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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317 | Together Again: U.S. hotel industry begins to see return of small meetings
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316 | Pandemic Trailblazer: Hunter Hotel Investment Conference leads lodging industry’s 2021 event circuit
The Hunter Hotel Investment Conference will be the industry’s first large event to be held during the coronavirus pandemic. The Atlanta event will be a hybrid format of in-person and virtual access, also an industry first. Lee Hunter, chairman of the conference, knows the level of expectation is high among other conference planners as well as industry professionals eager to network after more than a yearlong hiatus. Episode 316 of Lodging Leaders podcast features Hunter as he tells what it takes to re-launch the industry’s conference circuit amid the COVID-19 outbreak.