Latest / Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast / 218 – The Hospitality SHE Suite: Rosanna Maietta
Transcript
- EPISODE 218 Welcome to The Hospitality SHE Suite, where we spotlight the women shaping the hospitality industry. Through conversations with leaders and changemakers, we explore career journeys, leadership lessons, and the experiences that help shape who they are today. I'm your host, Cassady Quintana. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Hospitality SHE Suite, where we celebrate the women leaving their mark on the hospitality industry. My name is Cassady Quintana, and I'm super excited for our guest today, who really doesn't need an introduction. She's a Suite Spot professional, President and CEO of AHLA, Rosanna Maietta. Rosanna, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you again. Yeah. So glad that you could join us for this conversation. You've been on the Suite Spot before, but usually talking about what's going on at the AHLA, maybe The Hospitality Show, and some other topics. I'm really excited to get to know you and learn a bit about your career and your leadership. I want to start off, people know you as President and CEO, but I want to ask, how did you get into hospitality, and was that something that you always envisioned for yourself? I've always loved traveling. Certainly, as a kid, we tell people, so the allure of adventure and travel and seeing new places was always wonderful. But I started my career as a reporter. Did that for a number of years, and as part of that, had the opportunity to cover travel stories and food and beverage in different European cities. That was always fun and something that I loved. But I ended up in hospitality through a pivot after journalism. I got into communications and public affairs, moved to Washington, where I spent over a decade on public affairs issues and clients and whatnot, and one thing led to another, and somehow I ended up at AHLA in 2014. It was a really fascinating time. I've been in hospitality for over 10 years now, and it really is the best industry out there. There's nothing like it. No, I agree completely. It's always fun. There's always something new. No day is the same. I want to talk to you a little bit about your role, because we know what the title means, but for you, what does that look like day to day? What are maybe some topics, or things that are taking up a lot of your headspace right now? Oh, sure. Well, here we are; it's less than a month out to the midterm elections. That's always a much more interesting time in D.C. Certainly, we are living in an interesting time. We're doing a lot of work, both here in Washington to make sure we know where the polls are going to shake out and making sure that we're also connecting with people on both sides of the aisle. New incoming potential members of Congress and supporting their candidacy between now and the election, and around the country. State and local issues are always heating up. There's always fire to burn. We had a really big win in California yesterday that we're very excited about. But there is always something going on on the political side, and then when we're not doing that, I spend a lot of time trying to engage with our members, my board members talking to our industry to make sure that I'm on the pulse of what's happening and what's on their mind. Yeah. I mean, that's super important. You guys are always in the mix of things. You're always knowing what's happening on the political side and on the industry side, and those things are always going to go hand in hand. I'm glad you mentioned meeting with board members, because a lot of what we talk about on this series is leadership, right, and women in leadership. For you, you're in this position where you are the top leader. When you think back to your career, how has that leadership evolved? What were some of the biggest learning curves for you? What's your leadership style? I'm really interested, because you're so well spoken, but maybe it wasn't always that way. Thanks for saying that. I try really hard to be prepared. I think that's my biggest lesson, especially as you noted: as a woman, you always have to know what you're walking into. Confidence comes from feeling smart, and that comes from being prepared, so I think that's really important. But my leadership style, it always evolves. I feel like I'm always learning. I don't always get it right, and I think you have to be aware of those times, too, and recognize, okay, that was a mistake; how do I fix this? How do I move forward? I'm constantly learning from leaders that surround me. I think that's also really important. I mean, you always hope that you're inspiring and empowering in equal amounts, while also being true to yourself. I'm running a business. I’m making sure that we are developing a strategy that helps us win on behalf of our members. You have to do those, and sometimes that requires making hard decisions. But you want to empower your team, and you also want to cultivate them in a way that gives them the skills and growth that they need to move to their next level. Sometimes that means they may leave you, and that's okay. I mean, it really is always a wonderful thing when you see someone that you've mentored who moves on to bigger, greater things that they so deserve, right? Absolutely. I mean, that's part of leadership. Some of the pros and cons is you raise good leaders behind you, and sometimes they do leave, and sometimes you get to continue