Yesterday, after six months of carnage in the hotel business, I decided to leave the office early and go clear my head. It was one of those days and I just needed a moment.
When a pendulum swings, it moves from one side to the other but when the pendulum stops and just hangs straight down, it takes a lot to get it going again. That describes the hotel transaction market today. I have been through many cycles and it generally swings from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market and the shift is predictable and generally smooth. We can transact in either market, you just put on a different hat. This cycle, the pendulum was swinging very high January through the middle of March and instead of swinging the other way, it just fell straight down and has been hanging there for the past six months.
Yesterday I decided to go home and help my two sons-in-laws clean some stuff out of our garage but basically, I just wanted to do something different for a little while. On the way home I cranked up some Lynyrd Skynyrd (Call me the Breeze and Sweet Home Alabama) and realized there are sometimes when you need to be quiet and then there are times you need to turn up the volume. Yesterday was one of the later.
After a few minutes of Skynyrd and some time away from the office, I was good to go. Below is a link (just in case you need some Skynyrd) to Ronnie Van Zant and the Skynyrd band in live concert in 1976 singing ‘Call me the Breeze.’ KT