Hotel magnate Krissy Gathright shares her travel industry secrets.

Thanks, Renee.

Okay, well Apple RE companies, we've been in business since 1999 since we started our first RE, which was Apple Suites. And you are correct, it is an interesting little slant because we're actually real estate with a mix of operations because we're in hospitality. We operate right here in downtown. We have 291 hotels, they're all Hilton and Marriott, so we're franchisees. We pay fees to Hilton and Marriott to use their name, and then we pay management companies to run the hotels for us. We actually own the Richmond Marriott in downtown Richmond, as well as we own a SpringHill Suites in the Gaskin and Broad area.

Okay, when we took over the Richmond Marriott, it was around the beginning of 2008, so perfect timing. Actually, yes, so that was 2007 would really have been the peak for the Richmond Marriott. Occupancy in 2007 would have been in the upper 60s, probably around 69%, and the rate was close to $130. After that, we sort of, just like the rest of the economy, we suffered a little bit through the recession, so occupancy dropped. The interesting thing about Richmond though is that rate has remained pretty stable, but occupancy did go down into the lower 60s. Most recently, the hotel also needed a little bit of tender loving care, so we put some money back into the hotel. That's part of what we do: we buy the hotel, then we reposition it. In this particular case, we put quite a bit of money into renovating the hotel. Subsequently, if you look at occupancy numbers last year, we were around 66% occupancy, and so hopefully we'll be able to continue to grow that as the economy continues to improve. To your second question, one of the things that we do is we work with the management company and the individual markets to try to find ways to stimulate the economy. Obviously, you're going to have different business drivers, but with the city of Richmond, we want to be able to work with the city to make it an attractive destination, not only for businesses to want to do business in Virginia but in Richmond specifically, but also to attract larger conventions, citywide business, and to make it an exciting place for people to want to do business. Then our occupancy increases, and when our occupancy increases, then we can grow rate. In part of doing that, we are developing actually near here, the Street Rumor's here right down the street. We are, and hopefully we're waiting on one last permit issue. It's been a little bit of a challenge, but it's been exciting. We are going to develop the first Extended Stay Hotel downtown, a Residence Inn and Courtyard combo project. So it's a Residence Inn and Courtyard, so you'll share a lot of the back of the house type, like pool, fitness center. Actually, we may not have a pool on this particular one, I'll have to go look at that. It may just be a bigger pool, we're not sure. We'll get back to it. It may just be a bigger fitness center. But you'll share a lot of the... we will have two separate entrances for the Courtyard guests and the Residence Inn guests, but there is some savings of using the meeting space together, the fitness center together, the meeting rooms together. That's going to kick off soon, and we should have that open by before Richmond 2015, so we should have it open at the end of 2014.

Now that is the World Championship Bicycle Road Race. I'm so not a biker, I apologize for all the enthusiasts out there. Well, I'm not completely an expert on it, but what I can tell you is it's a huge event for Richmond. A lot of private-public partnerships came together, and there are going to be over 26 countries, I believe, over 450,000 people expected to come into the city. A lot of it is about putting Richmond on a better platform for healthy living and bicycling, and to hopefully stimulate some economic opportunity for the city. We'll of course be housing at least some of the teams, I'm sure. So that's one of the things: to be able to develop in the city is hopefully you're bringing more rooms downtown so you'll be able to bring bigger and better things to Richmond.

If you look at the industry occupancy, the industry hotel occupancy still is in the lower 60s, and the industry average rate is just above $100. But for us, we have primarily limited service hotels, so Courtyards, Hampton Inns, Hilton Garden Inns, TownPlace Suites, primarily business traveler type hotels. So our average occupancy is actually closer to the mid-70s, and our average rate is above $120. So it varies on the niche that you're in. You have all different types of hotels, all different types, the location, everything like that. So I would say Richmond... the Richmond Marriott is actually a full service hotel. It has convention and meeting space as well as restaurants. That type of hotel, we have a smaller portion of our portfolio. We only have a handful of those hotels. Even for the full service hotels that we have, most of them don't have nearly that type of space, so that's a little bit different. But still, with having occupancy in the upper 60s and a rate of close to $130, that's very respectable.

I'll throw two into the mix. One is in New York City. Again, some of the ones I'm talking about aren't necessarily our primary niche, but we took an older boutique hotel and we turned it into a Renaissance. It's on 57th and Lexington, so lots of good corporate business there, but also for me personally, some good shopping right there on 57th and Lexington. The other one, another full service hotel, we have a hotel, the Redmond Marriott. It's actually part of Apple Six, which we're selling, but it's on the campus of Microsoft. We did this innovative partnership with Marriott to try to attract more of an innovative, hipper crowd. When we redid the meeting space, we did a partnership with Workspring, Steelcase, and Marriott. So the meeting space, instead of having your tables and everybody sit across from each other in a very rigid environment, it's flexible, it's collaborative, there's healthy food included. Trying to move a little bit more to Gen X, Gen Y. It's worked out well so far. We've had lots of pickup in those smaller to medium-sized groups. It's just fun to be a part of some of those different thought processes. It keeps it unique and evolving on the edge all the time with the different events, but fun.

I appreciate it.