The Women Shaping Travel’s Future
Brash. Over-Ambitious. Maybe a little bossy. These are all words that likely have been tossed around about the 25 leaders on Skift’s inaugural list Generation Next: The Women Shaping Travel’s Future. The result: These women leaders are the industry’s disruptors, innovators, and you can bet they’re on more than one shortlist for the next big thing. Underestimate them? Go ahead, but do so at your own peril.
When we sat down to think about who Skift wanted to write about for Generation Next, we decided we were looking for the sector’s next big thinkers, along with those who were already stirring the pot. But most of all, we wanted to profile a woman who, when her name is mentioned, makes everyone knowingly smile because – she’s an absolute force.
With that, Skift proudly presents Generation Next: The Women Shaping Travel’s Future.
– Sarah Kopit
Skift, Editor-in-Chief
Amber Asher is the powerhouse behind the operations and marketing at Standard International, the hospitality group whose brands aim to make your Instagram feed seethe with envy. Now she’s planning her next career move, following Hyatt’s acquisition of Standard last month.
Asher took a unique path to the glitzy world of hotels. She grew up in a small town in Michigan and went to law school.
Asher has been with Standard International for 13 years and its CEO since 2021. She combines the precision from her legal background with the creativity needed for luxury and lifestyle hospitality.
Under Asher’s watch, The Standard has gone from too cool for school to the popular kid who actually talks to everyone at the party. Asher has helped take the brand global, planting its iconic upside-down logo everywhere from north London to the Maldives.
She has nurtured and grown brands, including The Peri Hotel and Bunkhouse, and added two new brands this year: The StandardX and The Manner.
In Asher’s world, no detail is too small, from the font on the “Do Not Disturb” sign to the exact shade of neon in the rooftop bar. This obsession with the little things — which she shares with Standard International’s executive chairman Amar Lalvani — turns a hotel stay from “meh” to “OMG, I’m never leaving.”
She must have done something right: Hyatt is paying up to $355 million for Standard.
It’s unclear what Asher will do next. “I’ve decided that, after the transition period, I will be leaving the company to pursue new endeavors,” Asher told us. “While I was offered the opportunity to stay, and the decision was certainly tough, I believe the end of the year is the right time for me to embrace a new challenge.”
“Working with the Standard International team and seeing our global growth come to fruition has been the highlight of my career,” she says.
Amelia DeLuca has a task that some say is almost nearly impossible: helping a major airline achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
The airline industry has been notoriously difficult to make more sustainable. Currently, sustainable aviation fuel, commonly known as SAF, is not able to be produced at a wider scale. Climate change is also already affecting airlines — record-high summer temperatures are beginning to limit aircraft takeoffs and causing greater turbulence.
Despite the naysayers, DeLuca is confident that Delta Air Lines can become a sustainable airline.
As Delta’s chief sustainability officer, DeLuca has spearheaded projects like eliminating single-use plastics on board and testing a more sustainable paper cup. She’s also leading one of Delta’s more ambitious goals: That 10% of fuel on flights will be SAF by 2030.
So far, Delta has built coalitions and partnerships across the industry to promote more investment and production into SAF.
“All roads lead to climate. I hear people from all ages, all levels, all positions, all backgrounds connect to this often in different ways,” DeLuca said in an interview with Shell. “The younger generation says, ‘This is critical and I’m anxious because I’m afraid I don’t have a future.’”
DeLuca didn’t start her career in sustainability. Instead, she held multiple roles in Delta’s network planning, revenue management and global sales team before leading the airline’s most ambitious climate change initiatives.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, DeLuca said she realized she wanted to contribute to solving climate change after listening to a kids science podcast about climate change while driving with her two daughters.
“That gave me clarity of what my role is: that we’ve got to get a running start on this,” she said to The Journal.
Sustainable aviation fuel, electric vertical takeoff and landing, and AI-powered flight operations technology are some of the most futuristic ideas in aviation.
That’s where JetBlue Ventures President Amy Burr comes in.
As the head of JetBlue’s venture capital arm, she oversees which startups the airline invests in and eventually works with. Some of JetBlue’s most high profile investments include ones in eVTOL startup Joby Aviation, Aether Fuels and Turnkey.
“One of the challenges with especially airlines is that we just have a really legacy tech stack,” Burr said. “And so I spent a lot of time thinking about what is going to move the needle and what are things that are realistic to implement.”
Burr didn’t get her start in venture capital. In fact, she made her career working in the operations side of the airline industry. After a stint at Continental Airlines working in revenue management and airline partnerships, she made her way to Virgin America, which she helped launch.
Burr said the experience helped her understand the startup mentality. Burr said she was constantly thinking of the future of travel and transforming the industry.
“Back then it was definitely the coolest job,” Burr said. Now she thinks that honor goes to her role with JetBlue’s venture capital arm, which she joined in 2018.
Burr didn’t initially think of pursuing a career path in airlines. When she was in business school, Burr originally wanted to go into consulting, but after receiving an offer from Continental, she decided to take a risk.
“I got sucked into the airline industry, spent four years at Continental Airlines and then kind of recognized that I wanted to do something different in this industry,” she said.
“Travel is so aspirational and inspirational,” Burr said. “What are the things that people love to do in the world? Travel is one of them. It’s exciting to be part of an industry that meets that need for people.”
