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.

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.

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.

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

Procurement, project management, and momentum

A front-row reflection on why aligning early around Budget + Schedule, and then selectively pulling forward the right long-lead decisions, reduces risk and creates real momentum on projects.

👉 Read here:

2. The Human Side of Hospitality (Podcast)

Chelsea on people, care, and why this industry still matters

A reminder that for all the talk of systems, scale, and efficiency, hospitality is still a human business.

Stories over process. Presence over polish.

🎧 Listen here:

3. When AI Becomes the Gatekeeper

Why story is becoming a real distribution advantage

As AI increasingly shapes how travel decisions get made, clarity, narrative, and trust matter more than ever. This one reframed how I think about content, context, and hospitality’s next chapter.

👉 Read here:

4. Lead With the “B” of F&B

Why food and beverage can be accretive, not a drag

A takeaway from ALIS Design+ that challenged conventional underwriting: when done with intention, F&B isn’t an amenity. It’s the opening move. Energy, place-making, and repeat local traffic pull rates and shape brand gravity.

👉 Read here:

5. We’re Almost 100 Days from Memorial Day

Are your outdoor spaces working hard enough this summer?

Pools, patios, rooftops, and courtyards are often the fastest way to:

• Increase dwell time

• Drive F&B spend

• Improve guest memory (and rates)

If you’re thinking about outdoor ROI this season, I’d start with teams who do this exceptionally well, in alphabetical order:

Business & Pleasure

Dedon

Gloster

Houe

Tribu

Happy to help think it through or make introductions

The conversation was practical, honest, and deeply aligned with what I see on real projects every day.

What I appreciated most was how consistently the panel came back to the same core idea:

Get the right people involved earlier.

Start with what Nick aptly called “the BS” - Budget and Schedule.

That alone would be a solid takeaway.

But listening, and then talking with owners, designers, PMs, and procurement teams afterward, it reaffirmed for me that there’s a second layer to this conversation that doesn’t always get said out loud.

Start With “BS” (Budget + Schedule). Then Go One Step Further.

The panel did an excellent job reinforcing why early procurement and PM involvement matters:

• Realistic budgets

• Honest schedules

• Fewer surprises

• Better risk mitigation

Everyone agreed that bringing procurement in early helps validate pricing, manage expectations, and avoid painful late-stage resets.

All true.

But here’s the question I kept coming back to:

What if some of the longest-lead FF&E items should come on even earlier than we’re comfortable with?

Specifically the items that are almost always the longest lead on a project:

• Casegoods and seating

• Lighting

• Flooring, sometimes - depends on the type of material specified.

In lifestyle and luxury projects, these are often the critical path items. Casegoods and seating in particular are frequently the second-largest check written on a project, right behind the checks with the extra zeros sent to the project’s GC.

So why do we still treat them like something that has to wait?

The “Fast-Track” Opportunity That Is Almost Always Missed

What we’ve seen, repeatedly, is that selectively fast-tracking long-lead FF&E can materially de-risk a project and significantly improve returns to the capital stack.

On average, bringing those items on earlier can save 11 to 22 weeks, and sometimes even more, on a project schedule.

Even if you discount that and assume you only save 8 weeks, the math gets interesting very quickly.

A simple, conservative, example (nota bene - I’m not a finance guy):

• 200-room hotel

• $225 ADR

• 70% occupancy

• $25 rate lift driven by renovation

• Rooms returned to the rental pool 8 weeks earlier

That could be conservatively almost $700,000 in incremental revenue returned to the property purely from time saved.

And that’s before considering:

• Leverage

• NOI capitalization

• Speed to “stabilization”

• Downstream impact on valuation

In many cases, that return is 5 to 10 times what a team might save by squeezing these long-lead items through a traditional competitive bid process.

For these long-lead items, especially casegoods and seating, the project already knows the budget. Share it. Give the greenlight. Design and build to it. Don’t exceed it. And unleash the returns to the capital stack on the project.

If you accelerate a project by six months on an 18 to 24 month timeline, the upside compounds even further.

This Isn’t About Skipping Process

To be very clear, this is not a critique of the traditional process.

Project teams are built this way for good reasons, and we are highly effective. This approach also does not work for every project, in fact I posit that it doesn’t work for most projects. If I were to guess, maybe 5-10% of Luxury & Lifestyle renovations. Some ownership groups, REITs, and capital partners require competitive bids, and have other by-laws and convenants that cannot be altered.

The real question is at what opportunity cost?

The types of projects this works for:

• Schedule-driven renovations: start construction in San Francisco on Super Bowl Monday and reopen just before the World Cup comes to town this summer.

• Assets where time-to-revenue materially outweighs line-item optimization

It’s worth asking a different question:

Have we considered a single-source, fast-track strategy for our longest-lead items?

When the right partners are involved early, with transparency around budget, schedule, and expectations, this approach doesn’t increase risk:

It reallocates RISK earlier, when teams still have room to maneuver, and allows you to work with more partners that you know, like, and trust.

Proof From the Field

At BERMANFALK, we’ve now executed a handful of projects this way over the past couple of years, and the results have been remarkable.

From the moment ownership gave the greenlight to:

• Project Managment

• Design and Procurement

• Preconstruction

• Model room kickoff

To the moment the last containers of rollout furniture are being delivered, the total timeline was under one year.

That includes:

• Model room

• Production

• Full rollout

• Deliveries to Hawaii, the West Coast, and East Coast of the United States

It does not change production time.

It does not eliminate the time spent making sawdust.

What it does eliminate is unnecessary waiting between decisions and allows for compressed approval times.

Why This Panel Lit Me Up

This panel was deeply aligned with something I care about: I love connecting people.

But what lights me up even more is shortening journeys.

