Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id157359638

Episode Transcript

In this episode of Defining Hospitality, Dan sits down with Adam Lara, principal at KTGY Interior Design and Branded Environments, to talk about career, culture, and what it really takes to build a studio that works. From formative early experiences to his latest chapter leading a growing team in Chicago, Adam offers a grounded look at what shapes great design work over the long haul.

Adam Lara has spent nearly three decades moving across architecture, interiors, and brand side operations, giving him a rare, well rounded view of the hospitality design world. His career has included time at Hyatt, a formative stretch under acclaimed designer Jordan Mosher, and now a leadership role at KTGY. That range makes him one of the more thoughtful voices working in hospitality design today.

Takeaways:

• Spending time on the brand and ownership side of the business, not just the design side, gives designers a sharper sense of priority and impact. Understanding how a hotel actually operates, from food and beverage to back of house, makes for better design decisions down the line.

• Great design is built on process, not ego. A strong, repeatable process naturally produces unique results because every project brings a different set of inputs.

• Culture is intentional, not accidental. Small planning decisions, like how an office layout encourages teams to mix, can be just as important to culture as any stated value.

• In person collaboration builds trust and understanding that remote work cannot replace. Body language, tone, and the small moments between meetings carry information that Zoom calls miss entirely.

• The best leaders are made in the transition from doing the work to developing the people who do the work. Soft skills like listening and communication matter as much as design talent when someone is stepping into a bigger seat.

"It's not just design, it's basically problem solving." - Adam Lara

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Adam:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-lara-aia-leed-ap-ishc-7aa04751/

• Company Website: https://ktgy.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id157359638

Episode Transcript

Dan Ryan sits down with hotelier Ryan Diggins to talk about building boutique hotels that lead with food and beverage instead of treating it as an afterthought. They dig into why the smallest design details can make or break a property’s identity, how Ryan thinks about revenue differently than most developers, and what it takes to keep a project’s soul intact as it scales. They also touch on what the future of hotel discovery looks like as AI starts to reshape how travelers decide where to stay.

Takeaways:

• Treat food and beverage as its own business, not an amenity. Ryan pitches investors by assessing the F&B program as a standalone concept first, then layering in the hotel. When both perform well independently and even better together, it makes a much stronger case than leaning on room revenue alone.

• Look at revenue per square foot, not just RevPAR. RevPAR can undersell a property that’s optimizing every inch of its footprint for guest experience. Shifting the conversation to total revenue production tells a fuller story of how a property actually performs.

• Small, unconventional buildings can hide big opportunities. Municipal Grand started as a vacant city building that didn’t fit neatly into any traditional real estate category. Being willing to look past a classic hotel site or a classic multifamily building is often where the best deals are found.

• Build the vision before you build the team. Ryan and his partners write an internal concept document before ever reaching out to architects, designers, or branding agencies, so every consultant they bring on is executing a clear point of view rather than shaping one from scratch.

• Keep your circle of decision makers small. The more lenders, investors, and stakeholders touch a project, the more diluted the original vision becomes. Protecting a tight, aligned group of decision makers is what keeps a project’s fingerprint intact as it grows.

  

"If we can't answer what is this here for or why are we doing this, well now you're just a Pinterest board." - Ryan Diggins

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Ryan:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-diggins-8a1297a/

• Company Website: https://www.theramblehotel.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id157359638

Episode Transcript

In this episode, Dan sits down with longtime industry counterpart Carl Long for a conversation twenty years in the making. They dig into how relationships compound like interest, why hospitality has resisted disruption from AI, and the vocational program Carl helped build at Richardson High School that's giving students a debt free path into the industry. It is a candid, reflective talk about risk, trust, and what actually keeps people in this business for the long haul.

Takeaways:

• Hospitality is best defined as an active verb, not a noun. It means asking how you can make someone’s experience memorable, comfortable, and safe, whether that is in a hotel, a restaurant, or your own home.

• Relationships compound the same way interest does. The trust built over years of working through hard projects together is what makes the next hard project easier, and it cannot be rushed or faked.

• The best leaders “enter the danger” instead of avoiding it. Being willing to name the uncomfortable issue in the room, rather than letting people talk around it, is often the fastest path to a real solution.

• Hospitality has resisted disruption because it is a high risk, low margin business built on granular, local relationships. AI can automate tasks, but it cannot replace the consultative trust required to get a project delivered on time.

• Vocational paths into hospitality, like the program at Richardson High School, offer a real alternative to college debt. Students can walk out of high school trained, employed, and on a steep career trajectory without ever taking on a loan.

"Those relationships, they have to start somewhere. It comes over time, it comes over effort, and when you do that, relationships are what make great projects easy to move ahead." - Carl Long

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Carl:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-long-pmi/

• Company Website: https://pmiconnect.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id157359638

Episode Transcript

To celebrate over three years of Defining Hospitality, Dan Ryan pulls together some of the most powerful moments from the show's history into one episode. From the etymology of the word "hospitality" itself to the sacred duty of welcoming strangers, this compilation revisits the ideas that have shaped the conversation around design, service, and business in our industry. Guests reflect on the moments that changed them, the leaps of faith that built their careers, and the small human details, like how a rendering makes people feel, that separate good hospitality from great hospitality. It's a reminder of just how much wisdom has passed through this mic, and why the question "what does hospitality really mean" never gets old.

Takeaways:

• Hospitality is an ancient, sacred duty. The word shares roots with “host,” “guest,” and “hospital,” rooted in the tradition of welcoming and caring for strangers on their journey.

• Design should start with the human experience. The real test isn’t whether something looks good, it’s whether it feels right for the people who will actually use it.

• Respect has to be earned, not assumed. Honoring others and following through consistently builds real credibility, no title can substitute for it.

• Growth often comes from leaps of faith. The biggest career moves rarely follow a straight line, they come from stepping into the unfamiliar without a clear roadmap.

• Forgiveness and gratitude are underrated leadership tools. Letting go of grudges and staying grateful creates space to lead with more clarity. This work is heart work, not brain surgery.

