No Vacancy Live!

Front desk upsells didn't just add revenue — they cut turnover by 40% in one operator's portfolio. In video 2 of this series, Geoffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group , and Sloan Dean, former CEO of Remington , break down how hotels train front desk teams to build rapport, tailor offers, track performance, and pay incentives that actually keep people. 🧠 Train the conversation: ask a...

Hotels don't need another system; hotels need the systems they already run to talk to each other. I talk with Alex Zoghlin, CEO of Duetto , during Duetto PERFORM about profit-first revenue decisions and connected hotel data. 🧩 Disconnected systems force teams to act on partial data 💰 Profit-first decisions require coordination across departments 🔗 Better access to existing data beats adding "on...

Profitability keeps getting squeezed even after years of strong revenue growth, so hotels can't live on RevPAR alone. I'm at Duetto PERFORM at Margaritaville Resort, and I talk with Michael Grove , CEO of HotStats , about what his data shows right now—and what hoteliers can actually do about it. 📉 Michael says cost pressure stays the story: labor, wage inflation, loyalty costs, and credit card co...

Oliver Shah is a first time guest, and we suspect after having drinks with Glenn, Craig and Suzanne itll be his last. Join us for some laughs and Happy Hour fun where Glenn is at Margaritaville Resort Hollywood Beach.

I'm at Duetto PERFORM at Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort , and I grabbed Olly Lynch , CMO at Duetto, to explain what Duetto built this event to do. 🚀 Duetto built PERFORM to give "hotel performance" its own space—not a back-room trade show conversation 📈 Olly lays out the idea: connect revenue and profit into one operating model, one story, and ultimately one technology 🧠 Duetto pulled in...

Last week, Suzanne Bagnera brought one of 11 student teams from nine schools to the AAHOACON Collegiate Championship , and the students ran the kind of decisions real GMs deal with. During AAHOACON 2026 , where No Vacancy was the official podcast , I interviewed Suzanne Bagnera, PhD, CHA, CED about the competition and what she saw as the professor who brought the students. 🎓 Year three of the Col...

Public-private hotel deals don't run on a private equity playbook. Cities use them to create demand and pull outside dollars into the market. Suzanne Bagnera, PhD, CHA, CED joins me, and we talk with Walter Peseski, Senior Vice President of Asset Management at Garfield Public/Private , about how these projects get financed and why brands matter. 🏛️ Why cities build headquarters hotels and conventi...

They flipped the first Sonesta hotel in a couple of hours . That's what a real partnership looks like when the operator needs speed and the vendor shows up. During AAHOACON in Philadelphia, I talked with Patty Jefferson from Visual Matrix and Chris Trick from Sonesta about how they built the relationship, scaled it, and kept it practical for hotel teams. 🤝 They started with trust, then proved exe...

Two hotels on one piece of land, two separate buildings, two separate lobbies—and the demand mix flips in a way you wouldn't expect. During AAHOACON 2026 , No Vacancy is the official podcast , and I caught up with Hanan Anand , a Red Roof owner, on the show floor to talk about his dual-property setup in Cortland, New York , and what actually drives the business. 🏨 Hanan runs Hometowne Studios and...

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 in Puerto Rico about how Wyndham Rewards Experiences works and what it means for hotels in the portfolio. 🌿 Members earn points on...

During hashtag # AAHOACON , I talked with James Ferguson🎉 , author of Seek the Good and Celebrate., about why he wrote it, what he wants readers to take from it, and how he expects leaders to use it when the day gets messy. 🧠 He turns the message into a habit system—something you run, not something you quote 📖 He connects the book to his cancer journey and how it reshaped his perspective 🎉 The...

Greg Juceam is President and CEO of Extended Stay America as and he's successfully scaling Premier Suites in the middle of one of the hardest building environments we've seen in years. 🏗️ Greg launched Extended Stay America Premier Suites in 2021, and the company invested in the first 15 hotels as proof of concept—then built the franchising system so owners could scale it 📈 Premier Suites now sit...

Suraj Bhakta doesn't sugarcoat the moment. He sees a strong Q1, then watches geopolitics and travel costs squeeze demand again. No Vacancy is the official podcast of AAHOACON , and I talked with Suraj Bhakta of New Gen Advisory on the show floor about how owners react when the Fed shifts, travel gets expensive, and buyers and sellers hit pause. 📈 Suraj says he saw a strong first quarter, then geo...

