The Modern Hotelier #133: How to Be Profitable in Hospitality | with Monty Bennett
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Steve Carran: We're excited to release this episode with Monty Bennett, Chairman and CEO of Ashford Group of Companies. David, what were some of your favorite takeaways from this episode?
David Millili: Well, I think just his, his background in general, I mean, Monty is really a legend in the industry and all that he's accomplished in Ashford has accomplished. So for me personally, it was kind of like being a little bit of a fan boy, being able to kind of finally meet him and get to talk to him.
Steve Carran: I mean, he knows what he's doing. He's been in the industry, graduated from Cornell. hotel business school with the hotel side. He obviously knows the industry very well. So it was just really impressive to not only hear what he's accomplished, but also his thoughts on what's coming up in 2025. So enjoy the episode.
David Millili: Enjoy it.

David Millili: Welcome to the Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. 
I'm David Mullooly.
Steve Carran: I'm Steve Caren.
Jon Bumhoffer: And I'm John Boomhoffer.
David Millili: who do we have on the program today?
Steve Carran: Yeah, David, we're I'm excited about today. Today we have on Monty Bennett. Monty is the chairman and CEO of Ashford Group of Companies, a leading real estate company, companies specializing in hospitality. With over 30 years of experience in hotel real estate, finance and operations, Monty's become a leading expert in the industry.
Under his leadership. Ashford manages a portfolio of more than a hundred hotels and advises two New York Stock Exchange listed real estate investment trusts. Beyond his role in business, Monty is a committed philanthropist focused on critical issues like crime prevention, education reform, and homelessness in the Dallas community.
Welcome to the show, Monty.
Monty Bennett: Thanks for having me, guys. Great to be here.
David Millili: So we're going to get started. We're going to go through a lightning round. We're going to get to know you a little bit better, your personal background, career, and then we're going to dive into some industry topics. Sound good?
Monty Bennett: Sounds great.
David Millili: Okay, so what's something that you wish you were better at?
Monty Bennett: Golf.
David Millili: Okay, what's your most used app on your phone?
Monty Bennett: X.
David Millili: Okay, what's a luxury you can't live without?
Monty Bennett: Ooh, a warm bed.
David Millili: All right, if you could trade places with one person for a day, who would you trade places with?
Monty Bennett: I'd probably trade places with, Elon Musk.
David Millili: Got it. And what's the best piece of advice you've received?
Monty Bennett: Wow. I've received a lot of advice. I'd say the best I've received, maybe, is, To stay calm in that, in your career, you can, do very well, later in your career, as long as you don't rush too hard, early in your career. something like that has been good advice for me.
David Millili: Okay, great. And last one, what's your favorite city and why?
Monty Bennett: My favorite city is Rome, because it has everything. It has architecture, it has history, it has fashion, it has, beautiful places to see, it has some of the best food in the world. I just love it.
Steve Carran: Love that. Rome is definitely on my bucket list,
great answers. Now we're going to get into a little bit more about you and your background. So you grew up in Houston, Texas. Is that right?
Monty Bennett: I did. Up through, end of high school. I grew up on the west side of Houston.
Steve Carran: Very awesome. How did that shape you into who you are today?
Monty Bennett: Well, it was interesting because in Houston, at one period during the late seventies, we had the, oil boom and an expression is it didn't matter how smart you are, how dumb you were, you would do fantastically well in any kinds of real estate. And then I went through the eighties, bust. in hotels and real estate and the expression then is, it doesn't matter how smart or dumb you were, you got absolutely killed.
So that really shaped my understanding of how volatile things can be.
David Millili: And so you went to Cornell and got your bachelor's in hotel administration. You got your master's in finance. How did you know that was the, this was the industry for you and that was the path you wanted to take?
Monty Bennett: Well, I didn't. I have an identical twin brother and he and I both grew up in industry. Our father was in the industry for many years and did a lot of development there in the Southwest, especially in ownership. And when it came time to think about college, he suggested this, and we both said, sounds as good as anything else, so let's go.
