Highest Paid Hotel Managers

Rob Goldstein, CEO and chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp., was the company’s highest-paid CEO last year, collecting $40 million. The runner-up was Patrick Pacious, president and CEO of Choice Hotels International, who received $27 million in compensation.

However, the latest information on hotel CEO salaries was otherwise. Many CEOs of major hotel companies ended 2022 with less compensation than they were initially awarded. This year’s new management system made it easier to see the gap between what CEOs want and what they have.

A new law this year required US companies to make clear the equity awards that pay for top executives’ packages. In the past, companies reported compensation as valuable when it was given. This year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission required companies to report “compensation provided” – which provides a clear picture of the shares that benefited from the loss of top executives for the last three years.

A hotel CEO’s compensation starts with a salary and then adds incentives that are tied to performance or changes in the company’s stock. Annual bonuses, stock awards, and other compensation help raise the average CEO’s salary. However, variable annuities can be difficult to estimate because the principal can hold them indefinitely and their value fluctuates.

Exhibit A: In 2022, Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta received a base salary of $1.3 million. But he also had the opportunity to receive 23.5 million dollars but only received 8.4 million dollars. Hilton tied CEO pay to financial goals. About half of the stimuli were associated with the modified content. Other goals include free cash flow, the size of all rooms, and the diversity and inclusion goals of employees.

Hilton’s sales fell 19% last year, which reduced the value of its rewards. By comparison, the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index, which tracks the 20 largest hotel companies and real estate investment trusts, was down 15% for the year.

Wyndham CEO Geoffrey Ballotti is another executive who saw an “unexpected” pay cut. Under the old standards, Ballotti received $9.7 million in pay last year. But according to the new measure, he was only awarded $1.6 million – mainly due to changes in the fair value of awards given in previous years..

Another notable compensation package was that of Thomas Reeg, CEO of Caesars, the casino and hotel operator. He was paid a starting salary of $2 million last year. But most of his salary was paid in different ways. A 56% drop in the company’s share price last year impacted his compensation so much that his compensation was $15.7 million negative. It’s on paper, though. Rewards that are about to be redeemed at a later date.

Pay against “Actual Pay”

Source: Skift/people filters.

European Hoteliers Paid Less

Hotel companies based in Europe are not required to disclose compensation as the US has adopted.

This year, the CEOs of IHG and Accor received less compensation on average than their US counterparts, following a multi-year trend.

Last year, IHG (InterContinental Hotels & Resorts Group) paid CEO Keith Barr $6.5 million (£5.25 million). The actual compensation was about $5 million (£4.7 million) because IHG failed to meet several financial targets, such as not exceeding the limit of rooms opened through new systems.

Accor does not rely on flexible payments like its US counterparts. It also compares equity awards to the value of the service date, rather than the actual compensation. With those warnings, CEO Sebastian Bazin received about $5.3 million (€4.9 million) in compensation last year.

Highest Paid Hotel Managers

Including European CEOs and excluding casino operators makes the following, updated list of the highest paid CEOs in 2022, curated by Patrick Pacious of Choice Hotels International.

Source: Skift/people filters. The figures for Accor and IHG show changes in income and expenses that account for the shares at the time of the offering.

None of the figures mentioned have been fully transferred to the public in the past year. Instead, these numbers include variable rewards whose value can be calculated. European companies calculate rewards a little differently than the US. But the ranking system can be the same for any method.

The median salary for CEOs at those seven hotel companies was $8.35 million. For that matter, the median salary for all S&P 500 CEOs in 2022 was $14.5 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Although the hotel industry achieved lower profits in 2022 than in the year of the end of the epidemic in 2021, the compensation of the hotel industry was in line with the performance of the sector that performed best compared to North America and Europe as a whole. wealth.

Photo Credit: Photo of The Venetian, by Las Vegas Sands. Source: Skift.