to work with them. But I'm sure that was the same for you. You had people that mentored you, and they were excited to see you flourish too. I want to mention, when people think about somebody that's president, or CEO, or some type of C-suite member, they have this aura about them, and you just think they've always been confident, but that's not the case for everybody, and may not be the case currently. What's your advice, if there were any moments in your career where maybe you question yourself, or you doubted yourself, how do you move past that? All the time. It's a good question. Again, I always go back to being prepared. Women tend to overthink, overanalyze, and from that comes a lot of self-doubt, right? There's so many stats out there about how women evaluate an opportunity versus men. Sometimes you just got to go for it. It goes back to, I think, being prepared. You have to have a point of view. The other thing I would say is women often talk about being at the table, and will you get invited to the table? I think that's really important moment for women. When you are invited to the table, have something meaningful to say, and know what you want to say. Have a point of view and share your perspective. Our voice matters, and so we have to use it in the right way. Absolutely. Yeah. Being prepared, but also if you are invited to that table, there's a reason. Remembering that and sticking true to yourself, like you said, I think that's really important too, to not lose ourself, even though there's things we want to accomplish, things we want to do, but still remembering who you are and what you value, and that's really important, I think, for the younger generation, too. When you think about bringing people up behind you and mentoring them, what do you think is that responsibility, especially for women in hospitality to mentor the next generation of women? Oh, I think it's enormous. I think we all have that role in terms of looking around who is in our orbit and how can we help people move forward. I think you're seeing that so much more. I certainly remember in my own younger career, there had always been this sense of, well, women didn't really help each other. I don't think you see that very much anymore. I think we are all putting out an arm and saying, “Come with me. Let me help you.” That's really rewarding, and something we always have to be mindful of. Absolutely. I think we're seeing it, like you said, in a lot of these events, there's so many organizations that are popping up that are women-led, women in hospitality, women in travel thrive. I was just at the Independent Hotel Show, and they had a women networking event, and then there's panels of all women. That's going to be increasingly important. I did a previous interview, and that interview was talking about how important men are too in this, to help make that seat at the table for us and how they play a huge role in that. I want to ask you a little bit about that experience, because you are at the top of your organization. What's important for the men that are around you to make sure that this stays top of mind for them as well? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I have the benefit of working with some tremendous male allies, especially in this industry. I look to my officers who are incredible mentors to me and are very thoughtful and concerned about how they can help us with what we're doing, especially around forward. You were talking about some of the other conferences. I just came from a forward meeting, so I'm really excited about – There you go. a program we’re developing for next year. But no question, they are huge supporters and advocates and have in my own life. There have probably been more male mentors than female mentors, although it's balancing out a little bit more now as I’m older. I experienced it too, where I'm at my position and just going to a lot of these events and seeing that it is balancing out, and it's awesome to see. But making sure that we're all in this together at the end of the day, especially if you're working within the hotels. Everybody's on the same team. These organizations, everybody's on the same team to try and make it better. Of course, this industry is always changing, and we have to work together, and we have to allow everyone to bring their different perspectives, too. I think that's super important, because we all are so different, so that's important. I actually want to go back a little bit. You mentioned FORWARD. For our listeners who don't know what FORWARD is, would you mind just giving a little spiel about it? FORWARD started out several years ago as an event to bring women together, to problem-solve, to build skills, to help advance women. It has now become a movement. There are many ways to engage, from our efforts around Build and Elevate, which are educational opportunities for mid-level women in the industry, to executive-level women in the industry, to our Forward exchanges, alongside many of the major conferences, where there are networking opportunities. And too, as you mentioned, just ensuring that across the industry, we are seeing more and more panels of all women on stage. I want to thank all of our industry partners who work with us to make sure that we can make that happen. That's really exciting to see, and I think we've come a very long way since 2019. I think that was the first one, if I'm getting my dates right. This year in Atlanta, we had over 1,000 women come to the Cornerstone event. Next