Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast
216 – The Hospitality SHE Suite: Kat Woods
We are thrilled to debut the first episode of a brand-new Suite Spot series spotlighting the inspiring women shaping the hospitality industry, The Hospitality SHE Suite! Throughout this series, TMG Brand Ambassador and Suite Spot Co-Host, Cassady Quintana sits down with female industry leaders to explore career journeys, key leadership lessons, and the power of supporting current and future generations of women in hospitality. To kick things off, special guest and familiar face on the Suite Spot, Kat Woods of Hyatt joins us to discuss her hospitality career trajectory and how she is opening avenues for other women through leadership and the NYC Women of Hospitality organization. Cassady Quintana: 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 have helped shape who they are today. I’m your host, Cassady Quintana. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Hospitality SHE Suite, a brand new series brought to you by The Suite Spot where we will be celebrating women in hospitality and their stories. I’m your host, Cassady Quintana, and I’m super excited to bring you guys this new series. It’s something we’ve been working on for a while and definitely something that’s needed in our hospitality industry. And I have an amazing guest with me, no one better to bring on first, Kat Woods, Regional Vice President of Pre-Opening Operations at Hyatt. Kat, thanks for joining me. Kat Woods: Thank you so much for having me, Cassady. I’m so happy to be here, and congratulations on launching this amazing podcast. Cassady Quintana: Thank you. Yeah, super excited. Glad you’re here. Glad we can make it work. Obviously, I’m pretty familiar with your story, but for our listeners that may not know you and who you are and what you do, kind of just walk us through a little bit about how you got involved in hospitality and where, how you got to where you are today. Kat Woods: Happy to. So I will take it pretty far back. When I was in high school and was looking at universities to go to, I ended up being recruited to run track and field at the University of New Hampshire, which also happens to have a really strong hospitality management program. I was relatively familiar with the field because I had traveled a lot and understood that hotels and restaurants need people to manage them, but wasn’t entirely sure I understood that it could be a major. Admittedly, trying to balance my athletic schedule and my academic schedule, I thought, “Hey, this might be an easy major. Let’s do it. Could be fun.” And I think the rest is history because as those who have studied this type of thing know, it’s not necessarily an easy major, but it is certainly a blast. And it was apparent from day one that this was something I ended up loving. I started working in the industry. The classes at the time were very interesting to me because going to hotels and restaurants and resorts was something that as a college student I could identify with. The same can’t really be said when you’re talking about real estate or marketing or whatever these other majors are, right? So I just fell in love with it. Continued obviously on the athletic side, but then really started to flourish on the academic side in later in my college life and ultimately started working for Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Now, quite a few years ago, Marriott bought Starwood, but back in the day, Starwood was its own company, and it had some really incredible brands. One of those brands was W Hotels, and W Hotels was certainly tailored to my demographic, the young, the fun, beverage culture focus, travel, party, fashion, music, design. And for a young 20-something, you just fall in love with the industry even more. So I worked for W Hotels for about three and a half, four years, anywhere from Barcelona to New York City, and just continued to fall in love with the operation over and over again. Worked in housekeeping, worked in front desk, worked in food and beverage. And about five years after working for W Hotels, I started with independent hotels. So privately owned, not part of a larger brand. At the time, there was a really exciting hotel opening here in New York City called 11 Howard, and it had just opened. It was the hottest place to be in town. Everyone who was anyone and knew about it. And I had an opportunity to go join the team there. That was my first introduction to private management, private ownership, and really the world of truly independent properties. I worked at 11 Howard for many years through a variety of different functions, and really fell in love with the independent hotel space. Ultimately moved from 11 Howard to a company called Bridgeton, operating another hotel here in New York City, the Walker Hotel Tribeca, really involved in the independent space as well. Privately owned, privately operated company, and once again, just really loving that independent hotel space. After the pandemic, or I suppose after I reopened a hotel after the pandemic, I was honestly burnt out. I took some time off. I traveled for about six months by myself to visit some family and some friends, and kind of reset a little bit. Went back to the amazing team at Bridgeton and said, “I’m interested in continuing to work for the company. However, I don’t wanna work in a hotel. I think I wanna try something else.” And that was when I sort of stumbled into a role that focused on asset management and hotel development. And if I was working for a larger company, I don’t think I would’ve ever had had that opportunity because on paper I was not even close to being qualified. But given my relationship with that hotel company and the fact that I had already worked for them for several years, I appreciated their confidence in basically saying, “You’ll figure it out.” <laugh>. And so I did that for about three years, owning on the owner side, on the operator side, essentially being responsible for asset management for the company, as well as any portfolio-wide initiatives that we were working on. A lot of tech enhancements, a lot of brand standardizations, just kind of anything and everything that at these larger companies you may have individuals or entire departments dedicated to. And at a small company like Bridgeton, you didn’t. And so that kind of fell