"It wasn't about, hey, we have these great finishes on the walls. It was about what does it feel like to be in that place." - Bruno Viterbo

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with The Guests:

• Bruno Viterbo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruno-viterbo/

• Chelsea Hershelman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelsea-hershelman-a0639656/

• Eileen Madigan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileenamadiganasid/

• Ian Sharpe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianstuartsharpe/

• John Duffield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnjduffield/

• John O’Sullivan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-o-sullivan-6719551/

• Margot Stern: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margot-stern-67a0a97/

• Steve Fortunato:https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-fortunato-3b990516/

• Dan Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thedailydanryan/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

Gary Brandeis, CEO of Scholar Hotels, joins Dan Ryan to talk about a strategy most hoteliers never even consider: betting everything on college towns. Gary explains why a large public university like Penn State makes for one of the most stable demand drivers in hospitality, and how his company has grown to nearly 1,000 rooms in State College alone. The conversation dives into his real estate investor first, hospitality operator second philosophy, the wild 16 month renovation of the historic Nittany Lion Inn, and his new Regulation A offering that lets everyday fans, not just accredited investors, own a piece of the hotels they love to visit. It is a masterclass in finding your niche, going deep instead of wide, and turning community passion into capital.

Takeaways:

• Gary treats his company as a real estate investment firm first and a hospitality company second. He believes if you get the real estate deal right, everything downstream, from staffing to guest experience, gets easier to execute well.

• University markets are busy far beyond football weekends. Penn State alone drives demand nearly 11 months a year through move ins, arts festivals, high school campus tours, and the school’s academic calendar.

• Gary’s thesis is that income backed by a stable public university deserves a lower cap rate than income from typical hospitality demand drivers. Predictability, not just profitability, is what makes an asset more valuable.

• Choosing the right design partner can define a project’s success. Gary credits his relationship with architect Craig Kolatian, someone willing to design to budget and hold him accountable, as central to the Nittany Lion Inn’s transformation.

• Regulation A offerings let companies raise capital from non-accredited investors, not just the wealthy few. Gary sees it as a way to let passionate fans of a university actually own a piece of the hotels they already love to stay in.

"If we don't make a profit and we don't invest well, our ability to provide a good experience for our guests is significantly hindered." - Gary Brandeis

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Gary:

• Guest’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garybrandeis/

• Guests Website: https://www.scholarhh.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

In this episode, Dan Ryan sits down with Michelle Finn, longtime industry fixture and the driving force behind Alis Design Plus, to trace the evolution of hospitality trade events from HD Expo's chaotic 1990s launch (earthquakes, riots and all) to today's design and investment ecosystem. Michelle unpacks her "dinner party" philosophy of hosting, the power of relationships over transactions, and how she scaled that intimacy from a dozen guests to thousands of attendees without losing the human touch. The conversation moves through mentorship, the rise of owner involvement in design, the new Alis Cala expansion into the Caribbean, and even a few fun detours into what a Vogue or Garden and Guns hotel might look like.

Takeaways:

• Great hosting scales the same way whether it’s twelve people at a dinner table or twelve thousand people at a trade show. The fundamentals never change: anticipate needs, create the right environment, and make people feel seen.

• Word of mouth is the most powerful and hardest metric to engineer. Trust and reputation compound over time, and there is no shortcut to earning them.

• Identifying a market need before it is obvious is a repeatable skill. Michelle built HD Expo, BDNY and Alis Design Plus by watching where the industry was headed, not where it had already been.

• Resilience is built through relationships, not avoiding setbacks. Canceled shows, earthquakes and a citywide verdict-day shutdown did not end her career, the trust she had built with customers and leadership did.

• New attendees get the most value from events by being intentional. Set a goal to meet ten people you do not know, attend the educational sessions, and stay open to the unplanned conversations too.

"Identify a need, see something that doesn't exist. That's pretty much what we did." - Michelle Finn

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Michelle:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alis-design-plus

• Guests Website: https://www.alisdesignplus.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

In this episode, Dan sits down with Adrienne Scribner, principal and managing director of hospitality at Baskerville, to unpack what three decades in hotel design has taught her about the unglamorous work that actually makes projects succeed. They dig into why there is no "coordination fairy" waiting to catch your mistakes, how typing specs into a purchasing system in the early '90s built the foundation for her entire career, and why mentoring the next generation means being approachable rather than intimidating.

Takeaways:

• There is no coordination fairy waiting to fix what falls through the cracks. If a task doesn’t have a clear owner, the job defaults back to you. Figuring that out early saves everyone from an expensive surprise later.

• Skipping the model room might feel like a time saver, but it rarely is. It’s far cheaper to fix a problem on one lamp than to find the same issue in 300 rooms. That small upfront step gives ownership a real preview of what’s coming.

• Great mentorship has less to do with authority and more to do with approachability. Walk your team through exactly how you solve a problem, but stay open to a faster or better way. People learn more when they feel safe asking questions instead of pretending they already know.

• Brand standards bend more than most people assume, especially once you understand them well enough to have an actual conversation instead of just following a checklist. A clear reason and a good relationship can open doors that seem locked from the outside. Knowing the rules well enough to explain them beats knowing them well enough to just follow them.

• Inspiration images and concept boards are a starting point, never the finished plan. What matters is understanding why a client likes something, then making it work given the budget, the building, and sometimes the sunlight needs of a hydrangea. Reality always gets a vote in the final design.

"Your reward for good work is more work." - Adrienne Scribner

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Adrienne:

• Adrienne’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrienne-scribner-265b045/

• Company’s Website: https://www.baskervill.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

Dan Ryan sat down with Alexa d'Argence, senior interior designer at Ken Fulk Inc., to explore what it really means to design spaces people fall in love with. Alexa pulls back the curtain on KFI's work at the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco and the Beverly Hills Hotel. sharing how a strong concept and cinematic vision guide every decision from the big picture down to the smallest detail. The conversation gets reflective too, touching on why slowing down is sometimes the only way forward, and what it means to truly love the work you do.

Takeaways:

• Start every project with a visioning workshop. Getting all stakeholders aligned on goals and values upfront saves time, reduces costly misalignment, and gives your team a clear trajectory before a single design decision is made.

• Niching down feels limiting but it’s actually freeing. The more clearly you define who you are and what you do, the easier it becomes to deliver exceptional work and attract the right clients.

• Branding isn’t a finishing touch, it’s the foundation. When a strong brand identity is established at the start, every design decision from architecture to case goods has a through line to follow.

