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 Christine:

• 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.

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

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

Episode Transcript

This Earth Day, Dan Ryan welcomes back JoAnna Abrams, founder and CEO of MindClick, to make the case that sustainability isn’t just good for the planet, it’s good for business. JoAnna reveals how MindClick’s product intelligence platform transforms the sustainability data already hiding in hotel FF&E purchases into a competitive weapon, winning corporate travel contracts, boosting sustainability ratings, and growing real revenue. With stories from the ground, including Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf, and eye-opening stats on what ditching polystyrene packaging actually means for waste, this episode proves that going green and going profitable are finally pointing in the same direction. 🌍

Takeaways:

• Stop waiting for sustainability to feel affordable. Hotels already own the sustainability story in their products without paying a penny more for them. The work is in unlocking and communicating that data, not spending more on new materials.

• Train your sales team to tell the sustainability story. Corporate travel planners are asking for sustainability data in 80 to 90% of RFPs, and your directors of sales need the answers ready. Handing them that information is a competitive advantage they can use immediately.

• Recognize that 20 to 40% of your hotel’s revenue is tied to corporate business, and that business is now making booking decisions based on sustainability performance. Ignoring it is not a neutral choice, it is leaving money on the table.

• Understand that EU regulations are reshaping what global corporations require from the hotels they partner with. Even if you operate primarily in the US, your corporate clients are subject to those rules and they will hold you to them.

• Bring the sustainability story down to the frontline staff. The most memorable guest experiences often come from a bellman or front desk employee sharing a small, genuine detail about the space. Equipping those people with the story makes the whole hotel feel more authentic.

• Think of sustainability data as an asset that grows the value of the property itself. As appraisal standards evolve and climate resiliency becomes a factor in valuations, the investments made in FF&E and building materials will show up in what the asset is worth.

• Do not let perfect be the enemy of progress. You do not need a full certification or a massive overhaul to start telling a better story. Even a new build or renovation can unlock meaningful sustainability credentials and give your team something real to talk about right now.

"Today's suppliers need to understand that they're no longer just selling a product. They're selling a product with a story." - JoAnna Abrams

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 JoAnna:

• JoAnna Abrams LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannaabrams/

• MindClick : https://www.mindclick.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

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

The session was led by Mike Lentz, EVP of Development, Design & Construction, Justin Ried, SVP of Pre-development, Design & Construction, and Michael Chang, First Vice President of Sustainability & Resilience. Between the three of them, they walked the room through roughly $3 billion in recent and active capital programs, a sustainability platform generating double-digit cash-on-cash returns, and a resilience strategy that turned a hurricane-ravaged hotel from a 10-month closure into a 9-day reopening.

On the eve of Earth Day, that sentence really resonated with me.

The Transformational Capital Programs

Let me start with the renovation story, because the numbers are pretty powerful. And I’ve been fascinated with these programs since they first started.

Host created what they call Transformational Capital Programs (TCPs): large-scale renovation partnerships with their brand operators (Marriott and Hyatt) that go well beyond a typical soft goods refresh. These are full repositionings: lobbies, food and beverage, meeting space, guest rooms, arrival experience, the works. And they come with a deal structure that makes them pencil, where everyone wins (one plus one equals three, or maybe even more, as I like to say): operating profit guarantees from the brand during construction disruption, and a clear target of 3 to 5 points of RevPAR Index Share gain post-renovation.

Here’s the thing: they’re not just hitting the target. They’re doubling it.

Mike Lentz showed a slide he first used at the 2024 GM Meeting in San Francisco (I remember it). Back then, they had stabilized data on only a handful of completed projects. Now they have 21. The average RevPAR Index Share gain across those 21 properties is 8.7 points, more than twice the midpoint of their 3-to-5-point target. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a thesis being validated at scale.

The Hyatt Transformational Capital Program (HTCP) covers six properties with over $550 million in total investment. By bundling procurement across more than 4,500 guest rooms (case goods, showers, LVT, carpet, etc) and consolidating consulting services, they saved over $10 million before a single room was touched. Four of the six properties are complete, with Grand Hyatt Washington and Grand Hyatt Manchester, San Diego on track for year-end.

The Marriott Transformational Capital Program (MTCP2) extends the playbook to four more properties (New Orleans Marriott, Ritz-Carlton Naples Tiburon, Ritz-Carlton Marina Del Rey, and Westin Kierland) at $300 to $350 million total. All four will have construction underway by late summer.

Justin Ried walked through the design details on several of these, and what stood out to me wasn’t just the finishes (though the renderings for Kierland’s lobby bar and the Ritz-Carlton Marina Del Rey’s club relocation are sharp). It was the intentionality. Every decision, adjusting floor levels at Kierland to add lounge seating, relocating the Ritz-Carlton Club to the lobby level at Marina Del Rey and converting the old space into four new keys, was underwritten against a return. Nothing decorative for the sake of decorative.

That’s the discipline. And as someone who’s worked on projects like the Grand Hyatt Manchester, Marriott Marquis San Diego, and Marriott Boston Copley with Host through BERMANFALK (something like 3,000 rooms across those), I can tell you: that discipline shows up in every coordination meeting, every design review, and every punchlist walk.

Sustainability as a Returns Story

Then Michael Chang took the stage, and the morning shifted from impressive to important.

Because here’s the thing about sustainability in hospitality right now: the conversation has gotten quieter in some circles. The political winds have shifted. Some companies are pulling back on ESG language. And you could argue that makes it easier to just… not talk about it.

Host is doing the opposite. And they’re doing it by leading with the math.

Michael framed sustainability not as a compliance exercise or a branding play, but as a capital allocation discipline. His opening line set the tone: “these investments are not about checking a box. They’re about protecting operations, reducing disruption, and improving performance.” Every project is underwritten the same way a renovation is.

The numbers back it up:

Green Building. Host helped pioneer LEED certification for existing, operating hotels, partnering with the US Green Building Council over a decade ago to develop an alternative compliance pathway. Today, about a third of their portfolio is LEED certified. That’s roughly 9 million square feet of certified hotel space, 25 properties with 5 at LEED Gold, and 9 more in the pipeline with a goal of 40% by 2030.

Solar. 14 properties with onsite solar Photovoltaics in operation, 8 more in development, supported by approximately $12 million in rebates and incentives. Cash-on-cash returns range from 10 to 35%. Those aren’t sustainability returns. Those are great returns no matter how you cut the cake.

AI-Powered Energy Management. For nearly a decade, Host has been using AI and machine learning with connected sensors to give engineering teams real-time visibility into HVAC, central plants, and water systems. A pilot across three properties generated about $700,000 in annual utility savings. They’re now scaling to 30-plus hotels, with an expected initial reduction of 8.5 million kilowatt hours and $1.5 million in savings.

