Preferred Hotels & Resorts
The 440-key Charleston Place Hotel is 40 years old this year, and its MD Becky Hubbard, above, is in her element (as a young girl she always dreamed of running a significant hotel with a grand staircase and crystal chandeliers).
What an idea venue for the 20th Global Conference of Preferred Hotels & Resorts, 12-14 May. It was full-house with 550 delegates. Main event sponsors were Amex, Aven Hospitality, Bernardaud and CapitalOne.
Preferred is owned by John Ueberroth and family and they were there in force as stars throughout: John and his marketing genius wife Gail, son Casey, and Preferred Hotel Group President/CEO Lindsey Ueberroth. Uniquely, Preferred is not only owned by a multi-generation family but the entire 625-member consortium feels like a family. Preferred has 5 brands - Legend, LVX, Lifestyle, Connect, and Preferred Residences – and its family of loyal customers musters over 6.5 million iPrefer members.
Charleston Place is anchor of Beemok Hospitality Collection BHC, is part of the Charleston philanthropic vision of financial ‘character’ Ben Navarro. He certainly is memorable. He was an opening keynote of the meticulously-planned three-day business meeting. Ms Ueberroth was attired in one of her usual statement ballgowns – see below. Mr N, who had probably cycled to the event, turned up, meticulously groomed as ever, in his self-imposed uniform, navy gilet over short-sleeved shirt and navy sailing shorts.
The work sessions, plenary and break-outs in such venues as an old working theatre across the street, subtly pushed better margins as well as thorough analyses of AI. Skift’s Seth Borko spoke of travel resilience, led by consummate love of travel, rising demographics and innovation, all successfully combating geopolitics. A Skift poll put travel, at 74%, the last luxury to be cut, and top component, at 45%, is luxury accommodation (with experiences at 39%). Social media’s the new power broker – 40% will switch from loyalty programmes to AI when it’s good enough. At the moment there’s too much ‘AI slop’, unauthenticated AI. At the moment ‘direct’ remains the most trusted channel…..