• Build sustainability into your values, not just your specs. Committing to it in practice means applying it across every decision you make, including the ones that seem small.

• Don’t fake expertise you haven’t earned yet. Lean into the people around you who can teach, ask honest questions, and let the learning happen rather than performing a confidence you don’t have.

  

"It's a calling, a vocation for me. So there's a lot of love that goes into it. This is a job where you are working long hours, and if you don't love it, you're gonna burn out." - Alexa d'Argence

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Alexa:

• Alexa’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexadargence/

• Company’s Website: https://www.kenfulk.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Audio Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

This week, Dan Ryan sits down with Alex Kuby, Associate Principal at Dyelot and a lifelong student of how built environments shape human experience. From his early days at HBA in Santa Monica to helping lead a studio through a full brand transformation, Alex has spent his career asking what it really means to make people feel seen, supported, and cared for inside a space. Together, Dan and Alex explore approachable hospitality, the power of integrated services, and what niching down actually looks like when you are doing it from the inside.

Takeaways:

• Start every project with a visioning workshop. Getting all stakeholders aligned on goals and values upfront saves time, reduces costly misalignment, and gives your team a clear trajectory before a single design decision is made.

• Niching down feels limiting but it’s actually freeing. The more clearly you define who you are and what you do, the easier it becomes to deliver exceptional work and attract the right clients.

• Branding isn’t a finishing touch, it’s the foundation. When a strong brand identity is established at the start, every design decision from architecture to case goods has a through line to follow.

• Build sustainability into your values, not just your specs. Committing to it in practice means applying it across every decision you make, including the ones that seem small.

  Don’t fake expertise you haven’t earned yet. Lean into the people around you who can teach, ask honest questions, and let the learning happen rather than performing a confidence you don’t have.

“Hospitality is the humanity in the built environment, that is the way in which we express care and facilitate all of those great high touch point, high emotional engagements that the best hospitality spaces are known for.” - Alex Kuby

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Thomas:

• Alex’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akuby/

• Company’s Website: https://dyelot.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Audio Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

Dan Ryan talks with Thomas Paterson, founder and lighting designer at Lux Populi, about one of hospitality's most overlooked design disciplines… light. Thomas explains why lighting designers need a seat at the table from day one, not after the drawings are done, and shares his take on how light shapes a space's emotional experience. The conversation covers the gap between the 2% of projects that engage a true lighting specialist and the 30-50% that probably should, what it means to design from the inside out, his unconventional path from Australia to Mexico City, the sustainability case for old-school screw-in bulbs, and why asking the right question at the right moment is the smartest move a lighting designer can make.

Takeaways:

• Bring your lighting designer in early, even before architectural drawings exist. You’ll get more value from questions about the experience and atmosphere than from someone reviewing finished plans.

• Think about lighting in terms of contrast and tone rather than fixture types. Ask how much contrast the space needs and how warm or cool it should feel for its purpose.

• Choose screw-in light bulbs over integrated LED fixtures whenever possible. When integrated systems fail, you have to replace the entire fixture instead of just the bulb.

• Use lighting as an editing tool to emphasize what you want guests to notice and conceal what you don’t. Small choices like dimming over mechanical ducts can transform how a space feels.

• Render your spaces in both day and night mode during design. If you only see one, you’re probably missing how lighting will shape the guest experience at different times.

"Lighting design is an editing tool. Emphasize, de-emphasize, reveal, conceal." - Thomas Paterson

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Thomas:

• Thomas’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tpaterson/

• Companies Website: https://luxpopuli.com/New/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Audio Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

This week, Dan Ryan sits down with Larry Traxler, a 30+ year veteran of architecture and design, former SVP Global Head of Architecture & Design at Hilton Hotels & Resorts, and founder of Traxworks Hospitality Collaborative, to make the case that great hospitality design isn’t about replicating what’s trending, it’s about understanding place, people, and purpose. From breaking ceramic tiles on job sites in Japan to navigating 102 countries and opening 1,000 hotels a year at Hilton, Larry has spent his career building bridges between creative vision and business reality, and now, finally free to say no, he’s going deeper than ever. 🏠

Takeaways:

• Start every project with a narrative. Before you pick a material, a mood board, or a color palette, define the story. The design follows; the narrative leads.

• Move toward the business case, not away from it. Crossing over to the developer or brand side isn’t selling out. It’s how you gain the control to actually protect and execute the creative vision.

• Resilience isn’t optional. When the market turns, put your head down and do the hard work. Complaining about bad timing has never moved a project forward.

• Sameness is the real threat to hospitality. If your luxury mountain resort looks like your beach hotel, you’re already losing. Designing for place and cultural specificity is what keeps guests loyal.

• Don’t wait for AI to catch up to you. Treat it as a toolkit, not a threat. The creatives who stay essential are the ones who use it to iterate faster while bringing taste, context, and cultural judgment that machines can’t replicate.

  

“It’s those people that have a fear of the future that get held back. Sometimes you just have to jump off the bridge and leap into those entrepreneurial waters.” - Larry Traxler

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Larry:

• Larry’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larrytraxler/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Audio Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

This week, Dan Ryan sits down with John O'Sullivan, hospitality executive, published poet, painter, and Regional Vice President & General Manager at Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita, to make the case that great hospitality isn't a service standard, it's a soul practice. A GM at just 25 who started peeling potatoes in a small Irish hotel at 12, John has spent over three decades opening and leading luxury properties across seven countries, building a career on the radical belief that belonging is borderless, failure is just success in progress, and heart intelligence will always outperform artificial intelligence. 🏠

Takeaways:

• Don’t just manage people, create space for them. The leaders who have the biggest impact are usually the ones who don’t know they’re doing it, because they’re acting from the heart, not from a need for credit.

• Treat creativity as a business tool, not a luxury. Business alone is a tunnel; business paired with creativity is a funnel. The two feed each other if you let them coexist instead of competing.

• Surround yourself with people who are better than you. This isn’t a cliché, it’s a survival strategy, especially when you’re young and leading people who have more experience than you do.

• Empower your team to fix problems without asking permission. Remove the roadblocks, replace what’s broken, apologize sincerely, and then go learn why it happened. That’s the whole process.

• Clear your hard drive. Forgive everyone, stop carrying mistakes that have already taught you what they can, and keep only the lessons. Victims ask “what if.” Leaders ask “what did we learn?”

