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Meeting Leaders: Brett Sterenson

Executive Profile

Name: Brett Sterenson

Title: President

Organization: Hotel Lobbyists

Location: Washington, D.C.

Birthplace: New Rochelle, New York

Education: BS in Management, Boston College, 1998

Career History:

Sales manager, Millennium Bostonian Hotel, Boston, 1998–2003

Sales manager, Kimpton Hotels, Washington, D.C., 2003–2007

President, Hotel Lobbyists, 2007–present

As the president of a company named Hotel Lobbyists, you might expect Brett Sterenson to work on Capitol Hill persuading legislators to pass laws related to the hotel industry. While Sterenson does reside in Washington, D.C., his company’s name is a clever play on words referring to the heart and gathering place of every hotel — the lobby.

Sterenson grew up in New Jersey and attended Boston College, where he studied marketing. After graduating, though, he struggled to find marketing jobs and ended up working in hospitality instead.

“I took a job as a reservations agent at a hotel in Boston,” said Sterenson. “I loved hotels and wanted to get into hospitality, and it was a good entry spot. Nine months later I was working in the sales office.”

Sterenson worked as a sales manager for Millennium Hotels in Boston from 1998 to 2003 before going to work for Kimpton Hotels in the same role. The job relocated him to Washington, D.C., and he stayed in his position at Kimpton until 2007.

“I really loved that job — I didn’t leave because I didn’t love it,” he said. “I was at a point in my career where I was selling a style of hotels that people loved, and I was a resource for my customers, but I couldn’t help them most of the time, which was frustrating to me. I worked with small hotels and there were too few locations. My clients would come to me, and I’d have to turn them down. I thought, ‘What if I could help them every single time they called me?’ And that was the impetus for me starting my own business in 2007.”

He started Hotel Lobbyists, connecting meeting planners with the ideal hotels for their conference needs. He has been in business for nearly 18 years, has booked programs in all 50 states and “all inhabitable continents,” and books roughly 500 meetings each year.

Even 2020 had a silver lining for Sterenson. He was planning to acquire the intermediary practice of someone who was ready to retire, but the deal stalled when the pandemic hit.

“It delayed the merger slightly, and I was able to get a better deal,” he said. “It gave me the time to transition all of her clients over to me during a time that I wasn’t frenzied with business.”

The majority of Sterenson’s clients work in government, which he believes to be a boon for his business.

“The benefit is that they have a lot of volume,” he said. “What they lack in their ability to spend, because their rate is a little lower, they make up for in the sheer number of meetings that they produce in a year.”

Another advantage is that most government agencies don’t have a dedicated meeting planner on staff, so they’re very receptive to having the type of help Sterenson offers. Along with that, Sterenson attributes his success to being “painfully organized” and his love of connecting people to each other.

“My favorite aspect of my job is that I truly believe that what I’m good at is connecting people to people,” he said. “Being in an industry that advocates getting people together is exactly what I should be doing. I joke that while some people go to meetings about pharmaceuticals or education systems, for example, I go to meetings about meetings. That’s my niche. There are a lot of us, and it’s a big, beautiful family that I really enjoy being a part of.”

Tips from Brett Sterenson

Keep organized. Develop systems so that information can be found quickly and put to use.

• Say yes and be visible. When possible, be available for in-person events and activities; the only thing you’ll guarantee by not attending is you won’t make an important connection that day.

Keep an open mind. You never know where the next opportunity will take you, so be open to engaging with customers in new ways.