Rate Management

When Fred Hirschovits lectures students at the hospitality school at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, he doesn't shy from telling them about his experience.

During the downturn there was nothing glamorous about the hotel business, Hirschovits tells them. After all, the Holiday Inn he owns with other investors near the university opened at probably the worst time in the recession: February 2009.

That area near FGCU and Southwest Florida International Airport experienced a development boom in the mid-2000s that created several thousand new hotel rooms. Multiplied by the 365 days a year, that turns out to be about 1 million room nights. “There's still too much supply,” says Hirschovits, the president of Naples-based Twenty Twenty Worldwide Hospitality. But Hirschovits, 61, says the hotel business is growing again. Occupancies are rising and so are rates. His own company posted revenues of $9 million in 2012, up 12.5% from 2011.