Now, Burr said she mentors younger women in travel and helps them break into the industry.
“It’s tricky,” she said. “We are an industry that is, you know, definitely not at parity.”
JetBlue, along with JetBlue Ventures, might have the most gender diversity in the airline industry. Joanna Geraghty became the first female CEO of a major U.S. carrier in February and more than half of JetBlue Ventures’ team is made up of women.
Crystal Vinisse Thomas is a Miami native who took a winding path to become vice president and global brand leader of Hyatt’s lifestyle and luxury brands.
While studying at Cornell University, the former track star discovered a passion for the hotel business. After school, Thomas landed a marketing job at Starwood. Later, she moved to Brussels as the European regional brand manager for W Hotels, one of Starwood’s lifestyle brands.
In 2016, Marriott bought Starwood, and in 2018, Thomas jumped to Apple, where she led the sports vertical of brand marketing of Beats by Dr. Dre.
In 2019, Hyatt called. It offered Thomas a chance to put her stamp on the first brand it had built in-house in decades. She gave the new brand, Caption by Hyatt, a more social focus for travelers who want to feel young at heart but who don’t want to pay high Thompson brand rates.
Thomas has been at Hyatt since, rising from a brand director role to her current job. She believes storytelling is critical to brand marketing. Too often, she says, hotel ads show generic guest rooms and swimming pools. Instead, her philosophy is that hotel companies ought to tell emotionally relatable narratives like iconic brands such as Nike do.
“Travelers should be able to see themselves in the story,” Thomas said.
To achieve this, she has sought collaborations with advertising creatives new to the hotel sector. Internally, she has encouraged recurring brainstorming sessions with “NBD” or “Never Been Done” as the aspirational goal.
Exhibit A of fresh thinking: Thomas’s team oversaw Andaz’s first new brand campaign since that luxury lifestyle hotel brand debuted in 2007. The theme: Be Like No One’s Watching. Thomas’s team hired real guests to appear in the ads, capturing them as they pursued personal passions like dancing at Andaz properties.
“While you don’t want to be all things to all people, you certainly want to create a space where people can feel that they can be who they are and bring their authentic selves,” Thomas said.
Peggy Roe leads Marriott’s data strategy, operations teams, and loyalty program. With a background in customer behavior at Harvard Business School and work on “voice of the customer” methodologies at GE Capital and Amazon, Roe found her way to hospitality after a chance encounter with a life coach at an airport.
At Marriott, Roe first gained notice by working on TownePlace Suites, a then-new brand that was underperforming. Over four years, she studied customer expectations and fine-tuned the brand’s operations and marketing.
The result? TownePlace Suites became one of Marriott’s fastest-growing brands.
“In this industry, it’s all about telling the customer upfront what they’re going to get and delivering on exactly what you said,” Roe says. “If those things are mismatched, you’ll miss the mark.”
Marriott sent Roe to Asia. She spearheaded the hotel giant’s joint venture with Alibaba, the e-commerce colossus. The partnership continues to deliver a significant portion of the company’s customer base and bookings in China, now Marriott’s second-largest market. Roe continues to serve as board chair of the venture.
Today, Roe focuses on Marriott Bonvoy, a loyalty program with over 210 million members. Her strategy revolves around understanding traveler preferences and passions. She has implemented marketing research panels of about 10,000 customers and non-customers, complementing this insight with data from guest surveys and other sources.
“The big unlock in value comes from better understanding who our customers are and what they’re passionate about,” Roe says. “Loyalty comes from how we make people feel, and the faster we can positively affect someone’s emotion, the more loyalty we can create.”
Reflecting on her career, Roe considers her move to China pivotal. It deepened her belief in seizing opportunities that feel right, even when the outcome isn’t certain. “Ripping the Band-Aid off and trying new things generally pays off over time,” she says.
Looking ahead, Roe’s ultimate goal is to understand and respond to travelers’ feelings in real-time. “We’ve created our Gen AI studio as part of our Innovation Labs and I do think that that will be a transformative space for our industry.”
Gilda Perez-Alvarado holds not one, but two important titles at Accor. She is the hospitality group’s Chief Strategy Officer, as well as the CEO of Orient Express.
Born in Costa Rica, her global outlook was defined by her international upbringing. Perez-Alvarado lived in North Africa, Europe, and Central America, all before moving to Indiana at 13.
She had early dreams of becoming a scientist and initially studied chemistry at Cornell before shifting her focus to hospitality. Perez-Alvarado says she was inspired by previous generations of influential women in her family. Her mother managed the largest hotel in Costa Rica, while her grandmother ran a hotel and restaurant. It’s here that she says she discovered her true passions.
Before joining Accor, Perez-Alvarado was the Global CEO of JLL Hotels & Hospitality. After 19 years at the real estate giant, it was time for a change. Speaking to Skift in February, she said the move came at “the perfect time.”
Today, Gilda Perez-Alvarado is based in Paris. In her new Accor strategy role, she has quickly become a critical player at Europe’s largest hospitality company – one that includes Raffles, Ennismore, and Fairmont among its dozens of brands.