  

"Hospitality is the almost sacred act of seeing another human being and saying, without words, that you authentically belong here." - John O’Sullivan

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with John:

• John’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-o-sullivan-6719551/

• John’s Company’s Website: https://www.fourseasons.com/puntamita/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

The opening montage played like a highlight reel: “This is where capital meets execution.” “Opportunity favors investors who sharpen their edge.” “Drive alpha and unlock value to lead the next cycle.” The music hit right. The energy in the Marriott Marquis ballroom was high. Two thousand two hundred delegates. Seven hundred equity investors. Alexi Khajavi called it the strongest investor attendance cohort in forty-eight years of this conference.

Then, one minute later, Alexi said something quieter: “Capital is not flowing broadly.”

That sentence was the first gear of the day. Because everything that followed, across four sessions and roughly eight hours, lived inside the tension between those two ideas. Smart capital is here. And it is pointed at a very specific part of the market.

The K

Anthony Scaramucci, fondly called the Mooch, named it twenty minutes into his fireside chat. “We are operating in a K, ladies and gentlemen.”

The data backed him up. The economist on the main stage showed the split: upscale and upper midscale demand is up 9.3% relative to 2019. Midscale and economy? Still down 8%. Consumer sentiment hit the lowest reading in 75 years in April. But spending from the top hasn’t slowed. Fifty-one percent of leisure travel spending in lodging comes from households making $150,000 or more. That’s 19% of American households driving more than half the revenue.

That is bananas to me.

The top 1% has seen nearly a doubling of net worth as a share of household income. Hotels with an ADR over $1,000 have tripled since 2019. Wealth has not tripled since 2019. (Barbara Muckermann dropped that line on the luxury panel, and it landed.)

Meanwhile, international visitation to the U.S. is sliding. Overseas travel is down 4.3% through April, on top of a 2.5% decline last year. Canadian travel fell 25% in 2025 and another 11% in the first four months of 2026. RevPAR is forecast to grow 2.8% this year, but when FF&E costs are up 25% and labor is up 40 to 50% since 2019, you start to wonder how much of that growth is real.

Scaramucci put it plainly: “The median income in the United States right now is eighty-three thousand dollars. The median house price is four hundred and thirty-two thousand. You can’t buy the house.” And then, because he’s Scaramucci: “Knicks in five.”

(He also said the Constitution hasn’t been meaningfully amended in 59 years, that the country is “very, very fixable,” and that he got fired from the White House in eleven days, not ten. Don’t hurt his feelings.)

What Do Guests Actually Need?

The luxury panels asked the right question. Jack Ezon, who doesn’t need a microphone to fill a room, said it best: “Ninety-nine percent of what we sell, people don’t need. The only thing they really need is to feel loved.”

Barbara Muckermann from Kempinski pushed back: people want to leave in a better state than they came in. But then she said the quieter thing: “If I cannot explain why you should come to our hotel versus another, I’m just selling a bed. And then Airbnb is the clear winner.”

That’s the tension at the top of the K. The capital is flowing to luxury. The branded residential pipeline has 1,077 projects globally (the U.S. accounts for 23% of that market). But the proliferation of luxury brands is outpacing the consumer’s ability to tell them apart. Tiffany Cooper from Mandarin Oriental asked the obvious follow-up: is there a bubble?

What is separating the winners? Not marble. Tiffany said luxury has moved away from opulence and excess toward “approachability of service, connecting with people on a very human level.” Jake Pinsof from Marriott talked about dedicated directors of culture and entertainment at W and Edition properties. Leanne Harwood from IHG made the point I keep coming back to: programming is everything. “If we don’t bring the brand to life with active programming, we’re not going to get the rate, and then we don’t get the revenue, and then it just becomes a whopping great big spiral down to the bottom.”

The metric is shifting too. RevPAR used to be the only number that mattered. In luxury and lifestyle, TRevPAR (total revenue per available room) is becoming the benchmark, because so much of the revenue lives in food and beverage, wellness, experiences, and programming. Not just the room.

But I’ll be honest: I’m not 100% sold on this from a valuation perspective. From my experience, RevPAR still outweighs TRevPAR. I’d like the latter to be true, especially in complicated experiential properties. But I think the former still rules the roost. I’d love to be wrong here.

Sweating the Asset

I really enjoyed “Sweating the Asset,” moderated by Esther Hertzfeld. Sarah Gulla from Pebblebrook, Paul McElroy from Highgate, and Jess Conroy from ROH.

Paul said something that sounds obvious until you sit with it: the most impactful investment in a guestroom right now might be better blackout drapes, better soundproofing, and a better mattress. Not necessarily a flashy lobby bar. Not a new spa. A good night’s sleep. “When they leave, they don’t feel like they need a vacation from their vacation. They actually feel restored.”

I’ve never heard an asset manager talk about blackout drapes before. Thank you, Paul. Sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer.

Sarah made the FF&E point that anyone in the casegoods business should hear: “If you buy good enough quality case goods, you can refurbish them, you can change the toppers, and they can last way longer than a typical lifecycle.” Pebblebrook is challenging brand PIPs on exactly this basis: is a renovation driven by condition, by guest demand, or just by the calendar? That’s a conversation that saves owners real money, and it’s one BERMANFALK has with owners every day.

Jess nailed the operational side: “If you have old piping and you put pristine water through it, the water gets mucky.” Revenue generation is great. But if the financial infrastructure underneath the hotel can’t move the dollars efficiently, the top line never hits the bottom line.

And aside from the Mooch’s Knicks fever dream, Jeff Stulmaker from KHP Capital Partners made the best statement of the day. When asked how he gets LPs to invest in private hotels versus public REITs, his answer was direct: “We do a public market equivalent analysis. How does an investment with us work versus the public markets over the same duration? We crush them every time.” (I like that line.)

Hooray for some recent examples: One Hotel Seattle, Hotel Viking, The Jay in San Francisco, and a couple more in development that I’ll keep on the down low.

The Edge

“Sharpening the Edge” is the conference theme this year. After Day One, I think the edge is simpler than people are making it.

The edge is knowing which side of the K you’re building for. The edge is active programming, not just beautiful product. The edge is a good night’s sleep (seriously). The edge is case goods built well enough to refinish instead of replace. The edge is asking whether your guest needs to be transformed, or just needs to feel loved.