So we went to the hotel school, then he encouraged us to both, pursue our MBAs there while we were there, which I think was great advice. And my twin brother went into full time ministry and has been doing that since. And I went to work with my father for a number of years. And then branched out on my own.
but it's a great industry. It's a, it's an industry where you get to deal with a lot of people. You also get to deal with finance, which I enjoy. general real estate. I mean, it really has a lot of neat parts about it. So it's an industry I've grown to love.
Steve Carran: That's great. That's great. And I think somebody leaked the questions to you because yeah, you kind of led into the next one here. you have an identical twin brother. is there a moment that kind of sticks out to you that, you know, you've either mirrored or modeled each other or kind of really been on the same page, maybe without being next to each other.
Monty Bennett: You know, I don't know about not next to each other. We have very similar reactions to things. So it's almost if I'm watching TV and. He happens to be watching the same thing. I can pick up and call him in New York and, start the conversation as if we'd been on the phone for five minutes because we just kind of approach things similarly in many regards.
I remember one time, I was watching, TV And my phone rang and, my stepfather was an actor and he was on TV and I'm watching TV and here he is on TV, pick up the phone. And my brother says, Roy's on TV, NBC. I'm like, I'm watching it right now. So anyway, you have those kinds of things that, that happen.
So it's great having a twin brother. We talk to it three times a week. And, he's a great friend and, couldn't do life without him, even though he lives in New York and has for many years.
Steve Carran: That's awesome.
David Millili: That's great. And so you're involved, we talked, you know, kind of going through your background, but advocacy and in Dallas, are there, what's the current issue that you're most passionate about? Okay.
Monty Bennett: There's quite a few. I, about three or four years ago, I decided that I had been just way too lax in helping my local community. And so I wanted to make it for lost times. So I launched a number of initiatives in town. I think it's actually 12. That I've launched and, and I'm behind one of them is the Dallas express, which is a online newspaper, because I didn't feel like we could get good news there in town without another newspaper and then helped launch a, a business group that was.
More focused on strict business issues. some of the other business groups have kind of lost their focus a little bit. trying to get some charter schools going in town. I'm working hard on trying to get a new homelessness shelter. built, in town, just had some propositions, put on the ballot here in Dallas and, got them passed, which I'm very excited about regarding crime and accountability.
So, the list goes on, but I'm, very excited about them and hopefully making, a positive, difference.
David Millili: That's great.
Steve Carran: That's awesome. That's awesome. So now we're going to get into your career a little bit, how you got to where you are today. So your father, he fell into hotels and Gallup Gallivan. Galvington, Texas. and after college, like you said, you meant you joined him there. What was something you learned in those early days of working with your father that you still take with you today?
That's
Monty Bennett: Oh, I learned a lot from him, an absolute lot. I mentioned one to you, before, which is something that I've learned from him. And, I'd say I, I, peel off some advice from my father, you know, once or twice a week to people, that work for me. he, was very smart and, especially very street smart and very wise.
And so, one phrase he has is if you're going to panic early. So don't wait for something to get way down the line when panicking may not Make a difference. So panic early. And, I use that advice in the March of 2020, when I first started seeing some, problems with, hotels and travel over in China, and we quote panicked by harboring cash and drastically starting to cut expenses before it even came over here.
It really made a difference. It really helped us. We ultimately needed. some rescue capital, but we needed a lot less because of that. So, lots of things that I learned from him over those years.
Steve Carran: great foresight right there.
David Millili: And so you launched Ashford Hospitality Trust in 2003. Where did that idea come from and how, what was that process like?
Monty Bennett: Well, we'd already been always been private and we would attract private capital and go build some hotels and manage them in the and the advantage of the public markets had is that they are permanent capital. Once you raise them, you don't have to go re raise it. And so when we were doing private deals, 70 percent of all the work we were doing was just to replace the assets that we had as deals matured and they got sold off.
And so I wanted to spend all my time growing, not just 30 percent of my time. growing. And so that was the allure. I could tell you over the years, though, with the passage of, Sarbanes Oxley and Dodd Frank, it has just become more and more difficult to do business, in the public arena. The regulations cost us in the millions of dollars every year.