Perez-Alvarado also leads a team pushing the traditional boundaries of one of the world’s best-known heritage hospitality businesses. By 2026, Orient Express will expand its reach with new trains, three hotels, and even a yacht. Summarizing not only the challenge but also her enviable skillset to Skift, she said: “We want to pay homage but also be entrepreneurial.”
Throughout her career, Gilda Perez-Alvarado has been a powerful advocate for women. Speaking to Hispanic Executive in 2021, she said: “The workplace has been designed for men. We need the people at the top to redesign the workplace so it works for everyone.” Gilda Perez-Alvarado’s dizzying ascent up the corporate ladder should place her in a prime position to help realize her vision for a more equitable future.
When Heidi Durflinger was growing up in Kansas, her parents welcomed students from all over the world through the American International Student Exchange Program to come and stay with them.
Students came from Sweden, Norway, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Ecuador, and Italy. “I was from a small town in Kansas,” Durflinger said. “These experiences changed my life.”
Durflinger, now the president of EF World Journeys, started as an entry-level tour consultant 20 years ago and climbed the ladder from sales trainer to vice president of sales to her current role. EF World Journeys is a tour operator focusing on culturally immersive, educational experiences. The brand serves tens of thousands of travelers a year.
Throughout her tenure, she has focused on bringing a sense of community to the workplace and customers. She led the launch of a community feature on the mobile app, which allows travelers to meet before they take their journeys. She is now working on expanding adventure and active travel with tours that have running and hiking themes. Staying active is a passion: “It’s sort of a third pillar of who I am,” she said.
Durflinger was instrumental in expanding solo travel offerings. She helped navigate partnerships with Nalgene Outdoor to promote sustainable travel and America’s Test Kitchen to offer immersive culinary tours, and she introduced a loyalty program called Club Go to reward repeat travelers.
She credits her career to her childhood and her parents, who were small business owners. And she devotes her work to giving travelers the immersive experience of the world that she grew up with. “I learned so much from having this cultural and global classroom in my home,” she said. “That’s the concept of the tours. We want to bring people out into the world so that they learn more about the world and about themselves through travel and bring that back home.”
Leah Chandler, the chief marketing officer of Discover Puerto Rico, wants you to always be thinking of the island – not just when you’re planning a vacation. For her, it’s a lifestyle brand.
Chandler was the second employee at Puerto Rico’s destination marketing organization, founded in 2018, the same year that Hurricane Maria devastated the island. In her first few years, her focus was to get Puerto Rico’s own destination brand off the ground, with a focus on its unique culture, distinct from other sun and sand islands.
For example, Discover Puerto Rico created an exclusive Sunshine Puerto Rico color and an exclusive Piña Colada ice cream flavor. She rejects advertising pitches and partnerships that have been done before. “We want to be the first DMO to do it,” said Chandler.
Chandler makes appearances at major events like SXSW and Cannes Film Festival to share Puerto Rico’s storytelling and innovation.
One of the DMO’s most successful campaigns was the locals-centered Live Boricua. It’s currently in its third iteration. The word “Boricua” comes from Borinquen or Borikén, the name given to the island by indigenous Taínos.
The U.S. territory was the fastest-growing destination in overseas visitation in 2023, having jumped 85% from 2019, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office.
“I am humbled and honored to be the first, but I have no interest in being the only.” That was how Leslie Hale put it to the Washington Post in 2018, when she was named CEO at RLJ Lodging Trust, which made her the first African American woman to be chief executive of a publicly traded real estate investment trust.
She had been appointed chief financial officer in 2007 and chief operating officer in 2016.
Hale is the granddaughter of a Tennessee sharecropper. Later, her family moved from Tennessee to Los Angeles before she moved away to study business and finance at Howard University and then Harvard Business School. In addition to her role at RLJ, she is on the board of Macy’s and a trustee at Howard University.
As CEO, she has managed several high-quality and premium acquisitions, including a portfolio of hotels from White Lodging, the Hyatt House in Chelsea, New York, and the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Austin, Texas.
Hale drove the adoption of data analytics for revenue management and enhancing guest experiences. RLJ Lodging Trust now has 96 hotels across the United States with approximately 21,200 rooms.
She has also fostered a sense of collaboration, inclusivity, and empowerment among her employees. She has focused on adding diverse leadership into the company and finding ways to provide mentorship and sponsorship for individuals from lower-income backgrounds to land high-earning positions.
“The most impactful thing to do is to add diverse leadership on the leadership team because those individuals will directly and indirectly drive diversity throughout the organization,” Hale said to the industry magazine, mpamag, in 2020. “And while it’s important to add diversity in the lower ranks, that won’t necessarily help you drive it through the organization.”
Everything about Ho Ren Yung screams “next-gen” – from her sense of style to her unwavering commitment to wellbeing, to the fact she is literally the next generation of leadership at Banyan Group. The daughter of Banyan founders Claire Chiang and Ho Kwong Ping, Ren Yung experienced the family business growing up and saw an opportunity to transform it later on.
In August 2024, Ren Yung was promoted to deputy CEO of the company, now working across every aspect of the business to drive its growth.
Before her move up, she handled brand, digital and wellbeing as VP of brand HQ since 2016. Her approach has been to find ways to diversify the business, hone in on customer experience and ensure Banyan is one of the most environmentally-conscious operators in the biz – both in design and operations.