I’m curious to find somebody who’s solved for the lower part of the K, because I heard the phrase “pitchforks and torches” more than three times throughout the day. Gilded ages can be fun, but the hangovers are not: hello, Marie Antoinette. Hello, Teddy Roosevelt and the trust busters. I heard “let them eat cake” more than twice across the sessions. That should make us all pause.

And for the people who actually deliver the guest experience (the designers, the purchasing agents, the manufacturers), the edge is execution speed. When the renovation window opens, it opens once. A manufacturer set up to deliver casegoods, seating, and a model room fast enough to keep pace with the construction calendar is the edge that shows up in the guest review, not the earnings call.

More tomorrow from Day Two.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

Most firms put their names on the door. David Shove-Brown put his philosophy there instead. Fifteen years, two offices, and over 70% repeat business, built not on a pitch deck, but on the belief that human connection is the only strategy that actually compounds. This week, Dan Ryan sits down with the partner at //3877 on why your tombstone won't say which hotels you designed, what a Green Beret father teaches you about building in uncertain territory, and why losing a mentor was the best thing that ever happened to his leadership. 🏠

Takeaways:

• Reframe networking as relationship building. People can sense when you’re selling, but trust compounds over time, and over 70% of David’s work comes from repeat clients and referrals.

• Build a peer group with your competitors. Sharing knowledge on fees, proposals, and market trends with similar firms removes the vacuum of entrepreneurship and makes the whole industry stronger.

• When you lose a mentor, become one. Instead of looking for a replacement, turn what you’ve learned into guidance for the next person coming up behind you.

• Listening is a skill, and it’s more valuable than talking. Ask hard questions like why you didn’t get the job, then actually absorb the answer instead of just checking the box.

• Let your team run with things. Micromanaging stunts growth for everyone; the firm’s best leaps forward came from trusting people and stepping back.

• Normalize mistakes on your team. Good mentorship means guiding direction, not dictating method; people grow faster when they know screwing up is part of the process.

• Keep perspective on what actually matters. Your tombstone won’t list your projects, so invest in people, relationships, and community the way you invest in your work.

  

"Networking always had this underlying idea of sales, we flipped it. For us, it's really relationship building." - David Shove-Brown

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with David:

• David’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsb3877/

• David’s Company’s Website: https://www.3877.design/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

Most designers pick a market. Christine McGinnis picked a direction on the map and just kept going. A Canadian who plotted six countries in six years and never stopped, she's spent two decades designing storied hospitality spaces, from a termite eaten Bangkok mansion blessed by monks, to a beachside Aloft in Bali, to a restaurant on a volcanic island off the coast of Africa where she drafted every line in Spanish. This week, Dan Ryan sits down with a globe circling designer who got the hospitality bug at the Waldorf on the worst day in recent history, to talk about why "why" is the only question that matters, and what the return of film cameras tells us about the future of human centered design. 🏠

Takeaways:

• Ask "why" before anything else. Most teams rush past it, but that one question will save you more headaches than any brief or budget ever will.

• The most innovative work comes from assembling people who don't belong together on paper, resist the obvious hire every time.

• You only need one word to define great hospitality: openness. It's not about doors or decor, it's about whether people feel genuinely welcomed the moment they walk in.

• People come once for the design. They come back for how you made them feel. Build for the return visit, not the first impression.

• Just go. Whether it's a new country or a new market, inertia is the only real obstacle the paperwork is always figured out.

• Be present wherever you land. If you're always yearning for somewhere else, you'll miss everything the place in front of you is trying to teach you.

• Pay attention to the analog craving. When younger generations reach for film cameras and darkrooms, they're telling you exactly what's missing from the spaces you're designing, serendipity, texture, and the chance for a wonderful mistake.

"People come to your joint once for the design, but they come back for the service and how you made them feel." - Christine McGinnis

Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Christine:

• Christine’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinemcginnis/

• Wave Design’s Website: https://www.wave.global/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Link Here to Learn More!

Audio Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

This week, Dan Ryan sits down with Genna Panagopoulos, Vice President of Development at Minor Hotels, to make the case that the most exciting real estate play in hospitality right now isn’t in Asia or Europe, it’s right here in America. A restaurant kid from Detroit who fell in love with hotels, Genna is the one handed the keys to a 640 property global giant’s entire North American future, armed with 12 brands, a freshly built franchise model, and a philosophy that deals only work when everyone at the table wins. One NH Collection in Manhattan down. Twenty four more to go.🏠

Takeaways:

• Lead with education before you lead with the pitch. Many potential partners in a new market simply don’t know who you are yet, so your first job is to tell the story before you try to close the deal.

• Think like an owner, even when you’re the brand. You will build more trust and close better deals when your partners can see that you understand what it feels like to operate, carry risk, and protect an asset.

• Qualify your time ruthlessly. If someone does not control the site, do not control the asset, or cannot meet you where you are on quality, it is okay to move on and protect your energy for the right opportunities.

• Your first few deals set the standard for everything that follows. Resist the temptation to compromise on quality or brand fit early on, because the hotels you use to tell your story will either open doors or close them.

• Build relationships with lenders before you need them. Doing the legwork upfront to introduce your strategy and track record means your partners are not starting from scratch when it is time to secure debt.

• Keep deals alive even when they do not close. Turning down a deal respectfully and staying in the conversation preserves the relationship for the right opportunity down the road.

• A non-industry background can be your sharpest tool. Asking simple questions that insiders take for granted, like why a workload or an asset needs to be that large or that costly, often surfaces the most impactful opportunities.

  

“We’re not here to make money right now. We’re here to plant our flags and build brand awareness.” - Genna Panagopoulos

Building a hotel, brand, or guest experience? Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Genna:

• Genna’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genna-panagopoulos-726a7525/

• Minor Hotels Website: https://www.minorhotels.com/en

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

This week, Dan Ryan sits down with Tanya Pratt, Global VP of Strategy and Product Management at Oracle Hospitality, to prove that the most powerful upgrade a hotel can make isn’t to its lobby, it’s to its data. A front desk girl turned tech executive, Tanya unpacks how Oracle is collapsing decades of fragmented systems into one seamless guest experience, why cloud adoption exploded the moment hotels ran out of people, and what happened during an 18-hour outage at 3am that changed the entire trajectory of her career. The promise of hospitality has always been human. The technology is finally catching up. 🏠

Takeaways:

• Hospitality is a promise, not just a job. Every interaction with a guest, employee, or owner is an opportunity to make and keep a commitment, and that mindset should guide every decision you make in the industry.