Shortening the journey of a project.

Shortening the journey from capital deployed to revenue realized.

Shortening the journey for owners carrying risk longer than they need to.

Talking with ALIS and ALIS Design+ attendees about how BERMANFALK has approached certain projects this way, the reaction was consistent: curiosity, excitement, and relief that someone was willing to rethink the sequence.

Not to blow things up.

But to make projects move faster, smarter, with fewer surprises and less risk.

Final Thought From the Front Row

This panel reinforced something I’ve come to believe strongly:

Great projects don’t just manage risk.

They front-load intelligence.

When teams align early around “BS”, and then selectively pull forward the right long-lead decisions, they don’t just avoid problems.

They create momentum.

If you’re curious what this can look like in practice, I’m happy to share more. I’ve got a presentation that walks through the approach, the math, and the trade-offs.

And if nothing else, it’s a reminder that oftentimes the fastest way to reduce risk is to stop waiting.

Food & Beverage is no longer an accessory. It’s the opening move.

The New Brands, New Players panel reinforced a shift I’ve felt building for a while. A few speakers didn’t just talk about it, they put real evidence behind it. In doing so, they exposed how traditional hotel funding and valuation models are making this trend harder than it needs to be.

Start With the “B”

What stood out most was how deliberately Ryan Diggins (The Ramble, Denver, and now Municipal Grand in Savannah) and Sam Bakhshandehpour framed their thinking.

Not: How do we bolt on F&B?

But: What happens if the bar, café, or restaurant is the reason the hotel exists?

At The Ramble, Ryan didn’t treat F&B as an amenity or a loss leader. He treated it as the living room for the neighborhood, and let the rooms follow.

I asked Ryan directly about the elephant in the room.

Traditional hotel underwriting still treats F&B as a valuation drag.

He didn’t dodge it.

Yes, conventional lenders get uncomfortable.

Yes, rooms still drive most hotel financial models.

But here’s the counterpunch.

There are times when The Ramble’s rates are scratching at the Four Seasons Denver, just down the street.

Not because the rooms were bigger.

But because the experience was.

And a huge part of that experience came from leading with the B, specifically Death & Co, whose gravity created real tailwinds for the entire property.

That’s why Ryan and David Kaplan (of Death & Co and a past Defining Hospitality guest - way back in Episode #036) decided to launch Midnight Auteur, a hotel management company that leads with F&B instead of apologizing for it.

That’s not theory.

That’s market proof.

F&B as Brand Gravity

Sam B took it even further.

What the José Andrés Group has built, among many other things, isn’t restaurants in hotels.

It’s hospitality that sometimes happens to include rooms.

Breakfast.

Lunch.

Dinner.

Lobby bar.

Rooftop.

In-room dining.

All “six pillars”. All intentional. PS - when Sam said there were 6 pillars, I felt a little overwhelm - I thought 3 or max 4 pillars are all that are needed when trying to communicate clarity and brands . But then I heard him say that the 6 pillars are the 6 potential F&B Pillars that can exist within a hotel.

When done well, F&B doesn’t just support ADR. It pulls it.

The takeaway wasn’t that every hotel needs a celebrity chef: nota been: Jose is famous, and a force for good, but the 6 pillars can be approached by any Hosptiality Entrepreneur.

It was that energy, place-making, and repeat local traffic are now core brand infrastructure for certain types of properties. Especially those willing to lean into their inner independent rebel.

A Trailborn Shoutout (and Why It Matters)

I also want to call out Laron Turley and the Trailborn platform.

Trailborn is doing something quietly radical.

They control their own brand standards while operating under Marriott’s umbrella.

That balance, owning the ethos while leveraging distribution, is rare.

BERMANFALK is proud to have worked on part of this project with Laron and the team on Trailborn Surf & Sound, and you can feel it in real time. Design freedom. Local specificity. A brand narrative that doesn’t feel templated.

That autonomy shows up in the guest experience, and ultimately, in the numbers.

The Bigger Pattern I’m Seeing

Across the panel, from wellness-forward concepts to outdoor hospitality to chef-led platforms, the throughline wasn’t size or scale.

It was conviction.

A strong point of view.

A clear audience.

Local relevance.

Experiences locals actually want to be part of.

Which brings me back to why this session mattered.

Why This Resonated With Me

This panel reinforced something I’ve come to believe more deeply over time.

The most compelling hospitality brands don’t start with flags or standards.

They start with people, place, and purpose, and then figure out how to finance it.

Yes, AI may soon decide which hotel gets surfaced.

But it’s still humans who decide where the energy is.

Tell the story.

Be specific.

Don’t let legacy models, or algorithms, gatekeep you.

And more often than not, that energy starts at the bar

I love these conferences and I love sharing them with all of you, from the front row.

Yes, there was plenty of talk about performance culture, financial discipline, rising costs, and the reality of running hotels in a predictably unpredictable market. That’s table stakes at ALIS.

But then the conversation turned to AI, and that’s where it got interesting.

AI Isn’t Just Tech. It’s the New Front Desk.

Allison made a point that’s still rattling around in my head: AI is about to become the gatekeeper of travel decisions.

Not in a sci-fi way. In a very practical, very human one.

Travel agents used to decide where you stayed.

Then OTAs.

Now: conversational AI.

Instead of scrolling endless options, travelers will ask a question, like Craig posed:

“Where should I stay if I want a hotel with a great pool for my kids, walkable restaurants, and a calm vibe?”

And the answer won’t be a list of 50 hotels.

It’ll be one or two.

That’s a seismic shift.

When AI Chooses, Narrative Matters

Here’s the takeaway that matters for owners, operators, and designers alike:

If AI is doing the choosing, your story becomes your shelf space.

