WITH summit presenters talking on stage

By Amy Bostock, Nicole Di Tomasso and Suzanne Chin-Loy

TORONTO — This year’s Women in Tourism & Hospitality Summit (WITH) event took place September 20 at the Sheraton Centre Toronto, bringing together more than 150 attendees. It was the first time since 2019 that the event has been held in person. Presented by WITHOrg.com (Women in Tourism and Hospitality) in association with Kostuch Media Ltd., (Foodservice and Hospitality magazine, and Hotelier magazine) and Sequel Hotels & Resorts, the sixth-annual WITH Summit brought together individuals and companies committed to a “Blueprint for Change,” and advancing diversity and inclusion in the tourism and hospitality industry.

“According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on women in the workforce, who were forced to continue their professional jobs while juggling family obligations,” said Rosanna Caira, editor/publisher, KML and WITH co-founder. “Now, labour shortages are creating a host of other challenges, causing burden for many of the staff left behind, highlighting the need to change our business models to become more compassionate and caring in our workplaces.”

“We are leaning in on our commitment this year; we are asking that we all come together to strengthen the recruitment, hiring, promotion and retention practices, with a particular eye towards creating an inclusive, diverse and expert workforce, and increasing the number of female business owners,” said Anne Larcade, president & CEO of Sequel Hotels and co-founder, WITH.

Change Maker

The first session of the day was a Fireside Chat featuring Maryann Turcke, currently board member at RBC and senior advisor at the National Football League, and Katie Taylor, honorary chair of WITHOrg.

As former COO of the NFL and former president of Bell Media, Turcke talked about her trajectory leading multi-million companies and her role as of the one most powerful women in sports, media and IT. During her time with the NFL, Turke was responsible for bringing female referees to the filed for NFL championship games and guided the organization through the turmoil of player Colin Kaepernick situation of him taking a knee during the U.S. anthem following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police.

At that time, she said “I really didn’t understand the issues…but what I learned was, there weren’t enough black voices around Rogers table.”

What that taught her, she said, is that when it comes to inclusion and diversity in all industries, “we need to make sure we have enough voices around the table so that they feel confident enough to speak, it’s not just enough to have diverse faces, they actually have to open their mouths and express an opinion.”

To that end, Turcke proceeded to ensure that there was more diversity, particularly people of color, particularly African Americans, in the organization. “I hired the first African-American woman as head of PR, which was huge, the first African-American woman as head of HR, who, when I stepped away from the league, became the Chief Administrative Officer,” said Turke, adding “one of the most important parts of taking on any role is leaving the campfire better than you found it.”

Changing the C-Suite

Next up, Rosanna Caira moderated a panel of industry leaders, who discussed their paths to success with a focus on how they rose to the top and how their companies are creating a blueprint for change. Panellists included Johanne Belanger, president, Health Care & Senior Living Services, Compass Group Canada; Dorothy Dowling, C-Suite marketing and commercial leader, public company board director; Sara Glenn, COO, Canada, Caribbean, Mexico & Central America, Accor; and Angela Lawrence, Chief Culture Officer, Gusto 54 Restaurants.

The discussion began by recalling challenges the five leaders faced throughout their careers and what lessons they took from those challenges.

“First, I got my first VP position that 25 years old. That was too young, right?” said Belanger. “The second thing was being a woman. That was a challenge — I was the only woman at the table and certainly, unlike today, I had my elbows out to make sure that I had my seat at the table. So, I competed against other women as opposed to helping other women, which now I would say, in the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve seen this tremendous movement that’s happened where women help other women.”

“Through my career, there’s definitely been a whole host of micro aggressions,” recalled Glenn. “Altough I’ve never run into a strong or overt aggression, microaggressions are as disabling sometimes as something that might be overt. What [I learned was] can’t focus on what is a perceived barrier, or a real barrier. You have to push past it and own your seat at the table — not at the cost of others, but in the support of others.”

Dowling says often times in her career, she felt she wasn’t good enough. “I wasn’t good enough as a woman and then I always felt because I came out of a regional market from Canada, that my American colleagues knew more and were better. But over time, what I learned is that Canada gives people a gift because we’re smaller, you get to wear a lot of hats, you get to connect the dots differently. So, I actually became stronger, which empowered me in my career. But at the time, I didn’t see that.”

