
Portfolio wide, group pace for 2026 is up 9% compared to where it was a year ago, she said.
“Group is looking strong across sectors and across markets, and we're trying to be really thoughtful and creative about how we play with groups to maximize revenue,” she said.
The company has focused on pattern management, Hollis said. In markets where business travel is strong on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, it shifts its groups to Monday and Thursday. Some groups are constrained by the rates they’re able to pay, but there’s also times when they can get creative with food and beverage minimums and packages, finding a way to maximize holistic revenue rather than being totally focused on group.
“I think, as a RevPAR growth driver this year, group will play an important part in our portfolio,” she said.
When evaluating the current transaction market, Cutshall said her company isn’t seeing a lot of exciting options.
“To be frank, we’re not really interested in properties that are a little long in the tooth, that are aging,” she said.
It’s one thing if a property hasn’t been operated well or needs a renovation or brand repositioning, she said. It’s staying away from the older properties.