Craig and Allison weren’t talking about chasing shiny tech. They were talking about fundamentals:

• Clear, accurate property descriptors

• Consistency across websites, OTAs, and review platforms

• Content written to answer questions, not just list amenities

“Pool” isn’t enough anymore.

Neither is “great location.”

AI needs context.

Guests need meaning.

And the hotels that win will be the ones whose story is coherent, specific, and trustworthy - because AI rewards clarity the same way humans do.

A Personal Realization (and a Little Origin Story)

Here’s the part that hit closer to home.

I started my podcast because I genuinely love doing it, the conversations, the curiosity, the humanity of this industry.

But there was another reason, too.

Early on, I ran into a fair amount of industry gatekeeping. I was told, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, that I couldn’t moderate panels, emcee events, or give a keynote because I was a vendor, not a sponsor. Or not the right kind of participant. Or not wearing the right badge.

That never sat right with me.

So I built my own table.

The podcast became a way to moderate the conversations I cared about, talk with incredible people, and share their lived experiences with others, especially those who can’t attend ALIS, BDNY, HD Expo, or any number of great industry gatherings.

At its core, the pod is about shortening journeys, giving people access to ideas, stories, and perspectives without needing the right invite, budget, or title.

Listening to Craig and Allison last week reframed that for me in a new way.

The podcast isn’t just something I enjoy.

It’s a way to help tell better stories, with thoughtful, curious humans, inside one of the most relationship-driven industries out there.

In a world where AI increasingly decides who gets surfaced, long-form conversations, nuance, and human context aren’t indulgences.

They’re inputs.

Two Tracks, Not One

Another moment that stood out: this isn’t an either/or transition.

Aimbridge isn’t abandoning paid search or traditional distribution. They’re running two tracks at once:

• The proven, performance-driven channels that still work today

• The emerging AI-driven discovery paths that will matter tomorrow

I’ve seen this movie before.

Digital didn’t kill sales teams.

OTAs didn’t eliminate brands.

The winners were the ones who learned to operate in parallel.

The “2×2” That Stuck With Me

One more idea I really liked - and it didn’t have anything to do with tech.

Aimbridge’s 2×2 mentoring program: every leader is responsible for mentoring two people below them, and helping identify who’s ready for the next step.

Simple. Scalable. Human.

In an industry obsessed with systems, dashboards, and tools, it was a reminder that talent compounds when someone actually takes ownership of developing people - not just managing them.

AI may change distribution.

It doesn’t replace apprenticeship.

Culture Is the Multiplier

What tied the whole conversation together was people.

Performance culture.

Curiosity.

Mentorship.

Developing talent that can think differently - and challenge leadership when needed.

AI may be the gatekeeper.

But humans still write the story.

And if hotels are ultimately in the business of care, memory, and experience, then the way we describe, document, and communicate those experiences is no longer marketing fluff.

It’s operational strategy.

The Front-Row Takeaway

As AI quietly starts shaping where people travel, stay, and spend time, the competitive advantage won’t come from louder ads or more channels.

It will come from:

• Better storytelling

• Cleaner data

• More intentional narratives

• Teams curious enough to keep learning

In a world where machines answer the question, the hotels that tell the clearest story get chosen.

That was the real lesson from the front row.

Here is a quick Q&A style recap of the quarter, the content that resonated, and a few signals worth carrying into the new year.

How did Q4 Feel from your seat?

Measured optimism.

Projects did not disappear, but they got sharper. Owners are still investing, designers are still designing, and brands and operators are still pushing for differentiation. The difference is that everyone is asking better questions about durability, lifecycle cost, and whether a space actually earns its keep.

One theme I am particularly excited about heading into next year is “speed to market”. At BERMANFALK, we should have three case studies where, from the moment ownership said “go” to their project team, we will have delivered a model room and all rollout furniture for the guest rooms in under one year. Historically, that process takes closer to eighteen to twenty four months. This is a different way of thinking about a project, especially the critical path - long lead items. And it’s not without challenges. There’s a reason why running projects in a “typical” process, has evolved the way it has.

What I’ve learned is that sometimes, not always, the cart can be better in front of the horse. Thank you to the teams who “Dare Greatly” to think differently.

What stood out this quarter?

A few highlights worth calling out:

Ideas and media

Emceeing Radical Innovation in New York was definitely a highlight and reinforced something I keep seeing. Hospitality’s best ideas come from overlap. Design, tech, operations, and lived experience all informing one another. And often times the best ideas through the eyes and minds of unencumbered students

Agency 967

We brought Business and Pleasure Co. into the Agency 967 East and West family, and it immediately clicked. Their parasols and outdoor furniture combine strong design with hospitality grade performance, exactly where outdoor spaces are headed. And their dedication to design and durability fits incredibly well with our other best-in-industry outdoor lines.

Conversations

Across podcasts, Symposiums, dinners, holiday fetes, and one on ones, the tone shifted. Less hype. More substance. More honesty about constraints, and more creativity within them.

What signals are worth paying attention to?

Much of this is informed by what I have been hearing consistently on recent earnings calls and in industry commentary.

Capital is still flowing, but it is more selective. Renovations are happening, but they are targeted. Guestrooms, outdoor spaces, and high impact public areas are being prioritized over broad, sweeping rebrands.

There is also a noticeable shift toward ROI scrutiny. Durability, lifecycle cost, operational efficiency, and speed to execution are no longer secondary considerations. They are part of the design brief, whether stated explicitly or not.

From the procurement side, expectations remain high even as budgets stay tight. Teams are pushing for clarity earlier in the process, fewer surprises, and partners who understand cost pressure and lead times before issues arise. That theme keeps coming up again and again.

