AAHOA
112 | Connecting with Your Team, Empowering Women and Mountain Climbing with Lina Patel
AAHOA
Lina Patel’s goal is to climb mountains and her passion is to serve.
Born and raised in India, Lina immigrated to the United States in the early 80’s with her parents. She grew up working in the hotel, cleaning rooms, doing laundry, working front desk shifts, and even mowing the lawn. She remembers coming home after school and immediately racing to the hotel lobby to begin her shift.
Lina graduated from Wright State University with a degree in Management Information Systems and immediately started working with Lexis-Nexis, the online database company, to gain Corporate knowledge.
Ultimately, she rejoined the hotel industry and started investing in multiple franchises across the Eastern United States.
Lina served as an AAHOA regional ambassador program for 6 years, and she was just elected by the members to serve as AAHOA Female Director at Large to represent the Eastern Division.
In This Episode, Lina Reveals:
- How her journey as a second generation hotelier led her from working in the hotel growing up, to working in the corporate world for many years, to returning to hospitality and investing in multiple properties.
- Why she chose to serve on multiple boards, and how getting involved in a trade association has helped her survive the 2008 recession.
- That her employee retention rate is about 50%, which is better than the industry average, and some of the ways she connects with her team.
- Why she is passionate about mountain climbing, and how she has been able to use her hospitality skills on the mountain, and climbing skills in the hotel.
Resources & Links
Mentioned in this Episode
Lina Patel
AAHOA
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346 | Repositioning For Recovery: Hotel conversions to outpace new builds
Lodging Econometrics has tracked the hotel industry since 1998. Its global database includes new-hotel pipelines as well as renovations and brand conversions. Hotel franchisers once eager to launch new brands are focused on converting existing hotels because it’s a faster way to recover revenue lost to the COVID-19 pandemic than through new construction. In Episode 346, Lodging Leaders explores the increasing number of conversions in the U.S. hotel industry and what owners and operators need to consider before repositioning an asset.
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345 | ‘Rosy View of Future’: Hotel industry sees unleashing of pent-up investor demand
In the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., financiers anticipated a swell of distressed hotel businesses. Some raised rescue funds to respond to what they thought was a pending crisis. Though there are financial rescues taking place, the level of such activity is far below what industry advisers and fund managers expected. Commercial real estate investors positioned to act in the early days of the pandemic held off and are now just beginning to unleash their cash hoards totaling billions of dollars. Episode 345 of Lodging Leaders podcast explores the state of capital investment in the hotel industry.