No Vacancy Live!

Hotel employees already juggle enough. They don't need 10,000 system steps standing between them and the guest. Kevin King, CEO of Shiji Group, joins me on No Vacancy to talk about how #AI strips away that complexity so hotel teams spend more time focusing on hospitality. But Kevin keeps coming back to another issue: protecting the enormous amount of guest data powering all this technology. As hot...

Hotels spend a lot of time and money dealing with linens, from buying and storing them to running equipment and making sure housekeeping always has what it needs. Bart Begley with Integrity Laundry Services joins me on No Vacancy to explain a different model: total linen management. Instead of owning the linens and managing the laundry operation in-house, hotels use a system that adjusts supply ba...

Most people don't look at a 12th-century monastery in rural Umbria and think, "We should turn this into a hotel." Cathi Lutjens and Fred Kubierschki did. They left the corporate hospitality world, took a chance on an unlikely opportunity and created Vocabolo Moscatelli around a simple idea: build the kind of place people would travel specifically to experience. They shaped it around the monastery,...

The next wave of hotel growth won't look like the last one. Bruce Ford with Lodging Econometrics joins me on No Vacancy to look at how the global #HotelDevelopment pipeline is shifting — and where the industry's next big opportunities are starting to emerge. Conversions increasingly drive growth in mature markets, while new construction tells a very different story across Asia, the Middle East and...

True luxury means not having to think about the details. Almando Rigby, general manager of Windjammer Landing in Saint Lucia, joins me on No Vacancy to explain why today's #LuxuryTravel guest expects a hotel to understand what they want before they ever have to ask. That creates an interesting challenge. Hotels now have more technology, data and AI at their disposal, but Almando argues that the mo...

Hotels spend years collecting guest data, then lose sight of what people want the moment they're actually staying in the room. Kevin Rohani, founder and CEO of Camo Hospitality, joins me on No Vacancy to talk about that blind spot. Guests order food, transportation, entertainment and other services during their stay, but much of that activity happens outside the hotel's ecosystem. So the property...

Live experiences drive operating success because they create reasons to travel, reasons to spend, and reasons to come back. That's why Marriott Vacations Worldwide is building Inner Circle around them. During ARDA , I talked with Mike Flaskey , President and COO of Marriott Vacations Worldwide , about what changes when the offer expands beyond the villa and into the full trip. 🎟️ Inner Circle laun...

To ease us into the holiday weekend, here's a rerun of a fun video I recorded in a Puerto Rican rainforest! Wyndham Rewards pushes beyond hotel nights into experiences, and Michael Shiwdin , Global VP of Loyalty at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts , explains why: engagement drives direct bookings, and direct bookings drive owner value. I talked with Michael at Wyndham Grand Rio Mar Rainforest Beach & Golf...

To ease us into the holiday weekend, here's one of my favorite chats from the year: Starwood Hotels operates  1 Hotels , Treehouse Hotels and Baccarat Hotels & Resorts around one idea: products need emotion and soul, not templates. While hosting Starwood's annual conference, I talked with  Raul Leal , CEO of Starwood Hotels , about differentiation through nature-led design, human experience, and A...

Collective excellence starts when hotel teams stop operating in separate lanes and start moving in the same direction. Glenn Haussman talks with Ben Campbell, President and CEO of Hospitality America, from **PEACHCON, the company's annual conference**, where team members come together to connect, learn and align around what comes next. Ben's focus is simple: get better today than yesterday and bet...

A busy airport hotel never really slows down. Guests come and go at all hours, plans change quickly and the team needs to stay ready for whatever walks through the door next. Alicia Augustine, GM of the Hyatt Place Pensacola Airport, joins me on No Vacancy and explains how she keeps her team prepared. Every morning at 9:00, they meet to cover priorities, talk through what needs to happen and spend...

Hotel operating costs keep climbing, but revenue isn't keeping pace. That's forcing operators to rethink where the money comes from. Rhiannon Reynolds, VP of Operations with Innisfree Hotels, joins me on No Vacancy from Pensacola, Florida, where we talk about how essential it is to shift from an ADR mindset to thinking about the total value of every guest . Once someone arrives, the opportunity ex...

