No Show

Daniel Kuperschmid has spent his career helping people discover exceptional places, first through three decades with Hyatt Hotels and now as President and CEO of the San Diego Tourism Authority. Daniel joins No Show to explore what it really takes to steward one of America's most visited destinations, balancing tourism, local communities, government, infrastructure, and long-term city buildin...

Joff Romoff, Google Cloud's Global Head - Travel & Hospitality, unpacks the real and imagined cultural gaps between Silicon Valley and the hotel industry. We talk how tech companies are asset-light and data-forward, while hoteliers are asset-heavy and still inclined to think of the room, not the customer, as the product. And, how AI is (very) quickly transforming how travelers get inspire...

Here's one of the clearest conversations you'll hear on why Africa is not a single hotel market, but 54 radically different ones. W Hospitality's Trevor Ward breaks down the realities behind the continent's booming hotel pipeline, and why local capital, not foreign money, is driving most development. Infrastructure, aviation, politics, and risk perception shape hospitality grow...

Experiential tourism around sports and music has gone stratospheric. BTS just announced they're back together and going on a world tour, and flights and hotels across 34 cities sold out almost immediately. Kickstarted by Taylor and Beyoncé, music tourism could go to $9 billion globally by 2030—a 50% jump from 2023. Sports could crack a trillion dollars within a few years, especially with FIFA...

About 71% of active U.S. travelers say they are more likely to travel internationally than they were two years ago. The U.S. has lost half its market share, 10% of global inbound travel to 5%, since 1995. What is happening exactly? We'll give you a couple of guesses... Also, how does war and regional instability affect travel routes of the major carriers? And when gas prices for airlines go u...

For 70 years, duty free sat at the intersection of monopoly on concessions, opaque pricing, cross-border tax rules, very captive audiences, and political insulation. Non-aeronautical revenue — retail, food, alcohol, duty free — accounts for roughly 40–60% of total airport revenue at major hubs. Duty-free shopping existed for a pretty straightforward economic reason: it helps countries capture spen...

The Nine Freedoms of the Air are one of the most fascinating (and quietly political) frameworks in global aviation. They define what airlines are allowed to do when flying between countries, and they shape everything from ticket prices to whether Dallas gets a nonstop to Dubai. But look, see, in aviation, freedom's just another word for restrictions with diplomatic paperwork. The Nine Freedom...

As President and CEO of Sonoma County Tourism, Claudia Vecchio always has an eye on the delicate balance between tourism growth and community stewardship. No small task in one of the most famous wine-producing regions in the world, a place that set the template for experiential travel. We talk tourism, California, ecology, how Sonoma excels in the beauty of backroads discovery, the region's l...

If the word "creator" were a person, that person would be Tony Lorenz. He is known universally for his work in the global meetings and events sector and his impossibly deep understanding of the event management industry. He lays out the importance of Destination Management Companies (DMCs), entities that focus on on-the-ground logistics and specialized local experiences for travel and ma...

From the Jersey Shore to the Sunset Strip, the Garden of the Gods to Boston Common, the Eden Roc to the El Capitan, Curator Hotel and Resort Collection has been on an absolute tear, bringing some of the most unique and independent properties in the country together in a groundbreaking collective. Jennifer Barnwell talks with us about Curator's ROI-first model and value proposition, the "...

We're here, it's happening, 2026 is officially a thing. As we restart our brains for the new year, we ponder: Is Hushpitality a thing? The good news about global growth Fatigue as a good thing in travel The shift away from marquee names and places The shift toward shoulder seasons and cost concerns How travel will be shaped less by whims and more by economic realism Eastern Europe's...

When you walk into the Mayflower Hotel, it feels like a film set, the ideal visual representation of what a hotel should be. It is one of the most important venues in the shaping of America, hotel or otherwise. The conversations, the deals, the A-list encounters, the scandals that shook politics. It was a place that knew how to keep a secret. Until it didn't. It survived depressions, wars, se...

