No Vacancy Live!

What if the biggest problem at your hotel isn't what you're missing? Heidi Stone knows that trap well. She took over Mountain Lake Lodge — the Virginia resort made famous by Dirty Dancing — when the lake had dried up and the property had plenty working against it. Her answer wasn't to obsess over everything that was wrong. That mindset changed the property, and it shapes how she looks at independe...

Some of the biggest hotel construction opportunities in the world right now are taking shape across Asia Pacific — and India is accelerating fast. I spoke with Lodging Econometrics' Bruce Ford about where hotel companies are placing their bets next. India's hotel pipeline nearly tripled over the past three years, and Bruce expects a construction wave there for the next five to seven years. China b...

What if the SBA's $5 million hotel loan limit doesn't actually limit you to $5 million? At LendingCon, SBA Regional Administrator Tyler Teresa explained how hotel owners now use the 7(a) and 504 programs together for as much as $10 million in total financing. Congress never raised the $5 million limit. The SBA found another route. Then Tyler dropped another number every hotel buyer should hear: 15...

Waiting for "uncertainty" to disappear before making your next hotel deal? Dan Lesser has a technical term for that: a cop-out. I caught up with the LW Hospitality Advisors president and CEO at LendingCon 2026, and Dan sees considerably more activity in the hotel market than all the hand-wringing might suggest. He says the first half of the year has been phenomenal, people continue to travel, subs...

Staypineapple Hotels President Dina Belon joined us for Friday Night Audit, and within minutes we were talking about underground printer-paper markets, retired Peabody ducks and why her early Google results once featured photos from the Playboy Club. So, pretty much a standard Friday Night Audit. Craig Sullivan and Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera were along for the ride, while I broadcast from EPCOT,...

During LendingCon 2026, Glenn Haussman asks Red Roof's Lina Patel why conversions now account for roughly 80% of the company's hotels this year. Lina also explains how Red Roof's RIDE initiative has helped 40 people become hotel owners and why the company sees more room to grow that number. Watch the conversation to hear what Red Roof sees happening in the hotel deal market right now. #NoVacancyNe...

LivAway Suites made a bold choice: give long-term guests more room and still protect the economics behind the hotel. The company builds rooms about 20% larger than typical economy extended-stay rooms, places the kitchen at the center of the space and adds features that matter when someone lives in a hotel for weeks at a time. Fast Wi-Fi, better sound control, package lockers, useful storage and st...

A Michelin-recommended restaurant on top of an Embassy Suites changes the conversation pretty quickly. I spoke with Bonnie Campagnolo, Global Head of Embassy Suites, from the rooftop of the brand's Asheville hotel, where the restaurant draws customers seven nights a week. The property combines two-room suites, breakfast and the evening reception with meeting space, serious food and beverage, and a...

Curator Hotel & Resort Collection brings together some seriously cool independent hotels without sanding away the qualities that make them interesting. New Waterloo offers a great example. The company creates distinctive hotels inside historic buildings, connecting each property to its surrounding community. Curator gives the team greater buying power, stronger vendor relationships, broader market...

Anthony Klok keeps 80% of his hotel staff for more than 20 years, and he doesn't credit software, surveys or another employee engagement program. I visited Anthony, Principal of Rebel Hospitality, at the Best Western Plus Hawthorne Terrace in Chicago while he cooked for his staff and handed out appreciation bonuses. He explained why people stay, why so many hotel companies still get this wrong and...

Every hotel brand makes a promise on a slide deck somewhere. There's a real gap between what a hotel brand promises and what actually happens at the front desk. I got brand strategist Philipp Mirow, CEO of Meridian Thinking, on the show with Dr. Producer Suzanne to figure out exactly where that promise falls apart. Philipp ran the Radisson brand while at Choice Hotels, then founded Meridian Thinki...

Picture 100% occupancy on your busiest weekend of the year — then picture running out of towels. Rooms sit unsellable, guests grow furious, and the hotel writes refunds and credits just to get through the night. Bart Begley built Integrity Laundry Services so no hotel has to live through that scenario, and I went to Destin, Florida to see how. Under Bart's model, hotels don't own a single towel or...

The hotel business apparently didn't get the memo that everything is supposed to be terrible. Consumers feel squeezed. Credit-card debt keeps climbing. Business travel remains soft. Hotel construction faces the same cost and financing challenges we've discussed for years. Yet hotels keep performing, people keep traveling and owners keep making deals. So what's actually holding this market together...

