CLIP: The Future of the Hospitality Business
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Neal Khatri:
It is a tough world out there. Now you need a lot more money to invest. You need good employees, very tough to get good employees, especially during COVID-19 a lot of hotels that are in tough times.
Ryan Swehla:
How do you see that playing out, going forward? As hopefully a vaccine comes, what do you see the future of hospitality looking like, do you see permanent changes or temporary?
Neal Khatri:
Of course. I think the real, this will separate the men from the boys. The ones who's got deep roots and that has been at the business long time and being around and we have seen recession, inflation, many things in life. We have managed to hang in there just because we've been in a long time. I feel sorry for someone who just got started because by the way, hotel economy, couple of years ago was fantastic.
Neal Khatri:
Some of the best ever in the industry, because there was lots of money. People were traveling. In fact, economy and hotels go hand in hand. If economy is good, hotels are good economies, bad hotels are bad. Those two things you have to see, and the ones that have been in it, hopefully they're not highly leveraged but hang in there yet. I know some guys that went way overboard thinking this is unstoppable.
Neal Khatri:
The occupancy was going like 80, 90% at the highest average rate all over the place. I think those are the peoples that I think I can make more money. I know throughout last four or five decades, every 10 years, there's a down and it comes back, there's a down, it comes back and I I've lived that and even my own family wanted to do something big.
Neal Khatri:
I said, "No, hold back. We're doing just fine." Sometime it's just wanting to get to a different level. Well, there's no reason to. We're very comfortable. We do very well where we're at and I just think for someone there's going to be tremendous opportunity at could be 50 cents on the dollar, if you will and do move around all over the place.