The Modern Hotelier #191: AHLA's New Focus On Independent Hotels | with Travis Mckie
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David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier Air Hospitality's Most Engaged podcast. I'm David Millili. I'm Steve Carran.
David Millili: Steve, who do we have the pleasure of interviewing today? 
Steve Carran: David, today we have on Travis Mckie from AHLA. Thanks for joining us, Travis, how you doing today? 
David Millili: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Absolutely. So we'd like to learn about your background before hospitality, and now that you're into hospitality. 
Travis Mckie: We had this conversation yesterday at Happy Hour. So before I got in the Hospitality and Association world, I was a professional basketball player. I played four years at Wake Forest University and then played five years, uh, around different, countries Greece, Luxembourg, Lebanon. And Beirut? No, Belgium. Yeah. Wow. Can't keep up these days. Yeah. Where is your favorite place you play? Oh, by, far, Lebanon. Living in Beirut, living by the Mediterranean Sea. Never getting below 60 degrees. I was there for like a year and a half, so it's perfect. Oh my goodness.
Steve Carran: Sounds awesome. I need to visit there for sure. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit more about what's new with AHLA? 
Travis Mckie: Well, what's new with AHLA especially from an independent standpoint, is that, you know, for most people that know AHLA industry-wide, they had the perception of just being focused on the brands.
You know, my position was created new two years ago, and over those past two years, we've almost doubled our membership with independent members and rooms. We've all, we've created new benefits such as our independent newsletter. We have an independent boutique committee, which ranges about 50 members of independent GMs owners staff that range across the country, meet about five times a year, virtually, and in person just to get, you know, the, the lead, the lead thinkers of our segment of our industry together to talk about what they're seeing from each part of the country. So we've had an extreme focus on independents and we want to continue that. 
David Millili: So what are you seeing as far as trends on the independent side? 
Travis Mckie: I think the customer, especially like the new age customers, like the younger customer coming into hospitality, they want experience over standard. Mm-hmm. You know, when you go to a major city.
If you say, I say that X brand or X brand, you just say the name of the brand. You don't have any, you, you know, there's no uniqueness to it, but if you go to an independent, you say the name you'll remember where it was. You remember something distinctive about it. So I think new customers especially after COVID I think with the growth of social media and everybody kind of being on one accord. They view experiences, you know, like the Peabody Hotel in Memphis is a great and a big hotel, but they have the duck walk, they have the rooftop, right? You know, they have plenty of things that you remember. There's a independent hotel in Chicago, the Buckingham Hotel, where it's on top of a office building and they took out all the office space and made it a hotel that type of unique experience just even walking in. People are gravitating to more than the, you know. Customarily hotel that everybody gets run in the mill. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. And I gotta ask a question. You know, you work for AHL on the independent side. Do you have a favorite independent hotel or one that you stayed in where your expectations were blown away?
Travis Mckie: I do not have a favorite, but the most memorable one was the wig, wham, and I believe it was Litchfield Park, Arizona kike 20 minutes 've been there.
David Millili: It's really cool. Oh my God. I stayed there. It's great. 
Travis Mckie: It's like the rooms are like a cabin, so to speak. Yeah, it's like a resort. It was in Arizona. There's no humidity, so you can enjoy the weather. It was just a beautiful experience. That was the most one I had the most fun at, for sure. 
David Millili: Awesome. Yeah, I made a motion because. You know, I'm, I'm from the Northeast and moving to, to the Phoenix area where I live now. The humidity thing is why I always helped that conversation. I said, that's what I love about it. Sorry. Yeah, that's good. So let people know, Travis, how can they get in touch with you? How can they find out more, especially if they're independent and they're looking to join AHLA and get involved? 
Travis Mckie: Yeah. Just go to our website, ahla.com. You can find me on LinkedIn or Travis Mckie. I'm sure we'll have some contact info somewhere in the podcast. But yeah, we're easy to find. You could email me, call me, this is my entire job, 24/7. So I could be 10 o'clock on the East Coast and a member from Hawaii calls me and probably, probably gonna pick up the phone. So this is the hospitality industry. We're here for our members. So that's how it works. 
David Millili: So that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged podcast here in Chicago at ILC CONfab. Thank you