Sustainable Financing. Host has been issued nearly $5 billion in sustainable financing, and the green building and renewable energy programs directly support the terms. Michael made the point that successful execution on solar and LEED projects helps meet annual targets in their sustainability-linked credit facility, which reduces their interest rate. So the sustainability investments are literally lowering their cost of capital. That’s a flywheel, and you know how I love flywheels.

And here’s the context that makes all of this more urgent, not less: surging electricity demand from AI data centers is driving energy prices up across the country. The hotels that have invested in onsite generation and energy efficiency aren’t just being responsible. They’re insulated.

9 Days, Not 10 Months

Then Michael told the Naples story, and I noticed a change in the room

In 2022, Hurricane Ian hit the Ritz-Carlton Naples. Total losses: $270 million. The hotel was closed for 10 months.

After Ian, Host invested nearly $11 million in resilience measures at the property: elevating the central energy plant and generators, installing comprehensive flood barriers, and accelerating planned CapEx to strengthen the building envelope.

In 2024, Hurricane Milton brought a comparable storm surge to the same property. This time, total losses were $5.8 million. The hotel reopened in 9 days.

That’s a 98% reduction in both losses and downtime. Same property. Similar storm. Different outcome, because of the investment.

Michael’s line on it was simple: your teams and strategies are the difference between a 9-day reopening and a 10-month closure.

Host is now applying this playbook across the portfolio. They’ve screened every property using third-party climate analytics, prioritized 24 hotels representing about a third of their EBITDA, identified more than 60 resilience opportunities, and advanced 32 projects. They’re developing resilience plans for properties in four markets with elevated climate risk, covering flood barriers, utility redundancy, MEP relocation, and wildfire protection.

This is the part that connects back to yesterday’s conversation about the human element. Resilience isn’t just about hardening a building. It’s about being able to open your doors. For guests, for displaced families, for your own employees. Mike Lentz said it yesterday, and Michael Chang proved it today with the data.

The Thread

What struck me about this morning is how tightly it all connects. The transformational capital programs, the sustainability investments, the resilience strategy: they’re all running through the same discipline. Every dollar is underwritten. Every project has a return target. And every outcome depends on the teams in the hotels executing it.

Michael closed with a line that could have been the title of the whole session: every capital investment, whether it’s development, renovation, or sustainability, ultimately depends on you to turn that investment into performance.

That’s the ROI of doing it right. Not just spending the money. Spending it with intention, backing it with data, and trusting the people on the ground to deliver.

Host isn’t just maintaining a fortress balance sheet. They’re reinvesting it, intelligently, into a portfolio that’s more competitive, more efficient, more resilient, and more valuable than it was two years ago.

And they’re telling us about it on the eve of Earth Day, which feels like exactly the right time to say: this is what it looks like when sustainability isn’t a slogan. It’s a P&L line.

I was walking out of the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Austin when I bumped into Mr. Marriott. Shook his hand and relished every time I’ve spoken to him: this was the third. Either way, it felt like the right punctuation on the afternoon I’d just had.

Because the conversation I’d just walked out of was different from the one I heard two years ago in San Francisco.

Two years ago, Host Hotels & Resorts held their GM meeting when the industry still had COVID not too far in the rearview mirror, and the phrase of the day then was “fortress balance sheet.” Rightfully so. Host had the capital structure, the discipline, and the portfolio to weather what a lot of companies couldn’t. It was a financial story, told in financial terms, to a room that needed to hear it. And it helped me, and BERMANFALK, thrive, grow, and evolve over those turbulent years on the heels of COVID.

This year in Austin, the fortress is still standing, and standing strong. Jim Risoleo said it plainly: all systems go. Very little new supply coming in. The affluent consumer is well-heeled. A generational transfer of wealth is on the horizon, and those consumers are going to spend it on experiences. The balance sheet is as strong as ever.

But the conversation has moved.

The senior team panel, Jim Risoleo, Sourav Ghosh, Nate Tyrrell, Mike Lentz, and Julie Aslaksen, moderated by Jaime Marcus, spent most of its time talking about people. Not headcount. People. Technology came up constantly, but every time it was mentioned, the counterbalance was immediately back to people.

Mike Lentz said it directly: the pandemic exposed that employees and labor are not interchangeable. They are our core assets. Julie Aslaksen, who joined Host in November 2019, just before one of the hardest periods this industry has faced, said the thing that gives her the most optimism about the future is the strength of the hospitality professionals and the leaders in the room.

And then there was Sourav.

Sourav Ghosh is the technology voice on the panel, and he said “AI” more than anyone else on stage (everyone was egging him on, too). But the term he kept coming back to was EQ. Emotional intelligence. His argument: as technology removes what he calls “transaction friction” (the check-in, the credit card, the QR code), the remaining human touchpoints become higher-value and higher-stakes. You end up with a labor force that has much higher EQ than one that’s just pushing buttons. And here’s the line that stuck: “Every point of contact makes more of a difference when you have more technology.”

I’ve been writing about this. The idea that AI isn’t going to replace the people who got into hospitality because they love hospitality. It’s going to strip away the friction around running a hotel so those people can do the work they actually signed up for. Hearing it echoed from the stage at Host’s GM meeting, from the tech executive no less, felt like validation.

A few other moments that stuck with me:

Mike talked about climate resilience as a value driver, not a nice-to-have. Storms are stronger and more frequent. But here’s what reframed it for me: hardening your assets isn’t just about protecting property. It’s about being able to open your doors as a place of refuge for displaced families, some of whom are your own employees and first responders. That reframes resilience from insurance to hospitality.

And then there’s the concept of digital twins, which came up multiple times. Nate described presentations that he’s seen with Nvidia to build digital replicas of hotels so you can run scenario analysis (operational changes, ROI on renovations, physical dynamics) all in AI before disrupting the real building. Mike extended the concept to the guest side: a digital twin that anticipates what someone needs before they have to ask. The building gets modeled. The guest gets modeled. The thing that can’t be modeled is the human standing in front of them. That’s the irreplaceable part. I’m pretty sure the notion of the “digital twin” has firmly supplanted the idea of the metaverse.

I’ve been in rooms with Host for a while now. BERMANFALK has had the privilege of working on projects like The Hyatt Manchester, Marriott Marquis San Diego, and Marriott Boston Copley, just to name a few. Something like 3,000 rooms across those. What struck me in Austin wasn’t the scale (the scale is always impressive). It was the culture. Everyone in that room, and especially the people on stage, genuinely cared about the people running their hotels. You could feel it.

