Pillow Talk Sessions

How do you scale a hotel business without losing the culture, agility and human connection that made it successful in the first place?

In this episode of Pillow Talk Sessions, Jessica Gillingham speaks with Hjörtur Valgeirsson, Chief Operating Officer of Íslandshótel, Iceland's largest hotel chain, about the challenges and opportunities of growing a hospitality business in one of the world's most distinctive operating environments.

With 19 hotels across Iceland, from large conference-ready properties in Reykjavík to smaller, seasonal hotels in remote locations, Íslandshótel has evolved from a family-run business into a major national operator. That growth brings new challenges, particularly in a country where labor costs are high, resources are limited and delivering value to guests is essential.

Hjörtur shares how the company is maintaining its entrepreneurial spirit while introducing the structure needed to operate at scale. At the heart of this approach is a commitment to empowering employees, maintaining a flat management hierarchy and building a culture around the company's mission of delivering exceptional hospitality.

Technology is an important part of that journey, but not at the expense of human connection. Jessica and Hjörtur explore how AI is already helping Íslandshótel turn thousands of guest reviews into actionable insights, identify operational efficiencies and make better-informed decisions. They also discuss why knowing when guests need human interaction, and when they would prefer a simple digital solution is increasingly important.

What we cover:

• Scaling without losing your culture: How Íslandshótel is preserving the agility and personal relationships of a family business while expanding its portfolio.
• The realities of operating in Iceland: Managing high labor costs, seasonal demand and geographically dispersed properties while maintaining service standards.
• AI as a business intelligence tool: Using AI to analyze guest feedback, explore energy consumption and waste management, and identify opportunities for operational improvement.
• Technology and the human touch: Why exceptional hospitality isn't about maximizing human interaction, but making sure it happens when it matters most.
• Sustainability and social responsibility: How Green Key certification, inclusive employment practices and a commitment to responsible operations are shaping the business.

The discussion also looks at the practical challenges of integrating two newly acquired hotel operations, including the importance of communicating with employees before a transition, and how Íslandshótel is preparing for its next phase of growth with new properties, expanded conference facilities and a technology-enabled, sustainability-focused hotel concept.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about what it takes to grow a hospitality business without losing sight of the people who make it work. As technology creates new opportunities for efficiency, the challenge for operators is to use it thoughtfully, freeing their teams to focus on the moments that genuinely make a difference to guests.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Pillow Talk Sessions to hear Hjörtur's insights on leadership, hotel operations, technology and the future of hospitality in Iceland.

#PillowTalkSessions #AbodeWorldwide #HospitalityLeadership #HotelTechnology #HospitalityInnovation #AIinHospitality #HotelOperations #SustainableHospitality #IcelandHotels

Links

Explore related industry analysis and strategic perspectives: https://abodeworldwide.com/news-insights/

Pillow Talk Sessions: https://www.pillowtalksessions.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pillowtalksessionspodcast/

Tech-Enabled Hospitality: https://techenabledhospitality.com/

Hjörtur Valgeirsson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valgeirsson/

Íslandshótel: https://www.islandshotel.is/

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

A houseboat that no bank would finance and no insurer would cover might seem an unlikely starting point for a hospitality brand. For Brian Meyer, it was the beginning of FLOHOM.

Brian Meyer grew up on the water. He paddled competitively, built a paddleboard company in downtown Annapolis, and spent years living at the marina where his business was docked. When it came time to move, he couldn't afford a waterfront home, but he walked into a refurbished 1970s houseboat and couldn't get the idea out of his head.

He shelved the idea but didn't drop it. When COVID arrived and life slowed down, he found himself back on the water, paddling, thinking, and watching a marina down the road rent a houseboat on Airbnb for $500 a night at near-full occupancy. He started scraping listing data and the numbers added up.

FLOHOM launched in 2022. The first unit opened in July 2023, and today the fleet sits at 17 homes across five US states, split between corporately owned units and assets held by individual fleet partners, all managed end-to-end by FLOHOM.