• Don’t let the size of a problem stop you from starting. When faced with a tangled mess of systems or challenges, pick one thing to fix first. Doing something is always better than being paralyzed by the scale of everything.

• Technology should free people to be more human, not replace them. The real value of investing in better systems is that it gives your team the time and headspace to focus on genuine connection with guests.

• Being ready is a choice, not a feeling. Say yes to things before you feel fully prepared, because waiting until you feel ready often means never moving forward at all.

• Sit in discomfort and earn your way up. No matter your generation, there is no shortcut for putting in the work and learning through the grind, especially early in your career.

• The people closest to the business often make the best technology leaders. Operators who understand the day-to-day pain points are far more effective at driving tech transformation than technologists who have never worked the floor.

• Your hardest moments reveal what you are actually made of. When you want to walk out the door and you stay anyway, those crucible experiences become the foundation of confidence you carry for the rest of your career.

“Hospitality is a promise. It’s a promise that’s made and kept a thousand times in small moments.” - Tanya Pratt

Building a hotel, brand, or guest experience? Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Tanya:

• Tanya’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratttanya/

• Oracle Hospitality: https://www.oracle.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

Audio Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386

Episode Transcript

This week, Dan Ryan sits down with Larah Moravek, founding partner at Dutch East Design, to make the case that the most powerful thing a designer can bring to a project isn't a mood board, it's a story. Larah pulls back the curtain on how Dutch East blends interior design and branding under one roof, turning narrative driven frameworks into spaces that feel inevitable. With real stories from the ground including the adaptive reuse of a Marcel Breuer brutalist landmark into Hotel Marcel, the first passive house certified hotel in North America, and the Tapestry Chattanooga (guestroom furniture provided by BERMANFALK), a former bank building brought back to life, this episode proves that when magic and precision are working together, the constraint becomes the design. 🏠

Takeaways:

• Lead with storytelling before aesthetics. Narrative driven design gives clients a framework to understand and commit to a vision, making the entire process smoother and more collaborative.

• Start with a functional brief before getting creative. Establishing the program, constraints, and parameters upfront gives you a defined space to push creative boundaries confidently rather than chasing a moving target.

• Don’t fear constraints design into them. Some of the most inspired solutions come from restriction, and the building or budget you’re working within can actually tell you what the design needs to be.

• Address the elephant in the room early. Asking the hard questions that others avoid saves enormous time and cost down the line, and it builds trust with your clients and team.

• Treat construction administration as seriously as the design phase. The precision you bring during project execution is what separates a good concept from a great finished result, don’t let it become an afterthought.

• Train people around you to replace you. Transparency with your team and investing in their growth is both a leadership responsibility and one of the most fulfilling parts of running a studio.

• Don’t let sustainability be a last-minute consideration. Integrating it into the functional brief from the start rather than retrofitting it later is what makes it actually achievable.

"Sometimes you need more structure to be more creative. And I think some of the most beautiful and inspiring solutions come out of restriction." - Larah Moravek

Building a hotel, brand, or guest experience? Reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or hit reply on the Substack to share what you’re working on.

Impact estimates vary by project. For the most up-to-date figures, please refer to the transcript

Connect with Larah:

• Larah’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larah-v-moravek-0b714044/

• Dutch East Design: https://www.dutcheastdesign.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

Check out their impact page! 🌍🌱 https://www.bermanfalk.com/impact/

I’ve spent the past week bouncing between two very different rooms. The Host Hotels & Resorts GM Conference in Austin and the Independent Lodging Congress’ IndieCultivate in Boston. One is a major institutional REIT with about 80 properties. The other is an independent lodging community that runs on scrappiness, gut instinct, and independent-minded hustle. The audiences couldn’t be more different. But the gravitational pull of every conversation was exactly the same.

Everyone is talking about AI and how to balance that with delivering the best human experiences.

And if you listen closely to the best operators and thinkers in our industry from different ends of the hospitality spectrum, they’re not necessarily talking about AI as a tool to replace people. They’re talking about it as a tool to elevate them.

The Seed Has to Crack Open

At the Host conference, the lunchtime keynote speaker, Mitch Joel, took the stage and framed the moment better than anyone I’ve heard. Mitch is the kind of speaker who makes you pull out your notebook, phone, or iPad as I like to do, and start scribbling notes (I filled four pages). He opened with a quote from fiction writer Cynthia Occelli that made me pause and realize I better start taking pictures of these slides: “For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out, and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”

That’s where we are right now. And Mitch’s point was simple: don’t confuse disruption with destruction. They’re not the same thing.

He also killed the “move fast” mantra that every conference seems to worship. His provocation: speed is dead. Not that things aren’t fast (they are, obviously), but that speed is now a given. Stop treating it like a strategy. Direction is more important than speed. Direction and momentum will always beat velocity without a compass. What’s your north star? Where are we heading, let’s back in from there.

From the Attention Economy to the Intimacy Economy

This is the idea from Mitch’s talk that I can’t stop thinking about. He referenced Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens, Homo Deus) saying that we’re moving from the attention economy to the intimacy economy. For years, brands have spent 70% of their energy shouting into the void to capture attention and 30% actually building something worth shouting about. That’s inverting.

Mitch reframed it for our industry: AI’s fundamental superpower is intimacy and memory. Not answering emails faster. Not automating your check-in kiosk. The ability to know a guest, remember a guest, and make every interaction feel like it was designed for that one person.

Think about it. When the bartender at your hotel knows what I drink before I sit down, that’s intimacy. When the front desk remembers that I prefer a high floor with a city view and I’m not a feather pillow person, that’s intimacy. We’ve always known this is the magic of great hospitality. What’s changed is that we now have tools that can deliver it at scale, for every guest, every stay.

This concept actually validates exactly why I focus so heavily on my symposium dinners and 1:1 Defining Hospitality podcasts. It’s all about cutting through the noise to create connections that are deeply personal and memorable. The live moment, once ordinary, is becoming a premium product. And maybe it always was in relationship driven industries, but we perhaps confused ourselves. I have been guilty here too.