Two years ago, the story was: we have the balance sheet to survive anything and EVERYTHING.

This year, the story is: we have the people to build anything.

That’s the shift I noticed. From fortress to family.

And the timing matters. With the largest generational transfer of wealth on the horizon, the next wave of travelers isn’t just going to spend more. They’re going to expect more. Hyper-personalized experiences. Stays where the hotel knows who you are before you walk in the door. That’s not something a balance sheet delivers. That’s something people deliver: people with high EQ, freed up by technology, standing in front of a guest who expects to be known.

The fortress got Host through COVID. Their family is what’s going to win the next decade.

And then you walk out the door and bump into Mr. Marriott. Pretty good afternoon.

PS - I will get a selfie with him before the week is out.

Last night was NEWH New York’s Women Making Moves in New York City. Four women on stage, all now leading hospitality work from very different seats: Caz Walker at Harbour Outdoor, Monica Kumar at Extell, Linda Laucirica at Marriott, and Diane Nguyen at Highgate. Rob Veluz and Miles Sotelo Hodge moderated, and they did a beautiful job of it, warm and fun, which is what these nights need to be.

Before I get into what was said, a quick word about NEWH. NEWH has been building the scaffolding and connective tissue of our industry for decades: scholarships that change lives and provide incredible visibility for the recipients, chapters that turn strangers into colleagues (and sometimes mentors and mentees). Events like this one pull people out of their corners long enough to remember we’re all working on the same thing. If you’re in hospitality and not yet plugged in, fix that by signing up at www.newh.org.

Now, here’s what the hamsters were running around in my head on the way home.

All the world is a stage

Linda opened a door I didn’t see coming. When the moderators asked how she came to be in hospitality, she went further back. She started in theater. “All the world is a stage,” she said, quoting Shakespeare but meaning it literally. Design, she said, has always been, intrinsically, about storytelling. Space is a character. The guest is the audience. Every choice, the fabric, the fixture, the lighting cue when someone sits down at the bar, is a choice in service of the show.

Diane picked up the thread, or should I say the Playbill. A restaurant is a theater. We come in, we’re cast in a role for the evening, we watch other people play theirs, and when we leave, we’ve been in a production whether we realized it or not.

What’s interesting: these two also came from the Rockwell tribe, and both consider Rockwell one of the most formative experiences of their careers. Rockwell, as you’d expect, does a lot of theater design.

Because we talk about hospitality in so many technical registers, operations, margin, F&B covers, RevPAR, programming, FF&E, and sometimes we forget that what we’re actually doing is staging a performance for a stranger who paid to be here - every single night. The designer is the set designer. The operator is the director. The GM is the stage manager, making sure the cues land.

Monica said it a different way. Her winding path from workplace design to hospitality taught her to design from the point of view of feeling, not from the point of view of the plan, the elevation, or the spec. Start with what the guest should feel. Reverse-engineer the room from there.

On mentorship

I asked Caz a question about mentorship because earlier that evening, I’d learned she mentors someone I know well. Someone who, on paper, you’d call a competitor of hers. I’ve sat in on how this person runs a monthly meeting, and I walked out of it changed. That kind of coaching doesn’t happen by accident, and it certainly doesn’t happen because people are guarding their territory.

Her answer was simple, and I think the whole room benefited from her knowledge: when you listen, you learn; when you learn, you grow. Mentorship, for her, is about guiding, giving direction, and modeling how to live the mission.

I think we all have more room for mentors than we give ourselves credit for, both in receiving it and in offering it. The question isn’t whether we can afford to make the time. The question is whether we can afford not to.

And this doesn’t need to be a formal practice. Call it coaching, call it mentoring, just make space. It doesn’t need to be robotic. I learned some great tools many years ago that I’ve been dusted off again, and I want to give a nod to Aaron Berman for the reminder earlier this week. If you haven’t read Trust & Inspire by Stephen M.R. Covey, pick it up.

Rockwell as a Tribe

Funnily enough, I’d been inside Rockwell Group’s office earlier that same day, so when Linda and Diane both traced their origin stories back to it, the word Tribe resonated powerfully with me. You can feel it when you walk in there. There’s a house. There’s a craft. There’s a lineage. (Hooray to Blaine Alexander, who I think has been there since the Appalachian mountains were formed, which are, by the way, the oldest mountains in the world. The place would not be the place without him. And somehow he looks younger and younger every time I see him.) Every one of the panelists had clearly been shaped by that tribe and then gone off to build something of their own with the lessons.

That’s what a great firm does. It doesn’t try to keep you. It makes you ready to go. And Rockwell has a strange gravity that brings many back, even after they’ve tried something else.

This is also why last week’s episode with Ed Bakos, CEO of Champalimaud Design, landed the way it did. Ed also got his start at Rockwell, and the DNA shows up in how he talks about anticipation as the real currency of hospitality. If you haven’t listened yet, it’s worth your commute. I was also surprised to learn he worked on Rockwell’s first hotel guestroom project - the W-Lexington - which was also the first W and ties back to Linda’s full circle, starting on W Hotels and now back on the team as W reinvents itself.

Linda said something else I want to hold onto: NEWH has been the backbone of her career. She left hospitality design for a while and came back to it, and NEWH was the through-line. Communities like this one aren’t extracurricular. They’re load-bearing. (That reminded me of the “spinal cord” framing from the Marriott rebrand panel Linda moderated, which I wrote about in my Waffle Maker piece. Same idea, different angle: the support structure is the thing.)

The lightning round

At the end, each panelist was asked for one word to describe the future of hospitality.

Linda’s answer: intentional.

I’ve been using that word a lot lately. It anchored my Q1 recap two weeks ago, I’ve been wearing it out in client conversations, and hearing it come back from the stage felt like confirmation. If all the world is a stage, intention is the only way to direct it. There is no set design by accident. There is no guest experience by accident. Either you meant it, or it fell together, and if it fell together, the audience can tell.

Start everything with intention. A task, a project, a coaching session. It doesn’t take much. Just pause and be deliberate.

Diane closed the panel with the line I highlighted twice in my notebook:

Enjoy the show.

I think that’s the whole can of beans. Every project is a show, started by the playwrights of intention, orchestrated into what can be an incredible experience.

I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. Or at least the hamsters in my head will.

Huge thanks to Caz Walker and the Harbour Outdoor team for hosting, to Rob Veluz and Miles Sotelo Hodge for moderating with such care and humor, and to Monica Kumar, Linda Laucirica, and Diane Nguyen for generosity with their stories. And to NEWH New York for continuing to build the tribe we all benefit from. If you want to support the work, their scholarship program is the place to start.

