MAKING HOSPITALITY MORE DIVERSE: "Not all orthodoxies are toxic, but the ones that create massive blind spots ultimately become driving lanes for disruption.".

• Author: Mirza, Alexander
• Position: BACK TO BUSINESS

AS A DOUBLE immigrant raised in Toronto, Canada, having spent a decade in New York and eventually starting a lifestyle hotel brand in Shanghai, I enjoyed the benefit of living in and working among the most diverse and multicultural places on earth.

Research confirms that discrimination is best understood, not by classroom lectures or corporate training, but by those who have experienced it firsthand. In 2007, when I was senior vice president of Corporate Development at Hilton, I was presenting to the board of directors at a Waldorf Astoria resort in Phoenix, Ariz. After a very thorough question-and-answer period that followed my presentation, I undid my tie and walked to the valet to get my car rental. The valet crew was out retrieving vehicles, so I waited politely alongside a few other hotel guests at this iconic resort.

In a span of a few minutes, not one but three white men handed me the car keys to their snazzy sports cars, mistaking me for the valet. I passed the keys over to the actual valet who quipped, "This is one of the few places where they trust brown people."

It turned out all three were CEOs of real estate and finance companies and were frequent guests at the resort. While the implicit bias of this experience was demoralizing, it pales in comparison to the explicit barriers that women and ethnic minorities face in reaching the senior ranks of the hospitality industry.

Given the lack of diversity at the top of hotel companies, it is even more important for executives to get off the beaten path. When I became CEO of Cachet Hotels in Shanghai in 2012, I championed increasing diversity and made it one of my top three objectives. In many Asian markets, hotel owners strongly associate prestigious international hotel brands with the tall handsome European men who usually manage them. Despite this association, in 2012, Cachet Hotels set a bold goal of 50% female and minority general managers at our hotels and restaurants. At the time, women comprised 70% of the hotel workforce in China, but only five percent of full-service hotel general managers.

Five years later, we met our objective across our entire portfolio of hotels and restaurants in China, the rest of Asia, and the Americas. We also were pleased that a few years later, in 2015, Accor announced a goal of 35% women hotel general managers in the Asia-Pacific region.

I returned to the U.S. a few years ago and partnered with hotel industry veterans, data scientists, and technologists to build Mogul Hospitality--our mission is to perfect meritocracy and accelerate diversity. According to our research, women and minorities comprise 60% and 40%, respectively, of the U.S. hotel frontline. However, only 20% of U.S. hotel general managers are women and 10% minorities. Blacks represent 15% of the frontline and a mere one percent of hotel general managers.

It took us a few years to analyze the data, but we have developed algorithms to rank diverse pools of talent and predict their worth and annual compensation...