Geller: Hotels will be just fine

As I have said here before, I don't know him personally, but I like Laurence Geller. Yeah, I like his company, but he is also the Chairman of the Churchill Centre, an organization I happen to hold dear because I consider myself a Churchillian. (In fact, this reminds me to renew my lapsed membership. Oops.)

Mr. Geller spoke about the hotel industry at a conference here last month, and he opened with a classic Churchill quote from 1945, when he lost a general election after V/E Day to Clement Attlee and the Labour Party. His wife said,

“Winston, for God’s sake, snap out of it. Look at this as a blessing in disguise.” Churchill’s response: “If so, Clemmie, it’s very effectively disguised.”

(This quote is very apropos for me personally for reasons I will soon discuss in another post.)

Geller's take is also at once Churchillian and Santayanian: history repeats itself. "Manage it, get over it, don’t look backwards, look forwards." I like that. And he's spot on. Room supply growth is modest and once absorbed you won't have much new inventory on line for a little while because of financing considerations. You can take a look at the rest of his reasoning of why things will be all right at NREI.

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