And we took one platform private. I had three public platforms. We just took one private. It might take some others private because the burdens are just a lot. The, regulations and the disclosure and the expense is off the chart and it's very unfortunate because it keeps a lot of people that would like to be public and probably should be public from being public.
Steve Carran: Absolutely. Absolutely. So then in 2013, you launched Bramer Hotels and Resorts. Where did, what caused you to expand and launch a new, 
Monty Bennett: Well, what we learned in the marketplace, which was evident, but I'm just a slow learner, is that investors like concentration. They like to decide exactly what they want to invest in. And so, we thought we'd spin out our highest end hotels. Into its own platform so that investors were interested in just high end hotels could invest there and investors that were interested in every other type of hotel could, invest in National Hospitality Trust.
So that's why we did it.
David Millili: That's great. And also you guys, build and own companies that support hotels, like Pure Wellness, Open Key, companies I'm very familiar with. No people have either worked in there or worked there in the past. How do those companies giving you a different perspective on the hospitality industry?
Monty Bennett: Well, it was really a different perspective that got me into those businesses. I was, you know, working hard, 10, 12 years ago. And then I noticed in my business and our business, in order to expand, you need a lot of capital. And it's a lot of work and you build a hotel or you buy a hotel, very capital intensive business and people intensive business.
We have to raise lots of money, either in the public markets or private markets. Then, I'd go over and I'd look at all these other businesses that as soon as I took over a hotel, let's say a local landscaping shop, well, he didn't have to put up any money and he didn't have nearly the difficulty in expanding to me as I did expanding the hotel.
And you look at that and a hotel's profits are what after debt service, 10 percent of revenues, maybe something like that. and I looked at all the people that I was paying all the way down, all the third parties and most of them weren't. Putting up any money in order to have that business. And so I thought to myself, well, I want to be in those kinds of businesses.
And since I've already got a ready market with a hundred plus hotels, I can kind of seed the business or really grow the business initially with my existing hotels and then grow from there. And so that was the model. We bought a company called JS AV, JS Audio and Visual and renamed it to Inspire. And we were able to switch all of our managed and owned hotels.
Over to them. And so we went from a 4 million EBITDA to a 8 million EBITDA almost overnight, which is great growth. And then over the past number of years, we've been able to grow that platform and we'll finish this year at about 23 million of EBITDA. So it's a great strategy to provide an accelerant, to these businesses.
And so. that's what we did. And we have a few businesses that we work with like that.
Steve Carran: I have a question here. Both David and I, we come from the hospitality tech space, and I still have a lot of friends in that space. And one thing I've been hearing more and more of is how difficult it is to get in front of hotels to, you know, talk about their products and, you know, hotels just seem a little bit lenient about adapting new technology.
I'm really curious about. your opinion on how to better get in front of hotels being both on the hotel side and also having companies on kind of the vendor side as well.
Monty Bennett: Well, it's a great question and your observations are what I experienced in that throughout my career, hospitality has always been a slow adapter, adopter, I guess, to technology. And they just are, and I don't see why that would change. You guys may remember, I sure do. It might have been 10 or 15 years ago, I walked into the Grand Hyatt in New York City, and they had a kiosk where you could check in.
And I looked over the desk, and there was 10 people in line, and there was no one in line at the kiosk. Of course, I went over to the kiosk and checked in, and then over the years, all those kiosks have disappeared. You don't see them anymore in hotels, even though the tech is there, is that our customers just wouldn't Use it.
They just wouldn't use it. And it's very frustrating for me because I think it's neat. I use it and it saved me some money if they'd use it. But for reasons I still don't understand, they would rather walk up to a front desk and stand in a line for, I don't know how long, instead of using something so simple.
And so I think part of it has to do with our customers, and then part of it has to do with our industry. And it's also a very service based, people based industry, so it's very natural to want to be cautious with tech so you can be, you know, in front of your customers all the time. But it's just a slow adopting industry, and that's just how it is.
Steve Carran: Absolutely. 
