La Quinta Inns & Suites president and CEO Wayne Goldberg
spoke recently with Business Travel News
hotel editor Michael B. Baker about revenue and rate projections for upcoming
corporate negotiations and a development update for the midprice hotel chain.
Business Travel News:
What's your outlook for the rest of the year?
WayneGoldberg: Every month of 2010 has been
better than the month before. So far, August looks like it's going to be our
best month. It started out really strong. Demand is clearly stabilizing.
Occupancy has been growing most of the year, and we've had positive revenue per
available room the last several months. We're clearly seeing signs that things
are continuing to improve. Rates are still not where we would like them to be,
but we're starting to see the momentum in the industry and our segment. 2010
will have growth. It will not be robust growth, but modest growth. All of that
will come in occupancy. In 2011, we'll start to see a little rate and
occupancy.
BTN: How about
corporate rates?
Goldberg: We've
had the reality of the full-service guys. We have to get them out of our space.
When they start moving out of our space and moving their rate and getting
corporate bookings back, ours will improve.
BTN: How is
development progressing?
Goldberg: The
development picture continues to be very strong. We had 58 hotels open last
year. This year, we'll open 65 to 75 hotels. I'm hedging a little bit, because
it depends on acquisitions that require conversions we could get by the end of
the year that open early. We've seen things taper off. We've cleaned up the
pipeline and removed some properties we don't believe today will be developed.
It continues to be over 200 hotels, down from 220. As we continue to grow, we're
getting close to number 800, so in the next two and a half years, we'll be at
1,000 hotels and 97,000 rooms.
BTN: What about
international development?
Goldberg: Growth
continues in Mexico and Panama, and we're working on some things in a number of
other places, like Guatemala, Colombia and Costa Rica. We also have a real
interest in Brazil. Execution is very hard, but hopefully some things will
happen and we'll be able to get our footprint in Brazil as well. The growth
there is just phenomenal.
BTN: What's been
your focus for amenities and service?
Goldberg: We've
done things like our deal with Universal Air Travel Plan. We have voice in the
cloud. We haven't put a phone switch in a hotel in four years. We've found ways
to lower cost, improve technological advances and it's just a matter of time
before they become standard, like increasing Internet bandwidth delivered to a
property to 3 megs from 1.5.
This report originally
appeared in the Sept. 6, 2010, issue of Business Travel News.