In January, Stephanie Kendrick became president of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts’ La Quinta brand, capping off a lengthy career with the company that spans nearly two decades.
In the early aughts, Kendrick oversaw a Howard Johnson’s hotel in Kissimmee, Fla., close to the theme parks of Orlando. During her tenure there, Wyndham acquired the brand, and Kendrick began working with Daniel Olsen, the company’s director of quality assurance and director of operations.
After two years of working together, Olsen encouraged Kendrick to apply to be a quality-assurance consultant in her own right—a promotion that took two years to realize. The job, she recalled nearly 20 years later, was “the most amazing position” because she had to win asset owners over to her point of view. “If you don't want to engage in conversation with me because of what I'm doing, then you probably won't take any advice or any skills that I can impart on you,” she said.
Building Connections
To build good relationships with owners—even as she qualified their properties—she made an effort to truly engage with them and to focus on elements that could be fixed. “What's our improvement plan? What are we going to do to get this going?” she remembers asking owners. When she came back to see how the implementations went, the owners were genuinely eager to show off their changes and highlight their successes. She also enjoyed the opportunity to see all of the hotels in Wyndham’s portfolio and learn about the company’s values. “There is something about the culture at Wyndham,” she said. “You feel cared for—which I think is interesting, because we're in the hospitality business. How novel is it that a hospitality company would take such great care of their associates?”
Wyndham launched localized field-based managers for its quality-assurance division and Kendrick became the manager for the southeast region, meeting a wide range of leaders at both the corporate and property levels. “What has been spectacular to me is getting to know the teams and individuals, because everybody is driven by different things, and you don't get to know that until you get the opportunity to lead a team,” she said. “When I was hiring different positions, I would always say, ‘I'm not replacing one job, I'm replacing a cast member, because they all have to work together.’”
Continuing to rise up through the ranks, Kendrick went on to lead the department, and then the operations team and then became senior director for the southeast region, overseeing all of Wyndham’s brands across the region. “And then I had a great opportunity to join Days Inn as head of operations… and then that took me to the opportunity to lead Ramada and TravelLodge.”
Rising through the ranks, she learned the value of taking on challenges and learning from each opportunity. “I do feel like there is something to be said about participating and being present—not only for your team, but for the entire company.”
Leadership
In January, Kendrick became president of the La Quinta brand, which Wyndham acquired in early 2018, and which she is excited to advance as a global flag. “I have been thinking about the order of initiatives,” she said, likening the process of growing the brand to building a hotel. “The first thing you pour [is] foundation. So [we’re] assessing our foundation—where are we sitting? What is our core in terms of service and quality and performance?” With a stable foundation, she added, the brand is in a good place for growth. The team will “amp up” the brand’s service culture, she said, and will likely have new elements to announce at the next Wyndham conference in the spring.
Today, leading the La Quinta brand, she still encounters some of the GMs and owners with whom she worked as a quality assurance consultant when she first started working with Wyndham. Those leaders, she said, are “still connected and still friendly and still glad to see me.” Building those relationships and watching owners and managers succeed through successful partnerships is a meaningful part of her role, she said. “Not everybody comes into it as a hotelier. They come into it as a business owner. It's our job to make them hoteliers. Those kinds of interactions make me so incredibly happy, because they finally get it.”
Kendrick acknowledged feeling “an immense amount of pressure” to accomplish her goals “on all cylinders, because I know that they're looking and I know that the next me is out there somewhere.”
To support the next Stephanie Kendrick, she mentors up-and-coming hospitality leaders, bringing them into the business as early as possible. “I want people [to choose] this industry when they're in college, when they are in high school,” she said. “I want them to know that it's possible. I want them to be the next me. I want them to have a great experience.”