Red Roof treats AAHOACON like the Super Bowl, and Matt Hostetler explains why: owners, franchisees, and partners all show up in one place. No Vacancy is the official podcast of AAHOACON , and I talked with Matt Hostetler, Chief Development Officer at Red Roof , about growth, franchisee support, and how Red Roof helps owners win when the economy tightens. 🚀 Growth strategy for 2026 and why multi-u...

Sloan Dean put a number on it: Frontline Performance Group drove a 3–5% RevPAR lift in the hotels where he used it—so he expanded it across the portfolio. I brought in Geoffrey Toffetti , CEO of Frontline Performance Group , and Sloan Dean , former CEO of Remington and now a fellow podcaster, to kick off a 3-part series on how hotels activate the front line to grow revenue and improve the guest ex...

MyPlace just hit 125 properties. That milestone matters even more now, because extended stay keeps getting more competitive. During the Hunter Conference , I talked with Eric Myers , VP of Franchise Development at My Place Hotels , about how they keep growing, where they're expanding next, and what he sees heading into 2026. 🏨 Eric says MyPlace planted its flag in extended stay early—before every...

Bruce Ford keeps coming back to one idea: the next traveling economy will book and spend differently. He tracks the data as SVP at Lodging Econometrics, so he sees the shifts before they feel obvious. 📈 He talks "blowout trips" and experience travel, where guests spend big on the moment and stop sweating the room rate 🏨 He breaks down meetings demand: more meetings, smaller meetings, and a bigge...

The Lantern has been open four weeks, and Grey Raines already talks about it like a platform, not just another hotel. During the Hunter Conference , I talked with Grey Raines, CEO and Managing Partner of Raines Company , about what they're building next, why they've exited some management relationships, and why adaptive reuse keeps showing up in their deals. 🏨 Grey shares why The Lantern is missi...

Justin Jabara , President of Meyer Jabara Hotels , keeps AI simple: give hotel teams time back so leaders spend less time buried in admin and more time actually operating. During the Hunter Conference , we talked about what that looks like in real life, plus why their growth focus shifts away from new builds and toward acquisitions and third-party management. 🤖 Justin frames AI as support, not st...

Final chapter. In Chapter 6 of this CoralTree Customer Journey series, we take everything from the last five weeks and put it at the property level. Customer journey work only matters when a hotel team can execute it in real time. This chapter shows what that looks like on the ground. I talk with Curtis Bova, General Manager of Hotel Polaris, about how he turns guest journey strategy into real mom...

Women enter hospitality at the same rate as men. Then the numbers thin out hard at the top. That gap isn't about "pipeline." It's about progression. Suzanne co-hosts #NoVacancyNews with me, and we talk with Emily Goldfischer of Her Tenure about the leadership study she and her team did with Forbes Travel Guide and what it reveals about what helps women advance—and what still gets in the way. 📊 Em...

During the Hunter Conference , I talked with Ben Campbell , CEO of Hospitality America , about what he sees right now: demand pockets, the real booking window, and why operators need to get serious about data before AI forces the issue. 📈 Ben says South Florida Q1 is "crushing it" after a flat year ⚽ He expects World Cup momentum, but he keeps the booking window realistic—60–90 days 🌍 He watche...

We lost industry icon Kirk Kinsell this past week, and I wanted to re-share this 2024 conversation because it captures who he was and what he meant to many of us: a generous leader, a calm force in the room, and one of the people who helped shape the way this industry thinks about leadership and relationships. In this episode of Icons and Experts with my co-host Doug Artusio from the Extended Stay...

I ran into Wayne West III of Newport Hospitality Group during the Hunter Conference and asked what owners actually want from management right now—and what separates operators who keep getting repeat deals. 🤝 Wayne says trust and alignment with owners drives repeat business, because the first deal teaches both sides how to work together 🏢 Newport runs 37 hotels and keeps key disciplines in-house:...

Friend of the show CJ Arlotta returns to do some clever PR tricks to make people think Glenn, Craig and Doctor Producer Suzanne are actually funny over here celebrating Happy Hour to get the weekend started. Plus, Bruce Ford joins for added fun.