Transcript: Episode 230: Hotels Are Political

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | TOPFLOOR.COM

[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor with Susan Barry, episode 230. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/230.

[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. This is your host, Susan Barry, and I am going to be taking this week's episode solo. Before we dive in, I am beyond delighted to share a new partnership with Hotel Online. Starting now, Hotel Online readers will get weekly episodes of Top Floor in their inboxes, and some exclusive content is coming soon, so stay tuned.

In order to truly welcome listeners from Hotel Online and HFTP, I felt like this was a good time for a quick reintroduction. So my story is that I grew up in Panama City, Florida, on the panhandle and went to FSU. I was an English major, not a hospitality major, and rarely attended classes either way. I was really active in student government and the women's center. Basically had a grand old time in Tallahassee. I also worked in restaurants, and then when I graduated from college, I started running an off-premise catering company, which was a wild and crazy experience. I used to sleep in my car in between events. When it was really busy season, it was just insane craziness. That's also when I met Sean, my now husband, who convinced me to move across the country to Denver, Colorado. Sight unseen for me, by the way. I got a job as a hotel director of catering to sort of tide me over while I tried to figure out what I really wanted to do next. And then before I knew it, I was a hotel director of sales and marketing for 10 years, mostly opening new build hotels. I opened Westin in Arlington, Virginia, and W here in Atlanta, where I still live. And then founded my company, Hive Marketing in 2009. We do business-to-business, hospitality marketing for hospitality companies, including startups management companies, and ownership groups. And then I launched Top Floor in the fall of 2021, so this is episode 230. We are always on. We don't do seasons. We don't go on vacation. We're a weekly show and we mostly interview people who have interesting jobs across the industry, so C-Suite, subject matter experts, authors, founders, everything in between. And then every once in a while, I do a solo episode, and obviously, this is one of those. On the personal side, I'm a big reader. I'm a treasure hunter. I love to thrift and look for cool stuff, especially vintage barware. I'm really into that. I'm on a George Briar kick right now, so trying to find all of that cool mid-century glassware. I love miniatures and sometimes I make weird crafts with them. I have some famous, if you know, you know, squirrel Cafe and cat lounge videos that you can find on my secret Instagram account, and you can absolutely expect more of that type of nonsense very soon. 

