Maintaining Focus: Checking In With Justin Jabara — LODGING

The Meyer and Jabara families have been in business together for more than four decades. Meyer Jabara Hotels is a privately-owned hotel ownership and management company. According to the president of Meyer Jabara Hotels, the company has a meaningful ownership stake in about two-thirds of its portfolio while it manages the other third on behalf of family office, private equity, developers, or other asset classes. During this year's Lodging Conference, lodging checked in with him to discuss the family business, trends he's seeing, and his outlook for the year ahead.

How have your properties been performing this year?

The company had a new president in January 2020. We weathered that storm and are a stronger company because of it. We had a lot of hard work and perseverance. In the United States, our portfolio consists of large, 500-key, full-service Marriott hotels, as well as our smallest hotel, a 16-key boutique. Half of the properties are new and a third is beating the year. There are some markets that are slower to come back than others.

On the management side, how has your company worked to stand out or innovate?

We invested a lot in our platform because we wanted to be the best and industry-leading. You need access to systems and data, as well as a different skill set, to be successful in today's world. COVID sped that up because it got more complicated. All that supports the property to pull all those levers to really get the best outcome is what we operate under a commercial strategy. In our hotel performance, we can beat our competitors. If you can get the right data and interpret it, you can make better and quicker decisions, and that's what our team is focused on.

How are you responding to guests’ changing expectations around F&B?

Food and beverage was one of the things that was greatly revised. We have multiple F&B assets that we are working on and renovated. People want a good food and beverage experience, especially on the leisure side.

What’s your outlook for the industry?

The booking patterns for group, business, and corporate travel are still depressed, but by all indications, it should be a good year next year. We'll be happy if next year is as good as this one is. We'll be very happy if we can do better than that.