Hospitality has been rife with hot-button issues this year, from regulating short-term rentals to the game-changing overtime rule introduced in late May. LODGING recently caught up with David Kong, CEO of Best Western Hotels & Resorts, to pick the executive’s brain on the industry’s most controversial topics.
How will the new overtime rule affect your business?
I think it will affect our business in a very major way and, for that matter, a lot of small businesses will be affected, too. Every employee making less than $47,000 will be impacted, as well as the employers paying out.
What do you make of the recent direct-booking push by top hotel companies?
It’s really good that two leaders of our industry, Marriott and Hilton, are taking a stance and pushing this approach to take back some of the control of our business. It it’s not surprising that all of the major brands are following suit—we also are.
How well is the industry is handling its battle against Airbnb?
We have to separate the sharing economy from Airbnb, and Airbnb is currently overshadowing the sharing economy. We don’t object to the sharing economy. What we do object to is commercial operators renting out their units full-time. People are buying up apartments and renting them out as hotels using the Airbnb platform—that’s what we are against. The operators run the rental like a hotel, but they don’t have to abide by any of the health, safety, or accessibility regulations, and they don’t pay all of the taxes that are required to be paid by the hotel industry.
