102 – TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Mark Williams

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

The first installment of Hospitality Trailblazers on the Suite Spot podcast with Marketing Director/Host Ryan Embree, featuring President of Coakley & Williams and SVP of Business Development at Hotel Equities, Mark Williams! These two discuss everything from the origin story of Coakley & Williams, navigating the new landscape of the hospitality industry, and what is on the horizon for travel and tourism. Listen now. Suite Spot Podcast · 102 - TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Mark Williams Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. And today I teased it in our 100th episode. We are starting a brand new hospitality series called TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. And what this series is all about are those individuals and hotel groups that are really pushing forward our industry, getting some one-on-one insights and perspective on what they're experiencing now and what they see in the future. And I think we have just the embodiment of a hospitality trailblazer today with me, Mark Williams, president of Coakley and Williams, and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Hotel Equities. Mark, this is your first time on the Suite Spot. Welcome in. Mark Williams: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks so much, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. Now what we always like to do with new guests on this podcast, Mark, is ask 'em how they got started in the industry. I know for your personal background, you know, a lot of people just kind of find themselves in the industry, but you actually have hospitality through a couple generations. But tell us that journey that led you to Coakley and Williams and now Hotel Equities as well. Mark Williams: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Well, I'll go backwards a little bit and then we'll go forwards from there. So our company, started in 1961. We are a third generation business, which is kind of amazing. I think there's only about like 5%, I forget what the percentages are of businesses that actually make it to the third generation. So for me, that's very humbling and it's an honor to be a part of this, this company, and to work for, a group that's been, you know, started by my grandfather and his partner. They actually were in the construction business. They met, on a rainy day through a mutual acquaintance. They shook hands. They never signed a formal partnership agreement to start the business. It was all really initially based off that handshake, which is really awesome. And that kind of, that spirit of integrity, I feel like has carried itself through our business over the years. They built their first hotel in 1971. It was, it was right off the beltway. They got into the hotel management business because they were doing what they were doing very well. There's a lot of backstory and anytime you're opening things and you're in this business that we're in, there's always funny stories and challenges and there's a lot of funny, interesting stories that happened as they got that off the ground. And so as time went along, you know, we, we got into the hotel management business, and then kind of in the mid nineties, my father bought the management company and there was a construction company as well. There's still Coakley Williams Construction Company that was bought by one of the Coakley sons. And so, so things moved on and they progressed and growing up, I, I never thought that I would be in this business. I thought, yeah, I have, my dad had us working in the hotels, which was great. And I was, you know, doing odd jobs,