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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301 | The Road Warrior Ahead: Business travel will come back ‘with a vengeance,’ say experts
Global business travel is a $1.4 trillion industry. The Global Business Travel Association calculates the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 resulted in a loss of $113 billion in business travel spend in hotels, airlines and other sectors of the travel industry. But all is not lost. GBTA, industry analysts and travel management companies see some green shoots of hope for 2021 as the COVID-19 vaccine rolls out and corporations put some of their people on the road again. This report is part of Long Live Lodging’s ongoing coverage of the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the hospitality industry.
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300 | 2020 Hindsight: Lodging Leaders reviews hot topics, gives sneak peek of what’s ahead
Long Live Lodging, an online multimedia news organization that covers the hospitality industry, found itself tossing aside its plans for news coverage late in the first quarter of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. and devastated the hospitality industry. The year turned out to be ground-breaking for Long Live Lodging, which developed the industry’s first live digital conference, and its podcast, Lodging Leaders, which increased its followers through timely, credible and balanced reporting on trends and issues driving the industry during the historic year. The company also won international recognition for its coverage of the COVID-19 crisis and its work as a whole. Long Live Lodging is a startup media company, formed in 2019, with Lodging Leaders, which was founded in 2015. In today’s report, we celebrate the podcast’s 300th episode. Podcast founder and co-host Jon Albano and co-host Judy Maxwell have a free-wheeling conversation in which they review the top podcasts of 2020 (Can anyone say ‘fair franchising’?) and give a brief preview of what the media organization plans for 2021.