Updated February 05, 2019 11:18:22In late October, the American Hotel & Resort Association (AHA) held its annual conference, a year-long meeting that’s been called the “Hotel Industry Conference.”

And the AHA’s chairman, Thomas E. Dickey, who was also the president of Marriott International, made an interesting case for the hotel industry to embrace “renovation as a strategic asset,” as if its primary function is to stay in business.

In essence, he was arguing that if the hotel was ever to be a sustainable enterprise, its primary purpose should be to become an economic engine for the American economy. 

“I want to get hotels to start thinking about a strategic business model that works for them,” Dickey said at the conference.

“The question we’re going to have to answer is, How do you build a sustainable business model?”

Dickey’s comments are a reminder of how important hotel owners have been to the economy of the United States for decades. 

In fact, hotel owners and operators have played a key role in supporting the U.S. economy in its long march toward economic and social prosperity.

As hotel owners, hotel operators, and others have seen the hotel boom, so too have many of their own workers, who have seen an average pay increase of about 8 percent per year from 1970 to 2017. 

But hotel owners are not the only ones who have been playing a role in helping build the American economic engine. 

The hospitality industry has played a role that’s not as obvious in the past.

According to a 2017 report from the Brookings Institution, there were 6,000 hotels in operation in 1970, up from 1,000 in the mid-1970s.

By the mid-’90s, however, the industry was hit hard by the dot-com bust, and as the economic downturn and recession took its toll on the industry, so did demand for its services.

As a result, the number of hotels in business declined by more than a third, to 1,500 from 4,600.

And while the number declined in the early 2000s, it grew again during the financial crisis.

Today, the hotel and vacation industry accounts for more than half of all hotel occupancy. 

So what’s changed in the last decade? 

The biggest factor has been technology.

With the rise of the Internet, hotels are no longer a place where you would be able to book a room and expect it to arrive on time.

Instead, hotels will send guests on their own private jet, or sometimes even private aircraft. 

What about hotel workers?

A lot has changed.

In the mid 1970s, most hotel workers were unionized.

As of 2018, that has been changed to “part-time,” meaning that a person working full-time in a hotel can’t unionize, but that a hotel has a legal obligation to provide them a wage.

The reason for the change?

According to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) the hotel workers union, the AFT had pushed for changes to the hotel labor code in the 1970s that would have required hotels to pay the union minimum wage.

That was a tough fight.

But the AFL, which is a membership-based organization, successfully pushed for the changes. 

According to a 2016 report from The Washington Post, the government paid out more than $5 billion to hotel workers during the economic recovery, including millions to employees who were laid off. 

There’s also a new wave of technology that has helped the hotel sector.

Today’s hotels are far more connected to the outside world, meaning that they are able to send guests to and from other cities.

That makes it easier for guests to stay longer and more comfortable in their hotels.

But as the economy has recovered, the demand for hotel accommodations has also increased. 

Some of the hotels have also been hit harder by the financial downturn, as the industry’s share of hotel revenue has plummeted.

A hotel that was profitable five years ago can’t compete today, and its occupancy rate has fallen to less than half what it was in 2014. 

How can the hotel workforce support itself in the years ahead? 

One way hotels can get back on their feet is by reopening or upgrading. 

During the recession, hotels could have closed down, but they didn’t.

Instead they turned to franchising, which gave them access to their workers, a big advantage.

Today many hotels are franchised, which means that the hotel is owned by a company or individual.

And that allows the company to negotiate higher wages, better benefits, and a variety of other incentives for its employees. 

Franchising has also made hotel owners more competitive in other areas, too.

For instance, hotels can now offer a variety and variety of rates to their guests, from free room and board to a room charge that can be as much as 50 percent higher than what a hotel would normally charge.