Well, that was great. Now we're going to get more into the industry thoughts, kind of what your predictions are for this year and, different things happening at hospitality. So you've obviously seen the industry evolve quite a bit over your, career. What is the significant change or trend that you're seeing coming up maybe this year?
And what do you see 10 years down the line?
Monty Bennett: Well, I got in the industry in 89 and then went through the 91 recession, and I thought, well, that was bad. We're not going to go through anything like that again. And then here comes 9 11, and that was bad and hammered our industry. And I thought, well, how often does a plane fall, fly into a building?
That'll never happen again. If we survive that, we can survive anything. And then we had the great financial crisis, which was even worse. And I said the same thing to myself. Well, that happens only one every 100 years. And then, you know, COVID comes. So I've stopped saying that because it's gotten worse every single time.
And it is a volatile industry. It just is. And you can make a lot of money or you can lose a lot of money. And I feel for the people that have had success in other types of real estate or they have a bar and they want to add a restaurant or at a hotel and I'm thinking these poor people, they're going to get a terrible education in the industry because it's very, difficult.
And I think you guys have probably seen, especially at the high end resorts, the person that built that high end resort almost always loses money. And then it's the second, third, fourth owner that can do fairly well because sometimes those are vanity bills and, you know, a wealthy oil sheik or the like, will build it.
And, it just doesn't work. So as far as the future goes, I don't think it can get more volatile, although I'm going to knock on wood because I've made that mistake saying that in the past. But I think we all see how travel is evolving. And what COVID did is it accelerated a trend that was already there.
And that was. People are getting wealthier. to have more time. And so they want to spend that money on things like. Entertainment at home and entertainment out and some of that entertainment out is travel and people just love to travel and they like to see different places around the world.
And you're going to see that, so I think you're going to see the percentage of people that travel for leisure to continue to grow. And for business to stay the same or grow less or slightly drop. This is over kind of like the next 10 years. You're going to see that as there's great forms, like what we're using here today in order to communicate with people in different parts of the country.
But when it comes to. Just enjoying themselves. People love to travel. So you're going to see more and more leisure and we're seeing it. We're seeing a lot of development going on down in Latin America and the Caribbean where more and more resorts, those are primarily resorts, are being built. You guys probably know the cruise ship numbers, which are off the charts with demand for cruise ships.
I mean, it's just crazy. They have waiting lists. And, this is after just three or four years ago, right? They almost all went bankrupt and. The demand, they just can't accommodate, because people want to get out and see the world. So you're going to see the leisure portion of travel just continue to grow.
David Millili: And if you could. Tell the audience, what ways are your hotels using some of the new technology to improve not only the guest experience, but some of the operational efficiencies?
Monty Bennett: Well, everywhere we can, it's in small areas, typically, here and there owning this audio visual company helps, right? We can bring that technology to the hotels, both to wires and others. To have forums like this, the presentations that are given by the people that host these events become more and more elaborate.
You have to give people reason to travel. If you're going to have an association meeting and you want people to go there, it needs to be exciting. And so they really need to dress it up and doll up all the audio visual and the like. And so you're talking all kinds of things, right? With lights and on.
In fact, the other day I was just watching the TV. But I saw this incredible, Chinese dragon drone that I'm sure you guys have seen. And I thought, does Inspire need to offer that in order to be competitive? So people retire out on the lawn and we have some type of drone show. I mean, people need to Have a reason to go someplace and the standards and the expectations just keep going up and you have to accommodate all those. As far as in elsewhere in the hotel, just the small things like open key to, help people avoid the desk. But in many cases, as I mentioned before, they are fine going to the desk. so, energy saving devices and the like, but guests are not. They're not that interested in, in, in tech, at least right now they want that experience.
And so that's what we're trying to give them in 
Steve Carran: I think you're right, like that human touch, that's what people really are looking for when they're going to those hotels, having that warm welcome, having them being recognized, they know their name, you know, ideas around the city, like they want to experience that city and not just the hotel. So I agree with you.
agree with you 100%. one thing that has been a hot topic is sustainability and obviously environmental concerns. how is Ashford kind of addressing these things and really becoming more sustainable?
