Newsmaker: Prime Hospitality Hires Carlson Cos. Sales Veteran

Prime Hospitality Corp. has appointed 25-year hospitality industry veteran Maureen O'Hanlon senior vice president of sales and marketing, responsible for corporate sales, e-commerce and central reservations, among other areas. Prime's inventory of 240 hotels includes two midprice brands, AmeriSuites and Wellesley Inns & Suites, and its new full service brand Prime Hotels & Resorts.

After a difficult two-year period for the industry, O'Hanlon said she sees the early signs of a recovery. "The sense is that the second half of the year is going to be better than the first half," she said. "Advance bookings are up, which adds to the optimism, but we're anxious to see that these early signs aren't just a blip on the radar screen and that any growth is sustainable and long term."

Given the importance of the corporate market to Prime, O'Hanlon is reaching out to clients to make sure it is included in as many requests for proposals as possible. "Our challenge still is growing awareness of the brands and communicating the price-value relationship we can deliver to buyers. The first year you're in a corporate program, you're really just exposing the buyer to the brands. Once travelers start getting used to staying in the properties, and understanding the service levels, they start coming back—and your marketshare is likely to grow."

Most of O'Hanlon's prior experience was with Carlson Cos., where she was executive vice president of sales and marketing. Carlson's hotel brands, which include the deluxe Regent, full service Radisson and midprice Country Inns & Suites, cover a wider range of industry sectors than Prime. This has given O'Hanlon a perspective on the rate compression between price points that has marked the current downturn in business travel, much to buyers' benefit.

"Economic and market conditions this past year have put a particular squeeze on a lot of full service brands and, as a result, they've been competing—at least on price—with midprice brands, which is a new phenomenon," she said. "Yet, we feel AmeriSuites and Wellesley have a lot of price elasticity."

Looking down the road, it might be difficult for some of these full service competitors to regain lost ground. "They might find it hard to get their rates back up in a reasonable fashion because they really came down in price strictly to drive occupancy," she said. At the same time, other buyers in the present economy have traded down from full service brands to midprice or, more likely, added the lower price point alternatives to their hotel programs. "Buyers are discovering our brands where they might not even have looked at a midlevel property in the past," O'Hanlon said. "If nothing else, such brands as AmeriSuites and Wellesley have gained exposure by being asked to compete from two standpoints—price and service."