Why Hospitality Leaders Must Stay Uncomfortable

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. We also get into failure and why people who fall down, learn and adjust often bring more value than people pretending they never screw up. Watch this one to challenge a few habits, rethink how you approach people and keep yourself from getting too comfortable. Gary's book, Twist the Familiar, is here: Twist the Familiar on Amazon Thanks so much to Actabl for supporting this podcast. Actabl gives you the power to profit. Visit Actabl.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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 understand their total buying power, while better data is helping hotels spot demand faster and respond before the opportunity disappears. Watch this one to see how you can uncover more group demand, respond faster and turn more of that business into #HotelRevenue. Thanks so much to Actabl for supporting this podcast. Actabl gives you the power to profit. Visit Actabl.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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 know. That's the drift problem. AI pulls from multiple sources, and once the wrong information starts showing up, hotels risk losing bookings or disappointing guests who arrive expecting something the property never promised. The opportunity here is bigger than simply fixing bad information. Hotels need to think differently about content, visibility and direct booking as search becomes more conversational. See why Michael and Nicki believe hoteliers need to take control of their story now, before AI-driven hotel search really takes off. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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, Craig Sullivan, Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera, PhD, CHA, CED and I track the voting in real time, argue over the bracket and treat this tournament with a level of seriousness normally reserved for actual sports. Somewhere along the way, the bracket itself becomes a pet peeve. We also go after dynamic grocery pricing, terrible buffet tongs, Gen Z slang and an upcoming lazy-river race where finishing last counts as a competitive strategy. That's hashtag#FridayNightAudit: hashtag#Hospitality, happy hour and entirely too much passion for hotel annoyances.

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, shared kitchens, big gathering spaces, private pools and room around the table for everyone. For years, we've talked about wellness through spas, sleep, fitness and nutrition. Relational wellness expands that conversation to something people desperately need right now: connection. Here chef Vincent Cani and I talk about bringing this vision to life while my family and closest friends for decades get to reconnect. Hotels and resorts have a huge opportunity here. Create spaces bringing people together. Build food and beverage around sharing. Give families and friends reasons to put the phones down, sit around a table, talk, laugh and create memories together. Thanks to Elizabeth Mullins, President of Evermore Hospitality for awakening me to a new way to enjoy being with the people we love that deepens those bonds while creating forever memories. Watch this one with #RelationalWellness in mind. I'm convinced this is the next big #Hospitality conversation. Do you see relational wellness becoming a real hospitality category, or are we still thinking too narrowly about what wellness means? Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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 hotels ask AI to do more, they also need to know exactly where that information goes and who gets access to it. That puts #Hospitality in an interesting spot: move fast enough to capture the upside, but build the safeguards before the technology outruns the operation. Watch why Kevin thinks hotels need to get this balance right now — before #HotelOperations gets a whole lot smarter and a whole lot more complicated. Visit https://shijigroup.com/ Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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 based on occupancy and keeps backup inventory available. Bart says some properties are seeing up to 30% savings in annual laundry and linen costs, but what interested me just as much is the operational side. Fewer equipment headaches, less time managing inventory and fewer distractions for housekeeping teams. Make the job easier and more manageable, and you're also creating a better environment for employees to stick around. It's a different way to think about a very basic part of #HotelOperations that most properties simply accept as part of doing business. See how this model changes the way hotels think about linen ownership, laundry and the people dealing with it every day. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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 region, the food, the local culture and the kind of hospitality they wanted to create themselves. What I love about this story is the courage behind it. They didn't just open a #Hotel. They created something deeply personal and trusted that the right guests would find them. See how Cathi and Fred turned an old monastery in an under-the-radar part of Italy into the kind of #LuxuryHospitality experience people remember long after they leave. Thanks so much to Actabl for supporting this podcast. Actabl gives you the power to profit. Visit Actabl.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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 other parts of the world. Bruce also makes a strong case for why India could become one of the most important #Hospitality growth stories in the years ahead. The numbers get even more interesting when you compare what's under construction today with what's actually likely to open over the next few years. See where hotel companies are chasing #HotelGrowth now — and why the map looks very different depending on how you measure it. Thanks so much to Actabl for supporting this podcast. Actabl gives you the power to profit. Visit Actabl.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

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 most memorable #GuestExperience still depends on something much more human. His perspective on what technology should do — and where people still make the difference — says a lot about where #LuxuryHospitality is heading. Hear how Almando thinks about creating the kind of trip where the guest simply gets to enjoy it. Thanks so much to Actabl for supporting this podcast. Actabl gives you the power to profit. Visit Actabl.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.