Hotel Revenue Executives Say Trial and Error Is the Best Learning Experience
Young Hoteliers Must Learn To Be Confident and Flexible
ORLANDO, Florida - When Lori Kiel was early in her career in hotel revenue management, she would use her lack of an Ivy League education and the fact she started at a community college as a reason to look down on herself.
ORLANDO, Florida - When Lori Kiel was early in her career in hotel revenue management, she would use her lack of an Ivy League education and the fact she started at a community college as a reason to look down on herself.
Now the chief commercial officer for the Kessler Collection, Kiel realizes that her background is a strength, not a weakness.
"I was always ashamed of my education," she said while speaking on the "View from the Top" panel at HSMAI's 2022 Revenue Optimization Conference Americas. "I always doubted that it wasn't as good as the person sitting next to me that went to Cornell, or the person that went to FSU or UCF. I just felt less than, and it was only as I got into my 30s and really started to hear my own voice that I realized that my education served me better than theirs did because I didn't pay as much but I could absolutely hold my own in those boardrooms."
Kiel added that her experience ties back to one of the biggest mistakes she sees among young professions in the industry, which boils down to "not owning it."
"You have to own that you are the expert, you were hired for a reason," she said. "So you should have a voice, and you should speak what you know and be silent when you don't."