MANALAPAN, Fla. — The economy extended-stay hotel segment has stood out during the pandemic and recovery: economy extended-stay hotels lost only a 10th of the revenue that economy hotels in general did during 2020, according to research from the Highland Group. This has resulted in an abundance of attention for extended-stay and the launch of several new brands in the segment.
With the segment's strength as the backdrop, extended-stay brand My Place Hotels kicked off its 10th anniversary conference, held at the Eau Palm Beach. Greeting several hundred attendees at the opening general session founder and CEO Ryan Rivett said the company has been largely stable throughout the turmoil. “The areas of instability that we experienced were less severe than the general industry and a lot of the smaller teams in our hotels rose really quickly to the challenge as they were presented with that and made lemonade out of lemons,” he said.
On the last day of the 2019 conference, Rivett said the company was about to debut its guest-loyalty program, Stay Rewarded, at all locations. Today, he said, loyalty is what sustains the company. “It was the guys that come in on Monday and leave on Thursday that kept coming—and they chose to come to us even though some of our competitors advertised rates that were lower and got really competitive,” he said.
Resetting, Refocusing, Regaining
The past few years, Rivett said, have been an opportunity for many of the company’s owners to reset, refocus on fundamentals and regain a grip on market strategy. “For others, it was an opportunity to refine,” he added, calling some of the challenges “a blip on the radar screen.” Some operators opted to focus on their “core competencies,” reinforcing each property’s value to its clientele.
Rivett said the company’s core values have not changed, but the delivery of those values has. “Revenues have sustainably increased but costs have, too,” he said. “The dynamics of performance are constantly in flux." He acknowledged that “a lot” of planned developments did not ultimately happen, or had to pause due to the pandemic. “And so we're not as far ahead as where we wanted to be on today's date,” he said.
Still, the company reached a notable milestone, with 100 franchise hotels sold as of August, with 66 currently open. “The dynamics of our offering and our market position over the last couple years have really emerged in the circumstances to create new circles of interest,” Rivett told attendees. “We've seen different types of investments, different types of entries into the My Place chain than we did in the last 10 years. … There's a lot of you today that came in for different reasons than many of our other operators did in years prior, and that, to me, says that we're maturing; we're continuing to grow into something that is valuable on a much broader scale.”