No Vacancy Live!

The latest Hotel Business Hot Topics session, "Planning Through Uncertainty: A Resilience Playbook for Hotel Leaders," presented in partnership with Entegra , featured a panel of industry executives, along with moderator Glenn Haussman, founder/host, No Vacancy Live podcast, who explored how hotel leaders can build resilience amid ongoing uncertainty by focusing on operational fundamentals, empowe...

Michael Goldstein has a cocktail for every time of day and a succession plan that apparently depends on how much hes had to drink. Naturally, we invited him onto Friday Night Audit! Michael and David Caron, MBA, CHA of Avalon Hospitality Group join Glenn, Craig Sullivan , and Suzanne Bagnera, PhD, CHA, CED for a few drinks and plenty of laughs. We get into absurd hotel brand requirements, the late...

During The Lodging Conference , Mark Sergot , Chief Development Officer, Americas, at IHG Hotels & Resorts , and I talk about a shift reshaping hotel development: owners at the end of a franchise agreement care far more about performance than the deal they signed years ago. Mark hears the same message again and again from owners: key money, fees and term length still count, but stronger results dr...

Hotel development costs keep climbing, and smaller markets present an even tougher challenge. But My Place Hotels fits 63 extended-stay rooms on just 1.25 acres, creating opportunities where larger hotel projects struggle to pencil out. Last month, when I attended the My Place Hotels of America conference, I caught up with COO Matt Campbell about the company's growth strategy and its decision to b...

During The Lodging Conference, Greg O'Stean, Chief Development Officer at Hotel Equities, and I tackled a familiar #Hospitality hiring dilemma. You need people, you've got open positions, and the temptation to fill those vacancies quickly is enormous. But hiring the wrong person creates problems for management, disrupts the entire team and leaves everyone dealing with the consequences long after t...

Outrigger Hospitality Group is spending $100 million renovating Outrigger Waikiki, taking the property, as CEO Jeff Wagoner puts it, "all the way down to the concrete." And the company is preparing to relaunch its brand after an extensive transformation of its hotel and resort portfolio. During The Lodging Conference, No Vacancy News host Glenn Haussman catches up with Jeff Wagoner, President & CE...

During The Lodging Conference, Shozib Khan, SVP of Strategic Asset Performance at Spire Hospitality, and I tackled a frustrating reality of #HotelTechnology: Hotels collect mountains of data, yet employees still waste time hunting for basic information. Think about a room attendant knocking on five doors just to find an empty room. Multiply those wasted minutes across an entire hotel portfolio, an...

During The Lodging Conference, Kerry Ranson, President Operations/Partner of Raines, and I talk about why more hotel owners now question whether their management company still fits the asset. Debt costs rise, expenses squeeze margins and topline growth doesn't guarantee stronger profit. Raines owns hotels, so Kerry looks at third-party management through the same lens as the owner. He explains whe...

During The Lodging Conference , Joseph Bojanowski , President of PM Hotel Group told me his Q4 booking pace is up double digits across group, transient, meetings and events, with Q1 tracking the same way. That's quite the different story than the broader economic mood. Low supply gives hoteliers pricing power, and Joseph thinks they need the confidence to use it. We also get into the value-minded...

I'm at The Lodging Conference with Greg Friedman , CEO of Peachtree Group , talking about what happens when the cost of money moves faster than the economics of a hotel deal. Greg walks through a hypothetical $25 million loan where annual interest expense jumps from about $1 million to $2 million. Add higher operating costs and the margin for error gets very thin. Owners must drive more revenue, p...

Ryan Bosch of Arriba Capital joined me at The Lodging Conference to talk through one of the toughest parts of the hotel investment market right now: the numbers keep moving faster than the deals. Treasury yields jumped more than 100 basis points, refinancing got more expensive and buyers started reworking assumptions almost overnight. Ryan explains why that could slow acquisitions, push some owner...

I'm at The Lodging Conference with Wayne West III , President of Newport Hospitality Group , and we get into something most people never really think about: how much value you can create from the conversations between the sessions. Wayne comes to events like this with a plan. He knows who he wants to see, what he wants to ask and where those conversations can sharpen the way he thinks about brands...