A beachfront resort in peak season puts plenty of pressure on a hotel team. The GM of the Holiday Inn Resort Fort Walton Beach found a way to keep hers. Sandy Beebe-Osipov joins me on No Vacancy and tells me she went more than a year without hiring a housekeeper because not a single team member quit. That's a remarkable #HotelLeadership stat in a business that constantly wrestles with turnover. He...

Putting my wife on Friday Night Audit seemed like a good idea. It was not. Helene Stein joins Craig Sullivan, Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera and me, and very quickly discovers the real purpose of the show: publicly correcting me while drinking. She gets into my travel habits, my complete lack of home-repair skills and hotel pet peeves, right as our Worst Hotel Pet Peeve bracket hits a semifinal show...

A coffee shop knows your name, loyalty status, order and how you paid — then calls out, "Whoever ordered the Americano." That pretty much sums up where service goes wrong. Bart Berkey, keynote speaker, author of Most People Don't and former Ritz-Carlton sales leader, joins Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera and me on No Vacancy to talk about Humanality : using #Technology without forgetting to see the h...

Some of Australia's strongest extended-stay demand sits in places most travelers would never think about. Damien Gallace, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Extended Stay Australasia, joins me on No Vacancy with a very different way to look at the #HotelDevelopment map. His team follows demand from steel, mining, ports, defence, hospitals and universities, then looks for places where people need...

Westgate Las Vegas is betting on something Vegas can't manufacture: history. Dawn Rawle, SVP of Marketing, Advertising and Guest Experience, joins me on No Vacancy from the very stage where Elvis performed, standing on the original planking he walked across decades ago. Westgate doesn't treat that #LasVegas history like something trapped in a display case. The team uses it to shape what guests exp...

The Peabody just opened a luxury hotel inside The Peabody. Doug Browne, President of Peabody Hotels & Resorts, joins me on No Vacancy to explain the thinking behind the new Pembroke Club. The hotel takes an already premium experience, creates an even higher #Luxury tier and gives guests who want more service a reason to pay for it. The Pembroke Club team starts working with guests before they arri...

Glenn Haussman, Craig Sullivan and Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera finally did Friday Night Audit together in the same room, and Memphis got the honor of dealing with all three of them. They broadcast from Kooky Canuck, right across the street from the famed Peabody Hotel, with giant drinks on the table and friends from the Southern Lodging Summit dropping in throughout the show. Producer Dave joined...

A major hotel brand doesn't need to make every property feel the same. I toured the Embassy Suites Downtown Asheville with Jack Benton, Area Director of Sales & Marketing, and this hotel takes plenty of inspiration from its surroundings. Appalachian textures, mountain-inspired design, open public spaces, meeting areas that connect naturally with the rest of the hotel and guest rooms with unobstruc...

A popular band you've never heard of announces a tour, demand suddenly takes off in a market, and a short-term rental owner misses the signal and leaves money on the table. That's one of the examples Anurag Verma, co-founder of PriceLabs, and I get into while walking along the Chicago River. PriceLabs watches what's happening across individual markets and combines those signals with an operator's...

The hotel room someone books online sits at the end of a massive web of technology, partnerships and decisions most of us never see. Danielle Von Weyhrother, Head of Sales North America at HBX Group, joins me on No Vacancy to pull back the curtain on #HotelDistribution. HBX connects hotels with airlines, travel agencies, OTAs, loyalty programs and more than 100,000 clients worldwide, helping hotel...

Something enormous is happening with hotels in India, and I don't think enough people realize the scale of it yet. I brought Bruce Ford, SVP of Lodging Econometrics, back to No Vacancy because the numbers coming out of #India are pretty staggering, but the real story goes much deeper than the size of the pipeline. Global hotel companies are making major moves across the country, investment is acce...

Friday Night Audit gives hotel company presidents a dangerous combination: cocktails, bad ideas and three people absolutely convinced they know how to run the business better. Red Roof President Zack Gharib made the mistake of joining us this week. We insisted our advice was genius. Zack knew better. Between drinks, Craig Sullivan started designing a red-jacket tradition for Red Roof, Suzanne Bagn...

What happens when you build a hotel around elves, orcs, fairies and leprechauns — and commit fully to the idea? Ancient Lore Village has just 14 rooms, yet some of its social videos draw millions of views, including one that topped 25 million. Now CEO Melissa Blattner is taking the concept much further. I spoke with Melissa about why immersive storytelling connects so strongly with guests and what...