Have a Better PACE

Mitch introduced a framework he calls PACE, and I think it’s worth writing down:

P. Palette. Master a broader taste of creative, strategic, and technological tools. Train yourself to see the awe behind the obvious. Taste isn’t something you’re born with, it’s something you cultivate.

A. Agency. Be proactive, resilient, and trusted. Don’t wait for change to happen, create it. Agency is what distinguishes us from the machines. He made a point that landed: the bad guys in The Matrix were called Agents. Twenty-five years later, we literally invented them. Your human agency will always be greater than any AI agent. Like Rob Zombie sang, be “more human than human.” This is our opportunity to do our very specific thing that we’re all very good at.

C. Commune. The strength of your network outweighs the strength of your product. BELONGING (this one keeps coming up everywhere lately) in our squishy “protein forms,” as Mitch put it, is everything. There’s a reason I traveled to Austin and Boston this week instead of watching a webinar.

E. Elevate/Educate. Continually raise the bar. Seth Godin (I’ve been a big fan of Akimbo for a while), according to Mitch, said it best: you can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it’s getting raised regardless.

Human First, AI Second

The next morning I was in Boston for IndieCultivate, and I watched a panel called Practical AI for Lean Teams, moderated by David Millili. The panel featured Matt Schwartz (Sage Hospitality Group), Tim Kinsella (Canary Technologies), and Rogers Leo (Mews). And they echoed everything Mitch had said the day before, but from the operator’s trench.

Someone had asked Matt how many FTEs Sage is replacing with AI. His answer: zero.

Not a diplomatic zero. A resounding zero. Matt explained that they’re not replacing jobs, they’re replacing discrete, repetitive tasks. Revenue management spreadsheets. Housekeeping schedules. Answering the same guest text about pool hours for the 400th time. The things that keep your team staring at screens instead of looking guests in the eye.

Matt put it perfectly: “We are unapologetically a human first company. AI is second.” If your front desk team is spending 80% of their time behind screens and 20% in front of guests, AI is the tool that flips that ratio. That’s the whole point. Get people out from behind their screens so they can do the high-EQ work they actually signed up for.

Tim Kinsella drew a useful distinction between linear automation (if A happens, do B) and agentic AI that can actually read context, make decisions, and route to a human when it senses the conversation needs a real person. Rogers Leo framed it as watch, suggest, act: the AI watches your property data, starts suggesting actions, and once you trust it enough, you let it act on your behalf within guardrails you’ve defined. But the guardrails are yours. The brand standards are yours. The AI just does the math faster.

Start Playing

Both events offered the same practical advice, and it’s so simple it almost sounds too easy: start playing, similarly to riding a bike. Start riding, you might fall or bump into something, but the road to riding can make us all irreplaceable. Matt compared AI literacy to learning a foreign language. You can be literate, proficient, or fluent. Right now, most people in hospitality are barely literate. His advice: put ChatGPT, Claude, or Google NotebookLM in the dock (pole position) of your phone, what you see every time you pick it up. Spend 20 minutes a day using it. Have it draft a policy. Summarize a report. Write a guest response. Just build the muscle.

Matt shared a stat that surprised me. When Sage rolled out ChatGPT Enterprise across their organization, 25% of people didn’t even accept the invite. Just left it sitting there unopened because they might have been afraid of using it. Of those who did accept, about half are now using it weekly, averaging 24 chats a week. The people who leaned in saw the magic. The ones who didn’t are the ones who’ll fall behind.

Rogers made a point that’s worth repeating (I love this): AI is an accelerator and an amplifier. If you have great processes, AI will amplify the great. If you have broken processes, AI will amplify the broken. Fix your foundation first. Know your data. Set your guardrails. Then let the AI loose.

Don’t Lobotomize Your Business

This was Mitch’s line and it’s the one that’s going to stick with me. He highlighted the word “bot” in lobotomize on purpose. The goal is not a fully automated, bot-run hotel. The goal is to let the bots handle the friction so the humans can create meaning.

He gave an example that made the room laugh: if you’re using AI to respond to an email that your boss used AI to write to you, based on a report that was generated by AI, from a spreadsheet made by AI, what are we doing? “Bot-on-bot action is not hot.” That is not the opportunity.

The opportunity is intimacy. Memory. Recognition. Making someone feel like they matter, not like they’re being processed.

Hospitality has always been, and will always be, a human-centric business. The magic happens in the live moment, in physical presence, in the community we build when we actually show up in the same room together (as all of us did this week).

1% More Curious Than Afraid

Mitch closed with a line that I think should be pinned to the wall of every hotel office in the country. It came from Suleika Jaouad, who wrote Between Two Kingdoms: “You just have to be 1% more curious than afraid.”

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You don’t have to master AI overnight. You don’t have to hire a Chief AI Officer tomorrow. You just have to be a little more curious than you are scared, and then show up again the next day and do it again.

Direction over speed. Intimacy over automation. Humans first, always.

I’m here for the Independent Lodging Congress’ (Full disclosure - I’m a RAVING FAN) IndieCultivate, in Boston, and this afternoon Chris Whittier, Senior Director at Tishman Speyer, walked our group through the Harvard Enterprise Research Campus (the ERC), a seven-acre development sitting between Harvard’s athletic campus and the neighborhood of Allston. It’s roughly a million square feet of new construction, and it’s one of the more ambitious things I’ve seen in hospitality, mostly because the people behind it wouldn’t call it a hospitality project at all.

They’d call it a neighborhood.

The Ecosystem

Here’s what’s on the ground: the Atlas Hotel (250 keys, operated by Highgate), the David Rubinstein Treehouse Conference Center (Harvard’s first university-wide conference center), One Milestone (500,000 square feet of purpose-built lab space), 345 residential units, and a two-acre Greenway that will eventually connect the Charles River to the Honan library in upper Allston, activated with farmers markets, concerts, movie screenings, and art installations.

Everything designed to feel like it belongs to the neighborhood, not dropped on top of it.

That last point matters, because I learned that when Harvard started buying up land in Allston in the 1990s, it created real tension with the existing community. People worried their homes would be swallowed up. Chris was candid about it: one of the biggest challenges, but also one of the greatest opportunities, was bridging two neighborhoods that hadn’t historically gotten along.

