CMO Interview: Understanding Omni Hotels’ Pivot Toward Experiential Meetings
Photo Credit: The new Omni at Atlanta Battery is attached to the Atlanta Braves' home stadium. Omni Hotels
Skift Take
By owning its 60 properties, Omni Hotels feels it has more quality and consistency control over the meeting planner sales experience, and more impact on delivering local experiences for meeting attendees.
Omni Hotels owns and operates its 60-plus properties in North America, unlike most other major hospitality brands with a pure marketing and management business model based on an asset-light strategy.
According to Peter Strebel, the new CMO and senior VP of sales at Omni Hotels since January, the value of direct ownership is proven by the fact that the brand ranks highest in the upper upscale category in the J.D. Power 2016 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study.
"Our competition is very fragmented," Strebel told Skift. "You've got REITs that own some hotels, and banks that own some hotels, and then there's third-party ownership and third-party management, and franchise. There's a hodgepodge of cultures going on in those hotel companies, so we feel that this model is a smart model, and we're glad that our owner likes it."
Omni has traditionally excelled in the U.S. meetings and conventions market, but it's pivoted in recent years toward developing more experie
