Omni's Jeff Doane talks...
- Moving upmarket and catering to corporate
travelers
- Omni's SME Select Business program
- Rate outlook for 2026
Dallas-based hotel company Omni Hotels & Resorts, which has 50 properties open in the
U.S. and Canada, is investing heavily in its product and service as it looks to
ascend the hotel service-tier and capture more of the corporate market. Omni
chief commercial officer Jeff Doane, who
joined the company last year, spoke with BTN managing editor Chris Davis
last month at the Global Business Travel Association convention in Denver about
the company's luxury ambitions, its push for small-to-midsize businesses and the
effects of macroeconomic uncertainty. Edited excerpts follow.
BTN: You’ve been
at Omni about a year and a half now. How has the experience been?
Jeff Doane: I
love it. My background includes serving as chief commercial officer at Accor
after it acquired Fairmont in 2016. I had worked for Fairmont for a number of
years, and probably the best experience was helping move Fairmont from a
four-star, upper-upscale brand into the luxury space, creating
more of an experiential type of brand. Omni is trying to kind of do the same
thing, and that really appealed to me. The culture here is strong, and everybody's
going in the same direction and is focused on the same things.
BTN: How does
that upmarket strategy translate to the business travel segment?
Doane: You want
to tailor your product around the needs of your customer. There's a service
experience that's expected when you're in that four- to five-star space. Then moving
from one that provides just that to a brand that's creating more unique and
rewarding and personal experiences for travelers to me is the difference
between four and four-and-a-half stars. Then it escalates right to Ritz-Carlton
and Four Seasons where they have such attention on the guests. We want to be
right in the heart of that luxury space.
From a product standpoint, we’ve invested $2.5 billion in
our hotels over the past three to five years, and we're poised to do the same
in the next three to five. We know that business traveler wants great Wi-Fi,
great breakfast, great gym, great sleep experience. Those are the things that
we're really focused on in terms of specifically for the business traveler. And
that experiential side is, why are you in town and do you want a foam pillow or
a feather pillow? Do you want to be on a low floor or a high floor? What are
the things that specifically turn the needle for you?
BTN: Does that
change the corporate customers you’re targeting, either on a corporate or
individual level?
Doane: Within
every company there's levels of travel. You may be at the midscale end of the
market, and you may be working with Amazon, but Ritz-Carlton is working with
Amazon too. So your customer ends up being the same, where you fall in that
spectrum determines who ends up staying in those hotels. Certain customers will
be like, 'We just started working with you. This is fantastic. We love your
product.' So it's new to him. I think there's a lot of that kind of opportunity
for us, but I think there's also a lot of companies that we're working with
where maybe a different traveler within their organization stays with us.
BTN: Along those
lines, all of the big hotel companies in the U.S. are multi-brand up and down
the line, including luxury. How do you carve a niche for yourself?
Doane: We've
always said we're not replacing Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt. They have so many
dots on the map and cater to every traveler. It would be naive for us to think
that was possible. But we are a complementary brand for people who want higher-touch
service, and we think that we can win people over once they experience this.
BTN: The
macroeconomic picture has been volatile this year. What are you hearing from corporate
clients? Are they cutting back?
Doane: They're
just plugging along. A lot of our customers say they've had a pretty good first
half of the year and a lot say the second half is going to be like the first
half.
[On tariffs,] we have to come with some conclusion on this
or something's got to give. [In a session on GBTA's Business Travel Index] the
speaker said if the tariffs end up at 20 percent, there will be an impact. I
don't know that there's not another way to look at it. So you're hoping that
cooler heads prevail and it ends up in 3 percent to 5 percent range. The longer
the uncertainty lasts, the more it's in people's heads.
BTN: Are requests
for proposals or how buyers communicate changing?
Doane: We're
seeing more customers saying, you know what, we work with the big brands and we
have that kind of relationship with them, but we're looking to try to figure
out how we complement that. How do we create a more diversified set of options
for our traveler? This year, year to date, business travel revenue has grown
for us by 17 percent and volume has grown 10 percent
I think it's the customer saying, 'I don't like to be so
boxed in.' And we're a little bit more of a one-on-one relationship with the
customer and that's real important too because they like to know who to call.
BTN: You launched
the Omni
Select Business program in April. What’s the early verdict?
Doane: A year ago
I came to this show thinking we could be better at business travel. We
learned that a number of the big brands have those kinds of programs just for
small to medium-sized companies. Well, Omni is a small to medium-sized hotel
company, so I think we're a natural for that.
We're real happy with how it's progressing. We thought 50 to
75 accounts would be a good start, and we’re already at 200.
BTN: Does its
success give you any ideas in terms of enhancing it?
Doane: We came
out with a 9 percent discount off of our normal rates, and we realized that
probably wasn't rewarding enough. So just recently we changed it to 12 percent.
BTN: Are you
integrating AI into your RFP process or operations?
Doane: Not in
RFPs yet, but we've moved our reservation system to the cloud. There's a
certain amount of AI involved in that in terms of knowing your guests and
understanding them. We are working with a company called BlueConic to better
understand our guests. If we know what a traveler wants from us, we can take
better care of them and develop those personalized offers.
BTN: How are you
approaching 2026 rate strategies?
Doane: The latest
projection I saw from CBRE was like 1.8 percent to 2 percent growth for next
year. [Note: CBRE
in May projected full-year 2025 U.S. average daily rate to increase 1.2
percent year over year and revenue per available room to increase 1.3 percent.]
I'm not sure we're back to stabilized occupancy altogether in the United
States. I don't know that there's enough pressure for hotel companies to really
try to drive rate. You'll try and move it to accommodate cost increases. We're at
that stage of trying to get our foot in the door with a lot of companies and
try and expose our product to them and their travelers. And that's not the time
where you're pushing for double-digit increases, you know?
BTN: What’s ahead
on the development front?
Doane: We have a
beautiful brand-new hotel opening in Fort Lauderdale in October, right at the
marina and convention center. We are working on a project in Raleigh, N.C.,
again right at the convention center. Same thing down in New Orleans. And then
there's a bunch of other projects that we're talking to people about.