137 – TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Paul Coury

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

Chairman and CEO of Coury Hospitality, Paul Coury, is recognized as a TMG Hospitality Trailblazer! Paul joins the Suite Spot to give viewers a look at the Coury Hospitality brand and how it grew from its humble beginnings of one hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a portfolio that contains the most extensive collection of Autograph Hotels. Paul’s story is one of perseverance and triumph. Tune in to hear the whole story and be sure to subscribe! 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. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree with another edition of our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. We've got a fantastic episode. First time guest, I'm gonna bring him right into the conversation. Paul Coury, chairman, CEO of Coury Hospitality. Paul, thank you so much for being with me on the Suite Spot. Paul Coury : Thank you, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah, we're excited to have you here. We're gonna have a great conversation today, all about Coury Hospitality. But you know, as many times as we've done this TMG Hospitality Trailblazers, whether this is your first or 12th, 15th time hearing, this type of series, what this all about is about the pioneers hotel management companies, brands that are pushing our industry forward towards the future. We work in such an amazing industry, and certainly Coury Hospitality. And Paul, you've done some, some great things we're gonna talk about. But before, as many times as we've done these episodes, I can guarantee you one thing. This question is never answered the same way because no two hospitality professionals have the same upbringing or journey into hospitality. Share with us a little insight and background into your journey that ultimately led you to Coury Hospitality. Paul Coury : Well, thanks again, Ryan. I look forward to trying to enlighten your audience today. It's a great industry. I have heard this term by a lot of hoteliers, that they are accidental hospitality individuals, and I kind of fall into that category. I've never worked in a hotel. I never, you know, maybe a few restaurants when I was super young as a busboy or something, but mine was a journey of starting a real estate company in the mid eighties. And we, purchased a building and next door to this building was an old historical hotel in Tulsa that had sat there an occupied for many years. And we ended up purchasing that asset as strategical consolidation with the building and some land that we were buying. And then we set out on a journey to redevelop it. And I think at the time we were gonna, we were working with Hyatt to do one of their first suite hotels. It, it happened to be a bad time, like all cycles, right? We caught ourselves in the middle of the big oil bust that hit and lasted 20 years in Oklahoma. So while we never developed that hotel, it did subsequently get developed. We owned it for 10 years and introduced me to some people in the industry through some exposure, marketing exposure. And we ended up doing some consulting for a family outta Chicago that owned many hotels and golf courses around the country. And, you know, what I would say to you is that was my first exposure to the concept of a boutique hotel, because these were really small hotels that were very, I don't know if I would say run down, but they, they weren't, they weren't cared for. They weren't a true design or boutique, but they were great locations. For example, the Royal Palms was one of them. There were others like that. There were some ground leases the Phoenician Resort, the Harbor Beach, Marriott, things like that.