Choice Hotels International President and CEO Pat Pacious opened the company’s 65th convention on Tuesday by reinforcing Choice’s strategy to strengthen its midscale presence, grow its upscale and extended-stay portfolio, as well as advance its technology platform.
In the past year, Choice surpassed 7,000 hotels open in its global system; expanded its domestic development pipeline to the largest in company history; and grew its international room count by nearly 6%. Choice Chief Development Officer David Pepper said today’s pipeline stands at more than 1,000 properties, the largest ever for the system. This news comes after 756 domestic franchise agreements were made last year – 60% with existing owners.
With more than 5,000 Choice owners, GMs and staff gathered in Las Vegas to celebrate the company’s 80th anniversary, Pacious also highlighted custom software development and announced the launch a fully mobile Opening Portal to simplify and improve the opening process for franchisees. The project management tool lets Choice owners track every step of the opening process – from franchise agreement to the first check-in. A search feature guides owners to important documents and educational content about the opening process and advice on how to improve profitability.
The new resource builds on Choice Hotels’ recently created Virtual Pay capabilities and the Group Management Platform. Virtual Pay allows travel managers to book stays for their guests without needing a personal credit card, and the Group Management Platform is an online reservation solution for planning and booking group travel.
Across the brand portfolio, Pacious highlighted news from Comfort, which started a transformation process in 2013 and promptly generated three consecutive years of RevPAR increases. Today, it has a vibrant pipeline that includes 80% new and this summer will officially re-launch with a new marketing campaign.
Pacious also pointed to the Quality brand, which had 132 openings in 2018 – the most among midscale brands; he said the conversion-focused Clarion Pointe launched seven months ago in the midscale, select-service segment and on Tuesday opened its first hotel in Sulphur Springs, Texas; he stated the Clarion brand recently opened an 810-room hotel in Oslo, Norway, becoming the largest property in the brand system; and added that the upscale Cambria brand is accelerating growth with 50 hotels opening in 2019 and another 25 more under construction.
Choice is also in the process of shooting new ad spots for television with the Comfort brand refresh getting the spotlight. Ads will also highlight a new tagline: “our business is you.”
At the end of the opening session, Pacious said he was sorry for issues related to its Choice Advantage operating system, saying the company has put 9,000 man-hours into improving system performance and is troubleshooting at the unit level. He also highlighted strategic partnerships with Amazon and Google to drive profitability and increase booking capabilities on platforms such as Book on Google.
Ending the day with an inspirational speech by entertainer Queen Latifah, Pacious reflected on how in 80 years, the company grew from seven owned motels to more than 7,000 hotels, representing nearly 570,000 rooms, in over 40 countries. “We’ve grown Choice Hotels from a cooperative of seven motels to the publicly traded, global enterprise we are today because we put our owners’ profitability front and center, and always will.”