Consumers don't shop for "economy hotels." They shop for a price point, a product they like and an experience that works for them. That's a big reason I think Red Roof has an interesting opportunity right now. At its conference in Fort Lauderdale, the company laid out plans to grow Red Roof Plus+, the traditional Red Roof brand and HomeTowne Studios, while also strengthening RediRewards and puttin...

A marina gives hotel owners another customer base without adding a single guestroom. Jeremy Parks, President of Trident Marine Group, joins me on No Vacancy to explain how boaters drive spending across restaurants, bars, pools, spas and other resort amenities. His point is simple: every marina slip creates another revenue-generating opportunity from people already arriving at the property. For #Ho...

Hotels keep saying they can't find people. PRIDE Industries is showing them where to look. Darleyn Pazdel, SVP of Workforce Inclusion at PRIDE Industries, joins me on No Vacancy to talk about a workforce hotels still overlook: people with disabilities. PRIDE already puts this into practice across hospitality, including 56 employees with disabilities at Thunder Valley Casino Resort processing more...

There's a big difference between hearing about a hotel brand and actually getting inside one with the people building and operating it. I toured a brand-new HomeTowne Studios by Red Roof in Bradenton, Florida with Hiten Patel of Dhruv Management, which operates the hotel, and Matt Hostetler, Chief Development Officer for Red Roof. HomeTowne Studios is an extended-stay brand, and this tour gives us...

Last week at the My Place Hotels of America conference, I talked with Jeff Thomas, VP of Marketing, about how a smaller hotel company competes against brands with much bigger marketing budgets. Jeff says My Place started experimenting with AI back in 2022, using it to create visual content at scale, personalize marketing and improve how travelers find its hotels through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity...

Glenn Haussman talks with Brian Quinn, Chief Development Officer at My Place Hotels, from the My Place Hotels of America conference about one of the biggest forces shaping hotel development right now: conversions. Brian explains why owners keep bringing conversion opportunities to My Place, how the company is expanding its development options, and how it protects the core My Place prototype while...

Glenn Haussman talks with Sarah Dinger, EVP of Franchise Relations at My Place Hotels, from the My Place Hotels of America conference about Trend, the company's new conversion offering. Sarah explains how Trend gives owners more flexibility to adapt a property to its market while My Place keeps its original brand focused on a consistent prototype. They also talk about how Sarah supports operators,...

Glenn Haussman talks with Ryan Rivett, President and CEO of My Place Hotels, at the My Place Hotels of America conference in Fort Lauderdale about how the company approaches growth in extended stay. My Place owns, operates, develops and franchises hotels, and Ryan explains how that experience shapes development decisions, franchise support and the way the company evaluates opportunities in both sm...

The minute you get too comfortable, somebody else passes you. Gary Hernbroth, author of Twist the Familiar, joins me on No Vacancy to talk about questioning how we work, how we lead and how we build relationships. His point is simple: confidence moves you forward, but comfort turns into complacency fast. That applies to careers, #HotelLeadership, sales and pretty much every part of #Hospitality. W...

One in three room nights globally comes from meetings and groups, with 60% of that demand coming from small and medium meetings. Lukasz Dabrowski, SVP of Global Supplier Relations at HRS, joins me on No Vacancy to explain where that group business is hiding and how hotels are getting better at finding it. Companies are combining transient travel, meetings, groups and extended stays to better under...

AI is starting to decide which hotels travelers see — and what it says about your property may not even be right. Michael Bennett, CEO of Cendyn, and Nicki Graham, CMO, join me on No Vacancy to talk about what happens when travelers start asking ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI tools where they should stay — and the information those tools return doesn't match what the hotel actually wants people to k...

We've spent months asking one completely unnecessary but surprisingly important question: Which hotel pet peeve annoys us most? We started with 32. Now Always Hidden Lamp Switches and Water Pressure Roulette fight for the last spot against Outlet Desert in the championship round. Vote now on my LinkedIn page and help decide who gets there. https://lnkd.in/gaKZvpxu On this week's Friday Night Audit...

I'm calling it now: Relational wellness is the next major hospitality trend. The opportunity is we're spending more time with screens and less time with each other. Hospitality reverses that by bringing people back together. My proof is the Evermore Orlando Resort , purpose-built for connection. Families and friends stay together instead of scattering across separate hotel rooms, with large homes,...