​​Nobody knows the ebbs and flows, ins and outs, weather patterns and trail ratings of Canadian tourism like Travel Alberta's CEO David Goldstein. In a candid and free-flowing conversation, we talk about how and why tourism traffic and spend is (way) up in Alberta, as well as the province's approach to Indigenous tourism partnerships, balancing big-ticket destinations like Banff with wor...

Tariffs, shutdowns, "integrity" fees, H2-B visa caps, FAA staffing and hardware issues, airport restrictions ... it all begs the question: Does the U.S. government hate its own travel industry? International travel is predicted to drop by 6.3% from 72.4 million in 2024 to 67.9 million in 2025, according to U.S. Travel Association . This year we are poised to be the only country in the WO...

AI was, predictably, everywhere, all at once, in every session at this year's conference, but there was a distinctly humanist air to it all as well. Trust, connection, authenticity, reality, face-to-face communication were thematic touchstones throughout. We still want recommendations from real live honest-to-goodness human beings, and AI can help facilitate that. (Right?)

No Show is at the 2025 Phocuswright Conference this week talking to a variety of exhibitors, innovators, and speakers and taking their temperature on the present and future of travel technology. We found out that: Levee founder Al Lagunas is done with the 3 pm check-in Ron Glickman from Innovation Launch People’s Choice Award Winner Acai Travel is ready for boundaries to be pushed Taylor Palmer fr...

Mitra Sorrells, Senior Vice President, Content for Phocuswright, joins us on the eve of the conference to talk about the big themes, keeping hype in check, new trends around data and customer journeys, getting good answers from panelists, the shift of power between traditional travel brands and tech startups, and the risks of playing a drinking game based on how many times AI will be uttered on st...

A short episode this week on the quite unique, very sad U.S. government approach to tourism and park spaces. How much money are the parks losing, how much are the towns around the parks losing? And what's going on with international visitors, Brand USA, and U.S. passports. We are fired up!

What specific AI-related things are good hotel commercial leaders actually doing today? Great question! It's already everywhere, so we got deep and practical for this episode. We talk about: How Al agents are starting to handle everything from customer service queries to qualifying sales leads, reshaping the whole workforce How AI is elevating guest experience through customer data, CRM, and...

AI's true impact on travel remains deeply speculative, with companies scrambling to stake claims while few concrete applications deliver true transformation. But everyday uses like dynamic pricing, translation tools, chatbots, and trip planning assistants like ChatGPT show AI is already here. We talk about the staggering potential of agentic AI to automatically rebook flights, arrange rides,...

How has Tiffany Cooper been so successful for so long? By bringing mind, soul, and spirit to the hotel industry. She's Head of Development, Americas for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, which for 5 decades has been owner and operator of some of the world's most luxurious hotels, resorts and residences. We talk about MO's ambitious global expansion plans, how the brand sets itself apar...

As founder and creative director of the boutique interior design firm AIDT Designs, Tonya is changing the way we think about boutique hotel, resort, and lifestyle design. Whether design property in the Keys or reimagining a resort brand from the ground up, her work is layered, luxe, and never, ever forgettable. We talk about her early career working under Las Vegas visionaries Steve Wynn & Rog...

Lyon Porter is one of the most talked-about hoteliers of our time. Alongside co-founder and partner Jersey Banks, he transformed a five-room Brooklyn townhouse into the first Urban Cowboy.  The industry, and the media, pay close attention to the brand, which now spokes into hotel properties in the Catskills, Nashville, and the newest location, a Gilded Age Denver mansion, which opened within the l...

There are dream jobs, and then there are jobs like Ben Hill's. Ben's Baseball Traveler newsletter is part culinary adventure, part architecture column on stadiums new and old, part biography series on characters of the game, part observer of the wild and wacky situations that occur nightly in cities coast to coast, part troubadour of the joys and heartbreaks inherent in Minor League Base...

From New Delhi to the Yucatan Jungle, from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean, Rocco Bova has crisscrossed the world, defining what luxury hotels are and can be. The My Humble House founder talks about building a profit-sharing hospitality company, creating change in a change-averse industry, working within nature, finding the right investors, and offbeat destinations in Italy and Mexico. https://w...