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

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

Episode Transcript

In this episode of Defining Hospitality, Dan Ryan sits down with Walter Peseski, Senior Vice President of Asset Management at Garfield Public Private, to explore the often misunderstood world of hotel asset management and public private partnerships. Sponsored by BERMANFALK, this discussion uncovers how cities, universities, and hospitals are leveraging creative financing structures to build hotels that serve as economic catalysts for entire communities.

Takeaways:

• Hospitality is the heart behind the service. Service is the technical delivery, but hospitality is why you do it. It’s the warmth that makes someone want to tell others about their experience.

• Speak up when service is exceptional. Most people only give feedback when something goes wrong. Taking a moment to recognize great service goes a long way and reinforces the culture you want to see.

• Great hospitality requires both product and service. If one is missing, the whole experience falls apart. Excellent service can’t fully compensate for a poor product, and vice versa.

• Third-party asset management pays for itself. An asset manager typically finds enough low-hanging fruit in the first year to cover their fee, they ask the right questions and advocate purely for the owner’s interests.

• Know what matters to you before choosing your career path. Whether it’s schedule, income, or passion for people, identifying your personal priorities early helps you find the right lane in a broad industry.

• Explore all avenues of hospitality, not just working in a hotel. Finance, development, asset management, and design are all part of the industry, your strengths might be better suited somewhere other than operations.

• Hotels built as community investments outperform those built purely for profit. When a hotel and convention center serves as an economic catalyst for its city, the long term value it creates far exceeds what a yield-maximizing developer would achieve alone.

"It's not how fast can we increase the value of this hotel and flip it. It's how can this hotel contribute to the community." - Walter Peseski

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.

Connect with Walter:

• Walter Peseski LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/walter-peseski/

• Garfield Public Private : https://www.garfieldpublicprivate.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 of Defining Hospitality, Dan Ryan sits down with Ed Bakos, CEO of Champalimaud Design, to explore the evolving dimensions of hospitality in the design world. Sponsored by BERMANFALK, this discussion uncovers how the nuances of design, from emotional exchanges to anticipating guest needs, define luxury and authenticity in the hospitality industry today.

Takeaways:

• Hospitality transcends mere service. It’s about creating spaces that forge emotional connections and lasting memories.

• Collaboration is key. High-quality design is the result of collective innovation, where a flat hierarchy allows for the best ideas to surface and lead.

• Anticipate guests’ needs. Effective design predicts and accommodates the unspoken needs of guests, transforming potential inconveniences into pleasures.

• Learn from historical designs. Ed’s work with historical aircraft underscores the importance of understanding past innovations to inform present design practices.

• Creating authentic luxury experiences. Every design element, from room layout to service strategies, aims to resonate emotionally with guests.

• Foster a culture of excellence. Bakos’ leadership style empowers his team to confidently pursue creative solutions.

• Continual learning is a necessity. Embracing the journey of constant education and adaptation is crucial for staying ahead in the ever-evolving field of hospitality design.

"Design is a relationship between different things. Why do certain combinations of things provide us with more satisfaction? Certain combinations in certain settings are… highly successful and can be highly successful." - Ed Bakos

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.

Connect with Ed:

• Ed Bakos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmond-bakos-62102014/

• Champalimaud Design: https://www.champalimaud.design/

• Tunison Foundation: https://www.tunisonfoundation.org/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

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

Fresh Off the NEWH Leadership Conference

Last week in DC, one word kept surfacing across every panel: intentionality.

How Intention Can Break the Gravitational Pull of the Waffle Maker started with a joke from Barry Sullivan about hotel brands never escaping the waffle maker and ended with Rado Ivanov reminding the room to design for people, employees first. In between, the BrandED panel made the most compelling case I've heard for why 77% of Marriott's premium portfolio renovation cycle is a chance to rewrite the story, not just refresh the rooms.

The Myths We Tell Ourselves About Hotel Projects - pressure-tested industry assumptions about consultant alignment, tariffs, budgets, and AI. My editorial take: the biggest schedule play in hospitality, bringing long-lead FF&E items forward, was never mentioned. Read it here:

Our most-engaged audio podcast was with Chelsea Hershelman at Coral Tree, and our most-engaged video was with Saxton Sharad at Hideaway Inns. Check ‘em out here (links to audio and video - whichever you prefer, in the show notes)

Earlier This Quarter: ALIS 2026

ALIS, in late January, gave me three Notes From the Front Row articles. Lead With the "B" became the most-engaged piece I've published in a while (64 likes, 5 comments) and argued that F&B is a strategic lever, not a cost center. Procurement, Project Management, and How to Deflect the Unexpected preached what I love most: front-load intelligence and shorten timelines. And When AI Becomes the Gatekeeper, Story Becomes the Asset explored why storytelling matters more than ever.

The Show Got a Fresh Look

In March I relaunched the podcast with a new format. When I published The Show Got a Fresh Look, 66 of you liked it. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a guide to 7 episodes from 243 that I keep coming back to.

Looking Ahead

Q2 is already stacking up. More meetings, presentations, conferences, more conversations, more Notes From the Front Row, and a deeper dive into the long-lead FF&E acceleration thesis that I believe can reshape how our industry thinks about project timelines.

If you're navigating these same questions or seeing different signals entirely, I'd love to hear from you. Reply to this email or reach out directly.

Onward,

Dan Ryan

The second panel I want to write about from the NEWH Leadership Conference in DC was called Myth Busting the Modern Hotel Project. Moderated by Trisha Poole of Design Poole, the panel brought together Alan Benjamin (Benjamin West), Aaron Anderson (The 26 Company and former Defining Hospitality guest), Heather Ciszcon (CoralTree Hospitality and former Defining Hospitality guest), and Meridith Zimmerman (RLJ Lodging Trust). Ownership, project management, procurement, and operations all in the same room, all on the same stage.

The premise was simple: name the things our industry believes that might not actually be true, and then talk about them honestly. And the panel delivered. But as I sat in the audience, scribbling in my notebook, I kept circling back to one question nobody on stage addressed: if the whole conversation is about saving time and money, why is no one talking about the fastest lever we have?

More on that at the end. First, what they got right.

Myth: “It’s Costly to Align Consultants Early”

Aaron Anderson framed this one clearly. He wants all consultants on board from day one, including procurement, engineers, lighting, everyone. His logic: the fee will be the same whether you bring someone on at the start or three months in. The only thing that changes is how efficiently the project runs.