Add in ongoing uncertainty around tariffs and input costs, and the takeaway becomes fairly clear.

Thoughtful spaces matter.

Products that last matter.

Teams that collaborate early matter.

Even some of the more compelling scenes and reporting coming out of Front Row lately reinforce this same idea. The work getting attention now is not loud. It is smart.

Looking ahead, especially through the lens of earnings commentary and operator behavior, a few things feel likely.

• Expect disciplined CapEx, not a freeze.

• Expect more focus on refreshes that directly move the guest needle.

• Expect higher expectations for partners to reduce friction, not add it.

For designers and architects, this is not a constraint. It is an opportunity to let your skills shine.

What content resonated most in Q4?

A few pieces clearly struck a nerve this year.

Substack Reads:

Podcast Episodes:

In cased you missed them here were some of the standout podcast episodes from this quarter (One of them was a Radical Innovation winner this year!)

These were not popular because they were flashy. They worked because they were relevant and timely.

What am I most grateful for?

My family and our health.

This industry.

The designers who care deeply.

The operators who sweat the details.

The owners and their appointed agents who take long views.

The reps, manufacturers, and partners who keep showing up.

Hospitality remains a human business. It is not always efficient, but it is always meaningful.

Looking ahead

I am excited about the year ahead. More thoughtful partnerships. More honest conversations. More work that blends design, durability, and purpose.

If you are navigating these same questions, or seeing different signals, I would love to hear from you. Many of the best podcast conversations start with, “We are trying to figure this out.”

Wishing you a restorative holiday season and a clear eyed start to the new year.

Bring on 2026,

Dan Ryan

It moves from room to room - living room, kids’ rooms, wherever the energy happens to be that season. It’s been the backdrop for play, arguments, late-night talks, and quiet mornings. At this point, it’s part of the family.

Aliya’s mom picked out that rug for me in Pakistan, and it was carried halfway around the world. Whether she realizes it or not, Aliya’s been woven into my daily life ever since.

So when I heard she was getting the Platinum Circle Award, our industry’s version of a lifetime achievement honor - it felt like watching that rug lift off the floor and fly.

I wasn’t in the room that night, that’s why this is “Notes From The Front Row(…ish), I wanted to be there, and I’m still bummed I couldn’t make it.

But I did the next best thing: I hunted her down for a recording of her speech. I even sent her this, in Urdu, just to make sure the message landed:

براہِ کرم پلاٹینم سرکل ایوارڈز میں آپ کی تقریر کی ویڈیو مجھے بھیج دیں.

The internet assures me this translates to:

“Please send me the video of your speech at the Platinum Circle Awards.”

(I’m still trusting but not verifying exactly what it says)

And listening to it: her voice, her gratitude, her stories; it felt exactly like what that rug has always represented to me: a place where people gather, laugh, argue, support each other, and keep coming back, year after year.

The First Threads

I honestly can’t remember if I met Aliya first at 1111 Westchester, at the Starleigh Building in Chelsea, or somewhere else. What I do remember is this:

Her warmth.

Her humor.

Her presence.

That immediate internal click: This is someone I will know forever.

The titles and promotions, and big projects came later. The title “Vice President of Global Design Strategy and Product Development” at Marriott International is impressive, and true, but for me, the headline was always simpler:

This is one of my people.

From there, the threads multiplied: shared projects, ridiculous travel stories, some parties, a Thanksgiving or (two?), the rug from her mom… all these little fibers twisting into a relationship neither of us could’ve predicted back in early 2000s.

The Long Road in a Volatile Business

Our industry is not for the faint of heart. It’s high-touch, capital-intensive, emotionally draining, logistically insane - and that’s on a good day.

Over the last 20+ years, we’ve all lived through:

• Acquisitions

• Brand launches

• Financial crises

• A global pandemic

• Flights that never should’ve taken off

• Installs that never should’ve finished on time (yet somehow did)
  

But if you stay long enough, something subtle happens. The game shifts from:

“How do I take the next step?”

to

“Who am I building this with?”

All the “business porn” I’ve read - Carnegie, Covey, Collins, Guidara, or Smart, etc. pick your guru - circles the same truth:

Stay focused.

Play the long game.

Relationships compound.

Aliya’s career is Exhibit A. She didn’t just stay in hospitality; she stayed in relationships with people. She nurtured her “pod”, expanded it, and never lost the core curiosity and care that made her fun to sit next to, long before anyone handed her an award.

Why Her Platinum Circle Moment Hit Different

People don’t get Platinum Circle because they’re technically good at their job. That’s table stakes.

Aliya got there because of how she moves through the world:

• She leads with thoughtfulness, not ego.

• She cares about imprint more than footprint.

• She geeks out equally over a matchbook, a rug, a chandelier, or an opportunity to give a friend a shot at something new. (No need to say “don’t fuck it up.” I just know that’s not a viable outcome.)

• She treats design as a form of love - a chance to give people an experience they’ll actually carry with them.

When she talks about hospitality, she doesn’t start with a layouts, a lobby or a room type. She talks about people.

Her mother remembering every guest’s preferences, cousins eating cross-legged on a rug at her grandmother’s house, the joy of watching travelers move through a space you helped shape.

When she talks about brands, she doesn’t start with guidelines.

She starts with quirks.

With personality.

With the specific guest who actually shows up at the door.

Thirty siblings in one portfolio - each with their own language, their own culture, their own weirdness that deserves to be celebrated, not scrubbed.

Watching her acceptance speech ex post facto, I heard all of it - gratitude, humor, story after story. But underneath, I heard something else: the continuity of two plus decades of work, friendship, and shared history.

All the unseen threads that made that moment possible.