For Lawrence, the challenge was not naturally being considered for or pursuing the next role. “An example of that, for me, is at one point I had put my career in my boss’s hands. I was waiting for her to recognize me and tap me for the next position. When they put someone else in that role, I was told it was because they showed interest. And so that was the last time that happened, she said, adding the lesson she took from that experience was “asking for what you want. Now, I will always ask for what I want. I might not always get it, but I’m not passive.”

Mental Health & Wellness

For the morning breakout sessions, Harriet Ekperigin, VP of Mental Health at Green Shield Holdings, hosted a workshop about the importance of women’s mental health. The workshop covered COVID-19 and its impact on mental health, stressors in the workplace and at home and their physical manifestations and strategies to avoid burnout and maintain optimal mental health.

Ekperigin began the workshop with some statistics. As a result of COVID-19, 500,000 women left the workplace and either took a sabbatical or a leave of absence to care of loved ones. Out of those women, 100,000 of them have said they don’t know when they will return to the workplace. Additionally, Hologic, a manufacturer of women’s health-screening equipment, released a survey about COVID-19 impacts on both men and women from multiple countries. The survey revealed that women were disproportionately impacted as a result of COVID-19. In fact, women struggled with their mental health 1.8 times more than males. In 2020, there was a sharp increase in the number of medical claims and in 2021, there was an increase in counselling. While older women leaned towards medication, younger women leaned towards counselling.

Then, the men and women in attendance were separated into four breakout groups. Two groups were tasked with identifying stressors at work while the other two groups identified stressors at home. The list of work stressors included attracting and retaining staff, deadlines, technology issues, lack of flexibility, micro-managers, negative company culture and more. The list of home stressors included caring for loved ones, managing work-life balance, balancing family schedules, the sandwich generation, recovery from illness, postpartum, menopause and more.

Ekperigin went on to explain how women’s behaviour affects their emotions from a cognitive behavioural therapy lens. “Cognitive behavioural therapy is regarded as the gold standard for treating depression, anxiety and other common mental-health illnesses,” she says. “The purpose of it is to break down negative thoughts to manage our emotions and behaviour. Not everything is black or white – it’s a balance. [If you catch yourself repeating these negative thoughts, try to identify a few takeaways instead.] For example, if you’re worried about a presentation and it doesn’t go well, think about how you can improve on the next one.”

Furthermore, Ekperigin identified common physical pains women experience as a result of the stresses they carry, such as headaches, jaw pain, shoulder pain and wrist pain. The breakout groups were then asked to identify strategies to avoid or reduce mental health stresses. Strategies mentioned include exercise, scheduling breaks, making lists, creating boundaries, meditation, journaling, spending time alone, learning to say no and more.

Women of Worth

The second breakout session, Women of Worth Retaining and Developing Women of Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality, was led by Joanna Jagger, founder, WORTH and association instructor at the School of Tourism at Capilano University in Vancouver.

Using data gathered from a recent survey of 50 of most senior influential women in B.C., Jagger presented insight into systemic barriers that hold women back and offered a checklist of best practices to ensure more women take a seat at the table.

She said careers are a lot like driving a car. When you first start out, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re not comfortable, you’re nervous behind the wheel. And then you get a little bit more confident. You get on the highway, you’re feeling a little bit more in control. And then at some point, you’re not even thinking about driving, you just know what you’re doing. “But here’s the challenge for women. Women are faced with a lot more barriers, roadblocks, speed bumps,” she said. “A lot of us have sat there behind the wheel and watched the men around us cruise that highway. This highway that we’re on is one of the only industries that comes with an off ramp. So, we actually let women in their mid-career, go off to the off ramp and leave our industry – whether they’ve elected to do that or whether they’ve been pushed there – and it got very crowded.”

During the session, Jagger reviewed the six questions asked in the survey and shared the insights gathered. The attendees were then sent home with a gender-equity audit containing 65 audit points.

“You’re not going to agree with everything on there and that’s okay,” said Jagger. “And maybe your organization is not at the scale in which you can achieve some of these gender-equity markers. And that’s okay, too. But what we have to universally agree on is that progress is lagging – we’re not doing enough as an industry to hang on to and develop our women and it’s a real problem.”

