PODCAST: JLL Global Hotels CEO Gilda Perez-Alvarado On The Cities Where Hotels Are Coming Back To Life

Bisnow's audio series, Bisnow Reports, examines every facet of the international commercial real estate industry — from the murky future of retail and office to real estate’s reckoning with diversity to the effects of climate change on the built world, and so much more. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon Music, or scroll down to listen in your browser.

On this episode, Bisnow sat down with Gilda Perez-Alvarado, the global CEO of JLL hotels and hospitality, by the pool at the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference last week in Miami.

Perez-Alvarado was appointed to this role in February, which made her the highest-ranking Latina at JLL, leading a team of more than 300 people in 48 offices. On the podcast, she spoke about which hotels are recovering and the growing pressure in the hotel industry to meet ESG mandates.

“Hotels that are catering to domestic leisure clientele are doing absolutely fine. … Along the Mediterranean, here in the Sun Belt and the 'smile states,' those cities and hotel markets are doing fine. In fact, some are doing better now than they did in 2019,” she said. “Those cities that depend on international travel and corporate demand are not doing as well.”

Perez-Alvarado also spoke about her belief that companies need to provide flexible working arrangements and why diverse leadership is the best way to create environments for productive, happy teams.

“I will absolutely continue to push flexible work arrangements, because life happens,” she said. “You can have that if you have trust in your employee and you set your employee up for success. So if I want to attract and retain the most brilliant minds in the world, I need to be flexible.”