Hilton Sees Link Between Brand Strategy and Workplace Morale

25.08.2023 - 13:58 / skift.com / Sean Oneill

Over 14 years, hotel operator Hilton Worldwide has doubled its number of hotel and resort brands to 19 and more than doubled its number of rooms to 1.1 million. During the pandemic recovery, the McLean, Virginia-based hotel giant is looking to fine-tune its brands and portfolio, especially in light of its introduction in January of its first economy brand, Spark by Hilton.

“From a macro perspective, in terms of services we provide across the chain scale, everything’s getting touched up and evolved in a way I’ve never seen in my 14 years in this industry,” said Matthew Schuyler, chief brand and communications officer. “It’s like a Big Bang.”

When franchise and management companies talk about their brands, they often speak about brand standards. These distinctions help brands stand out for guests and developers.

Yet Schuyler, responsible for positioning the company’s brands, points to labor relations as a critical component. Happy workers equal prosperous brands, he noted.

Brand marketing is just talk if there isn’t a matching operational delivery. So Hilton has worked hard to cultivate an energized workforce to deliver on its brand promises.

When asked what he’s most proud of in his 14-year tenure at Hilton, Schuyler said it was the company’s improvements to its workplace culture over many years. As signals of progress, he pointed to independent rankings that find Hilton one of the best and more diverse workplaces according to employee surveys.

“When we started, we couldn’t make the lists, and when we broke in, we were at the low levels,” Schuyler said. “By around 2016, we were topping the lists. I think we’re number one on lists in about a dozen countries now.

For example, Fortune magazine has named it one of the World’s Best Workplaces in the past seven years. It’s currently the only hospitality company on the 25-slot “Great Places to Work” list.

Schuyler said how it handled the pandemic disruption as sensitively as circumstances permitted helped it maintain good relations with its workers. When it had to lay off workers because hotels were closed, it created a job board with listings for openings in other sectors such as retail, grocery stores, and warehouses that, Schuyler said, at one point had 100,000 listings.

“We drew down on the goodwill we had built up with our colleagues in a big way during the pandemic,” Schuyler said. “We’ve built our ‘bank account’ back, maybe not fully to the pre-pandemic levels. But, in a recognizable sense, it’s back.”

It’s not just labor relations that matter to brand management. Hilton also sees partnerships with non-travel brands as a key path to staying relevant.

For example, connected fitness was a trend that surged in the pandemic, and Hilton is adding at least