Lunch & Learn

During lunch, keynote speaker Amanda Hite, president of STR, shared how she rose to her current role with the company and how, under her leadership, STR has experienced significant growth in its global presence, client base, data coverage and revenues.

When Hite first joined STR in 2006, with no hotel background to her name, she said “I went into it with pretty low expectations. It worked well for me because it was a sink or swim moment. I was left to figure out how to find my place in the company and I thrived in that environment, because no one was telling me exactly what to do or how to do it.”

When she stepped into the role of president in 2011, “it was only the second company I’d ever worked for. I was 33 years old and by all accounts, I should have never been put in a C-suite position. It took me a little while to get my feet under me but I focused on what I had done so well, [such as] operations process, managing teams – I was really good at putting teams together and helping teams in the day to day.”

As STR grew and evolved, Hite says her style of leadership had to change as well. “The competitive landscape was changing, and we had to make different decisions,” she said. “That requires constant conversation and being able to speak up and just say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to accomplish the same goals.’ This is a hard one and it’s a challenge for everyone. But it’s so empowering when you figure out how to find that voice and have those conversations so you can drive such better results for the business.”

She said everyone struggles to have difficult conversations and because we’re all unique, we all have different perspectives, which creates natural conflict and work. “That’s the normal. We should have conflict. But you have to resolve the conflict, and when you’re resolving that natural conflict in the workplace, that’s where innovation happens for business.”

Breaking Barriers

In keeping with this year’s WITH theme, “Blueprint for Change,” Moira McDonald, assistant professor at Royal Roads University, Victoria, B.C., and former director of Operations at the Fairmont Château Laurier in Ottawa, led attendees in the afternoon breakout session through data-driven research compiled from a survey of women and the tourism space.

“I’ve had input from many survey participants who said they saw success in various ways. They wanted to see more women leaders encourage other women in the industry and more women to speak up with their ideas. They wanted more mentors or role models, more education and mentoring, more women general managers and representation, and more men’s support,” said Moira.

Moira emphasized that though women are progressing in tourism, it is still a slow process, and the glass ceiling needs to be broken. Although women in the survey ranked higher on leadership attributes than men, they often struggle with the definition of success and feel a need to be like men in their leadership style.

“The feminine leadership style is what our teams want and need, but many of us have been conditioned to act like men and deny our authentic selves,” said Moira. “Once I shifted to leading from my take on life, it became natural. You can be nurturing and compassionate and still be driven. And I think that’s the key message. I stopped trying to be someone else long ago and just tried to lead my way. I think the crux is not forcing yourself into a box and being a good listener.” 

From her research findings, Moira recounted that there’s no one pathway to success and that women should not shun conflict because innovation can be born from struggle. “We don’t celebrate our wins enough. We’re suffering from impostor syndrome. We need to get uncomfortable, take more risks, not be afraid to return to school and keep an open mind,” she said.

The workshop ended with Moira reading a quote from a top executive in her survey. “If I could tell my younger self a few things, it would be to have more confidence to speak up for yourself. You can do anything you set your mind to. Don’t be afraid of change, applying for a promotion, taking risks, scared of failure. Learn as much as you can when you are in your role. Don’t be afraid to move around if you’re not 100-per-cent passionate about what you’re doing. When you’re in the proper role or place, it will just feel right.”

Driving Diversity and Inclusion

Moderated by Michelle Dias, senior manager, Americas Commercial + Brand Public Relations at IHG Hotels & Resorts, the Driving Diversity and Inclusion workshop panel featured Marina Elsener, director of Sustainable Development, Diversity & Inclusion for Accor, North & Central America; Indira Naidoo-Harris, AVP, Diversity & Human Rights, University of Guelph; and Lisa M. Pierce, VP, Canada & U.S. Sales, Air Canada. Together, the panelists discussed how organizations can create a culture of inclusive leadership to ensure every employee feels like they belong.

First, each panelist explained what their organizations are doing in the DE&I space to move the needle. “In late 2019, [Accor] partnered with global organizational consulting firm, Korn Ferry, to conduct a series of listening forums with a selection of diverse employees, both from our hotels and our corporate teams,” says Elsener. “From there, we developed and began executing a five-point action around recruitment, retention and development, education, celebration and recognition and community. With DE&I, it takes a whole organization to move things forward, so we built out a clear infrastructure with a cross-functional team that has joined together to form a committee.”