The Quiet Magic of Staying in the Weave

Here’s the thing nobody tells you early on:

If you hang around this industry long enough, you get to watch your friends turn into the very leaders you once tried not to embarrass yourself in front of.

It’s surreal.

And it’s a gift.

Some now run brands.

Some run portfolios.

Some run firms.

Some stepped out to create something new.

But the “pod” - the one she referenced - is still there.

A kind of invisible group chat that outlives logos and org charts.

Her Platinum Circle honor wasn’t just about her.

It was about that whole generation that came up through their Starwood origins, doing something very different.

A recognition that long-term commitment in a volatile industry is still worth celebrating.

Planting New Trees, Spinning New Threads

I keep coming back to a line I love, and repeat often:

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.”

Same goes for relationships.

Same goes for careers.

Same goes for deciding, “This is my industry. These are my people.”

We’ve hit the stage where we’re not just the scrappy ones begging for a shot….well some of us still are ;)

We’re the ones who can open doors, make introductions, vouch for someone, give a young designer or strategic thinker their first platform.

Aliya does that naturally. She’s mentored me in this respect, whether she realized it or not, on how to be damn good at this and have extreme intention and joy while doing it.

Her Platinum Circle win is proof that you can play at the highest level and still pull others up with you.

We owe that to the next wave - the assistants, project managers, coordinators, junior designers, emerging operators, and young hoteliers standing where we once stood: starstruck, overstimulated, just hoping someone remembers their name.

A Note to Aliya — From One Rug to Another

So, Aliya:

I’m sorry I wasn’t in the room that night.

I wish I could’ve been on my feet, clapping like an idiot, yelling your name while security gave me the side-eye.

But I did chase down your speech.

I listened to it. I watched it.

And like the rug your mom chose for me, it transported me.

Back to Westchester.

Back to the Starleigh Building.

Back to some parties and Thanksgivng(s?)

Back to when none of us had titles, but all of us had hope.

I am proud of you.

I am grateful for you.

And I’m honored that some of the threads in your story are tangled up with mine.

Here’s to the magic carpet ride so far, and to wherever it takes us next.

You truly are the Great Khan.

— Dan Ryan

Here’s a gander way back at episode #35

Audio:

This session was a tug-of-war between consistency and uncertainty. If the renovation cycle doesn’t change and adapt anytime soon, the outcomes will be “like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.”

Consistency is what brands and owners want to sell; uncertainty is what tariffs, interest rates, labor, and supply chains keep handing them. You can read my thoughts on those in last week’s post here:

The interesting part was where everyone landed: speed is back, lenders need educating, capex discipline has to grow up, and guest satisfaction is finally steering more of the renovation agenda.

What changed: ❤️GUEST LOVE❤️(or more accurately, HATE) is finally steering the spend!!

The line that stuck with me: brands (Hilton was named specifically) are weighing guest satisfaction more heavily when they prioritize and pace PIPs.

Think “curated PIPs” tied to stay scores and inspections instead of rigid cycles. If you’re performing, you can flex timelines and focus on the items that actually move guests into the “intent-to-return” column. Guest surveys finally matter again - HOORAY!

Remind me to tell you a very cringe-worthy story about me filling out a guest satisfaction survey in Orlando the next time you see me. It’s too cringy to share here.

Doug Dreher called out Hilton’s approach: if your stay score and Quality Assurance show you care, “they’ll give you a little more timeline on the fixed renovation cycle.”

Suzanne Saunders added that another brand is moving to a good-better-best numeric model, so an Omaha hotel and a Miami twin aren’t treated like clones.

Same flag, different wear patterns, different PIPs. That’s sanity.

Why that matters: We’ve lived in an era of almost six years of deferred capex while guests continue to pay 2019-plus rates (although my last post shows ADR is now softening). A brand stance that marries QA and stay scores to PIP timing is a welcome correction in my book.

Capex reality: 4% isn’t enough anymore

The panel didn’t mince words. “Four percent is way too low,” Dreher said.

Set the baseline at 6% and increase it to 8% for big-box full-service once you include chillers, boilers, transformers, FF&E, and fan-coil systems.

That’s a sea change owners should embrace if we want to stop patching as an industry and start performing to win the guest’s love back. Sustainability measures didn’t come up in this part. Still, as JoAnna Abrams mentioned earlier in the conference, this is where CapEx, potentially sprinkled with some C-Pace Financing and new systems, can improve the bottom line through energy efficiency and increase cash-on-cash returns. It will also help, as she showed, boost group sales to the property.

One practical anecdote I loved:

Midwest airport Marriott: converting fan-coil units “in less than a day,” container by container, year after year:

Guest dissatisfaction skyrocketed in fall and spring because the fan coils only kicked on when it was too hot or too cold—summer or winter—leading to a rise in intent to return.

One of my favorite lines was used: How do you eat the elephant? One bite (or container) at a time, there’s no need to invest everything on MEP at once; you can space out big-ticket items.

Non-traditional lenders: try to teach them hospitality’s feverish cadence early

We heard a painful example: a lender wouldn’t release the first 50% of funding, intended for FF&E and other deposits, until the product was in-country.

Of course, you need the deposit to purchase and ship it. Draws took 45-60 days. Net result: schedules blew up and had to be redone.

Three takeaways:

• Vet your lender for hospitality experience. If not, define reality in the loan agreement—especially the draw mechanics and documentation.
  

• Build working capital into the budget for the revenue dip and lagging draws; renovations aren’t traditional refis.
  

Educate early: show the business plan, ramp assumptions, displacement analysis, and why the timing of deposits matters to land goods on time.

Schedules and speed: velocity is alpha again

For a decade, owners optimized for consistency. Now, as Kevin King put it, “speed is becoming a factor again.”