Alan Benjamin reinforced this with what he often cites as one of his most important metrics: the “ROT” model, Return on Time. The more information you have on the front end, the less ugly the value engineering gets on the back end. His worst-case example: a designer works for months, buys a model room full of items the owner can’t afford, with durability that won’t hold up, from a vendor that’s running late on 10 other projects. Then procurement comes in and the whole thing gets redesigned. That’s not a cost savings. That’s a cost explosion.

Meridith Zimmerman, from the ownership side at RLJ, put it simply. Get everybody on the same page at the same time. Same objectives. Same budget. No go-backs. She called having the full team aligned from the beginning “vital, golden.”

And Heather Ciszcon of CoralTree added a layer I appreciated. Before you assemble the team, define the vision. Is this a generational hold? A 10-year flip? That intent should shape every decision that follows, from the casegoods you specify to how long the design needs to last.

The room overwhelmingly agreed when they polled us. Green smiley faces everywhere. Nobody was arguing against early alignment. The myth was thoroughly busted.

Tariffs, Costs, and the 40% Question

This is where it got interesting. The myth on the table: project costs are up 40 to 50 percent because of tariffs.

Aaron was direct. He hasn’t seen a project stop because of cost, and the increase everyone is feeling is mostly on the construction side: labor and materials are up roughly 30% from pre-COVID levels. From an FF&E standpoint, the tariff impact on goods has been real but not the project-killer the headlines suggest.

Alan Benjamin, who does 250 to 300 projects a year through Benjamin West, confirmed it. He’s not aware of a single project that was a no-go solely due to tariffs. The much bigger issue for renovations is the mechanical infrastructure: chillers, boilers, roofs, kitchen equipment, elevators. That’s where the massive capex decisions live.

He also offered some historical context that I think the room needed to hear. Anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese casegoods have been in place since 2004, in some cases up to 200%, going back to the Bush administration. Those tariffs stayed in place through Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump again. The 2018 tariffs were layered on top. And every yard of fabric for the last 35 to 40 years has carried roughly a 15% tariff baked into the price, it just wasn’t discussed.

I was called on in the audience by Trisha. I don’t remember raising my hand! Perhaps it was because I was in the front row and was holding up my green smiley face emoji. She asked whether we’ve seen projects get 40% more expensive in the more recent age of tariffs. My honest answer, with a little more time to think about it: the average order size at BERMANFALK has increased about 25% over the past seven years. But I think much of that is because we’ve been working on increasingly large projects as we continually strive to delight our clients and improve our processes. So yes, things cost more. But the why matters, and it’s not just tariffs driving the number.

I also added that from 2001 to 2020, there was essentially no inflation in our industry. If you spread the increases we’re seeing now over that 20-year flat period, it’s not as dramatic as it feels. Another manufacturer shared that they went to their mill in China and said, “you’ve got to help us, we have to keep our standard.” And the mill cooperated. Relationships matter, even at the factory level.

Myth: “Design Suffers When Budgets Are Tight”

Meridith’s answer to this one was refreshingly direct. Share the budget. Tell your designers where you’re willing to spend and where the limits are. RLJ has actual manufacturer programs with preferred pricing that they share with their design teams. No surprises.

Alan was even more blunt. If the budget is $8 million and you design at $8.5 million, a competent procurement agent can get you to the promised land. But if the budget is $8 million and you design at $20 million, the chair will still have four legs, but nobody’s happy at the end of the job. And Meridith added: if you design an $8 million project at $20 million, you’re probably not getting the next call.

Heather framed it well: not everything in a room can be the star. Define your star, focus your dollars there, and let the rest be good and functional. Sometimes the most important design decision isn’t the headboard. It’s putting the hook in the right place so you have somewhere to hang your towel when you get out of the shower.

Aaron’s advice to every designer listening: if you get an RFP and it doesn’t include a budget, don’t start until you have one. It is the most important piece of information you can have.

The Wedding Photographer and the Model Room

The model room was referred to as the wedding photographer of the wedding. You cannot miss the wedding.

The panel was unanimous. Model rooms are where relationships get tested, where you see if a vendor’s shop drawings are on time, where you discover what’s hiding behind the walls (leaks, rust, delaminated drywall), and where the design gets that last 5 to 10 percent of refinement that turns a nice room into a wow room.

Alan made a point I think every designer and owner should hear: even if you give the same spec to two legitimate casegoods vendors, the design engineer at each will interpret it slightly differently. You might prefer the flitch of the grain from one, the drawer glide from the other, the hardware from a third. That last 5 to 10 percent of quality, what he called the “star moments,” comes out of the model room process. And most of the time it doesn’t even affect cost.

The consensus: it costs you more to skip the model room than to do one.

Relationships Over Transactions

This theme ran through the entire panel. Meridith talked about how RLJ builds long-term relationships with vendors and manufacturers, not just chasing the lowest bid. When they find a vendor that delivers, they use them again and again. And they share those relationships with their designers.

Heather reinforced this: when you think of your partnerships as relationships rather than transactions, everything changes. If an owner is writing a half-million-dollar purchase order, they should have a relationship with that manufacturer. Not just a line item on a spreadsheet.

One of the manufacturers in the room raised a question that I think a lot of vendors feel but rarely say out loud: sometimes the designer is the gatekeeper, and they won’t let the manufacturer get to the owner or even the procurement agent. How do you break through? Aaron’s answer was honest: events like this. Person to person. There’s no other way.

Alan added something important from the procurement side. He wants the owner to have the most direct relationship possible with each vendor. When Benjamin West is doing the bid comparison, they want full transparency: lead time, quality, cost, payment terms. If another player on a project is blocking that transparency, that could be a red flag.

AI: Not There Yet

Aaron got the AI question and gave what I thought was the most grounded answer I heard at the conference (and this is the second panel in a row where I’ve said that). He uses AI for research, for Excel models and formulas, and he name-dropped Claude, which made me smile. But for actually managing a hospitality project? “We’re not there.”

He wasn’t dismissive. He was specific. AI is useful as a tool for certain tasks, but the way hotel projects actually get managed, the relationships, the judgment calls, the ability to walk a site and know something’s off, that’s not something a model can replicate today. He’s hopeful and optimistic, but not convinced. I think that’s exactly the right posture.

The Question Nobody Asked

So here’s what kept running through my mind the whole time.

The panel spent an hour making the case that early alignment saves time and money. Get consultants on board sooner. Share the budget. Build consistent teams. Define the vision. All of that is correct, and I agree with every word of it.

But nobody mentioned the single fastest way to accelerate a hotel project timeline: bringing your long-lead FF&E items forward.

