In typical fashion, the Asian American Hotel Owners Association meeting in Chicago brought up several topics important to franchisees—topics that are frequently overlooked at many industry events. In the case of the this convention held at the city’s Navy Pier, general session topics included royalty fees, guest-loyalty programs and transparency in procurement programs.
Top executives of several hotel-franchising companies did their best to deflect any “oohs†and “aahs†from attendees as moderator Cheryl Casone of Fox Business Network peppered them with questions.
Casone: Would you consider lowering royalty fees?
Jim Abrahamson, president of the Americas for IHG: “We look at the fees as being one component of business, and we did see our income fee drop precipitously. We look at the entire menu. And that is all of the cost of affiliation, which we did take specific steps within our cost affiliation of looking at the other fees that are associated with our business. For example, we lowered our performance marketing fees from 13 percent to 10 percent. So we did definitely drop some fees last year.â€Read full interview here.