Some actions the organization has taken include partnering with the National Society of Minorities in Hospitality (NSMH), a non-profit student-run organization, which aims to empower students from traditionally under-represented communities; completing a third-party certification to identify where the company currently stands and areas of improvement; and building out a supplier diversity program.

Similarly, Naidoo-Harris says one of the first things the University of Guelph did was come up with a 14- point anti-racism action plan. At the top of the list was creating the president’s advisory committee.

“[We] set up a committee so that [we] could actually talk to folks and find out what may be the challenges people are facing and the best way forward,” explains Naidoo-Harris. “The next thing we did was train the entire leadership team. The most important thing we’ve done and continue to do is data collection. We can’t plan the right strategies, policies or hiring plans if we don’t know who our people are and where they are. Our major data collection plan involved not just faculty and staff, but also students.”

Additionally, the university brought in a required training plan, Principles of Belonging, for all first-year students to establish early on that the institution was a place where people treat one another with respect.

At Air Canada, “an annual corporate sustainability report is released called Citizens of the World, with a significant portion dedicated to DE&I,” says Pierce. “Some initiatives include employee resource groups to support inclusion. We have one for Black heritage, two for women in aviation, one for the Indigenous employee group and one for the Asian heritage group.”

Pierce continues, “We put in place an executive council, a steering committee and ambassador programs. And of course training is key. We have growing knowledge about LGBTQ+ inclusion and unconscious bias training for management to develop self-awareness. It’s a continuous journey we’re on and we’re constantly adding more training and more resources for teams.”

The workshop wrapped up with a discussion about creating inclusive spaces, with specific attention paid to the LGBTQ+ community.

“Adding pronouns to an email signature or a name tag isn’t necessarily about doing it for yourself. If you identify with the sex you were born with then you may be wondering why it’s important,” says Elsener. “The reason this is so important is it begins to normalize conversations around gender and it signifies to those being interacted with that you respect gender identity and helps create an inclusive an welcoming environment.”

“We created the Positive Space module at the university but have made it available to other groups and non-profits who want to learn from these trainings and use them,” says Naidoo-Harris. “The module is all about how to speak with someone who may use other pronouns or maybe in a transition and so on. It’s about understanding how to have a conversation without having fear of saying the wrong thing.”

“It’s important to not only make change internally, but also externally,” says Pierce. “Air Canada attends a lot of community events in support of the LGBTQ+ community to ensure that we reflect the customers we serve and look up to our role models to hopefully make everyone feel included.”

Travel Trends

Four industry leaders from the hotel/tourism industry took to the stage next to share best practises and discuss travel trends and opportunities, while also highlighting how they achieved gender equity in the boardroom and throughout their companies. Moderated by Robin McLuskie, managing director, Hotels at Colliers, panellists included Laura Baxter, director of Hospitality Analytics, Canada at CoStar Group; Yola Marshall, VP, Commercial Sales Performance at IHG; Beth Potter, president and CEO, Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC); and Sarah Sklash, co-founder of June Motel.

Baxter set the stage for the discussion by sharing data on how the industry performed from 2020 to 2022 and how it’s looking for next year.

“There’s two main takeaways here,” she said. “The first is that demand has been driven by pent-up demand from the transient leisure segment, whereas group, corporate and international demand still remain below the 2019 benchmark. The second is that ADR has been driving recovery. ADR has been so strong that it’s not only met the 2019 benchmark, but Canadian hoteliers achieved the strongest ADRs that they have ever achieved this summer. So, hats off to our hoteliers.”

Next, Potter shared her views on the state of the industry through the lens of TIAC’s advocacy work and what the association is hoping to see in the industry next year.

“Momentum is on our side and as we’ve all heard today, leisure has been leading the way, domestic has been leading the way and we’re seeing the return of some cross-border travel [thanks to] the ramping down of some of our restrictions earlier this year. So, the forecast that we’re looking at overall, not just hotels but also air travel, attractions, restaurants and recreation, is that we will not see 2019 numbers until the end of 2025, both for international rivals, as well as visitor spend.”