Monty Bennett: every way that we possibly can. Right. With, with refuse, with, and how we dispose of it with, reusing materials as much as we can. the challenge has always been that many customers demand it, but they won't pay for it. They will pay a nickel more for it, but they want it. So you just have to feather it in when you can, wherever you can.
Some cases, it actually saves you money, which is great. in other cases, it doesn't save you money, but it's something that the customer demands. And as you can imagine, hotels out on the West Coast, look at these kinds of things more than hotels in the South and the like. But, sustainability is something that, I think you'll continue to see.
As far as ESG and sustainability at the corporate level. That has kind of died down here in the past couple of years. But at the hotel level, people are still interested.
Steve Carran: Any sustainability trends that you're seeing, or maybe something new that you've seen over the past six months where you're like, wow, this is kind of a game changer for any of my hotels.
Monty Bennett: I think people are becoming more educated and the consumers are, right? You're seeing more people recognize that, recycling in many cases does not help. it actually consumes more energy, it consumes just as much landfill, and so a lot of that sustainability that was more virtue signaling than actually helping, people are, wise to.
Thank goodness, because we care about actually helping the environments rather than just Acting like we're helping the environment. So I think that's great. Then you can concentrate your efforts on areas that really do help our economy and help our environment. And that's a great trend.
David Millili: Yeah, and what would you consider maybe as we head into 20, we're in 2025, but the biggest challenge that the industry is facing, maybe outside of labor shortage, and is there any other, you know, trends that you're seeing that are starting?
Monty Bennett: Well, something that I'm concerned about, and I don't know yet if it's a. If it's trend or a problem is that I've been surprised about the forecasts, industry forecasts for the next year or two. If you look at them, some of them, the 1%, some of them 2 percent and you look over it and you see that inflation is still hanging in there.
Right. And then we all know that in the past, whenever you have situations like this in the cycle where there's very little net new supply, it's under 1%. You don't have 1%, 2 percent growth. You have 7 percent growth. And I'm just scratching my heads of trying to understand of why the pundits are saying there's going to be such small RevPAR growth, because I don't think that our expenses are going to come in that low of an increase, right?
We still have inflation going on. And so I'm worried about it. That being said, at least as we look out into the future, group businesses up, in fact, in some areas, it's up more than it's ever been. leisure's hanging in there, even though it's pulled back from, the, COVID highs and, and business is starting to pick up.
So at least in our immediate, window here, we don't see these lower, levels of RevPAR growth. And our portfolio is pretty, pretty, dispersed across the country. So I don't know where they're getting all this. So I'm, worried about it because these people are a lot smarter than I am. And I don't know.
Why they're, they're saying that this is going to happen when I don't either understand it and I don't believe 
Steve Carran: So do you think we're going to have a better year this year 
than the 
predictions? 
Monty Bennett: seems like it. I mean, I don't know why we wouldn't. I don't know why we wouldn't if the fed got way behind and started, trying to cut interest rates, too slowly.
Then maybe, but otherwise no. 
Steve Carran: so you've been a CEO at Ashford for quite a number of years. Can you give any advice to somebody out there who is aspiring to be a CEO of maybe not only a hotel company, but, maybe CEO of any company in general.
Monty Bennett: Work hard, there's no substitute for it, you've got to work hard, and you have to make sacrifices for it, and in some cases those sacrifices aren't worth it, so don't do it, and what's the expression, you can do anything you want, but not everything, and That's just how it is. and, family's important and, and other parts of our lives are important.
And so that may be something you can't do, but if you want to be the CEO, you have to work hard. And that means many times, many more hours and smarter and thinking ahead and anticipating. And, there's no substitute for that. So that's what I would tell people to, to expect. And, And if they do, they've got a very good chance.
Steve Carran: Great advice. 
Great advice. So Monty, we've been asking you the questions this whole time. We're going to turn the tables a bit. So we're going to let you ask David and I a question so you can get to ask us something for a change.