Practical speed plays from the panel:

• Renovate in low-occupancy windows, not the cycle’s preferred date. Suzanne is pushing from November to March with three floors at a time to maintain momentum to avoid displacing heads in beds.
  

• Pad your lead times. A recent “typhoon in China” story delaying both lighting and casegoods is the new normal. If the spec says 20-24 weeks, plan for 28-30.
  

Bring contractors into design to reality-check pricing early; eliminate rework loops before they metastasize.

Brand flexibility ≠ brand drift

Yes, flexibility is up. But that doesn’t mean settle. It means negotiate the scope where it doesn’t drive RevPAR or guest love—and redeploy spend where it does.

Examples from the room:

• Keep tubs in heavy international markets, waive the shower-conversion blanket, and expand the bar that actually throws off revenue.

Localize where it counts (artwork, signage, small “you are here” moments) while meeting the brand’s core promise.

Transparency is a force multiplier

Suzanne’s method is the one every owner should steal: share the budget up front with designers, purchasers, and manufacturers.

Break it down by line (“sofa = X,” “lighting = Y”), set a real target, and let experts trade across the package.

Also, ask manufacturers to value-engineer the design with you - they know their cost drivers better than any of us.

Do that, and your schedule compresses.

In my experience, putting the numbers on the table on day one can shrink the timeline from 18-24 months down to around 12.

And if all you save is eight weeks? That’s still 5-10x faster revenue back to investors than the old way of designing in the dark and repricing, value engineering, etc. which leads to delays.

It won’t fit every project, but when it does, it’s magic.

Case studies forthcoming—I’m in the middle of a couple of projects like this right now.

A few quick hitters to close

• Brand waivers: Be selective and meet in person. “If someone emailed me, I said no. If we met and they explained, we found a path,” Suzanne said. The panel’s hit rate: around 75% when the case is clear. Human interaction matters!
  

• Displacement analysis beats the calendar: schedule to occupancy, not to PIP anniversaries.
  

• Scope swaps with purpose: remove low-ROI scope to fund revenue drivers or address guest dissatisfaction.

Plan for volatility: tariffs, labor, storms, ports—your schedule needs slack by design.

The throughline

Renovation ROI in 2025 isn’t just about what you buy; it’s how fast you get back to selling nights guests actually want.

Raise the capex reserve. Tie scope to guest love. Educate your lender. Share the budget.

And run, Forrest, run!

If 2020-2024 was the era of deferred capex, 2026 and beyond needs to be the era of disciplined velocity.

The first answer he got: “Laxative.”

Cue laughter. Then came “challenging,” “unclear,” “opportunity,” and “stuck.” That combination pretty much summed up the mood across two days at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge — equal parts anticipation and anxiety, ambition and backlog.

Day One: The Dealmakers — From NUGs to NRG

Stephanie Ricca from CoStar kicked off the conference by asking each brand development leader how they were feeling about 2025. The question drew polite chuckles, but the responses were telling.

“Optimistic,” said Hilton’s Christian Charnaux.

“Momentum,” said Hyatt’s Dan Hansen.

“Thankful,” said IHG’s Kevin Schramm.

And David Pepper from Choice summed it up best: “It’s been a year of delayed optimism — but we’re starting to see it now.”

The alphabet soup of growth acronyms got its own subplot. Hilton still talks about NUG—Net Unit Growth—while Hyatt has rebranded the same idea as NRG (eNeRGy), for Net Rooms Growth. “It’s the energy behind how we grow,” Hansen said, smiling. Energy beats units every time.

The panelists may use different acronyms, but the themes were consistent:

• A resilient pipeline fueled by conversions and new brands.

• Key money coming back into play.

• A surprisingly healthy sense of long-term confidence.

Pepper described Choice’s focus on “proven prototype, proven margin, proven exit,” while pointing to a quietly undersupplied market north of the border. “Canada is a big opportunity for us,” he said. “Double-digit RevPAR increases, and they’re not overbuilt.”

As the conversation turned to owner pain points, the mood stayed pragmatic. PIPs have been deferred since COVID, costs are up, and everyone’s underwriting is tighter—but there was a sense that the brands are meeting owners halfway.

“It’s a great time to be an owner,” Pepper said flatly. “Brands are putting in key money, and they’re motivated. We all win when assets upgrade.”

Hansen agreed, framing it as a long game: “If I’m an owner, I’m thinking five or ten years out—where do I want to be, and with whom? The right brand, in the right market, with the right story.”

The big story wasn’t just NUG or NRG—it was flexibility. Smaller footprints. More conversions. Brand extensions built for white space. Hilton launched its 25th brand, The Outset Collection, that morning. Wyndham introduced Dazzler Select, an economy lifestyle soft brand. Even IHG’s “micro-lifestyle” Ruby got a mention.

All of it added up to a collective message: growth is still happening, but in smarter, leaner ways.

Day Two: Speed Stats and Mood Swings

If Day One was about optimism, Day Two was about digestion, and maybe a little indigestion.

Harry Javer’s “laxative” opener got the room laughing, but the laughter faded as the data rolled in. Rod Clough of HVS urged the crowd to “seize the opportunity” in the overlooked corners of the market. “Buy the nine-and-a-half cap,” he said. “Transform the value. Up-brand. Be patient.”

Then Isaac Collazo from STR followed with a sobering line: “The industry is stuttering.”

Room demand has fallen for five straight months. ADR growth is below inflation. “Flat,” he said, “is the new up.”

JP Ford from Lodging Econometrics offered a counterbalance: the construction pipeline is still strong—just smaller. “We’re building more hotels with fewer rooms,” he said. “Renovations and conversions are where the action is.”

