Will Song

Will Song

Economist by training. Revenue manager by trade. Fifteen years running price discovery experiments on real hotels with real money — measured in RevPAR index against the comp set, not raw numbers.

Currently

VP, Commercial Strategies
MacNaughton Hospitality

Founded & Exited

Lights On Digital
51 hotels · Inc. 5000

Results that survive
an audit.

Every claim below is measured against a competitive set, a prior year, or a market index — the only numbers that mean anything in this industry.

No. 1

77 → 104RevPAR Index · 24 Months

Kauai Shores — from trailing the comp set to leading it.

A 200-room independent under-earning its market. Rebuilt pricing, distribution, and demand strategy: 23% then 32% year-over-year RevPAR growth against Hawaiʻi market growth of 5%. Zero capex — no renovation, no rebrand, no flag. Finished as the #1 TripAdvisor property on Kauai.

No. 2

+111^%RevPAR · 2021 · Index 76 → 103

RSVP Hotel, Bozeman — open when the market went dark.

Modeled the demand case for staying open through COVID while competitors closed — then priced into the recovery. 111% RevPAR growth in 2021, index from 76 to 103, no major renovation. The kind of call a model makes and a heuristic misses.

No. 3

14% vs 4%Annual RevPAR growth vs market · 10 years

A ten-point spread, held for a decade.

Revenue strategy for 50+ hotels — roughly 8,000 rooms across independent and select-brand properties. 14% average annual RevPAR growth against a 4% market, sustained across a full cycle including COVID, with 95% budget attainment on forecasts accurate to 5%.

No. 4

1 → 51Properties · Founded 2014 · Exited 2025

Lights On Digital — built, scaled, exited.

Grew the Highgate Hotels relationship from one property to an eight-property Hawaiʻi portfolio — $450M in room revenue — on performance alone. Built a 30-person team with 8% turnover in a 30% industry. Inc. 5000. Exited January 2025.

The quantitative edge.

Most revenue managers learn pricing as a set of heuristics. I learned it as demand theory first — then spent fifteen years finding out where the theory breaks.

Demand theory first, heuristics never.

University of Chicago economics: demand elasticity, market microstructure, how a price signal actually moves behavior. Recommendations are elasticity-based rather than rule-based — which is why they hold up when the market turns.

ii.

I build the model, not just read it.

Channel attribution, five-year revenue decomposition, pace-versus-pickup forecasting accurate to 5%, comp-set indexing off STR and HTA data. I don’t outsource the analysis and interpret the output — I write it.

iii.

AI in production, not in theory.

Claude as a daily operating tool, with custom infrastructure wiring live PMS and channel data directly into AI-driven analysis — a week of report-building turned into a same-day answer. The near-term edge in this industry goes to operators who can actually wire these systems together. That’s the bet I’m making with my own workflow.

An economist in an industry that runs on instinct.

I’m an economist by training and a revenue manager by trade — which in practice means I’ve spent fifteen years running price discovery experiments on real hotels with real money. University of Chicago economics gave me the framework. Hospitality gave me a live laboratory.

I cut my teeth directing revenue for Aqua Hotels & Resorts — fifteen hotels, 2,700 rooms, 21% year-over-year RevPAR growth at 10 points ahead of comp — then founded Lights On Digital in 2014. Over the next decade: fifty-one properties, a 30-person team with 8% turnover in a 30% industry, Inc. 5000 recognition, the HLTA Leadership Award, and an exit in January 2025.

Today I’m VP of Commercial Strategies at MacNaughton Hospitality in Honolulu — full commercial oversight of three properties, reporting to the CEO and COO of a group whose primary business is real estate. The mandate: run the hotels well enough that ownership doesn’t have to think about them.