Casegoods. Seating. Lighting. Sometimes flooring. These are the items with the longest manufacturing and shipping lead times, and they’re the ones that sit on the critical path of nearly every project. If you pull them forward, if you get them specified, approved, and into production earlier in the process, you can compress a project schedule by 11 to 22 weeks. In some cases, up to six months.

Read my article here:

The industry keeps optimizing around getting people in the room sooner, and that’s important. But there’s an equally powerful play on the product side. It’s not about hiring faster. It’s about ordering smarter.

Aaron talked about front-loading information and preventing back-end engineering. Alan talked about “ROT”, Return on Time. Heather talked about defining the vision early so the casegoods match the hold period. All of those arguments point in the same direction: if you know what you want, and you have the right team in place, why are you waiting to pull the trigger on the items that take the longest to arrive?

I say this with full respect for every person on that stage, some of whom are clients and all of whom I admire. The conversation was excellent. I just think the next chapter of it is about procurement sequencing, not just consultant alignment. And the numbers back it up.

The Front Row Takeaway

The Myth Busting panel did exactly what it promised. It named the things we accept as true and pressure-tested them in front of a room full of people who live this every day.

Consultants don’t cost more when you bring them on early. Tariffs are real but not new, and they’re not the reason your project is over budget. Good designers can work within any budget if you share it with them. Model rooms aren’t optional. And relationships beat transactions every single time.

But the biggest myth might be the one that wasn’t on the agenda: that we’ve already optimized the project timeline as much as we can. We haven’t. The long-lead items are sitting right there, waiting for someone to pull them forward.

That was the real takeaway from the front row.

Audio Links:

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

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

Episode Transcript

In this episode of Defining Hospitality, Dan Ryan sits down with Thomas Oh, Co-Founder & General Manager of Perilla Korean American Steakhouse, and Daphne Shin, Founder & Principal Designer of the Ruimte, two passionate creators working at the intersection of culture, cuisine, and design. Sponsored by BERMANFALK, the episode delves into the unique approach Thomas and Daphne take to blend Korean cultural elements into their business ventures in Chicago.

Takeaways:

• Hospitality is about inclusion. Daphne focuses on creating environments where guests can feel a sense of belonging and create lasting memories. For Thomas, it’s about making guests feel seen, heard, and valued, leaving a lasting impression.

• Korean cultural integrations. At L7 Hotel, Thomas and Daphne have harmoniously integrated elements of Korean culture. Guests can appreciate the subtle Korean influences in the design and cuisine without feeling overwhelmed.

• Bridging the cultural cuisine gaps. Thomas talks about the challenge and excitement of introducing Korean cuisine, like kimchi and Korean BBQ, alongside American steakhouse traditions to a diverse audience in Chicago.

• Subtlety in design blending. Daphne discusses the intricacies of balancing Korean design elements with modern American tastes in the hotel setting. She highlights the use of color palettes and material choices that subtly nod to Korean heritage.

• Taking opportunities as they appear. The story of a high-profile Korean guest discovering the restaurant and providing positive feedback underscores the impact of authentic, thoughtful design and cultural incorporation.

• The future of Korean influence. Thomas and Daphne both reflect on the growing global influence of Korean culture in sectors like hospitality, cuisine, music, and skincare, and their roles in shaping this narrative.

"It's exciting for me and for the team here, for them to come into our space… We're not screaming this is Korean to them, but they're loving the design of this restaurant and the hotel." - Thomas Oh

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.

Connect with Thomas and Daphne:

• Thomas Oh LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-oh-b6164570/

• Daphne Shin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphne-shin-1a223b44/

• Daphne Shin Email: daphne@theruimte.com

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

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

Not innovation. Not disruption. Not AI.

Intentionality.

It showed up in a joke about waffle makers. It showed up in a conversation about Marriott’s premium brands. And it showed up in the way a former guest, originally from Bulgaria, talked about what we owe the people who actually work inside the hotels we design. More on Bulgaria towards the end - if you keep reading.

Here’s what stuck with me.

“Hard to Escape the Waffle Maker”

Barry Sullivan of Hilton, a past guest on Defining Hospitality and someone I always enjoy hearing from, commented on the Hospitality on the Move panel that got a knowing laugh from the room: many hotel brands will never be able to escape the waffle maker. Just like my dad loved staying at Courtyards because the same iron, not a waffle iron, mind you - but same difference, was always in the same place in every hotel.

He wasn’t being cynical. He was being honest.

The waffle maker has become a kind of metaphor for the default setting in hospitality, the thing we keep doing because we’ve always done it, not because anyone asked for it. Barry’s point was that F&B is actually the easiest area to change in an established hotel. Menus can evolve. Spirit-free cocktails that look and taste identical to the real thing are gaining traction. Health-conscious options that reflect how guests actually live at home are showing up more and more.

The waffle maker isn’t the problem. The problem is the mindset that says we can’t do anything about it. But as Barry noted, changing the hearts and minds of the calcified ranks who say “this is how we’ve always done it” is often the hardest.

BrandED: The Future of Marriott’s Premium Brands

I really enjoyed this one, and for good reason - Marriott took the issue that Barry mentioned above, and did an entire panel on it. Moderated by Linda Laucirica (Senior Director, Global Design, US & Canada, Marriott International, and a former guest), the lineup included Jennifer O’Brien (Marriott International), David Ashen (Saguez & Dash), David Carofano (Crown Creative, and another former guest), and Lauren Uthenwoldt (Washington Marriott at Metro Center).

Full disclosure: BERMANFALK sponsored this session, even though our focus is on guestrooms and not restaurants, we can always learn from other teams that do things expertly. And I’m glad we did, because what unfolded was one of the most candid conversations about F&B strategy I’ve heard in a while. These tend to be popular topics on this Substack, and this panel reminded me why.

The setup was sobering: 77% of Marriott’s premium portfolio properties, Marriott, Sheraton, Delta Hotels, Renaissance, Le Méridien, Westin, are due or past due for a renovation cycle in the next three to five years. This segment represents roughly 54–55% of all Marriott F&B revenue.

Linda framed the challenge well: the full-service segment is big, complex, wildly inconsistent, and, in many cases, lacking a clear point of view.

And then Jennifer O’Brien took the conversation somewhere that had the whole room leaning in.

The One Stop Shop

Jennifer described a model Marriott has been developing, which she called the “One Stop Shop.” Think of it as the evolution away from the 300-seat hotel restaurant that sits half-empty most of the day.

Instead, a consolidated public-space concept where coffee and grab-and-go in the morning transforms into a dynamic cocktail experience at night. Same square footage. Different energy. More revenue per square foot. Fewer sad, empty dining rooms.