In this episode of the Pillow Talk Sessions, Brian talks through what it took to get houseboats accepted in marinas, why FLOHOM ended up becoming its own manufacturer, and how the fleet partner program came directly from guests asking to own what they'd just stayed in. He also gets into the commercial model in some detail — cash-on-cash returns of 15–24%, ADRs in the high $400s to high $500s and how he’s building a brand with 70% direct bookings.

FLOHOM’s broader vision goes beyond lodging. Floating saunas, floating offices, marina acquisition and repositioning, and eventually floating residential communities. Brian sees FLOHOM as building a new real estate asset class on water — one that already exists in Europe and much of Asia, but has barely touched the United States.

We also talk about technology. FLOHOM is AI-native in a specific sense: over the last year, members of the team have rebuilt most of the company's internal software stack using Claude Code, replacing off-the-shelf tools with systems built for their business. Their AI concierge is trained on FLOHOM's full communication history. The website is being rebuilt in custom Claude code. In Brian's view, any company can now be a technology company.

What we cover:

• The double barrier FLOHOM had to clear: marina resistance to houseboats, and marina resistance to short-term rentals
• Why they became manufacturers when they didn't plan to, and what vertical integration actually gives them
• The fleet partner program: who buys, why, and what the tax picture looks like for US investors
• Commercial performance: ADR, occupancy, cash-on-cash returns, and the direct booking rate
• The licensing model and why marina owners are paying attention
• Floating saunas, floating amenities, and the path to on-water resorts
• How FLOHOM rebuilt its own tech stack with Claude Code — and what that means for the software companies they used to pay
• Fundraising: from a $2.5m friends and family seed round to a Series A by end of year

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear my conversation with Brian Meyer about winning over an established industry, building technology in-house, and making waterfront hospitality work.

#Hospitality #ShortTermRentals #ExperientialHospitality #PropTech #WaterfrontLiving #TravelTech #PillowTalkSessions

Explore related industry analysis and strategic perspectives: https://abodeworldwide.com/news-insights/

Pillow Talk Sessions: https://www.pillowtalksessions.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pillowtalksessionspodcast/

Tech-Enabled Hospitality: https://techenabledhospitality.com/

Brian's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianmeyer5787/

FLOHOM: https://flohom.com/

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

AvantStay started with a simple proposition: create a consistent guest experience in a fragmented market. Eight years later, Reuben Doetsch has scaled it to more than 3,000 homes across 100-plus US markets.

In today's episode, I ask Reuben a deceptively simple question. What exactly is a short-term rental operator in today's market? AvantStay spans large group homes, aparthotels,, and branded residences, with technology and data at the center of how it operates.

Reuben makes a case that the boundary between hotel operator and short-term rental company is already dissolving — and that the operators who understand that earliest will define what professional hospitality looks like for the next decade. Along the way, he gets into what it actually takes to scale quality across non-standard assets, and why AvantStay ended up building much of its own technology to do it.

The conversation gets into:

• How AvantStay uses technology, data and incentives to maintain consistent guest and owner experiences across 3,000+ properties
• Why scaling short-term rentals is fundamentally an operational challenge, and how the company expanded from large homes into aparthotels
• The importance of brand standards and local character, and how to create consistency without making every property feel the same
• How the short-term rental and hotel sectors are converging, from loyalty and personalized service to AI-powered discovery
• What the next five years could look like as hospitality becomes less about the type of asset and more about the experience being delivered

Reuben argues that the future of hospitality is less about whether a guest is staying in a hotel or a short-term rental, and more about creating the right experience for the person traveling.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear my conversation with Reuben Doetsch discuss the challenge of scaling hospitality, the technology behind AvantStay, and why the distinction between hotels and short-term rentals may matter less and less.