As a teenager, Ren Yung enjoyed being in the marine lab of Banyan Tree Vabbinfaru, which is where she found her love for the environment. She went on to study economic development and sociology, but when she joined Banyan in 2009, she sought to focus heavily on wellness.
Today, Banyan Group has 12 brands, and in 2024, it will open the most hotels in a year since the group started in the 1980s. Last year, the luxury operator saw revenue increase 46% to about $300 million, surpassing pre-pandemic levels.
Under her watch, Banyan has pushed into new markets like Saudi Arabia and Dubai, with the Bahamas on the horizon and an ever-growing presence in China. This is all while she juggles her own co-working space business and an ethical clothing brand called Matter.
Sonia Cheng is known for bringing culture, heritage, and history to her role as CEO of Rosewood Hotel Group, a global luxury hotel management company. Appointed in 2011 to CEO at age 30, Cheng has focused on making the 45-year-old luxury hotel group “purpose-driven” and welcoming to the younger generation.
Cheng was born into one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families. She is the daughter of a Hong Kong property developer and the granddaughter of a real estate and jewelry billionaire. She worked as an investment banker in New York and Hong Kong before joining the investment firm New World Hospitality – the family business –- in 2008. The group became “Rosewood Hotel Group” following the acquisition of Rosewood Hotels & Resorts.
When she took over Rosewood as CEO in 2011, she expanded the brand globally and brought it into the modern era.
Cheng’s leadership is largely defined by her dedication to bringing a “sense of place” to each property. She has tried to make the hotels feel like someone’s home and match the local culture. London’s Rosewood property has drawings by British illustrators, for example, while the Beijing location integrates elements of traditional Chinese architecture.
When Cheng first became CEO, there was some skepticism from rivals about how much she could achieve. Cheng spent her first few years learning about every aspect of the industry, from housekeeping to operations to marketing.
Today, Rosewood’s portfolio boasts 50 hotels in 23 countries, with 33 more in development. She has overseen the transformation of iconic properties like The Carlyle in New York and Hôtel de Crillon in Paris. Cheng has also introduced innovative concepts such as Asaya, an integrative wellness program, and the Rosewood Explorers Club, enhancing family travel experiences.
Staci Mellman has sat at high levels in America’s destination marketing industry. Until August this year, she was chief marketing officer for Brand USA, America’s destination marketing organization. Before that, she was chief marketing officer for Visit Florida, the DMO for one of America’s most-visited states.
Mellman effectively managed agency relationships, branding, and marketing plan development, said Will Seccombe, who hired her during his time as Visit Florida’s chief executive. “She is a grinder who gets things done,” he said.
Amid the pandemic and global lockdowns, Mellman helped drive Floridians to take more vacations inside the state and explore their own backyard with a marketing campaign that highlighted Florida’s attractions, landscapes and experiences.
During her time, she was focused on positioning Florida as a destination that is inclusive of travelers with disabilities. She was also pivotal in building a coalition of tourism boards from Tampa, Orlando and Miami to each invest $150,000 and bring in the Michelin Guide to review their restaurants in 2022.
“Prior to our partnership with Michelin, 37% of respondents in a survey that we do saw Florida as having unique local cuisine,” said Visit Florida CEO and President Dana Young. “Two years into our partnership with Michelin, 51% of respondents see Florida as having unique local cuisine.”
Florida’s culinary scene has not only gotten more attention, it’s also attracting talent hoping to work at Michelin-starred restaurants.
In November 2022, Mellman joined Brand USA as senior vice president of integrated marketing. After a year, she was promoted to chief marketing officer.
At Brand USA, she helped the DMO take on a more innovative approach. Brand USA partnered with Expedia’s media division to launch GoUSA, the DMO’s own streaming channel showcasing what the U.S. has to offer.
Mellman also helped craft Brand USA’s “This Is Where It’s At,” the organization’s single largest consumer campaign in its history. In 10 countries, the campaign highlighted America’s lesser known destinations and variety of experiences, from serenity to adventure to family fun.
Zina Bencheikh has been an outspoken advocate of empowering women through tourism and breaking down gender barriers. One of her biggest successes was to bring more women into Morocco’s male-dominated travel industry.
Bencheikh actually started with a career in corporate finance at KPMG in Paris, but found travel was her passion. When she moved back to Marrakesh in 2010, she took up a job as finance manager with Intrepid Travel. She quickly rose to general manager for Morocco and Europe.
Starting out, she found it “very complicated” to hire women tour guides. Only 9 in the entire country were qualified by the government to be mountain tour guides.
Through lobbying the government and leveraging Intrepid’s size, she was able to convince government officials to simplify the process. She told the tourism minister: “We’re a big business, we bring money here. If you want us to stay here and continue to grow, give us more human guides.”
Intrepid now has 150 women tour guides.
She is frequently invited to speak at travel industry events around the world about the economic opportunities destinations unlock when they encourage more female employment in leadership positions.
At the Latin America Travel Association’s Expo this year, for example, Bencheikh spoke about how stereotypes and ‘macho’ culture have been a barrier to women rising to top leadership roles in the industry.
