No Vacancy Live!

We had a guest cancel at the last minute, so Craig, Suzanne, and I opened drinks and talked about my absolute disaster of a travel day.

I'm not giving away the whole thing, but yesterday involved delayed flights, a plane too hot to board, a jammed wheelchair, Atlanta airspace doing Atlanta airspace things, a sick flight attendant, a Popeyes dream that died quickly, a late-night LIRR miracle, and the crushing realization that I wasn't getting Taco Bell at the end of it.

Suzanne somehow turned our text thread into a blues song, Craig did Craig things, and I tried to explain the whole mess without reliving too much trauma.

We also got to the important business:

🍾 Identical Dispenser Bottles beat Breakfast Buffet Hunger Games 🐴 The Four Horsemen of Hotel Misery are officially set 🧠 Glenn Knows Stuff returns with Jets misery, peacoats, landlines, and cars ☎️ Craig apparently still lives in a world where landlines matter ✈️ Delta and I need some time apart

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Jonathan Tisch helped shape Loews Hotels for 45 years, built some of the company's most important projects, and still talks about hospitality as a people business before anything else.

Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera cohosts this conversation with Jonathan Tisch, retired executive chairman of Loews Hotels, and we get into the decisions behind Loews Miami Beach, the long relationship with Universal Orlando, the Arlington growth story, and why hotel people still need to fight for more respect.

Jonathan also shares one line from his first sales boss that stuck with him through every chapter of his career:

Never start a paragraph with "I."

That idea runs through the whole conversation. Jonathan keeps coming back to the guest, the team, the community, and the responsibility hotel leaders carry.

🏨 Why the "hospitality gene" still matters 🎥 How television production shaped Jonathan's eye for hotel design 🌴 Why Loews Miami Beach required vision when the market looked risky 🎢 How Loews and Universal Orlando grew from three hotels to 11 🏟️ Why Arlington, Texas fits the Loews real estate approach 🙌 Why hospitality workers and tourism economies need more respect 🧠 Why communication, humility, and attention to the other person still matter in this business

Thanks to Actabl for supporting this episode. Actabl gives you the power to profit. Visit Actabl.com.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

We drove through the Las Vegas Loop in a Tesla with Cami Christensen, President/GM of Westgate Las Vegas, and she's got 25 years of stories to tell from inside one of Vegas's most connected properties.

🏨 Westgate is about to be the first Vegas hotel with direct airport access through The Vegas Loop. End of June. You step off a plane, hop in a Tesla, and you're in your room — no traffic, no surface streets, plane to room to convention center.

🎰 Westgate just partnered with Caesars to power their sports book with Caesars technology. Full circle moment: Cami started at the property 25 years ago when it WAS a Caesars property. Now Caesars is back as a partner. The world's best sports book just got even better.

🍹 The younger generation isn't drinking like they used to. Alcohol is down. So Westgate went from maybe one mocktail option to eight or nine on every bar menu. Small shift. Big difference in revenue.

🎯 Cami's leadership rule: "What are we risking by trying it?" She lets team members pitch ideas. If it doesn't work, pivot. If it does, you get buy-in and engagement that sticks.

From The Vegas Loop, Las Vegas #HotelLife #VegasHotels #WestgateLasVegas

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Your mid-market property is about to get a neighbor it didn't expect. Bruce Ford, SVP of Lodging Econometrics, explains why 158 luxury conversions are coming — and what that means for everyone else.

Luxury used to be exclusive. Expensive to build. Hard to convert. Not anymore. Brands are loosening their grip. Third-party operators are moving in. Mid-market properties are being stripped down and rebuilt as five-star, with new tech and new standards. And they're happening fast.

Here's what worries operators: once a guest stays at the converted property next door with all the new tech, better itinerary management, and total customer value strategy, they're not coming back to yours. Bruce talks through the pipeline — where the money is actually flowing and why your market might be next.

China has 3 to 3.5 times more rooms under construction than every other country combined. The Middle East is accelerating. And New Orleans just went from one luxury hotel to seven on one street. This isn't coming. It's already here.

From Lodging Econometrics. Visit lodging econometrics.com/global insights.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Your mid-market property is about to get a neighbor it didn't expect. Bruce Ford, SVP of Lodging Econometrics, explains why 158 luxury conversions are coming — and what that means for everyone else.

Luxury used to be exclusive. Expensive to build. Hard to convert. Not anymore. Brands are loosening their grip. Third-party operators are moving in. Mid-market properties are being stripped down and rebuilt as five-star, with new tech and new standards. And they're happening fast.

Here's what worries operators: once a guest stays at the converted property next door with all the new tech, better itinerary management, and total customer value strategy, they're not coming back to yours. Bruce talks through the pipeline — where the money is actually flowing and why your market might be next.

China has 3 to 3.5 times more rooms under construction than every other country combined. The Middle East is accelerating. And New Orleans just went from one luxury hotel to seven on one street. This isn't coming. It's already here.

From Lodging Econometrics. Visit lodging econometrics.com/global insights.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Your owners are making decisions blind. PM Hotel Group just fixed that.

Steve Marino, VP of IT and Hotel Systems at PM Hotel Group, explained at HITEC how they're using AI as their competitive differentiator — not to replace anyone, but to move owners from reactive to proactive.

