Peter Strebel said the pandemic has taught him a lot about himself and he points to three specific takeaways that have made him a better businessperson. Perhaps more than anything, the president and CEO of Omni Hotels & Resorts, Dallas, says reflectively and with personal awareness that he has learned to better manage challenges as they come.
“I realized that in life you can’t control everything, and that some things are out of your control,” he told HOTELS in mid-February. “So, you have to let go at some point and say, ‘this will be what it will be, and we’ll do the best that we can.”
The 62-year-old leader of a brand with more than 50 primarily owned and operated properties also says that he started to value people more “because we did survive.” In fact, Strebel said, Omni performed quite well through the pandemic, and it remains the case today. “But we only did that because of people.”
And the third realization Strebel cited, like so many others have over the past two years, is that he learned how to run the businesses with less. “I picked up some really, really good skills.”
The survival game
What truly helped Omni thrive during the pandemic was a decision first taken in 2018 to consolidate back-office functions and move them to a service center in Dallas. For example, a property-level accounting department was trimmed from 16 to six people. Recruitment was centralized and the sales process was streamlined. In total, Strebel said the company added a couple of points to margin very quickly and is still in the process of generating more efficiencies.
“We were still profitable during COVID, believe it or not,” Strebel said. “In 2020, we came in at about only 10% of what our profits were in 2019, and then in 2021 we were back to more than 60% of where we were in 2019.”