Bencheikh has overseen Intrepid’s expansion in several markets like Iceland, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. She has been heavily involved in developing Intrepid’s Women’s Expeditions, tours led by women and for women travelers. Its latest launch was in Saudi Arabia.
In times of crisis, Bencheikh is an important voice in the industry, encouraging travel to destinations hit by natural disasters. After an earthquake struck Marrakesh in September 2023, she spoke to news outlets to inform viewers that local communities need tourism income to feed their families.
To lead with example, on December 1, Intrepid restarted tours to one of the villages disconnected due to damaged roads. “It was quite fast because we really needed to send a strong message and make sure that our communities don’t get a double impact from this devastating earthquake,” said Bencheikh.
Neha Parikh became one of the few women CEOs in travel when she took the top job for the Google-owned navigation app Waze in 2021.
Though Parikh was able to carve out a space for herself in the industry, she explained that it’s an ongoing battle to contribute a perspective that peers and customers often don’t share.
“I think I’m constantly fighting to find my voice, and even if I have something different to say, that I would actually have the confidence to say it,” Parikh told Skift in 2022. “If you’re in a position to amplify someone’s voice and to help give them the confidence, please do that because it makes a difference. I’ve had people do that throughout my career.”
Google in 2023 absorbed Waze into its Geo business, which oversees the company’s portfolio of mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View. As part of that move, Google cut the CEO role for Waze and Parikh exited the company. During her time there, the app hit 151 million active monthly users.
Before Waze, Parikh had 10 different jobs and lived in five different cities during a 12-year stint at Expedia.
Her last role at Expedia was as president of flight and hotel booking service Hotwire. Earlier in her career there, she helped build the first loyalty program for Hotels.com, which was called Welcome Rewards.
Parikh is also a board member of online used car retailer Carvana, a Fortune 500 company.
Shruti Challa, a former Sonder chief revenue officer and currently an active investor, was not the first entrepreneur in her U.S. immigrant family.
Growing up in Kansas, Challa’s dad was a physician and serial entrepreneur who came to the U.S. from India. He loved “solving unique medical problems and building something from scratch,” Challa says. “So I was around an entrepreneur as a young girl. And I was Daddy’s little girl. So I really got the feel for it and love for it early on.”
She also credits her success to her education at Stanford, where she was a champion debater, an internship at PayPal when she was 19, and then another one at the Founders Fund. “Peter Thiel,” who co-founded PayPal and The Founders Fund, “had this kind of a PayPal mafia and it was a big thing,” Challa recalls.
“They really mentored me and got me into investing really early, but also gave me the confidence to be an operator at a really young age,” Challa says. “ So since then, those two things, [the mentoring] and Stanford, facilitated this career and operating over the last 15 plus years, 10 of which have basically been in travel.”
In 2014, Challa joined Rocket Travel and served more than four years as general manager/senior vice president of new business and partnerships. Booking Holdings acquired the company in early 2015.
Then she met Sonder co-founder and CEO Francis Davidson, “who supports people who don’t fit a mold.” Challa joined Sonder in 2019 and helped lead both data science and brand at the short-term rental/hotel company. “It’s a hard business at its core,” Challa says, referring to Sonder. She helped take it public, but it has been unprofitable and its share price has swooned.
“It’s not a tech business first,” Challa says of Sonder. “It’s probably a hospitality-first business. I think it probably grew too fast in a way that was unsustainable.”
Sonder’s revenue grew from $60 million when she joined and hit $610 million by the time Challa left in March 2024. She remains a believer in Sonder’s long-term potential. Last month, Sonder signed a licensing deal with Marriott and secured additional financing.
As for her leadership style, Challa says her teams “love her and hate her and I think that’s the best compliment, the one I love. You were the hardest manager, but the one who’s been the most impactful. And it’s because I believe people can reach and do things they think they can’t do.”
Garine Ferejian-Mayo, chief commercial officer at Sonesta, has, in her own words, been “tapped on the shoulder” many times to take the next step in her hospitality career.
Ferejian-Mayo arrived in the U.S. at age 11 from Lebanon. Starting at the front desk part-time at a Holiday Inn in Los Angeles while still going to school, Ferejian-Mayo has worked along the way at eight hotel brands, including IHG, St. Regis, Westin, W Hotels, and Fairmont.
She spent a half dozen years working for the management company Interstate Hotels & Resorts. “Every two, three years, they would tap your shoulder to say, ‘Are you ready for your next move,’” Ferejian-Mayo says.
Interstate selected her to become front office manager and then rooms director in Seattle, followed by a stint as director of reservations in San Francisco.
Ferejian-Mayo has managed housekeeping, food and beverage, done revenue management, and overseen sales organizations and commercial operations.
At Sonesta, where she started as chief commercial officer in March 2021, Ferejian-Mayo oversees sales for both managed and franchised properties, global sales, and leads revenue management.
“I’m probably one of the few, as a commercial leader, who knows and understands how each department works, and how it functions,” Ferejian-Mayo says. “And I think that has really built a very strong foundation for me in my career.”
If revenue management seems an unexciting field, Ferejian-Mayo is having none of it. “My God, no,” she says. “It’s not at all. It’s all about strategy. And that’s the passion I have. I’m very, very strategic.”
Ferejian-Mayo recalls that Sonesta generated $1.2 million from “the Taylor Swift impact” – “I want to know her next set of dates to make sure that we’re ready to yield and drive performance.”
