Themed “Accelerate,” the BWH Hotels 2024 Annual Convention began yesterday with a Welcome Reception at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina, and continued this morning with the General Session at the Charlotte Convention Center. “My racing analogy applies to every one of you in your hotels. Every day at your hotel is a race to win. … You have to accelerate—accelerate your team’s performance, accelerate your revenue,” urged BWH Hotels President & CEO Larry Cuculic, asking the audience of franchisees, “Are you prepared to win? Are you truly committed to win every day?”
Cuculic stressed that winning in the hospitality industry requires an “all-star team,” where the staff “understands and executes their duties and responsibilities together—general manager, front desk, front desk manager, housekeeping, maintenance, sales champion, revenue manager, everyone working in sync together. When I think about the power of teamwork at all of your hotels, I think about effectiveness and efficiency.” Cuculic then highlighted an appropriate exemplar of teamwork with a video presentation of the pit crew that holds the current pit stop record of 1.8 seconds.
Teamwork at the property level is the foundation for great financial performance, and BWH Hotels’ North American properties are a case in point, achieving a 2.5 percent year-over-year increase in ADR. “That outstanding ADR indexing has to be considered in the context of 2023, which was a tremendously strong recovery year,” he noted. Teamwork on the sales front has also been highly effective, with over $1 billion in revenue generated for the first time in North America and revenue up 6.2 percent year over year, representing 43 consecutive months of year-over-year growth. The worldwide sales team has also achieved an all-time high of $8.5 billion in international revenue. Helping BWH Hotels to maximize revenue is the recently launched BestREV 2.0 revenue management tool, currently being utilized by 1,350 North American hotels to load rates.
A great guest experience is the link between an effective hotel team and financial performance, and Cuculic noted that the company has made guest experience its No. 1 KPI this year. The positive results are evident with a Medallia score of 82.3 percent on overall experience across the company’s 2,000-plus North American hotels. Also speaking at the General Session, Board Chairman Phil Payne noted, “Our guest satisfaction, as measured by overall experience, is the foundation of loyalty. Nothing else we do can affect our future business in such a positive way as doing a good job with our guests day after day. … This simple concept of guest satisfaction has helped us weather the current softness to travel better than industry averages, and with your continuing hard work, we will continue to thrive for another 70 years.” Payne added that BWH Hotels has also been working to help hurricane relief efforts and has already made an initial donation to the Red Cross.
Cuculic explained that great on-property experiences “create ‘sticky guests.’ I love that term—sticky guests who return to Bestwestern.com and are apt to book their next stay.” He added, “We have the richest hotel loyalty program reimbursing structure in the industry. This year alone, we will pay back to our members through this program $64 million. That’s $17 million more than last year, which is a symbol of how we’re growing the rewards program and rewarding you for our success.”
Toward enhancing the guest experience, loyalty, and revenue, BWH Hotels has partnered with Canary to launch a new guest messaging platform that facilitates upselling. The brand is also communicating to potential guests with a “highly relatable, emotionally based” new global marketing campaign themed “Life’s a Trip,” which includes ads that ran during the Olympics.
“The landscape of travel and how we operate is changing faster than ever before, and we need to evolve with it, from how we market, manage revenue, and develop new hotels and guest experiences at the property. We must evolve. We must accelerate. Championships are competitive, and we need to love to compete,” Cuculic concluded.
