STONECREST, Ga. — Three and a half months after Wyndham Hotels & Resorts launched its BOLD by Wyndham program, the company held its first Black Hotel Ownership Symposium, hosting several dozen Black business professionals for a one-day meeting at the Priví Event Center in the suburbs of Atlanta. The event brought local Black entrepreneurs to the center, part of the Mall at Stonecrest, to network with financial experts and Wyndham C-suite leaders and learn about the risks and benefits of hotel ownership.
BOLD Undertaking
When it was announced in July, BOLD—Black Owners and Lodging Developers—was described as a platform to expand awareness for the challenges faced by Black entrepreneurs and to use Wyndham’s resources to address those challenges. The first participant in the program was Vaughn Irons, principal of Stonecrest Resorts, the company behind the Priví Event Center, who is set to build a new-construction, 110-room Tryp by Wyndham franchise.
Irons kicked off the symposium with what he described as a simple message: “Opportunity is here,” he said. Of the 60,000 hotels currently open in the U.S., Irons said that fewer than 2 percent are owned by Black people. “We have to work hard to change that,” he said.
For the remainder of the day, local dignitaries, business professionals, association heads and Wyndham leaders talked with attendees about the logistics of hotel ownership. Wyndham President and CEO Geoff Ballotti greeted the crowd, calling BOLD “the most important initiative we’ve ever done,” and emphasized that Wyndham was there to “support” the potential hoteliers. Wyndham General Counsel Paul Cash, meanwhile, noted that while fewer than 2 percent of hotels are owned by Black businesspeople, fewer than 1 percent are owned by Black women. The symposium, therefore, was a means to end the “old boys’ club,” lay a foundation for Black hotel ownership and provide aspiring hoteliers with the tools they need to determine what is right for them. “We really needed to listen to the needs—the specific needs—of the Black community,” he said. Later in the day, hospitality veterans from different fields moved from table to table and answered questions from the attendees one on one, offering insights into varying facets of the industry.
The CEO Weighs In
During a coffee break, Ballotti told Hotel Management that attendance was beyond the team’s expectations. “We were thinking 50, maybe 70 developers [would be here],” he said. In total, about 90 potential owners attended the symposium, some of them invited by Irons himself. “Vaughn is certainly very well connected. He's been a great partner from the very beginning on BOLD [and] has helped us think through it,” Ballotti said.
Ballotti highlighted a moment during the “Path to Hotel Ownership” panel, when Paul Breslin, a managing partner at Horwath HTL, asked the crowd how many of them had invested in real estate. Nearly every attendee raised their hands, but when Breslin asked how many owned hotels, most lowered their hands again.
While the attendees were all “very successful Black real estate owners,” they have—so far—not invested in hospitality. Ballotti cited several possible reasons for this: “They're not owning hotels because they're more of an operating business. They're not owning hotels because they don't understand the franchisee-franchisor relationship. They're not owning hotels because of the operating nature of the business and the labor components and whatnot. But all of those things are things that we can help with.”
Local Strength
Irons came to the BOLD project with a history of investment and community support. He spent 12 years at Freddie Mac in the late 1990s and early 2000s, running the Housing and Community Investment department and investing capital to support development, particularly among indigenous communities. Looking to help his own community, he decided to bring his financial acumen to Stonecrest—a neighborhood that is more than 90 percent Black—and invest in the struggling mall there, buying a former Sears and turning it into the $17 million Priví mixed-use development. Beyond the already-open SeaQuest Aquarium and event center, the development will get restaurants, a day spa, a gym, an art gallery and a bookstore and other retail and lifestyle venues. The “capstone” of the project, however, will be a new-build 110-room Tryp by Wyndham hotel on the site of the former Sears Auto Parts store.
While the mall already has three select-service hotels on the far side of its parking lot—including an AmericInn by Wyndham—Irons sees a need for more development, particularly for full-service properties like the Tryp brand in Stonecrest. The greater Atlanta area has long been a popular location for filming movies and TV programs, and while many of the performers and directors stay in downtown Atlanta, the film crews stay in Stonecrest, Irons noted. “The hotels that exist here today are more businesspeople's hotels, not lifestyle brands,” he said. “The Tryp gives us an opportunity to take full advantage of other industry investments … because it's a full-service hotel and this is the first full-service hotel flag that we have in the city.”
The new-construction property was important to Irons in another way. “We have to help the residents and the traveling-by visitors see that this is an area that's worthy of attracting new investment and not just adaptive reuse,” he said. “What's bigger and shinier and prettier than a brand new hotel?”
Irons got involved with Wyndham when he sent the company an email with a prospectus of his idea and some news articles about what he had already accomplished. “I got a phone call to have a conversation within 24 hours,” he recalled. Within a week, a Wyndham representative was at Stonecrest to walk the property and talk strategy. “That type of experience and level of customer service is rare in America in every industry, but in particular on the sales side of the hospitality flags,” Irons said. With his history in lending and building Priví, Irons was already familiar with some facets of the process, but having a large company like Wyndham offer support made the development easier. “I believe they don't just care about me developing the hotel,” Irons said. “They really care about my overall business. And likewise, I don't just care about the fact that I'm in BOLD or I have a flag. I care about their overall business.”
Entrepreneurs, Opportunities and a Brand of Choice
One of the attendees, Frank Jefferson, owns salons and barbershops in the Atlanta area and learned about the event from Irons. “I'm looking for another opportunity,” he said of his reasons for attending the symposium. “This could potentially be another opportunity for me.”
Jefferson found Irons’ message about the potential in hospitality to be an inspiring one for entrepreneurs, especially with the power of a major corporation behind it. The BOLD program could, he estimated, take the percentage of Black hotel ownership from 2 to 20 percent, especially given the number of Black entrepreneurs with multiple businesses.
And with more Black ownership, Jefferson sees opportunities for hotels that cater more specifically to Black communities. “Hotels are in the community. They have people working from the community,” he said. “The only way we exist is through being connected to the city, having our doors open and people knowing that we're embracing and helping support the community.” Hotel pools, he suggested, could double as neighborhood gathering spaces where locals and visitors can interact with each other. “I just am really excited about the potential here, and as the owner of F&D Barbershop, I know what difference it makes when you get people investing, like Wyndham, in the community.”
This sentiment is exactly what Irons was hoping to hear: “We need to work very diligently to make sure that the entire African American community views Wyndham as a brand of choice,” he said.