to myself and a very select group of others to roll these things out. And I loved it. I was very proud to work in the independent hotel space. There’s a reason I am on the advisory board for the independent hotel show, and I think there’s a lot of beauty in that world. About six months ago, I joined the team at the lifestyle group of Hyatt to focus on their pre-opening operations. And essentially what that means is having a GM-focused individual, a GM operational brain for every phase of the project from signing the deal until opening. Why I made the change, I was looking to grow my own professional network. I was also looking to grow professionally and work for a larger organization. And quite honestly, the opportunity felt like a dream job. Cassady Quintana: There’s nothing wrong with that. I love that. You’ve been in hospitality. It’s almost rare these days to meet someone that, like, chose that route, right? Like to go to college for hospitality and then stay in it their entire career. A lot of the people we talk to, it’s like, “Oh, I was working a side job in college,” and kinda just fell into it, and then they fall in love with it. But you kind of already knew from the jump when you went to college, like, “This seems interesting. It’s something I’m interested in.” You stayed in it. And I’m glad you brought up this new position because I saw when you got this new opportunity at Hyatt and it’s awesome. But for me, I was like, “So what exactly does this position. Like what does that day-to-day look like?” So kind of walk us through. I know you’re traveling all the time, but what does this role specifically look like on a day-to-day basis? Kat Woods: I’ll tell you a story because this is the reason that this job is a dream job. I’m not gonna mention which hotel I was working at, but there was a hotel that I had worked at when I was really young, and the back of house layout was very confusing and did not make much sense operationally. In addition, there were finishes and things about the guest rooms that did not age well. So as the product became two, three, four years old, it looked even older. And I remember specifically saying to somebody, “Who did this?” and how come we didn’t have someone who’s operated a hotel before look at these floor plans, look at these finishes, think about it how a guest is going to use it. Think about how all of the employees and colleagues need to walk through these spaces. Because at the time, being 20-something and having the confidence of anyone that young. I felt like I knew I though I could do it better. And this job is such a dream because I’ve always thought about how it would be great to be involved from the ground up to always keep in mind the, of course, the guest experience, but the employee experience and the way that the back of house spaces are evolve throughout the development process to make sure that they’re efficient, that people have the space and the resources and the tools to do what they need to do in order to ensure that obviously the guest has the best time, and to ensure that whatever these finishes are that we put in a room look messy or bad after a month or two, right? And so that’s a lot of what this is. This job, I have an incredible team that I work with and don’t have to worry about things as silly as, like, does this finish age well because they’re phenomenal. But talking about how backs of house flow, how employees need to move through space efficiently in the back of house in order to make the front of house experience feel to the level that we are certainly trying to deliver. And it’s great because I am pulling knowledge and resources and lessons learned from my days as a room inspector in housekeeping. Or a front desk agent or times when I had to cover the bellman, to most recently when I was a developer myself, or I was thinking about how does this hotel position in the community and how do we make sure that it’s a staple of the area surrounding it? So it’s kind of a dream because I’m using everything I’ve learned along the way. Cassady Quintana: I was gonna say, this is honestly perfect for you. Well, congrats on this new role and it’s awesome to kind of see what you’re doing there. And you brought up all this experience you have and your professional career shows for that, but I wanna get a little bit deeper onto that personal side because, you talked about maybe you weren’t qualified for a role at some point and, but you had the confidence to say that you could do it or you were gonna try and figure it out as you went along. So when you think about those roles and the experiences you’ve had in your career, what would you say you’ve, you’ve learned about yourself and what have you gotten really good at? Or maybe what was something that you realized, “Well, I’m not very good at that, but I want to be”? Kat Woods: That’s a great question, and hindsight is a beautiful thing because I’m confident that there were some lessons that I was learning that really didn’t feel all that good. At the time. So a great example, right, when I left the hotel property level and moved to corporate, I always had this shiny, beautiful image in my brain of what working for a corporate job would be, you know, coming to the office and seeing your office mates every day and going for an hour and a half for lunch and attending all that happy hours because nothing ran past five o’clock or whatever it may be. And there are certainly some really wonderful benefits, and everyone has to make the decision that’s best for them, about going to a corporate role. But I do not thrive sitting behind a screen. I need to be out with people. I need to be building relationships. I love to be connecting people. And so while I started to realize very quickly that sitting behind a screen wasn’t what made me the most fulfilled, I had to balance that with the fact that I took on that role at Bridgeton, which had a kind of a junk drawer of responsibilities because I needed to understand why we were making some of the decisions we were making at the property level. And when anyone is kind of looking at a job and maybe it’s not the best job for you or you’re not fulfill- fulfilled or you wanna travel more or whatever it is, right, whatever your situation is, I encourage you to keep just trying to focus on what you can get out of that role. And for me, it was learning a