She adds: “We also don’t want to gouge our customers. But if the market is demanding $500, you can’t sit there for $200. You’re leaving money on the table.”
Noha Abdalla, the chief marketing officer at Choice Hotels, considers herself a problem solver, and she’s had several marketing positions over the years where she’s worked as a quasi-internal consultant charged with taking on a new challenge.
At Choice Hotels, which she joined in 2022, the goal was to expand beyond the company’s traditional focus on the franchisee, and to improve the guest experience. You may have seen the series of Stay for Any You TV commercials, touting Choice brands Comfort and Cambria, for example, and discounts for direct bookings.
Abdalla overseas marketing, loyalty and external communications. “This includes traditional and performance marketing, as well as our CRM channels, and brand creative.”
She almost didn’t become a marketer. “I historically, from high school to college and MBA, was a straight A student,” Abdalla says. “I got one B-plus in my life — in marketing.”
“Fast forward 27 years, I think I had something to prove to that professor,” she quips.
Abdallas’s first marketing job was for the American Red Cross, promoting the need for ongoing blood donations. She subsequently spent seven years at the Discovery Channel, and then Capital One, before she was “tapped on the shoulder by a former boss to go to Hilton and start its Social Media Center of Excellence,” she says. “I got my global job in there.”
When the pandemic hit, Abdalla worked on how to engage with Hilton customers when they weren’t traveling, a matter of considerable internal debate. Her first idea was to share the DoubleTree chocolate chip cookie recipe, but some pushed back that guests wouldn’t visit the hotels if they already had the recipe. She won out and it was a success.
Beyond the chocolate chip cookie, the campaign ended up also revealing the recipe for the Waldorf salad, and touting the fact that the Piña Colada was supposedly invented at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, she recalls. The origin of the Piña Colada, however, is also open to debate.
While many Hilton owners are institutional investors, when she made the jump to Choice, Abdalla said she had a greater appreciation for working with franchisees, in addition to guests. “Here you are also helping with the American dream and helping build generational wealth for these owners,” Abdalla says.
Abdalla advises women starting their careers to have more confidence in themselves and be willing to take risks.
“I think women — not wanting to make a huge generalization — sometimes tend to have that inner voice that finds all the reasons you’re not as qualified to do a job versus a man,” Abdalla says. “You know what, I got 60% of this, I’m fine.”
Kristie Goshow’s career journey, much like her personality, is anything but conventional.
Goshow’s love affair with the world began young, inspired by her father’s travels as a petrochemical engineer. “He would come back from these far-off places, full of stories and new languages,” she recalls. “He taught me that it’s safe to leave and try something new.”
Her career started later than most. “I wasn’t ready for university until I was 23,” she admits. “My friends would call me ‘consistently inconsistent.’ I wasn’t built for repetition — unless it’s making a grilled cheese sandwich.”
This wandering spirit eventually led her to jobs at Virgin Atlantic, Le Meridien, Jumeirah Group, Sabre and many other hospitality, travel and technology companies. Working with Virgin Atlantic became a pivotal chapter in her journey. “Every aircraft carries the dreams, hopes, and desires of over 300 individuals,” she says. “Travel is a catalyst for humanity’s growth. It’s a privilege and a great responsibility.”
Her career is a tapestry of experiences across aviation, travel technology, and hospitality. She sees each role as a calculated move, a building block that contributes to her broader vision. The hospitality industry, in particular, has been transformative.
When asked about advice for young aspirants in her field, Goshow, who is now the chief commercial officer of KSL Resorts, emphasizes the importance of open-mindedness and adaptability. “Don’t fixate on titles,” she advises. “Look at the potential impact of your next opportunity. Be willing to step out of your comfort zone.”
Her vision for the industry is encapsulated in her mantra, “Defy the corner chair.” “It’s about challenging irrelevant traditions,” she explains. “Take the ubiquitous corner chair in hotel rooms. To this day, we can still find ‘a corner chair’ in most hotel rooms. What if it wasn’t there? What could that space be used for instead? I wish my legacy will be a ‘what if’ mindset.”
Goshow’s personal passions seamlessly blend with her professional life. Her love for real estate is about unlocking potential, whether in residential or commercial spaces. “It’s like playdough for adults!” she says, delighting in the metaphor.
And then, there’s her love for cooking — specifically, Indian curries. “Growing up in the UK, how could I not love a curry?” she laughs. Chicken tikka masala, Britain’s unofficial national dish, has long been a family favorite. But it’s Madhur Jaffrey’s Butter Chicken that truly holds a special place in her heart.
Shannon McGehee remembers visiting the Embassy Suites in Orlando at age six, tagging along on her mom’s business trip.
She didn’t get to travel a lot so this trip was special and made a lifelong impression. “I thought it was the epitome of adventure and luxury,” she says. “I thought it was Eloise at The Plaza.”
By age 17, McGehee landed her first job as part of a team that opened a Hilton Garden Inn at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. She rotated through virtually every department at the property, and her love affair with the hospitality industry had become part of her DNA.
McGehee resolved to become a general manager of a large hotel but her career took a turn in 2011 when she became revenue manager at Hotwire, an Expedia Group company.