Andrea Grigg from CBRE delivered one of the more memorable slides of the week: EBITDA down 3.5%. “The wheels came off in Q2,” she said, but added, “Not everything is lost. The opportunities live in efficiency—in how you manage the fixed costs everyone else ignores.”

Then came economist Bernard Baumohl, who could’ve been mistaken for a stand-up comic if his topic weren’t so grim. “No recession,” he said. “Just chaos.” Tariffs, Treasury yields, shutdowns, stagflation threats—take your pick. It reminds me of a common Scott Galloway, “Prof. G” statement that - “The only adult in the room is the ten-year bond.” - he puts the odds of the bond vigilantes below driving up rates at 40%. So let’s all hope the 60% path takes hold.

Sustainability, Survival, and “Operators Crushing It”

The afternoon brought a reset in tone. Joanna Abrams of MindClick took the stage and reframed sustainability as a straight business play: “Energy costs are up, but efficiency is profit.” She pointed to $6 billion in C-PACE financing available for retrofits and noted that certified “rated” hotels are already winning more RFPs from corporate buyers. “Sustainability isn’t a box to check—it’s revenue protection.”

Cindy Estis Green followed with hard data from Kalibri Labs. Corporate and group travel are both down, she said, but extended stay remains a quiet outperformer. “The pain is evenly spread,” she noted. “But we’ve been through worse.”

Then came my favorite line of the conference. Lindsey Goedeker from Actabl looked straight at the audience and said: “Operators are crushing it.”

Even with top-line revenues down 15%, GOP margins were flat. “You’re pivoting,” she told them. “You’re finding the inflection points.” Her example: resorts cutting room labor costs by $14 per occupied room—saving roughly $300,000 a year without hurting guest experience. And as I always believe - you can’t change things without measuring them, so I’m guessing that Actabl provides some pretty detailed telemetry to the operators who are crushing it.

Tanya Venegas closed with a global snapshot: U.S. and Europe lagging the Middle East and Asia in profit flow-through, labor costs at 50%-plus of revenue, and utilities climbing fast. Her point: profitability now depends more on discipline than demand.

Unstuck

By the end of Day Two, the words “laxative,” “momentum,” and “resilient” had all made their rounds. But the throughline wasn’t about being stuck—it was about getting smarter.

Across two days, I heard data, strategy, and humor all orbit the same truth: we’re not growing the way we used to, but we’re still growing. Through conversions, through efficiency, through storytelling.

As Liam Brown and Craig Smith reminded everyone later that afternoon, hospitality’s biggest blind spot isn’t capital—it’s advocacy. “We don’t tell our story well enough,” Liam said. “We forget how much impact hotels have on communities.”

Maybe that’s the real lesson from the desert: the numbers matter, but the narrative matters more.

If “laxative” was the word of the week, maybe it fits. We’re clearing what’s been stuck—one deal, one pivot, and one story at a time.

It was my first time inside the tower. And as one of my all-time favorite Chicago movies is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I couldn’t help but feel like Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, with a front-row seat to hear about some pretty incredible projects.

It was one of those moments that reminded me why I love this industry — projects that span from Naples to Times Square to Park Avenue, but all tied together by design that balances imagination with practicality.

FWIW - I do feel like a little bit of a celebrity every time I go to Chicago - it’s cool having an Expressway named after me.

DLR Group: AC Naples

Rebecca Buchmeier and Hannah Koch shared the story of creating the first U.S. version of an AC “Resort” or “Retreat,” a project that challenged both the brand and the design team.

• They convinced Marriott to embrace green as a neutral, a bold departure from AC’s typical palette.

• They coordinated with a millworker in Bulgaria to deliver intricate wood ceilings and cypress-inspired details that run from lobby to rooftop bar.

Fun fact: after I interviewed Marriott’s Rado Ivanov, who’s from Bulgaria, Defining Hospitality briefly hit #1 in Bulgaria. I still owe his mom a thank you for listening!

The result? A property that feels true to the AC brand while also rooted in Naples - proof that even branded projects can carry a strong local narrative.

Gettys Group: Hilton Times Square

Chris McDonough and Matt Swope walked us through Gettys’ Hilton Times Square transformation, a space that needed to be both durable and theatrical.

They repositioned the hotel’s public areas as “a place in the clouds” above the chaos of Times Square, layering in Art Deco nods, lighting drama, and finishes tough enough for Manhattan’s guest behavior.

It was also a nice full-circle moment — Chris has been a guest on Defining Hospitality, and it was energizing to see his team’s work celebrated from the stage.

Pierre-Yves Rochon: Waldorf Astoria New York

Amy Jakubowski (also a past Defining Hospitality guest) presented PYR’s painstaking restoration of the Waldorf Astoria, where 1,400 rooms were reimagined as 375 guest rooms, suites, and branded residences.

The level of detail here is hard to overstate:

• Murals in the Silver Corridor were brought back to their original vibrancy.

• Artisans recreated moldings on-site in a dedicated workshop.

• The iconic Park Avenue clock was restored, anchoring the hotel’s reborn Peacock Alley.

And here’s where my personal note comes in: Chantell Walsh, from Strategic Hotels, recently gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of the Waldorf. To call it stunning would be an understatement. Seeing the craft, care, and reverence that PYR brought to the project in person made Amy’s presentation all the more powerful. The Waldorf doesn’t just bridge past and present — it proves that restoration can be a form of innovation.

Beyond the Projects

A quick shout-out to Tabitha Luciano, who moderated with poise and energy. Having done it myself last year, I know how deceptively hard it is to keep a panel on track while letting the magic unfold. She made it look easy.

Closing Thought

Whether it was convincing Marriott that green could be a neutral, finding joy in the chaos of Times Square, or restoring a landmark so lovingly that it feels brand new - these NEWH Chicago TopID projects showed that great design isn’t about choosing between artistry and pragmatism. It’s about delivering both.

