A long road to acceptance
The Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), founded in 1989, is now one of the fastest-growing organizations in the industry. According to the association, its members own almost one in every two hotels in the U.S. Furthermore, the AAHOA website states, “With billions of dollars in property assets and hundreds of thousands of employees, AAHOA members are core economic contributors in virtually every community in the United States. As an association, AAHOA is a proud defender of free enterprise and a leading example of the ongoing realization of the American Dream.”
Hotel Business—25 years ago—tackled the issues facing the Asian-American owners community. And, suffice it to say, it was a slightly more challenging time for the association—or, more specifically the people who made up its membership. The association, still in its infancy when the accompanying article appeared in the August 1992 issue of Hotel Business, was still in an uphill battle in terms of fighting bias and discrimination, despite, as the article states, its success “garnered in a 20-year climb from lodging’s bottom rung.”
At the end of the article, Harry Pattni, the Days Inn franchisee who chaired the anti-discrimination committee of AAHOA, profoundly shared, “Slowly but surely, we’re doing it. I have children who are four, six and nine. By the time they grow up, hopefully, they won’t have to go through what we did.”