Her phrase that I keep coming back to: “Who wants to sit in a dead restaurant?”

Nobody. And yet, as an industry, we keep building them and renovating the same footprints and same workflows, because that’s what we’ve always done.

Spine and Soul

What Jennifer was really arguing for, and what David Carofano reinforced, is that premium hotels need to have what she called “a spine and a soul” when it comes to F&B.

Not white tablecloth. Not complicated. But intentional.

“Not complicated, but done well.”

She talked about designing for day-to-night transitions: concealed spirit displays that reveal in the evening, flexible lighting, moveable elements that shift the mood. She called it “concept, form, and function.” And she made the case that F&B has long been the “red-headed stepchild” of hotel operations when it should be treated as one of the biggest opportunities in the portfolio.

The data backs her up: 85% of millennial premium travelers say ambiance, design, and branding are the most important factors when choosing a hotel restaurant. And David Carofano noted that even a 1% ADR increase driven by a strong F&B program justifies the investment. The exclamation point on this: if every hotel public area started with the simple question, “How can this F&B experience add just 1% to the Average Daily Rate?” that would be a game-changer.

The $26 Buffet and “Strange Things Are Afoot at the Circle K”

David Ashen told a story that summed up the mindset problem perfectly. He was walking a property where the operator was running a $26 breakfast buffet and had resisted adding a grab-and-go market for fear it would cannibalize the buffet.

Meanwhile, the guest who just wanted a quick coffee walked out the door and ended up at Circle K. Good for Bill & Ted, not good for the hotel.

“They don’t know what they don’t know,” David said. And that fear of cannibalization? It’s driving decisions that send revenue and guests out the front door. It also misses the opportunity, as David put it, to engage the community around the hotel and invite them in to grab something as well.

Jennifer pushed it further: “What do you have to lose if you’re a little more specific?”

I heard what I’ll call a “food truck mentality”, speed, specificity, personality, and he pointed to the AC Hotel and Boqueria (another former guest, Yann de Rochefort) partnership at the AC near the Port Authority in NYC as the kind of thing that should be rolled out more broadly. Why not? Not a food truck - but a definite point of view as you walk into the hotel - and quite successful to boot.

Intentionality From “Go”

The through-line of the whole panel was that none of this works unless the right people are in the room from day one. Design. Operations. F&B consulting. Ownership. All of them, aligned early, collaborating with what David Ashen called “intentionality.”

Jennifer O’Brien’s parting line landed: “Open the aperture as widely as possible for what’s possible.” She and her team have even launched what she described as a “choose your own adventure” website (I’ll try to find the link later). If you’re going through a renovation lifecycle, it guides you to options, models, and ideas tailored to your property.

It’s a shift from prescriptive to collaborative. And it’s long overdue.

Rado: Design for People

Rado Ivanov of Marriott, another past Defining Hospitality guest, was on the earlier Hospitality on the Move panel with Barry, and his closing thought was the one I walked out of the building thinking about. P.S. If you’re still reading, I’m convinced it was Rado’s family who made Defining Hospitality the number-one podcast in Bulgaria a few years ago. Still grateful for that quick moment of international stardom!

When asked what advice he’d give the room, Rado said: “Design for people. Employees first. Guests always. Owners top of mind.” To me, this echoes Danny Meyer’s thinking in Setting the Table, where owners and investors are the last stakeholders in the hierarchy, because if you take care of employees, guests, the community, and your suppliers, the investors will ultimately be overjoyed with their returns.

His logic is clean: the experience is driven by the people on property. If you don’t design for the staff, nobody’s happy. If nobody’s happy, the guests feel it. And if the guests feel it, the owners don’t make a profit.

He also offered the most grounded take on AI I heard over the past couple of months, and I hope that’s not my hubris talking. Technology is “ever hyped,” he said, and where it actually helps most is at the points of friction, the tasks that people didn’t follow their passions into hospitality to do. But the brands that win long-term? They’ll be the most human ones, not the most automated.

Rado also warned the room about AI-generated design packages. He described a situation where a furniture supplier ran a designer’s package through AI to produce shop drawings, and what came back looked real but had no substance. No dimensions. No detail. “Like a three-year-old put it together.” This landscape is changing rapidly, so let’s see how my take on this ages.

AI is a tool. Not a substitute. And when we use half-baked tools, without human guardrails, to replace expertise and HUMAN EXPERIENCE, things can fall apart.

The Front Row Takeaway

Two panels. Two rooms. One thread.

Barry Sullivan reminded us that the defaults we accept, the waffle makers, the empty restaurants, the “we’ve always done it this way”, are choices, not mandates. And F&B is the easiest lever to pull.

Jennifer O’Brien and the BrandED panel showed what it looks like when a massive brand segment decides to get intentional, about flexibility, about narrative, about having a point of view. Seventy-seven percent of the premium portfolio is about to be touched. That’s not a renovation wave. That’s a chance to rewrite the story. COME ON, BABY! I hope this dam of deferred cap-ex breaks soon.

And Rado Ivanov brought it back to first principles: design for the people who work in these spaces, and everything else follows.

Intentionality isn’t a buzzword. It’s the opposite of one. It means doing fewer things, but doing them on purpose and doing them well. Give your F&B a spine instead of a buffet line. Design a room that serves employees, not just photographs well. Ask “what do we have to lose?” instead of “what if it cannibalizes?”

The hotels that figure this out won’t just look better. They’ll perform better. And the people inside them, guests and staff alike, will feel it.

That was the real lesson from the front row.

Audio Links:

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

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

Episode Transcript

In this episode of Defining Hospitality, Dan Ryan sits down with Michaelangelo L’Acqua, a global entertainment director and music/lifestyle branding expert, to discuss hospitality as “infrastructure” built through sound, motifs, and emotional arcs across dayparts. This conversation dives into shifting luxury expectations, analog-era craft, and mentoring creatives within business-driven environments.

Takeaways:

• Sonic architecture is the infrastructure. Michaelangelo L’Acqua discusses the importance of a Sonic Identity Brand Bible, an intricate strategy that aligns a brand’s sonic elements with its core values, much like architectural blueprints guide building design.

• Bridging emotional peaks and valleys. Hospitality is more than heads in beds; it’s about crafting experiences that weave sound motifs throughout a guest’s stay, enhancing their journey emotionally from sunrise to late-night moments.

• Analog wisdom holds value in a digital age. Raised in the pre-digital era, L’Acqua emphasizes the value of the rich, textured experiences of analog days that can inform and elevate today’s hospitality landscapes.

• Mentorship and legacy building are vital. L’Acqua highlights the value of mentorship in fostering future leaders, suggesting that nurturing talent in younger demographics ensures the preservation and evolution of luxury standards.