In today's solo episode, I wanna talk about something that has sort of been scratching at my brain for a while. As you are probably aware, a franchise location of a big brand, a hotel in Minnesota made the news a few weeks ago for refusing to accommodate ICE agents. And I think it appears like that request was kind of a stunt designed to create controversy rather than a real group request or whatever. But there's still been a lot of public backlash, a lot of media attention, even calls to boycott the brand, which ultimately decided to pull the flag from that franchisee. One of the first things I saw in response to this situation on LinkedIn was this post that just said hotels should stay outta politics, and that has been bugging me like crazy ever since. I think that people only say something like that when a hotel's action conflicts with their personal politics. There's no comparable outrage over like lobbying efforts when HLA is trying to influence tax policy, for example, or H-2B visas or labor policies, stuff like that. The hotel didn't just become political. It made a local decision that someone disagreed with, but rather than admit to that disagreement, the person who posted that just sort of presented it as a universal truth, like framed it as though it were a neutral holier than thou stance rather than a personal position. I think what's really being said when you say hotel should stay out of politics is this hotel did something I don't like. And you know what? That's a fair opinion to have. I mean, whether I agree with it or not, it's certainly an opinion to have, but to me, I think that there is a broader question, which is, is it actually possible for hotels to stay out of politics at all? My contention is that hotels are inherently political, and I definitely have a few reasons to explain that position. First, as I already mentioned, the hotel industry participates in institutional politics, both nationally through trade associations like HLA and locally hotels lobby and advocate on tax and labor policy, and locally on issues like zoning, liquor, licensure, etc. Secondly, hotels are political spaces. They host party conventions, candidate fundraisers, diplomatic summits, negotiation strategy meetings, as well as the protests in reaction to those types of events. And third, hotels are really hubs and kind of the frontline right now for labor politics, both through union organizing and efforts to stop it. So, my key takeaway here, the main thrust of my point is that hotels are political because they sit at the intersection of real estate, labor, capital, travel, visibility. But of course, you do not have to take my word for it. History makes this abundantly clear. Historically, hotels have repeatedly become political actors during moments of conflict, crisis and social change. I wanna share some examples of that so that we can think about how and why this happens and how the past can inform what we as an industry do today. So I'm interested in how hotels fit into the sort of broader context of major political events. There are tons of examples of hotels being used as headquarters and hospitals during times of war. For example, the Green Briar was used to accommodate or perhaps in prison. Diplomats from Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II. World War II really has tons of examples of how hotels play political roles. For example, during the Nazi occupation of France, the Ritz Paris was a social hub for Nazi officers and collaborators, which made it a place where information moved relatively freely. And Frank Meyer, who was the head bartender at the Ritz, used his position to listen, observe, and help pass information that would assist the folks who were in danger. Once a hotel is occupied, every day, hospitality work becomes political, whether the staff intends for it to or not, although I do think that Frank intended to be part of the resistance in this case. Another example is brought to life in the movie that I hope everyone has seen, but if you haven't, run, don't walk, which is Hotel Rwanda, which is about how a hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, I'm not sure I said that right. Sheltered more than 1200 people during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. His hotel was one of the few places where civilians could sometimes find protection, and the hotel mattered because it had physical assets, communication tools, and negotiation leverage that private homes didn't. So the staff had to use all of those tools under an extreme amount of pressure. In situations like this, really honestly, just keeping the doors open and continuing to operate was a political and moral decision. Hotel Terminus and Leone show another side of kind of that same dynamic. So, Nazi war criminal, Klaus Barbie and the Gestapo used that hotel as a command center to interrogate, torture, and eliminate members of the French Resistance during World War II. The same features that make ho hotels useful in moments of refuge, like in Hotel Rwanda, also make them very effective tools of control. And you know, in this case, when the wrong people controlled the hotel, it was used to commit crimes against humanity for which Barbie was sentenced to life in prison. In the United States, the civil rights movement gives us more examples of how hotels play political roles. So in my hometown of Atlanta, Pascal's Motor Hotel served as a planning center for the Civil Rights Movement. It hosted meetings where people like Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and John Lewis worked through the strategy of the movement. Because of Jim Crow laws and segregation, black leaders could not safely use white-owned or white hotels. And Pascal's provided lodging, meals, meeting space, all in one place. One of the great features of a hotel, right? And the layout of the property sort of supported the privacy that those leaders needed. So James Pascal intentionally made the hotel available for this work. And you know what? It's a reminder during Black History Month that black-owned hospitality businesses often functioned by necessity as strategic infrastructure. Also, to learn more about black hoteliers, you really need to get Calvin Stovall's book, Hidden Hospitality. We interviewed Calvin in episode 131 before the book came out. The book is out now and it's fantastic and you need it. Another Civil Rights era example is the AG Gaston Motel. It was a planning hub for the Birmingham campaign. It was bombed in 1963 because it played that role. It really symbolized black economic independence, which obviously made it a target in the racist South. The fact that staff reopened and continued operating after it was bombed is an example of resistance through continuity. Across all of these examples, what is clear is that hotels step in as sort of parallel institutions when traditional civic space is too public for good or for ill. They are logistics hubs for meetings, meals, lodging, communication, and offer sort of a degree of autonomy that other spaces can't. Just as important, maybe more importantly, they are workplaces where everyday actions by staff add up to continuity, protection, or resistance. So this brings me back to the Minnesota case and how power really works in today's hotel industry. In an asset-light model, owners put up the capital, sign the debt, and manage the day-to-day reality of running a hotel, while brands control legitimacy through their flags, loyalty programs and reservations channels. It raises some hard questions about how much authority a local operator really has to make decisions based on their own local conditions, and whether a national brand, you know, usually many, many layers removed, has enough information or context to intervene decisively, appropriately, etc. When a brand pulls a flag, that action is not neutral. It is a political and economic judgment that can reshape that business overnight instantly, in a flash, even though the brand is not the party carrying the long-term financial risk. I guess in closing, Hotels don't just step into politics here and there under some like non-existent context. They sit inside of it. History shows this again and again across wars, social movements, and other moments of crisis. The real question for hoteliers is not whether that power exists, but how to exercise it, how consciously and responsibly it can be exercised, especially in moments when the stakes are high.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk/solo episode, and stay tuned for episode 231 next week. 

Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/230. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all-around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.

[00:16:11] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.