In the early 2000s, McGehee recalls, there weren’t a lot of women hotel general managers.
“I think that only drove my ambition and my seeking roles that challenge the status quo, which then drove me to Expedia,” she says.
McGehee hasn’t become a hotel GM — yet — but since late 2022 she’s served as Expedia Group’s senior director of global partnerships in lodging, and in that role leads a team that negotiates contracts and manages the relationships with nine of the top global hotel chains, from Marriott to IHG and Best Western.
Her advice to other women moving on up? They should be “adaptable and flexible” because industry dynamics always change.
McGehee also points to the power of mentorship, citing Dorothy Dowling, former chief marketing officer of BWH Hotel Group, and Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin, as helping McGehee invent her own leadership personna.
“I know just from those two relationships, I’ve been able to help my leadership style, which is around emotional intelligence and analytical rigor,” McGehee says. “And I aspire to one day be one of these ladies that can help the journey of the next generation.”
For most tourism chiefs, the playbook is pretty much the same: Get more people in your country, and have them spend more money. For Princess Haifa Bint Mohammed Al Saud, Saudi Arabia’s vice minister of tourism, her job has one extra mandate: To change the image of the nation.
It’s no easy task. While Saudi Arabia can get headlines with its high-end tourism developments and endorsements from famous footballers, it is still fighting against peoples’ long-held perceptions.
Princess Haifa travels the world, speaks at conferences, and tries to convince people that Saudi Arabia is transforming. Since she took the role in July 2022, international tourism has almost doubled to 27.4 million last year. By the end of the decade, Saudi wants that number to reach 70 million, with an eye on lucrative markets like the UK, India and China.
Princess Haifa has a background in finance. She grew up in Riyadh with her sister and two brothers and attended school in Saudi Arabia, where she was educated in Arabic, English, and French. She studied at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, and earned her MBA from the London Business School. After completing her studies, she worked in banking in London at HSBC.
Outside of tourism, she also chaired the Saudi-Emirati Youth Council and served as Chair and Vice Chair of the Arab Fencing Federation Women’s Committee and the Saudi Fencing Federation respectively, increasing the number of women on the official team from zero to over 200.
Alessandra Alonso founded the non-profit Women in Travel after working at the notoriously rough-and-tumble KPMG and finding she was often the only woman in the room.
“I was thinking, there’s something wrong here,” says Alonso. For an industry that’s at least 55% women overall, the lack of female voices at the top was troubling.
So she went to her bosses at KPMG and got the resources to find out why. Alonso did research. She held workshops.
“They [women] said to me, ‘We are not mentored, we are not coached. We don’t know how to network, or can’t network, because the things that happen happen at times of the day when we’ve got other priorities,’” she says. “I can’t play golf. I don’t go to the pub. And, you know, they mistake my lack of presence for lack of ambition.”
So Alonso left the for-profit world and has made it her mission to advance gender inclusion across the travel, tourism, and hospitality sectors. Her career has been a blend of corporate savvy and dedication to diversity and empowerment.
Her advice to young leaders: Be authentic, strategic – and a little bit political.
“If there is one thing that I learned over the years, it is that I wasn’t very patient, and that is not necessarily a good quality,” chuckled Alonso. “When you start, you need as many allies as possible.”
Renowned for her expertise in gender empowerment and mentorship, Alonso has earned her reputation as a thought leader who also champions male allyship in organizations. “Ultimately, there are still many positions that are fundamentally in the hands of white, middle-class men,” says Alonso. “So we need the men in the discussion. We need the men in the conversation.”
In 2021, Alonso was recognized with the JourneyWoman Award, for her impact on gender empowerment. She’s determined to make sure diversity and inclusion aren’t dismissed as feel-good initiatives, but are recognized as key drivers of business performance and concrete results. “As women rise, the idea is that they lift others with them, and therefore they open the floodgates.”
– Sarah Kopit
Jenn Chick says she has always focused on the opportunities in front of her without paying too much attention to others. That’s what she believes has allowed her to advance in her career to become the current senior vice president and global head of Hilton Honors and customer engagement.
“I have always maintained a simple focus as I have moved through my career: Do great work and build great relationships,” she said. “Staying committed to delivering your best and building trusted relationships will keep you grounded and ensure you are poised for success no matter what lies ahead.”
Chick is responsible for improving the customer experience and driving expansion of the Hilton Honors loyalty program.
Skift reported in late 2023 that Hilton’s loyalty program was the leader in terms of growth. Its membership grew 110% in the five years through September 2020 to a total of 173 million members.
Hilton Honors recently added two new partners: Outdoor hospitality company AutoCamp and boutique hotel brand Small Luxury Hotels of the World. That means Hilton customers can book stays with those brands through its booking channels, and Hilton Honors members can earn and redeem points through those bookings.
There are two more additions on the way, including “luxury lifestyle” brand NoMad, which Hilton acquired in April 2024, along with the brand Graduate Hotels, which Hilton bought for $210 million.
Chick is a board member for the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., an annual springtime festival that commemorates the gift of 3,000 cherry trees from Tokyo and attracts 1.5 million visitors.
She lives in Virginia with her husband and three children. They enjoy traveling in their free time, especially to outdoor destinations for hiking and rock climbing.