• Adaptation and timeless style. While trends ebb and flow, human needs remain constant. L’Acqua reflects on how enduring designs and sounds, analogous to timeless furniture pieces or classic tracks, resonate deeply across generations.

• Passion is the focus. Even within the structured world of private equity and ROI demands, L’Acqua finds creative freedom by marrying passion with practicality, achieving personal and professional fulfillment.

• Cultural agility can drive relevancy. In a world of fast conservation and changing tastes, staying connected to cultural radars through networks of tastemakers helps brands to remain relevant and exciting in diverse contexts.

"I truly believe that there are moments I can really tap into unconscious feelings within somebody. And if I can do that… you're gonna walk away from that experience and say that was a great night. I don't know why, but it was just special." - Michelangelo L’Acqua

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.

Connect with Michaelangelo:

• LinkedIn: ttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelangelo-lacqua/

• Starwood Hotels: https://www.starwoodhotels.com/

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

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

I’ve had over 240 conversations on this show with some of the sharpest minds in Hospitality - hotel owners, developers, designers, brand leaders, operators, and entrepreneurs. And most of those episodes just… sit there. They get published, they get a moment, and then they disappear into the feed.

That didn’t sit right. So we went back and refreshed the show. New artwork. Better descriptions. Timestamps and chapters so you can jump to the part that matters to you. If you’ve been to the YouTube channel lately, you’ve probably noticed.

But more than the visual refresh, it got me thinking about which conversations have stuck with me the most. Not just the popular ones (though some of those are on this list) - the ones that changed how I think about this industry.

Here are seven I’d point anyone to, whether you’ve heard them or not.

What’s Happening Right Now

Saxton Sharad - Transforming Hospitality for Millennials

Just dropped this week. Saxton is building Hideaway Inns around an idea that most of the industry still hasn’t caught up to: the next generation of travelers doesn’t want more amenities. They want less friction and more authenticity. His innkeeper model is one of the most interesting things I’ve heard in 243 episodes.

Isaac Collazo - What Hotel Data Reveals About the Future

Isaac leads research at STR, which means he sees the numbers before anyone else does. This conversation is about what the data is actually telling us - not the headlines, but the underlying shifts in how people travel, where they stay, and what they’re willing to pay for. If you make decisions in this industry, this one’s required listening.

The Hospitality Insiders

Kristen Conry - What Marriott’s Design Leader Knows About Generosity in Hospitality

Kristen oversees design direction across Marriott’s portfolio, which means she sees where the entire industry is heading before anyone else does. This conversation got into how generosity shows up in design decisions - not the obvious stuff, but the choices that make a guest feel something without knowing why. One of the smartest people I’ve had on the show.

Marc Bromley - Leadership Lessons from Four Seasons

Marc spent decades building one of the most recognized Hospitality brands in the world. This conversation is a masterclass in what it actually looks like to lead with care at scale - not just as a talking point, but as a business strategy. One of the most-watched episodes on the channel for good reason.

The Big Names You Might Have Missed

Will Guidara - Unreasonable Hospitality

If you’ve read the book, you know Will’s philosophy. But this conversation went somewhere different. We talked about why the little moments - the ones that don’t scale and don’t show up on a P&L - are actually the ones that define whether a guest comes back. This is still the episode I send to people who ask me what this show is about.

David Allen - Getting Things Done in Hospitality

Yes, that David Allen. We sat down and talked about how the GTD framework applies to an industry where your to-do list changes every five minutes. If you’re someone who feels like you’re always behind - and let’s be honest, that’s most of us in this business - this one will reframe how you think about your day.

Amanda Knox - Overcoming the Limitations of Your Circumstances

This is the episode that surprises people when they see it on the list. Amanda Knox on a Hospitality podcast. But this conversation is about what it means to show up for other people when you have every reason not to. While she was in prison, Amanda became an unofficial translator, helping other inmates read their court documents and write letters home. That’s Hospitality in its purest form. This one will challenge your definition of what this industry is really about.

The show is 243 episodes deep and closing in on 250. I’m not slowing down. But I am getting more intentional about who I talk to and why - and about making sure these conversations don’t just live in a feed. They deserve better than that. So do the people who gave me their time.

If any of these resonate, share them with someone in your network who needs to hear them. And if you’re working on something in Hospitality - a development, a renovation, a brand, a business challenge - and you want to talk it through with someone who’s been in this industry for 30 years, I’m always up for a real conversation. Just hit reply.

Kindly,

Dan Ryan

Audio Links:

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

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

Episode Transcript

What does hospitality truly mean in today’s world?

In this episode of Defining Hospitality, Dan Ryan welcomes Saxton Sharad, the founder and CEO of Revival Hotels and Hideaway Inns. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Saxton shares his journey and insights on transforming the guest experience, catering to the evolving needs of millennials and Gen Z travelers, and redefining what it means to be hospitable.

Takeaways:

• The true meaning of hospitality is getting a break. Saxton defines hospitality as providing a break from daily life, allowing guests to live authentically and leave their stresses behind, even if only for a moment.

• Catering to younger generations with authenticity. Saxton highlights the growing trend of micro vacations among millennials and Gen Zs and how Hideaway Inns are uniquely positioned to cater to these shorter, more frequent leisure experiences.

• Innovation leads to improved guest experience. Frictionless check-ins and the concept of invisible hospitality ensure guests can maximize their leisure time without unnecessary interruptions or delays.

• The role of an innkeeper. Saxton emphasizes the importance of an on-site innkeeper who serves as a local ambassador, enhancing the guest experience by providing personalized recommendations.

• Tying together sustainability and local engagement. Hideaway Inns contribute to local communities by partnering with local charities and promoting regional businesses, reinforcing their commitment to sustainable and socially responsible tourism.

• Localizing loyalty and recognition. The growth model of Hideaway focuses on building a strong regional presence, initially concentrating on the Northeast to foster brand loyalty.

• Every hotel gets a personal touch. Each Hideaway Inn is uniquely designed, with rooms featuring bespoke elements, vintage artifacts, and local arts, offering guests a truly immersive and memorable stay.

“ I don't care how talented you are or how much money you have in your pocket, you cannot be good at everything. Step into what you're good at, find that strength, and live that strength.” - Saxton Sharad

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.

Connect with Saxton:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saxton-sharad-cha-6642a49

• Revival Hotels: https://www.revivalhotels.com

• Hideaway Inns: https://www.hideawayinns.com

🏨✨ Defining Hospitality is Sponsored by BERMANFALK

https://www.bermanfalk.com/

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