On this here, the first day of the fiscal year and also on the first day of my 37th year on Earth, I thought I would share with the world some statistical information regarding my company’s booking record as I’ve now been in business for sixty-six months. I’m sure there are questions about where my booking are going. And in an effort for full disclosure, here goes!
In the five and a half years since I began Hotel Lobbyists, I’ve been able to place nearly a thousand groups total, and in every state except for South Dakota. Trust that the moment I’m able to close a deal on a hotel in South Dakota I will sound the alarm of excitement so I might claim booking every state in the nation. And in addition to forty-nine US states, I’ve also booked six foreign countries on a total of three continents – Canada, Ireland, Spain, Israel, Korea and Taiwan. Hotel Lobbyists is a global enterprise!
In terms of targeted US cities, there’s no question that Washington, DC will always possess the lion’s share of my attention as my clients are still predominantly DC based government or non-profits and inbound groups are exceedingly common. To date, I’ve booked roughly half of my groups in the District of Columbia, 479 to be exact – and if you add in Arlington, Alexandria and Bethesda, that number is actually 532. The remaining nine of my top ten destinations are Baltimore (39), San Francisco (24), Atlanta (21), Chicago (21), New Orleans (20), Seattle (19), Denver (17), Portland (12), and San Diego (12). I thought many would find this data intriguing.
In terms of brand loyalty – it is my job not to play favorites. That said, I also don’t intentionally spread business out amongst the brands. It will come as no surprise that my former employer, Kimpton, does get more than their fair share of my smallest groups, but this is almost exclusively because I was booking these very groups at Kimpton Hotels before I left and now I’m continuing to book them in a different capacity. What’s most interesting is that without deliberately trying to keep things even, things are incredibly even amongst the top national brands. In five and a half years, I’ve booked 252 groups in Kimpton Hotels. But because these groups are small, the revenue total is less than that of the next two highest shares. The remaining major brands booked by number of groups are Hilton (111), Marriott (98), Starwood (78), Hyatt (61), and IHG (60). I’ve also booked 120 groups at hotels I’d classify as independent. As far as the smaller brands go, my top shares go to Omni (20), Affinia (18), Loews (17), Historic (16), and Fairmont (13).
This is probably information that hoteliers might like to copy and paste into Delphi, no?