Sophia Lin was behind the evolution of Google Maps from a simple GPS app to a place where people can explore and book hotels, vacation rentals, and things to do, as well as make restaurant reservations and order food delivery.
“I’m delighted whenever people tell me they use Google Maps to explore — it makes my heart happy,” Lin said.
Since Lin started at Google in 2007, she’s also built digital maps from scratch in several new countries.
Now, she is a director of product management for Google Search, overseeing the development of new travel and local experiences. That means one of her jobs is exploring the role that generative AI — namely, Google’s Gemini model — will play in the next iteration of search, from discovery to booking.
Google has already started integrating generative AI into travel-related services, including various trip planning tools in Search and Maps — with much more surely to come.
Lin looks to the phrase “farming for dissent” — coined by Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings — as a guide to her leadership. With this approach, managers and employees are open with each other when evaluating new ideas.
“It’s been a wonderful way to provoke candid, open conversations about hard topics and to keep myself and my teams accountable to building the best products we can for people,” Lin said.
And, she takes inspiration from her father, who she said immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan to give his children better education and opportunities.
“Growing up, one of the things I saw him do time and time again was to always fight for what he thought was right, even in the face of countless obstacles and setbacks,” Lin said. “That’s stuck with me a lot as I started in my own career – that even when things are hard or I fail, that I can get up, brush myself off, and try again.”
As President and CEO of The Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), Shannon Knapp’s brief spans more than 400 hotels in over 80 countries. The organization was founded in 1928 and remains the only global collection of five-star independent properties.
Knapp started her current role in 2019, but her tenure and impact at LHW stretches back over a decade. She joined the company in 2013 as SVP & Chief Marketing Officer after holding a range of senior positions at American Express.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Knapp has been instrumental in the growth – and even the survival – of LHW. Taking on the top job just months before the pandemic, she successfully navigated the company and its worldwide members through the crisis. In many ways, the business is now stronger than ever. Evidence, if needed, came in both 2022 and 2023 when LHW reported record-breaking results, with global revenues exceeding $1 billion.
The company’s robust financial performance hasn’t been at the expense of its social and societal goals. Knapp is well known in the industry as a trailblazer for community empowerment and inclusion. It is therefore no accident that within a few clicks of landing on the LHW website, visitors can filter search results by female-owned hotels. These properties, in locations ranging from Italy’s Amalfi Coast to New York City, are all “helmed by the industry’s most influential women,” and fall under the company’s ‘Leading with a Purpose’ mantra.
This ethic goes beyond glossy consumer-facing materials. Under Knapp’s leadership, LHW has made meaningful internal changes too. In 2021, the company’s executive team reached gender parity, while LHW’s wider 200-strong workforce also has a 50/50 gender composition. Knapp has described the importance of building “a new and more inclusive future.” Few would argue that she’s turning talk into tangible results.
Ayesha Molino held various roles on Capitol Hill before landing as chief public affairs officer for MGM Resorts. She was an attorney in the Commerce Department, held a stint as the international trade counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, and served as the chief counsel for late Nevada Senator Harry Reid.
Now, she’s a rising star at MGM. In just six years, Molino has climbed her way from senior vice president of government affairs to chief public affairs officer, and more recently, taken on an executive role for Aria Resort and Casino and Vdara Hotel and Spa.
At MGM, Molino leads the company’s corporate communications, public relations and government affairs strategies. And she’s in that role during a turbulent time for the casino hotels industry. The industry essentially shut down during the height of Covid-19 and has dealt with labor shortages.
But now it’s having a comeback — Las Vegas casinos generated a record $15.5 billion in 2023, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In her role as chief public affairs officer and as vice chair of the Nevada Resort Association, she supported a state Senate bill that would remove daily cleaning requirements at hotels, casinos and resorts.
Nevada initially passed a bill during the pandemic that outlined certain cleaning standards for hotels, but those requirements became difficult for many operators to meet due to widespread staffing issues.
She’s also been an advocate for women in the industry. Molino was recently a part of an event on mentoring young women in the gaming and casino industry hosted by Global Gaming Women, an organization that fosters the career development of women in the gaming industry.
“I owe much of my career to mentors who were willing to spend their time and energy to support, guide, and challenge me,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to pay it forward and encourage my colleagues to seek and provide mentorship when the opportunity arises.”
Edited by Lex Haris. Design and photo treatments by Beatrice Tagliaferri.
All photography by Skift, except for Amelia DeLuca (credit Delta Air Lines), Amy Burr (credit JetBlue Ventures), Crystal Vinisse Thomas (credit Hyatt), Peggy Roe (credit Marriott International), Heidi Durflinger (credit EF World Journeys), Leslie Hale (credit RLJ Lodging Trust), Ho Ren Yung (credit Banyan Group), Garine Ferejian-Mayo (credit Sonesta Hotels), Kristie Goshow (credit KSL Resorts), Shannon McGehee (credit Expedia Group), H.H. Princess Haifa Bint Mohammed Al Saud (credit Saudi Arabia), Alessandra Alonso (credit Women in Travel), Jenn Chick (credit Hilton), Sophia Lin (credit Alphabet), Shannon Knapp (credit The Leading Hotels of the World), Ayesha Molino (credit MGM Resorts International)