lot about asset management, learning how hotel development deals really get to the finish line, how to evaluate and underwrite all these different properties. And sitting behind a screen, again, wasn’t what I wanted to do. But when I shifted my brain to think, “Okay, I need to learn this. I need to understand this. I need to be good enough at this so that I can speak about it and, and bring it with me to wherever I go next,” it made it a little bit easier to go be in Excel all day. Cassady Quintana: Yeah. Well, I think there’s, you know, there are pros to having a job that you don’t love is, one, you learn what you don’t wanna do for the rest of your life, but also there are some things that you can take, okay, like you said, I need to learn this so that for when I get the job I really want, you’re already kind of there. So, you know, as you’re going through that job that you necessarily didn’t love and all these other experiences you’re having, was there ever a moment that you were like, “Okay, I’m meant for a larger leadership role or something greater than where I’m at right now?” Kat Woods: I think that’s true about anyone who’s driven or wants to continue to grow in their career. We should all be looking for our next step and how do we grow and how do we kind of expand our own professional path. And anyone who knows me is, knows that I’m pretty ambitious. I like to see progress. I like to try things. If they fail, we fail fast, we move on, we try something new. And so, I was always constantly looking out for what’s next and what’s exciting. When you get to a certain point in your career, and many women that you interview on this, I’m sure will say the same thing, you have the luxury of continuing to be more and more selective. And when I was in the operation, I always worked for brands that I wanted to be a part of and associated with. I always worked for people that I enjoyed spending 60 plus hours a week of my time with, right? And now I have the luxury of being able to do both of those things, as well as being associated with projects that I just kind of hardly can believe that I’m associated with. Like pinch me and these are so cool, so amazing. And that’s what I would kind of always say when you have the luxury of starting to be selective, think about what you want. Do you really wanna work for Maria? And if you do, take any job and get your foot in the door and then figure it out. Or do you really wanna work with X, Y, Z woman who’s been a great mentor to you? Maybe there’s a role within her organization that’s not a perfect fit for you, but you can at least start to be in her circle, right? And so just figure out what you want. For me, it was first important to be a part of a cool brand and then it was very interesting to be a part of independent hotels. And now Hyatt has some really phenomenal colleague benefits, and I’m lucky to be in this organization. And that was really important for me at the time of making this decision, not to mention this, like, really cool job and amazing team, so. Cassady Quintana: You kind of have the best of both worlds. It sounds like a great job that anybody would want. Well, yeah. And I love that because for me, I’m in my late 20s now, and I had a job before this, and realized really quickly that while I loved the people I worked with, the job wasn’t for me, but I’ve kind of found myself at Travel Media Group now and getting to meet people like you and hearing these conversations and hearing these stories, it kind of helps me think, like, okay, what’s next for me too? Obviously, within Travel Media Group, I started in one position and now I’m doing something else, and now I’m on this podcast. And for me, it’s staying at Travel Media Group because I love it here, but finding ways to move up where I’m at here. So when you think about that, because sometimes leadership isn’t for everybody, right? Some people know they don’t wanna manage people, they don’t wanna have a team, they just wanna go to work and do their own thing. But for me, and for you, we kind of have that drive and that passion to keep reaching another level. So when you kind of transitioned into a leadership position, how was that for you, and what did you learn, and how has your leadership style evolved going from kind of being in the weeds of everything to now, like, “Okay, I have a team that can handle this stuff, and I can kind of overview, supervise them?” Kat Woods: Great question. And having direct reports is, like, a very obvious way to learn how to manage, right? You have people that report to you, you need to keep them organized and make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction. So for people who are entering their first leadership role or one of their first leadership roles, my advice is always to be humble and, and honest, right? Even leaders make mistakes, and I think when you can recognize that as someone who reports to somebody else, you just naturally have grace for the fact that we’re all human here. But also, don’t be afraid to learn, like, alongside people. So earlier I said, if we’re gonna try it, let’s try it quickly. If we fail, we fail fast and we try something new. Ego is a huge, huge thing to overcome for some young leaders. Just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean you’re actually in charge. And so it’s okay to look to the people to the right and left of you and work together to accomplish whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. But for me, maybe it’s astrology or whatever the, whatever the stars had in line for me, I always was attracted towards leadership roles. And I found having a team that reported to me came very naturally. It was, it was natural for me to understand what we as a group needed to accomplish in the day, help my teams prioritize, give them honest and real-time feedback about things that could help them not only professionally, but in their interprofessional relationships with other colleagues. And it, I think it’s just in my nature. And I found my biggest challenge started to come when I moved to out of property roles. And leadership is something that you need to be able to have even if you don’t have direct reports. And so, I’ve been working a lot on learning how to influence without authority and the ways that real leaders drive teams that may not be people that just do what you say bec
