Joe Pettigrew
Group CCO @ L&R
Hospitality commercial strategist with experience maximising asset value across 1,000+ hotels globally through owner-led systems.
Architect of The Hotel Commercial OS™
An owner-installed operating system that governs commercial decisions to maximise cash flow, NOI, and long-term asset value
I build owner-installed commercial operating systems for hotels where profit, not optics, governs decisions.
The Hotel Commercial OS™ aligns forecasting, pricing, demand access, distribution, sales, marketing, cost elasticity, and guest experience into a single governed system, designed to run through repeatable, high-frequency decision loops.
Inverse Distribution Theory™ is embedded into the OS: distribution is downstream. Demand increasingly routes to hotels that are most recommendable, not merely most visible.
Doctrine: Inverse Distribution Theory™
For two decades, hotel growth was interpreted through a distribution-first lens: more access, higher rank, more spend, more demand.That relationship is reversing.
Inverse Distribution Theory™ states that in an AI-mediated discovery world, distribution is no longer the primary driver of demand. It is increasingly the outcome of upstream forces: experience quality, narrative consistency, and machine-readable signal density.
The new causal chain:
Experience design → narrative creation → signal propagation → AI and social routing → demand capture → conversion
Why it matters:
If recommendation replaces browsing, the competitive unit is no longer a listing. It is trust, proof, and repeatable narrative.
What this changes operationally:
Guest experience is not an operational function. It becomes a demand engine.
Marketing is not visibility buying. It becomes signal engineering.
The Hotel Commercial OS™
The Hotel Commercial OS™ is an owner-installed operating system that governs how hotel commercial decisions are made, prioritised, and executed - aligning forecasting, pricing, distribution, sales, marketing, cost elasticity, and guest experience around Profit-First, Outcome-Driven logic to compound hotel asset value over time.
It is not a department, a technology platform, or a reporting framework.
It is the governing system that translates commercial philosophy into repeatable, high-frequency decisions that maximise cash flow, NOI, and long-term valuation.
Core Components of the System
Inverse Distribution Theory™
The doctrine that reframes distribution as a downstream outcome of recommendability.
Unified Commercial Stack™
The architectural blueprint that integrates awareness, demand access, conversion, pricing, inventory, cost elasticity, and data into a single commercial system.
Hotel Commercial Segmentation™
A demand-access model that replaces legacy rate-type segmentation by classifying demand based on how it is accessed and influenced commercially.
GX as Marketing™
A demand-generation doctrine that positions guest experience as an earned-media and advocacy engine in the AI travel planning era.
Profit Over Profitability™
A financial philosophy that prioritises absolute cash flow, NOI, and risk-adjusted earnings over margin optics and index performance.
Outcome Over Output™
A performance logic that measures success by commercial outcomes rather than activity, reporting volume, or operational busyness.
Execution Over Strategy™
An operating cadence that favours high-frequency, profit-aligned decisions over long-range planning documents.
About the Architect
Joe Pettigrew has built his hospitality career focused on maximising the asset value of hotels through an ownership lens.
Across more than 1,000 hotels globally, his work has centred on influencing commercial performance in ways that compound cash flow, NOI, and long-term value—often within owner, owner–operator, and owner–brand environments where traditional brand-led incentives fall short.
He has worked across category-defining hospitality platforms including Iconic Luxury Hotels, 1 Hotels, YOTEL, Extended Stay America, De Vere, and Getaway.
Rather than optimising for brand metrics or short-term optics, his career has been shaped by designing commercial systems that align pricing, demand access, distribution, cost elasticity, and execution cadence with ownership return objectives.
The Hotel Commercial OS™ is the formalisation of this work, codifying how owners can govern hotel commercial performance to reliably compound asset value across cycles.
He currently serves as Group Chief Commercial Officer at L+R Hotels.
Independent Coverage & Citations
Referenced, quoted, or featured by independent industry publications and platforms.
These third-party sources reflect external discussion of the ideas, systems, and commercial principles described on this site.
Skift Live — Joe Pettigrew speaker profile (hospitality commercial strategy)
Skift — L+R Hotels streamlines operations and tech under Joe Pettigrew’s commercial leadership
PhocusWire — Hotel revenue optimiser versus maximiser (Joe Pettigrew framework)
Hotel Investment Today — L+R Hotels restructures tech stack to maximise asset performance
Hotel Tech Insider — Podcast interview with Joe Pettigrew on commercial segmentation and strategy
Hotel Moment (Revinate) — “Is NOI the only thing that matters?” with Joe Pettigrew
MEWS — Matt Talks: Hotel investment strategies with Joe Pettigrew