The first of its kind, The Hospitality Show is a bold new event for the entire hospitality ecosystem with one shared goal: operating hotels efficiently and profitably. Brought to you by The American Hotel & Lodging Association and Hotel Management, the event will bring together top industry leaders, senior executives of hotel brands, owners, operators, management companies and procurement specialists—and their teams—to discover, network and drive profitability.
Business accelerates when the right people are in the room, and this new weekly series of speaker interviews goes 1:1 with the industry’s best and brightest as they build the inaugural event to be held June 27-29, 2023 at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas.
In this installment, we catch up with The Hospitality Show Speaker Ben Erwin, president and CEO of Encore.
What issues are currently causing headaches for the industry?
Erwin: We are all still assimilating a new workforce. The industry has made positive strides with attracting workers, but now the job shifts to development and putting this new workforce in a position to be successful. Hospitality leaders are adapting to the post-pandemic environment and thinking differently about recruiting, training, and retaining talented team members. At Encore, we’ve invested significantly in training and career development programs to accelerate technical development and we’ve introduced a company-wide incentive plan focused on service excellence. Those two strategies align wins for our customers to wins for our team members. We’re all invested in delivering top-notch events this year.
What new trends do you see affecting the hospitality industry the most in 2023?
Erwin: There’s an interesting focus on delivering more engaging experiences outside of traditional meeting space. With the right partner, hotels can use space creatively and have a bigger footprint to sell to groups to maximize their return on investment. We want to be evaluating the ROI on digital hardware and connected infrastructure in public spaces – there’s upside there to drive more group revenue. We are continually learning from our own proprietary planner research that attendees are more focused on finding connections through networking and socialization. We believe we will see attendees continue to look to special moments at events to justify their time and investment. As an industry we need to lead the innovation to deliver on that expectation.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for the industry as we make our way through 2023?
Erwin: Let’s come together to empower our shared customers to host events that have measurable business outcomes. The industry can do more to demonstrate the return investing in bringing communities together delivers for organizations. We need to support meeting professionals as strategic leaders in their organizations to solidify the role of events in the business world in the face of recessionary fears.
Share one key takeaway Show attendees can expect to gain from your session.
Erwin: I look forward to the discussion during the panel, “Where Hospitality Talent Will Emerge in the Future.” Our industry has a great story to tell, and we need to continue to find creative ways to tell it to a new generation of workers. The story of the purpose behind travel and hospitality, endless examples of rapid career progression from entry-level roles to the job we are all doing at making our organizations great companies to work for. At Encore, our talent strategy starts with our purpose to “Connect and Inspire People” and commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging so we are a great company for all. Team members that feel they belong are team members that feel engaged and they are team members that deliver for the customer.