And as Ferris reminded us: life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around at what these designers are creating, you might just miss it.

I made a TikTok over the summer, and I think, all things considered, it’s aged pretty well - in it, I said: “tariffs, schmariffs. Love them or hate them, the real issue isn’t the tariff itself - it’s the uncertainty.”

@thedailydanryanTariffs schmariffs. Just give us clarity so we can do business. 25 years. 50,000 hotel rooms. We adapt. #Tariffs #HospitalityLife #EntrepreneurTalk #FurnitureBusiness #GlobalSupplyChain #hospitalitydesign

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Running any business, let alone one with a global footprint, is extremely challenging. Add in tariff announcements and shifting “effective dates”... and suddenly the real challenge isn’t what the tariff is, but rather not knowing what it will be and when it will be implemented.

And before anyone explodes on me (like they did in the TikTok comments), let me be clear: I know how much these costs and uncertainties hurt. They are painful for entrepreneurs. My intention isn’t to minimize the effects of tariffs - they are serious. What I’m pointing to is that the uncertainty itself is often the heaviest weight. The uncertainty is the biggest fear for all of us. At this point, I could quote FDR, but I think you know where I’m going with this.

Here’s what that means on the ground:

• Hotel Developers and owners cannot plan capital allocations if they don’t know whether a 25%, 50%, or 100% tariff is forthcoming.
  

• Hotels already carry a higher risk in the real estate spectrum - needing ~20% returns to pencil. With high interest rates, labor shortages, and tariff uncertainty? That financially engineered math doesn’t math so easily, and proformas face a ton of headwinds.
  

• Specifiers, Suppliers, and purchasers are in limbo. Will it stack with existing country-wide duties? Do “on-water” shipments get exemptions? Will it only hit residential projects, not commercial projects? Nobody knows.
  

As my customs attorney put it:

“We don’t have more info than the tweets. We don’t know how they’ll be implemented, whether they stack, what items are impacted, or if there are exemptions. As soon as there’s a formal announcement, we’ll know more.”

That’s the frustrating part. It’s not an if problem. It’s a question of when and how much.

And it ties back to something I’ve written here before: there’s a wave of hotel renovations coming. We all feel it - they are sorely needed. But will the wave break in Q1 or Q4 or even further out? Which owners will have the capital to move first? Just like tariffs, the need is certain - the timing isn’t.

So my commitment is simple: I’ll use this space to cut through the noise where I can. Not to predict outcomes - nobody can - but to offer one more point of clarity in the thousand points of light everyone’s trying to navigate.

Because once certainty arrives - whether it’s tariffs or PIPs or interest rates, or lions, tigers, or bears - then we can plan. Until then?

As Gold Five keeps repeating to his team on the final run, “Stay on Target”.

As Jack White sings - “Steady as She Goes”.

More updates to follow.

There’s something energizing about being in the room when people are willing to tell the truth — especially in an industries that too often play it safe.

That’s what made the first-ever NEWH New England trade show so refreshing. The panel, moderated by , featured Diane Hang Nguyen from Highgate, David Shove-Brown from 3877 Design, and Andrew Ashley from AAmp Studio (Portland, Maine — the New England Portland). It wasn’t just a box-checking conversation. It was candid, raw, and at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

🎤 Real talk on design, development & the renovation wave

There were strong points made about the headwinds we’re all feeling — stalled capital projects, delayed PIPs, revenge travel tapering, high interest rates. But the throughline was this: a wave of renovation is coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not even Q1 - Q4 of next year. But soon. And those who are hanging on and nurturing relationships now will be first in line when the work hits.

Diane Nguyen cut straight to the reality operators face: not every building lets you follow the playbook.

She shared examples of a cinder block hotel, a Kimpton I believe, designed by Crème out of Brooklyn, where you can’t move walls, electrical, or plumbing. In those cases, brand standards don’t just slot in neatly. The designer’s role becomes one of creativity under constraint — using FF&E, millwork, or layout tricks to meet the intent of the standard without the cost of heavy construction.

As Diane put it, sometimes you have to embrace asymmetry or “distract” the eye so limitations feel like design moves rather than compromises. It’s about being pragmatic, resourceful, and cost-conscious while still delivering the branded experience guests expect.

🚫 Bashar declared war on the “copy-paste hotel”

This was my favorite moment.

Bashar went on a tear about how hotel design has become too safe and too same. You know the look: the Softbranded-Independent-core aesthetic that gets copied, pasted, and rolled out again and again in wildly different places. It’s all blending together.

His message was clear:

“If you’re designing a coastal hotel, don’t just reach for a ‘beach palette.’ A beach in Oregon doesn’t look like a beach in North Carolina. So why should the hotels?”

He shared how his team once collected actual driftwood and materials from a shoreline to build a palette from the place itself. Design, he argued, should be site-specific, story-driven, and unapologetically local. When we default to generic, we lose the soul of the place — and the guest knows it.

He’s been over the word “authentic” for quite some time - now don’t copy and paste around him.

He wants designers to earn the right to tell a place’s story.

🌱 Why NEWH matters

This was NEWH New England’s first-ever trade show, which is surprising in its own right. And while only one panelist was actually from New England, the event still hit the mark.

Why? Because NEWH isn’t just another networking event. It raises money for scholarships. It spotlights emerging talent. And it brings our fragmented, multi-layered industry together — designers, brands, owners, operators, reps — all under one roof.

That’s the magic.

P.S. A lot of what was said reminded me why I started Defining Hospitality in the first place. When I got into this business, I couldn’t find the inside voices. So I built the platform I wish I had. And I keep doing it because every conversation like this one pushes us — and the industry — forward.

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