year, it's in Washington, here in our hometown, where we also have a lot of our hotels are headquartered, so we're excited to see that grow even more. Yeah. I think you guys are going to be exploding, especially when we look forward to the next few years and just how much we're seeing women get more involved in all these organizations pop up. I think Forward is just going to continue to grow. I'm certainly excited for it and to follow along with everything that's happening there. Back to the personal side a little bit, Rosanna, I want you to think about when you were first starting in the industry, or just career in general, like, what is some advice that maybe you wish somebody would have told you that you could give to the younger generation? It's going to be okay. Yes. I think sometimes you – the doubt, the worry, where am I going? How do you even evaluate opportunities? I mean, sometimes you can have a plan for what you want to do, but an opportunity will arise, and you're at a crossroads. I would offer the advice that you should always sometimes say yes to things that weren't in your plan, or that you would anticipate. They can lead you to incredible things, either opportunities or new people and relationships and friendships that you will carry your whole life. Nothing is forever, so you can always try something. If it really is not what you're hoping for, that's okay. Try something else. I love that. I think that's a really good mentality to have of if you don't like it, or it doesn't work, it's okay. I always remind myself, the world keeps spinning, right? There's always going to be a new day you're going to wake up, and you can always change it every day. I think that's important, and I'm glad you said that, because I think it's evident in what you're doing, and it's evident in what your organization is doing, too. I do want to talk a little bit about The Hospitality Show. I know this is not a preview episode for that, but you're heavily involved in that. It's coming up pretty soon. Talk to me a little bit about the event, maybe what you're looking forward to this year. Sure. Well, Miami is the place to be. There's so much hotel development there. I think bringing The Hospitality Show to Miami in the beginning of November is going to be phenomenal. We're already seeing so many people register. I encourage people to continue to do that. It's an interesting time for the industry, too. The theme, of course, is optimization. As we're coming on towards the end of the year, you're sensing and seeing, and the industry is feeling a little more optimism about how things are going. People are traveling. And so, there's certainly a lot to talk about when it comes to how do you make the most out of your hotel space to drive revenue? How do you continue to cut costs? Who's doing that really creatively? Also, how is the industry doing? We're going to hear from some incredible industry leaders. Very excited to have Chris Nassetta in a conversation with Thom Geshay, the Chair of AHLA. I'm really looking forward to that. Our show floor is massive. We have all of these incredible pavilions. Of course, Ecolab always brings their dogs, so we're very excited about the adopt-a-dog section. Oh, gosh. You probably shouldn't have told me that, because I live in Orlando and that would be really easy for me to get a dog and bring it back up with me. Yeah, that's awesome. Me and Ryan are going to be at the event. We're super pumped this year, especially at being right down the road. Super easy for us and looking forward to seeing you there again, too, and witnessing all the new stuff you guys have going on. This is, again, why I love hospitality, because it's changing. You can do this event every six months and we would have something new to talk about. It's always changing. Exactly. The other thing is this show falls on election day. Of course, we're having an election watch party, so that will be fascinating, too. Yes, it definitely will be. I'll have to check that out for sure. Well, thank you, Rosanna. I'm super excited to connect with you again in Miami Beach, and I know our listeners are going to really appreciate this conversation getting to know you a little bit more beyond your position. Before we hop off, is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with? I want to thank you. I want to thank you for putting a spotlight on female leaders in the industry. I think that's so important. There's so many incredible people that we work with every day who don't get a chance to tell their story. You can learn so much from hearing about someone else's own path. Thank you for what you're doing. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I think, yeah, hearing other women's stories and knowing that you're not alone in this industry and that there is a seat at the table for all women, for sure, I think, is important. I'm excited for your episode to come out and for the episodes that are going to follow and what's going to come of this. I really appreciate you again taking some time to sit down with me. Thank you. This was great. All right. Well, thank you, Rosanna. Thank you to all of our listeners, and we'll catch you next time on The Hospitality SHE Suite. To make sure you never miss a conversation, be sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. I am your host, Cassady Quintana. I hope this conversation inspires you to continue supporting, elevating, and celebrating the women shaping hospitality today and for generations to come.