The hotel was designed with that in mind. Warm, comfortable, not corporate, not academic. An independent lifestyle brand that could belong to a Harvard visiting scholar and a family coming for a weekend in Boston equally. Nicholas Fils-Aimé, Senior Director of Acquisitions & Development at Tishman Speyer (and the first hotel investment in Tishman Speyer’s history, which says something about the conviction behind this bet), called the Atlas a placemaking catalyst. Not a room block for the campus. A catalyst.

Best of Global, Best of Local

That phrase came up more than once during the panel. Monica Miranda, Principal at JHP Architecture (whose firm was the architect of the buildings), moderated a conversation with Nicholas and Athené Sirivallop, Director of the Treehouse Conference Center at Harvard.

ILC’s Fearless Leader, Andrew Benioff, introduced the panel, and the conversation circled around a question that I think applies well beyond this campus: how do you build something new without losing the soul of the place it sits in?

Nicholas answered it clearly. They could have brought in a big restaurant group from New York. Instead they went local: Ama, the ground floor restaurant at the Atlas (where I ate last night, and it’s very good, thanks Ryan for the wine selection and food), and Foxglove, the rooftop bar that’s just opening with panoramic views of the city. The intent was to anchor the hotel in Boston, not just locate it there. Best of global, best of local.

The Treehouse is the same story from the university side. Athené described it as the front door to the campus: a public cafe on the first floor, six breakout rooms on the second, and a canopy ballroom on the top floor that holds up to 800. It’s designed for “collision,” as she said, and if you know me, you know I love collisions. People coming for a conference bump into someone grabbing a coffee who works in the lab next door. That’s the point.

Harvard’s Business School runs executive education programs that bring in over 13,000 professionals a year, right across the street. There isn’t enough housing on campus to hold them all. So the Atlas and the Treehouse feed each other: conferences generate room nights, the hotel generates foot traffic for the restaurants, the restaurants draw residents from the 345 apartments next door, and all of it brings life to a campus that could easily feel like a ghost town after 5pm without it.

Nicholas called it a 24/7 relationship. Not seasonal. Not dependent on graduation weekends or alumni reunions, or football, though those help. The executive education pipeline alone is a year-round demand driver.

Nine Stakeholders, One Group Chat

I asked a question during the panel (I counted the stakeholders on my notepad as they talked, and kept coming up with more). Between Tishman Speyer, the Treehouse, the Atlas, Compass Group, Highgate, Harvard, the Allston community, the David Rubinstein Foundation, and HALC (the Harvard Allston Land Company), that’s at least nine entities that need to be aligned on everything from operations to brand to who picks up the phone when something goes wrong.

Nicholas laughed: “A lot of group chats.”

But then both he and Athené gave a more thoughtful answer. The key is designated single points of contact from each group. Athené represents the Treehouse and the university. If something touches her area, you know who to call. If it touches something deeper inside Harvard, she has a deep bench internally to route it. Nicholas described HALC as the glue that holds it all together: the landlord that connects Tishman Speyer with the right people inside a university that is, as he put it, enormous.

They have weekly calls. They share data. Athené proactively sends activity reports from the Treehouse to inform the hotel and lab teams what to expect. It’s not a formal governance structure so much as it is a culture of frequent communication, single-threaded ownership, and people who are genuinely “mission-aligned.” That was said a lot too.

That last part is the one that’s hardest to replicate, and probably the most important.

Teaching, Learning, Iterating

Athené used the word resilient more than once, and she meant it in a specific way. This project was born during COVID. She started in 2021, during concept design, at a time when talking about convening and gathering felt almost absurd. But she kept coming back to the mission: Harvard advances its academic and research mission by bringing people together. That didn’t change because of a pandemic. The how changed. The why didn’t.

She also described the partnership itself as a teaching and learning exercise. This is Harvard’s first university-wide conference center. Nobody had a playbook. The project iterated (it was originally a conference center with a hotel attached, then evolved into the ecosystem it is today). The operating model is still being figured out in real time. And Athené seemed completely comfortable with that: “We’re a teaching and learning institution. To innovate, to learn, to create, to iterate, that’s part of the course.”

Nicholas acknowledged the tension from the developer side. Tishman Speyer wants to move fast. Harvard thinks in centuries. After all, it was founded in 1636 (flash back to my 7th grade history teacher, Mr. Wilson, thank you). The challenge was understanding the other party’s time horizon and finding a pace that worked for both. That tension, he said, is actually productive when the teams are aligned on what the ERC means for Harvard’s broader expansion.

The Rooms (and the Furniture)

I should say a word about the guest rooms, since I slept in one last night and BERMANFALK provided the furniture. Inc. Architecture & Design out of New York created the interiors, and they designed something that everyone on my room tour said felt grounded, calming, and connected the colors in the expanse below the windows into the rooms. The leather daybed, the green marble coffee table, the muted tones against those floor-to-ceiling windows with views out over Cambridge. It’s residential in the best sense: you feel like you’re staying in someone’s very well-designed apartment, not checking into a hotel.

Harvard’s requirements pushed us and indicated where things are going in terms of what institutions expect from their development partners.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Looking at my notes on the way back to my room, the word that kept coming up was collisions. The Treehouse is designed for it. The Greenway is designed for it. The Atlas, sitting at the intersection of academia, biotech, and a neighborhood that’s learning to trust what’s being built next door, is designed for it.

You take a university that’s been in Cambridge for longer than the country has existed, a developer making its first hotel bet, a neighborhood that’s been skeptical of both, a conference center that didn’t exist before COVID, and 500,000 square feet of lab space with some of the brightest biotech minds in the world, and you put them all on seven acres. Then you build a restaurant, a rooftop bar, a Greenway, and 345 apartments, and you see what happens when all of those people start colliding.

If you build it, they will come. But only if you build it right. And from what I’ve seen, they’re building it right. This project will “go the distance,” and if Harvard’s timeline is right, that distance will be centuries. And that feels so right, polishing this substack off while sitting at the Hotel Commonwealth, in the shadows of Fenway’s Green Monstah.

Don’t miss the next Independent Lodging Conference Confab in Jackson, WY - June 23 & 24 - Information HERE.