7 questions with Woodcraft Hospitality's Deidre Schwartz

Deidre Schwartz, VP of marketing at Woodcraft Hospitality, is set to attend the 20th Hotec Design, an annual conference presented by Questex Hospitality, the parent company of Hotel Management. At the conference, buyers meet one-on-one with hospitality-focused suppliers like Woodcraft to learn about new products and services and to keep up to date on emerging trends. 

Ahead of the event, Hotel Management checked in with Schwartz to learn about how the company is adapting to changes in the industry.

1: How has your segment of the industry changed over the past year? 

We continue to grow our presence in the upper-midscale to upper-upscale hotel chains and independent hotels and tangent types of properties such as multifamily and senior living.

2. Can you share some ways you and your company have adapted to these changes? 

Increasing staff, updating website and various marketing collateral and participating in more industry events such as Hotec, The Lodging Conference, NEWH trade shows and BDNY are ways that we can communicate our story to the industry.

Deidre Schwartz
Deidre Schwartz (Woodcraft Hospitality)

3. What are some trends you think will have staying power beyond 2023? 

Remote work, sustainability, personalization, experiential travel, geopolitical unrest, COVID or something else, financial uncertainty, political polarization.

4. What is the biggest challenge you have overcome over the past year? 

We survived through the supply-chain crisis that brought on enormous ocean transit times and costs.

5. How have you incorporated environmental, social and governance efforts into your hospitality operations? 

We continue to identify means of driving efficiency and have adopted many lean practices in manufacturing for not just resources but also for safety and well-being. The nature of our manufacturing business uses wood products and in the interest of offsetting our consumption, we have committed to planting a tree through One Tree Planted for every piece of furniture we manufacture. We have a diverse workforce and are a minority-owned and -managed organization.

6. What are you most excited about accomplishing over the next year? 

We are very excited to show off some really great projects that we've been working on for the past one to two years. We will be at a dozen or so shows this year and will have product to showcase to demonstrate our capabilities and quality.

7. What is the value of meeting hospitality buyers one on one? 

Cultivating and building relationships that transcend business. We know that people like doing business with people they like and trust and those are attributes that take time and energy to establish. If given the chance, we will delight customers with our quality of service and product.

The 2023 Hotec Design conference will take place June 19-22 at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz. Registration is open for both buyers and suppliers.