#Hospitality #ShortTermRentals #VacationRentals #PropTech #Hotels #TravelTech #PillowTalkSessions

Explore related industry analysis and strategic perspectives: https://abodeworldwide.com/news-insights/

Pillow Talk Sessions: https://www.pillowtalksessions.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pillowtalksessionspodcast/

Tech-Enabled Hospitality: https://techenabledhospitality.com/

Reuben's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reubendoetsch/

AvantStay: https://avantstay.com/

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

Like many entrepreneurs entering the short-term rental space, Maxime Leufroy-Murat started out believing growth was a function of acquiring more properties and scaling operations. After more than a decade in the industry, he has reached very different conclusions.

Maxime Leufroy-Murat has spent over a decade inside the short-term rental industry — building City Relay, one of London's most established lettings management platforms, and Opago, a tech-enabled operations business now managing around 5,000 units across London and Paris. When growth hit a ceiling, he built sideways — into a new venture called Sejour Living, a design-led branded living concept in the heart of London targeting the part of the private rented sector that institutional capital is just beginning to take seriously.

His central argument is that growth alone is not a strategy. Businesses that have survived the last decade in STR have done so by constantly reading the market and evolving ahead of it, not by holding their position and hoping the fundamentals stayed the same.

In this episode, Maxime traces the journey from short lets to branded residential, and makes the case that the skills hospitality operators have spent years developing — speed, service culture, owner relationships — are exactly what the PRS has been missing.

The conversation gets into:

• Why the short let model in London was always a tool, not a strategy — and what the operators who survived worked out early
• The gap Sejour is targeting: a BTR-style guest experience, without the BTR price tag or the amenities arms race
• How hospitality instincts translate into a long let product — and where the translation breaks down
• Why community in residential doesn't require a rooftop terrace or a co-working space
• What it takes to build a brand in a sector where most landlords have never thought about brand at all
• The role of institutional capital in the PRS — and where Sejour fits in a market that is starting to consolidate

Maxime runs four interconnected businesses that together form a vertically integrated stack: investment, development, operations, lettings, and brand. That structure shapes everything about how he thinks — and it's what makes this conversation worth paying attention to.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how Maxime Leufroy-Murat is applying a decade of short let experience to the biggest and most underbranded slice of the rental market.

#Hospitality #ShortTermRentals #BrandedLiving #PillowTalkSessions

Explore related industry analysis and strategic perspectives: https://abodeworldwide.com/news-insights/

Pillow Talk Sessions: https://www.pillowtalksessions.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pillowtalksessionspodcast/

Tech-Enabled Hospitality: https://techenabledhospitality.com/

Maxime's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxime-leufroy-murat/ 

City Relay: http://cityrelay.com/ 

Opago: https://www.opago.co/ 

Leufroy: http://leufroy.com 

Séjour Living: https://sejour.living/

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

When Njål Elliasson co-founded his Norwegian-based short-term rental property management company, Heimby, in 2022, he was over the moon as it quickly grew in size and profit. But before he knew it, his company started crumbling, going from a $100k profit in year one to a $200k loss by the end of year two. 

By the end of 2023, Njål was forced to start over, prioritizing quality of product over profit and growth. He got rid of all of his team, downsized to just the 20 best homes, hired at CTO and spent a year working on a tech product that would help him scale, but this time better. He is now also the founder of Proptonomy, an AI-driven operations platform built to solve the challenges he encountered while scaling and his property management company is doing better than ever. 

In this episode of the Pillow Talk Sessions Podcast, Njål's shares his story. This is not a straightforward success story, and in today's interview, he shares all the lessons he learned from starting, failing, and restarting Heimby, going from catastrophic failure to building a completely different, AI-driven approach to hospitality.

The conversation explores:

• Why so many short-term rental operators hit a ceiling when they try to scale

• The operational mistakes that nearly brought Heimby down

• Why quality and process matter more than chasing margins

• The lessons learned from rebuilding a company from the ground up

• How AI is being used to streamline maintenance, onboarding, and day-to-day operations

• Why technology can become a competitive moat in property management

• The changing relationship between operators and property owners

Njål challenges some of the industry's assumptions. While many operators view relationships as their primary competitive advantage, Njål argues that technology and operational excellence may ultimately prove more scalable. He also makes the case that owners should take greater responsibility for the performance of their own assets, rather than relying on operators to absorb every problem.