Jamie Caraher was recently recognized as one of Utah's CEOs of the Year. She runs Lodging Dynamics. Owners trust her with their #hotels. And she told me, on camera, that the moment she got the call, her first thought was: do I even deserve this? If you've ever sat in a leadership role and quietly waited for someone to figure out you don't belong there, this conversation is going to hit different....

Hotels keep sending me golf deals. I don't play golf. I've never played golf. Dana Cariss, SVP of Revenue Strategy at CoralTree Hospitality, showed me exactly how close the industry now stands to fixing that problem. Disconnected systems used to trap hotel data in silos that couldn't talk to each other — point of sale here, property management there, sales and catering somewhere else entirely. Dan...

Derek Pacqué drove three hours from Manhattan to The Haussman Resort, Pool Club and Smokehouse on Long Island for Friday Night Audit. In LIE traffic, you know it's bad when the cars start passing you, then a horse and buggy passes you, then an elderly woman with a walker passes you. That's Friday in the summer on Long Island. Derek made it anyway.   He runs Chexology , the bag and valet check comp...

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts just knocked Marriott International out of the #1 spot in U.S. News & World Report 's 2026 hotel rewards rankings — and the reason comes down to something travelers are clearly reacting to: devaluation. I talked with senior travel editor Elizabeth Von Tersch about this year's rewards rankings, plus a brand new list for road warriors. A few numbers worth knowing: Wyndham he...

Morris Tiedemann, General Manager at AYANA Midplaza Jakarta, joined Glenn and Suzanne from halfway across the world to explain how a hotel competes in a market flooded with luxury. Morris took a job in Urumqi in 2003 when he had to buy a book to figure out where it was. Twenty-two years in China taught him to move fast. Then AYANA came calling, and he had to slow down. Indonesia rewards patience....

Hotel technology shouldn't just look impressive. It should help guests enjoy their stay and help hotels make more money. The Hotel Communication Network Inc. CEO Kevin Bidner showed me how the company combines in-room tablets with AI to create a much more useful guest experience. Guests can request extra towels, explore room-service options, discover hotel amenities, research local restaurants and...

Lauren Bennett McGinty, Executive Director of Explore Minnesota, sat down with Glenn to explain how a state agency generates $25 billion in economic impact and what hoteliers can learn from it. The state welcomed 81 million visitors in 2024 and generated nearly $15 billion in visitor spending. Lauren breaks down how Explore Minnesota subdivides 5 major regions into 11 micro-regions to distribute v...

James Hansen showed up with a Paloma. Sarah Becherer poured a digestif. Craig Sullivan had his beer. Glenn was doing whatever Glenn does. This is how you open a conversation about parking. They're from  Ocra , which turns empty hotel parking lots into cash. We got there eventually. First we had to sort out Chicago cocktail pricing, why Sarah wants to launch a podcast about parallel parking, and th...

Liza Amlani, The Chief Merchant, spent 20 years as a merchant at Ralph Lauren. She now studies what retail can teach hospitality. The parallels are closer than you think. Both industries live and die by customer experience. Both rely on frontline workers whose voices too often get ignored. Both are trying to figure out how to bridge strategy from the corporate office to what actually happens on th...

Julie Kee, Director of Sales and Marketing at the Belize Collection, just revealed why her hotels are winning. It's not what you'd expect. The Belize Collection owns real estate. Spans jungle to reef to private island. Partners with local communities in ways that feel authentic because they are. And that's become their competitive advantage. But how do you actually turn that into a business model...

Your guests are done waiting in line at check-in. Wallet key technology just made that line disappear. 🔑 Tap your phone to your room. It opens. That's it. No app. No Bluetooth. No waiting. Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, Apple Watch — NFC technology that actually works. 📱 The old digital keys had 2% adoption because they were clunky. This one? Glenn tested it at Harrah's Las Vegas and it was so smo...

We had a guest cancel at the last minute, so Craig, Suzanne, and I opened drinks and talked about my absolute disaster of a travel day. I'm not giving away the whole thing, but yesterday involved delayed flights, a plane too hot to board, a jammed wheelchair, Atlanta airspace doing Atlanta airspace things, a sick flight attendant, a Popeyes dream that died quickly, a late-night LIRR miracle, and t...