Monty Bennett: Well, good. You tell me, why are the industry pundits saying there's going to be one to 2 percent RevPAR growth when there's no net new supply and no one is anticipating a recession next year? Can you guys help me understand that?
Steve Carran: David, do you wanna take a shot at it first or you want me to go see?
David Millili: you can go if you got a good answer.
Steve Carran: I don't know. Maybe here's my theory. I'm not a conspiracy theory guy by any way, but maybe there, there's something that they know that something's gonna happen this year that might set us back. I don't know, otherwise, maybe they're just a little bit more pessimistic, due to some of the numbers in the past.
But, I, like your take on it much better.
David Millili: Yeah, I think I, agree. I mean, I think, there was a lot of uncertain certainty politically going into this year. And I think that probably made people conservative, no matter how things went. So, we'll find out, maybe we'll have you on in 2026 and see how the year went.
Monty Bennett: Well, that would be great and I'd appreciate the honor, but I think that your, your, suggestion is, on, I can understand that caution before the election because before the election, there's all kinds of talk about what might happen and will it be peaceable and all these kinds of things. But it looks like it's just going to be peaceable and smooth sailing.
There even seems to be a weight lifted off, the country collectively of, okay, this is all going to be fine. And at least in talking to people, there seems to be renewed, enthusiasm and excitement. And I would have thought by now that a number of these, predictors would have, up their predictions.
And I think one did. One went, I think LARC went from like 2. 2 to 2. 7, not as much as I would have thought, but maybe they're just being cautious. So maybe some of the others will follow and raise their forecasts.
Steve Carran: Hopefully, hopefully. So our producer, John has been listening this whole time. So we're going to wrap up here. He's going to ask you the last question and then we'll get you out of here.
Monty Bennett: Great. Thank you guys. I've enjoyed it.
Jon Bumhoffer: So listening to this full episode with you, it's clear that your, business and financial acumen is just really strong. And you also mentioned the narrow profit margins that is just, that's what hotels face. I'm curious in your opinion, what are the few of the main things that you see profitable and successful hotels doing, whether that's from operations or financial standpoint?
Monty Bennett: I think it's shifting to being more leisure driven and group driven. I think that's a way to, to go. we sure could use some help with interest rates coming down, but that's nothing that we can control. At all. And I'm not making the, the situation any easier by saying if a lot of an immigration slows down, then we might even have more difficult of a labor problem.
We'll see how that goes. I think all that points though, to higher room rates, because construction costs are much higher. And so with some time, I do think we'll get some really great, acceleration some really strong movement in rates because of. The ever growing demand and just supply, not moving up because of, inflation and financing and the like, so that hopefully it'll be something that we just have to be smart and take it, be taken advantage of, right.
Use all of our hotel revenue systems in order to maximize it. And so that's what we're going to try to do.
David Millili: That's great. So that does it for another episode of the Modern Hotelier. Monty, this is a portion where you can get to plug Ashford. How can people find out more, find out about some of your, companies or even connect with you?
Monty Bennett: Sure. Ashford Incorporated, the Ashford group of companies, is, online. That's the one that we're taking private, but we still have a website present, so we own a number of businesses, including, Inspire Audiovisual, Red Hospitality, which provides water sports, to, the beachfronts of resorts in the Caribbean and in Hawaii.
We have a property management company that manages hotels looking to get into other real estate types to property manage. We have a, developments company, that develops hotels and other property types and renovates and, a few other companies as well that you guys have mentioned. So, we manage, a couple of publicly traded REITs.
One is Ashford Hospitality Trust that's located on the NYSC and Braymar Hotels and Resorts, which is also located on the NYSC. So that's what we're up to. And right now we are seeing our prayers for our associates out in California. And, our hotels out there, are thankfully not in harm's way right now.
and our, all of our associates seem to be accounted for. And, okay. So that's something we're focusing on right now. We hope and pray that everybody's okay.
David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of the Modern Hotelier, Hospitality's most engaged podcast. Whether you're listening or watching, we appreciate you and we'll see you again soon. Thanks, Monty.
Monty Bennett: Thanks, gentlemen. Enjoyed it.