What emerges throughout the conversation is a picture of an industry wrestling with complexity. Short-term rentals have often been built on hospitality principles, but as portfolios grow, logistics, systems and operational discipline become increasingly important.

Looking ahead, Njål's focus is on helping other operators avoid the mistakes he made. Through both Heimby and Proptonomy, he is exploring how technology, process, and accountability can help property managers scale without sacrificing quality.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how Njål Eliasson went from rapid growth to operational collapse and back again — and what his experience reveals about the future of short-term rental management.

Njål Elliasson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/njaleliasson/?locale=en_US

Heimby LI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/heimby-no/

Heimby website: https://www.heimby.no/

Proptonomy LI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proptonomy/

Poptonomy website: https://proptonomy.ai/

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

What does it take to build a hospitality brand that delivers genuine quality at a budget price point?

Matt Bell is the Managing Director of Mollie's, a design-led motel and diner concept with properties in Oxford, Bristol, and Manchester. With nearly two decades in independent hospitality, Matt brings a rare mix of operational rigour and brand instinct to everything Mollie's does.

In this episode, Matt breaks down the philosophy behind the brand — why budget doesn't have to mean boring, and how Mollie's is building what he calls a value-lux proposition. Great design, thoughtful food, and a deeply human guest experience, all at an accessible price point.exclusive to the luxury end of the hospitality chain. 

The conversation gets into:

• What it means to run a hospitality brand like a retailer — and where that analogy breaks
• Why technology should remove friction without replacing warmth, and how Mollie's walks that line
• The three-part test every decision at Mollie's gets held against: guest satisfaction, financial viability, and team performance
• Why Mollie's embraces failure, iterates fast, and doesn't wait for perfect
• How a young brand thinks about scale — and the discipline required to get there

What makes Mollie's worth paying attention to is the clarity of thinking and deliberation. In a sector where budget often means transactional and the bare minimum, Matt and his team are making a deliberate case that the guest experience and the price point don't have to trade off against each other. The design, the diner, the technology, the people — each one is chosen to pull in the same direction.

Matt is also clear about what technology should and shouldn't do. At Mollie's, it's an enabler — centralising expertise, reducing friction, and freeing up the floor team to focus entirely on the guest in front of them. The human side of the experience is non-negotiable, and the technology is there to protect it, not replace it.

Looking ahead, Matt sees Mollie's growing through discipline. A standardised, refined product that can scale quickly, into locations with the right blend of corporate and leisure demand. The goal is a brand guests actively seek out — not just somewhere reliable to stop, but somewhere they actually want to be.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how Matt Bell and the team at Mollie's are building a hospitality brand where great design, smart operations, and genuine warmth are designed to work together, not compete.

#Hospitality #HospitalityTech #PillowTalkSessions

Explore related industry analysis and strategic perspectives:
https://abodeworldwide.com/news-insights/

Website: https://www.pillowtalksessions.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pillowtalksessionspodcast/

Tech-Enabled Hospitality: https://techenabledhospitality.com/ 

Matt Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcrbell/

Mollie’s Motels: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mollies/ 

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

Mike Rawson spent seven years as CIO of CitizenM, one of the most tech-forward hotel brands in the world. His biggest lesson? Technology comes last.

In the latest episode of Pillow Talk Sessions, Mike joins me to break down what most hotels are getting wrong about automation and how CitizenM built an NPS score good enough to catch Marriott's attention.

His belief: you shouldn't reach for technology until you understand the real requirement, the business value it will bring, and most fundamentally, the people around it.

In this episode, Mike shares with me:

• Why the speed of AI innovation is making decision-making so difficult for operators right now
• How most operators are currently stuck between paralysis and poor decisions
• The compliance, governance and control conversation nobody in hospitality is having — and why that's going to hurt
• How AI, done right, frees people for the moments that actually move NPS
• What Mike's ideal hotel would look like if he were starting from scratch in 2026

#HospitalityTech #CitizenM #HotelTech #PillowTalkSessions

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

In this episode of Pillow Talk Sessions, Tim Major, CEO of Operto, joins host Jessica Gillingham to explain how agentic AI is shifting hospitality from automation to autonomous execution.