Access to Capital

Moderated by Anne Larcade, president and CEO of Sequel Hotels and co-founder of WITH, the Access to Capital panel featured Tara Mascitelli, assistant VP, Portfolio & Structuring at CWB; Mark Sparrow, Head of Alternative Assets at CBRE; and Aaron Laurie, senior director of Lodging and Development for Marriott International. Overall, the panel provided a discussion on how to move the dial in the world of finance while providing an overview of current trends to access debt and/or equity for new deals, as well as fostering entrepreneurship and ownership roles amongst women.

“In hotel and restaurant assets specifically, the book is comprised of approximately 300 to 350 borrowers. Out of those borrowers, only three are women,” says Mascitelli. “Now, we have a data point, so what are we going to do about it? From here, we can start a conversation around the barriers to entry that women are facing in accessing capital to build hotels and restaurants across Canada.”

One of the newest initiatives in this space is Marriott’s Bridging the Gap program which aims to address the barriers to entry historically faced by under-represented groups in terms of owning and developing hotels in Canada and the U.S. and provide financial incentives, such as discounted application fees, start-up fees and royalty fees.

“We’re hoping to encourage other lenders, brokers and capital partners to support these ownership groups in Canada,” says Laurie.

For entrepreneurs looking to enter the space, Sparrow provided an update on the future of the market. “Where we have seen a significant amount of interest over the past year is related to leisure driven businesses that are performing above 2019 levels,” he says. “The pricing has held steady in the real estate sector. There’s real opportunity to look at cash flow and mix debt and equity to be able to get a strong return. Moving forward, Average Daily Rate (ADR) is in a very strong position. The opportunities in the next 12 to 24 months are going to be slightly limited based on who’s selling because the market is slightly down based on the cost of capital. The opportunities will likely start to come on the select service and limited service side. A lot of the larger capital sources that invest in full-service assets and luxury assets are telling us that their hands are down for the immediate future.”

Mascitelli adds, “Coming up with that equity component seems to be more and more challenging these days. Interest rates have changed and they seem to have no end in sight. From a regulatory standpoint, we’re being asked to build sensitization into our modeling. That modeling exercise is going to be the reality in the next six to 12 months. We have to demonstrate that the borrower has the ability to service their debt when those interest rates become reality.”

To encourage and make room for more Canadian ownership among women and other under-represented individuals, Laurie says Marriott’s She has a Deal program in the U.S. is a great starting point. Essentially, the program is a pitch competition for young women in post-secondary school and who have just entered the workplace “provide extensive training on how to source equity, how to find an ideal site for hotel development and what a typical hotel transaction looks like. I think developing news like that, especially in Canada, would be a fantastic opportunity to continue to expand the pool of prospective female hotel owners.” Additionally, the winner receives $50,000 to put towards an equity contribution to pursue a deal.

“There are a lot of phenomenal people with great experience who would love to own real estate,” says Sparrow. “There’s an openness from a lot of lenders and brands who are trying to encourage women leadership on ownership in the business, and I think we need to come together and provide some more understanding relative to how to build that capital stack. As a broker, I always say ‘you make money when you buy.’”

Closing Keynote

To wrap up a day of insightful and thought-provoking conversations, Samra Zafar brought the audience to tears with her story of resiliency and triumph over adversity. After escaping a decade of abuse living as a child bride in Canada, Zafar has become a beacon of hope for many people facing exclusion, abuse, and gender-based violence as an award-winning international speaker, bestselling author, and social entrepreneur.

But it was not an easy road. She tried to leave her abusive marriage five times, but always either went back or was sent back by her family. When she finally left for good, she said it was a “game changer. The community that I found [to support me], the sense of belonging that I found, the people that I found, actually lifted me up and accepted me for who I was, rather than who I thought I was. And that is what helped me realize that, in order to find my place of belonging, I needed to allow myself to be seen.”

She went on to share how her experiences helped shape her opinion of what leadership, diversity and inclusion are supposed to look like, both in business and in life.

‘Leadership is about creating a safe space. And that’s also what diversity is. When you think about diversity, it’s about being invited to the table. You get the right number you get the right people into the boardroom, you get the right kind of mix around the table. But, inclusion is going a step beyond that and inviting them to speak; asking them, ‘Hey, what’s your what’s your opinion?’ Inclusion is creating the psychological safety net that when you actually invite them to speak, they speak their truth.”

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