Best Western's Parent Company Looks to Outflank Its Hotel Peers
Skift Take
Best Western Hotels & Resorts lacks youth appeal. But recently installed CEO Larry Cuculic is bringing a military-like approach to strategizing. He appears to be boosting the group's metabolism.
Early Check-In
Editor’s Note: Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill brings readers exclusive reporting and insights into hotel deals and development, and how those trends are making an impact across the travel industry.I wanted an update on BWH Hotel Group, the parent company of Best Western Hotels & Resorts. So I spoke with Larry Cuculic, president and CEO since late 2021.
Cuculic methodically shared his plans for the Phoenix-based group with 4,700 hotels.
Cuculic's approach to strategy may come partly from his legal education and partly from being a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Cuculic talks through his operational decisions and organizational philosophy in a way that sounds like a military tactician — though he prefers the metaphor of an athletic coach.Strategic thinking requires making trade-offs based on well-defined goals. Leadership requires aligning incentives with those goals and communicating the goals clearly and often. It's early days to see how the newish BWH CEO will measure up.
Cuculic plans to fine-tune and expand the Best Western family of brands, the soft-branded WorldHotels (see details, here), and the pragmatic brands of the SureStay Hotel Group. Cuculic wants to push the company's rate and occupancy up. Levers to do that include updating brands and enforcing brand standards to boost guest satisfaction scores and loyalty, making better use of software (like rate-setting tools) and hardware (like holograms), tightening processes, and having more collaboration with owners.The finances of privately held BWH seem robust.
"We have the strongest balance sheet in our company's history," Cuculic said. "One of the most important strengths of this company is that we have no liability whatsoever. We carry no debt. We're very strong in terms of the capital we have in the bank." During the pandemic, BWH streamlined its budget to survive and stayed on that budget. Hotel owners con