Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, September 8. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
25.08.2023 - 13:50 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Tyler Morse / Catherine Powell
Tyler Morse, Chairman and CEO of MCR Hotels, revealed that his company had acquired about 70 hotels and two software companies during the pandemic when he spoke at the Skift Future of Lodging Forum.
Morse expects more good hotel investment deals to emerge because he predicts interest rates will decrease again because of potential banking contagion. MCR is set to close on four hotels this week and has 12 more in the pipeline.
In the discussion with Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali March 29, Morse said he owns 150 hotels in 37 states and operates under 17 different brands, including the iconic TWA Hotel at JFK Terminal 5. That makes MCR the third-largest hotel owner in the U.S., Morse said. Morse also discussed why he’s a fan of airport hotels and why Residence Inn is one of his favorite brands. (You can watch a full video and read a transcript below.)
MCR has also invested in hotel technology to improve the industry’s software systems, which Morse finds lacking. It has acquired two hotel technology businesses, StayNTouch and Optii, and it has a “pipeline” of other investments.
Ali: All right, folks. Now comes the best or worst part of the day. You guys will decide. The next two interviews are mine. This is the Rafat hour, the last hour left for the day. So thank you for staying. Thank you for being here. Two very different conversations to come, one from… You don’t like to be called a hotelier. We’re going to talk about why you don’t like to be called hotelier. But hotel owner, investor. And then the last one is Catherine Powell, who’s the global head of hosting for Airbnb. Couldn’t be more different in terms of businesses, but obviously there’s a lot of commonality. Lodging, which is staying of humans, is definitely the common part. So thank you Tyler for coming. You obviously don’t have business currently in Europe.
Morse: Working on it.
Ali: Working on it.
Morse: Trying to change that.
Ali: Trying to change that. You’re the third-largest hotel owner in the US.
Morse: Correct.
Ali: That happened over the pandemic. You took a contrarian strategy of going all-in, buying hotels when the whole industry was shut. So explain your contrarian strategy there first and why.
Morse: When there’s blood in the streets, that’s when you should be buying. This is not some Nostradamus-esque philosophy. It’s been around for a long time. The lodging business is a terrific business. The hotel business is great. You heard one of the speakers say earlier, it grows at a 4% CAGR and has for the last hundred years. Supply grows at less than 2%. Those are positive tailwinds. So COVID, if you look at what happened in 9/11 or even farther back in the early ’90s, and then in the global financial crisis, the hotel business always
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, September 8. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
The inaugural Skift Aviation Forum welcomed Robert Isom, the CEO of American Airlines, as its first speaker at the Statler Hotel in downtown Dallas. During the interview he shared how the world’s biggest airline was prepared for the upcoming Thanksgiving vacation, and already looking ahead to the future with a focus on recruiting and training pilots, and staffing the carrier back up.
Azul Brazilian Airlines doesn’t expect any ultra-low cost carriers to enter Brazil any time soon. The low cost carrier has 165 aircraft that fly to 170 destinations in Brazil and will flies just under 1000 flights a day next month.
Linda Jojo, chief customer officer for United Airlines, described a slew of ways the major airline is changing the customer experience during the Skift Aviation Forum in Dallas.
Sun Country Airlines CEO Jude Bricker believes it’s premature to draw firm conclusions about the emergence of new travel patterns seven months into the travel industry’s recovery. But Bricker said at the recent Skift Aviation Forum that surging airfares are changing travelers’ behaviors, including driving more consumers to fly on Tuesdays instead of the weekend.
Steven Udvar-Házy, the co-founder and executive chairman of lessor Air Lease Corporation, believes the airline industry will likely see more consolidation, especially in Europe. Udvar-Házy said at the recent Skift Aviation Forum in Dallas that while he doubts the continent’s low-cost carriers will be involved in any mergers, he sees Italy’s ITA and TAP Air Portugal as takeover targets.
Sean Donohue, the CEO of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, has seen his airport make a significant rebound from the pandemic, becoming the world’s No. 2 in terms of passenger count.
Here are some excerpts from Daily Lodging Report from the past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here, now.
Dubai will play an outsized role in the United Arab Emirates aim to attract 40 million visitors annually by 2031, so what can it do to improve its tourism industry? Four panelists — Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths, Kerzner International CEO Philippe Zuber, Emirates Airline Chief Commercial Officer Adnan Kazim, and Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing CEO Issam Kazim — discussed at the recent Skift Global Forum East in Dubai what local tourism officials need to do to continue to attract visitors.
Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta considers himself amazed at level of growth he’s seen in the Middle East’s hotel industry during his roughly 40-year career. Nassetta described the commitment officials in the region have made to travel and tourism as extraordinary during his appearance at the recent Skift Global Forum East in Dubai, adding he views Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as markets for significant growth.
Last year, Skift debuted its Future of Lodging Forum in New York City – focused on what Skift has called The Great Merging of how we live, work, and travel. This year, we are bringing this event and a wide cross-section of hospitality leaders together in London on March 29th, 2023.
Hilton Worldwide’s earnings report on Thursday was a good news-bad news story.