Generation Next: The Women Shaping Travel’s Future

Noha Abdalla

Choice Hotels CMO

Noha Abdalla, the chief marketing officer at Choice Hotels, considers herself a problem solver, and she’s had several marketing positions over the years where she’s worked as a quasi-internal consultant charged with taking on a new challenge.

At Choice Hotels, which she joined in 2022, the goal was to expand beyond the company’s traditional focus on the franchisee, and to improve the guest experience. You may have seen the series of Stay for Any You TV commercials, touting Choice brands Comfort and Cambria, for example, and discounts for direct bookings.

“I oversee communications, everything from public relations and franchisee communications to speech writing, as well as marketing,” Abdalla says. “This includes traditional and performance marketing, as well as our CRM channels, and brand creative.”

She almost didn’t become a marketer. “I historically, from high school to college and MBA, was a straight A student,” Abdalla says. “I got one B minus in my life — in marketing.”

“Fast forward 27 years, I think I had something to prove to that professor,” she quips.

Abdallas’s first marketing job was for the American Red Cross, promoting the need for ongoing blood donations. She subsequently spent seven years at the Discovery Channel, and then Capital One, before she was “tapped on the shoulder by a former boss to go to Hilton and start its Social Media Center of Excellence,” she says. “I got my global job in there.”

When the pandemic hit, Abdalla worked on how to engage with Hilton customers when they weren’t traveling, a matter of considerable internal debate. Her first idea was to share the DoubleTree chocolate chip cookie recipe, but some pushed back that guests wouldn’t visit the hotels if they already had the recipe. She won out and it was a success.

Beyond the chocolate chip cookie, the campaign ended up also revealing the recipe for the Waldorf salad, and touting the fact that the Piña Colada was supposedly invented at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, she recalls. The origin of the Piña Colada, however, is also open to debate.

While many Hilton owners are institutional investors, when she made the jump to Choice, Abdalla said she had a greater appreciation for working with franchisees, in addition to guests. “Here you are also helping with the American dream and helping build generational wealth for these owners,” Abdalla says.

Abdalla advises women starting their careers to have more confidence in themselves and be willing to take risks.

“I think women — not wanting to make a huge generalization — sometimes tend to have that inner voice that finds all the reasons you’re not as qualified to do a job versus a man,” Abdalla says. “You know what, I got 60% of this, I’m fine.”

– Dennis Schaal