Through Operto One, Operto is building an AI workforce capable of performing operational and marketing tasks, optimizing performance, and driving outcomes across hotel systems.

The conversation explores what this shift means for hotel teams, guest experience, and business performance.

While AI offers significant potential, most hotels face a fundamental challenge. Data readiness. Without structured, accurate content, AI systems struggle to deliver reliable results.

Tim outlines how hotels can begin adopting AI in a controlled, practical way, focusing on high-impact areas like direct bookings and operational efficiency.

Key themes explored:

What agentic AI means for hospitality operations
Why direct booking optimization is a key AI opportunity
How hotel teams will evolve into hybrid human-AI workforces
The importance of ethical, consent-based data use
Why structured data is critical for AI performance
How hotels can approach AI adoption without falling into hype

For hospitality leaders, this episode provides a clear view of what AI will actually change, and what foundations must be in place to make it work.

#HospitalityTech #AIinHospitality #AgenticAI #FutureOfWork #HotelTech #PillowTalkSessions

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

In this episode of Pillow Talk Sessions, Nils Mattisson, CEO & Co-Founder of Minut, explains how privacy-first technology is solving one of hospitality’s most complex challenges. Balancing guest privacy with host security.

Minut developed a system that detects events such as noise, overcrowding, and smoking without recording or storing audio. This approach builds trust while enabling operators to maintain control over their assets.

The conversation expands into broader industry shifts, including the convergence of short-term rentals, student housing, and senior living, all of which are adopting similar technologies and service expectations.

At the same time, upcoming EU and UK regulations are expected to reshape supply, pricing, and operational strategies across the market.

Key themes explored:

How privacy-first monitoring builds trust between hosts and guests
Why asset classes are converging across hospitality and living sectors
The impact of new EU and UK short-term rental regulations
How AI and automation are transforming guest experience and operations
Why guest safety remains an underdeveloped area in hospitality
The future of building-level monitoring and operational intelligence

For hospitality and real estate leaders, this episode highlights a critical shift. The next generation of operations will be defined by how well technology balances privacy, safety, and efficiency.

#HospitalityTech #PropTech #ShortStay #DigitalTransformation #GuestSafety #PillowTalkSessions

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.

In this episode of Pillow Talk Sessions, Marc Laros, CTO of The Usual Hotels, explains how sustainability, technology, and guest experience can be designed as one integrated operating system.

The Usual Hotels is building toward becoming Europe’s most sustainable hotel brand, targeting 20 hotels in five years. Rather than treating sustainability as a layer, the company embeds it into how hotels are built, operated, and measured.

At the same time, a flexible, API-driven tech stack and growing use of AI are transforming operations. From frictionless check-in to automated backend workflows, technology is used to remove complexity and allow staff to focus on delivering meaningful guest experiences.

The conversation explores how hospitality can evolve by aligning sustainability, automation, and human service into one coherent model.

Key themes explored:

Why sustainability must be embedded into operations
How transparent reporting builds trust and accountability
Using AI across guest communication and operational workflows
Why automation should enhance staff roles, not replace them
How frictionless journeys improve both efficiency and experience
The importance of flexible, API-driven infrastructure
Why community engagement is central to modern hospitality brands

For hospitality and technology leaders, this episode highlights a clear shift. The future of hospitality will not be defined by sustainability or technology alone, but by how effectively they are integrated.

#SustainableHospitality #HotelTech #AIinHospitality #DigitalTransformation #GuestExperience #PillowTalkSessions

Meet the host of Pillow Talk Sessions
Jessica Gillingham is the Founder and CEO of Abode Worldwide, a strategic public relations agency dedicated to elevating the profile of transformative technology solutions in global hospitality, lodging, and rental living. An established industry thought leader, Jessica is a frequent conference speaker and author of Tech-Enabled Hospitality, a new book exploring the innovations shaping the sector.