Most owners aren't hoteliers — they're investor-class people who don't know how to navigate systems or run reports. So they wait. They ask. They get frustrated. PM turned that into natural language: "Give me my cost per occupied room across these hotels for the last three weeks." Instant answers. No friction.

On the BD side, AI is now helping them identify which assets and which owners actually fit their model, so they're not taking every deal that walks through the door. They're qualifying for the right fit.

From HITEC. Visit pmhotelgroup.com or find them on LinkedIn.

Unifocus, Workforce Management Redefined. Visit unifocus.com.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Here's obvious: Hotel energy prices aren't coming down. Rick West, CEO at Commercial Green Solutions, and Kenny Weston, VP at Commercial Green Solutions, explained why hoteliers need to stop treating utility costs as fixed.

⚡ The "double whammy" is real: your kWh costs are up AND your demand charges are through the roof. But there's $50 billion in rebates sitting in utility programs that most hotels don't even know exist.

🎯 It's not about spending millions on new infrastructure. One hotel cleaning a P-tack can save 17,500 kWh — paid for entirely by the utility. Multiply that across a portfolio and you're looking at 3-5% energy savings with zero out-of-pocket cost (#NoVacancyNews).

🔌 Peak hours matter more than total usage. If you can shift energy use away from peak demand windows, you save on kWh AND on what utilities call your "demand charge" — the penalty for asking for power when everyone else is.

💡 Utilities will literally pay you to participate in demand response programs. Their job is keeping the lights on 24/7. They'd rather give away rebates than build new power plants.

Visit commercialgreensolutions.com or check them out on LinkedIn.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Kartik Yellepeddi, Chief Product Officer at Duetto, says AI in pricing is stuck at level one: algorithms that recommend prices. That's the problem. Building three levels is the solution.

🎯 Foundation (pricing and forecasting algorithms), layer two (explaining why the AI decided what it decided), and layer three (performance engineering that guides humans across sales, marketing, and distribution).

⚠️ The most confident algorithms are often the least trustworthy. AI has to earn trust by explaining itself, showing its confidence level, and flagging where it's struggling — so humans know exactly where to jump in.

💭 Revenue managers are excellent at judgment. They don't need another dashboard. They need conversational AI that works like the computer in Star Trek — natural, explanatory, collaborative.

💰 Hotels optimize one lever: price. Yellepeddi is pushing for decision-rich systems (#NoVacancyNews) that optimize restrictions, group prices, ancillaries, labor spend — the entire commercial ecosystem at once.

From HITEC. Visit duetto.app.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Hotels are asking the wrong question at check-in — and Alliants just proved it.

🔑 Apple Wallet and Google Wallet keys at Resorts World Las Vegas are table stakes. Member Pass is the real play: loyalty recognition built into the digital key so repeat guests see their benefits the moment they arrive.

🎯 One customer captured additional guest names from 13,000 out of 20,000 check-ins. Hotels book one name. Alliants helps capture the whole group — the difference between selling one spa package and five World Cup packages.

❓ Nobody's asking "What's bringing you to town?" They should be. Tristan Gadsby, CEO, Alberto Santana, Chief Revenue Officer, and Andrew Pirret, SVP Customer Experience at Alliants, explained how the check-in moved to pre-arrival (#NoVacancyNews) — where you can actually tailor the stay and learn why someone came.

💰 Golf packages going to people who haven't golfed since junior high. Hotels finally have the data to ask the right questions.

From HITEC. Visit alliants.com or find them on LinkedIn.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Matthew Bright, SVP and Head of IT at Davidson Hospitality, made a promise not to talk about AI. He broke it 54 seconds in.

🔒 AI is making security worse and easier at the same time — phishing emails with zero typos, sophisticated language models doing the work bad actors used to do by hand. 🎯 Large hospitality companies getting breached makes the whole industry a target. People now understand what to steal. 👤 Your tools can block entry points. Your users are the real vulnerability — and they're more susceptible than ever. ⚙️ Basic security wins: strong network security, strong endpoint security. Then invest everything into user awareness, because that's where attacks are working now. 🚨 Social engineering and help desk password resets are the attacks happening right now, not the ones you're reading about.

From HITEC.

Unifocus, Workforce Management Redefined. Visit unifocus.com.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Deena Baikowitz is a cat whisperer, networking extraordinaire, and the funnest, loudest (the good kind) person you'll ever meet.

She joins Friday Night Audit alongside myself, Craig Sullivan and Suzanne Bagnera, PhD, CHA, CED from Toronto (where she's "in exile" from New York) and the crew immediately put her to work on the pet peeves hotel tournament.

🐱 The parallels between training introverted cats and introverted people are uncanny. Slow blink. Build trust. Don't stare. Feed them. Deena's done it for both species.

🍤 Hotel networking events are broken: greasy sticky fingers on the shrimp, then a handshake, then touching your phone. Someone needs to design a clean-hands networking menu. Deena volunteered. We're here for it.

🏨 The pet peeves tournament is down to the Four Horsemen of Misery — and constantly hidden lamp switches just demolished anti-theft hangers 71-29. The hotel industry is listening now

💼 She speaks five and a half languages (people training and cat training), does coaches, comedy, and will absolutely work a room for you at any conference.

Find her: Fireball Deena on Instagram, LinkedIn, or in the indentation at the middle of any crowd.

Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.