Business View Magazine - July 2023

138 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 7 trends impacting the hotel and hospitality industry have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels. The most notable is staffing, Jaeger says. After many professionals in the hospitality sector were laid off in 2020 when communities and states were faced with mandatory travel bans, they often found jobs in other industries or simply exited the workforce altogether. Still, managing hotels can be a labor-intensive process. Jaeger estimates that about 3 million jobs in the broader hospitality industry have been lost post-pandemic and may never come back. That forces WNW Hospitality’s hotels to do more with less. He calls the labor shortage the biggest challenge the industry is facing. “It’s an ongoing problem we need to solve and we’re not there yet,” Jaeger says. Another post-pandemic challenge is the impact of higher interest rates and inflation on consumers, which reduces the available disposable income for some travelers, especially as government checks to support the COVID economy ceased nearly two years ago. Jaeger admits that after four decades of personal experience having managed hotels through economic recessions, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Stock Market crashes, and more, he and his industry colleagues could not have prepared themselves for COVID. Within the first 18 months of March 2020, the goal was often to make sure that WNW Hospitality’s properties did not go out of business. “We’re still working on ways to supplement the loss of some business travel,” Jaeger says. “There was so much angst for hotel owners, so we often had weekly meetings with our hotels for a while to discuss things like preservation of assets.” While business and convention travel has still not returned to pre-COVID levels, neither has international travel to the U.S., especially from parts of Asia, Jaeger says. advantages based on the hands-on approach from management. WNW Hospitality has a regional team of leaders, with executives that spend time onsite at its properties, which range from New York and Pennsylvania to the east, Texas in the south, and Illinois in the Midwest. Executives are also in regular communications with hotel operators on a full range of topics like marketing, renovations and investments, and staffing. WNW Hospitality uses technology systems that can help better direct rates, identify trends and anticipate changes. Jaeger says the firm provides its properties with in-depth sales and marketing tools that help owners make better revenue-generating decisions. “Rates can change multiple times per day, and we have to be on top of our hotels to help (those firm’s properties) stay competitive,” says Jaeger. Labor remains the biggest post-COVID challenge While COVID hasn’t gone away, its impact on the travel industry has loosened. Yet many