The Future of Hospitality

A gym would kill for ten hours of someone's time, and a hotel already gets them.
This roundtable unpacks what it takes to turn the guest room into a container for recovery.

In this episode Arjan Eikelenboom interviews Sarah Walker of Nuance Interior Design, Wouter Dekker of Q Hospitality Group, and Keith Dickey of YouMind, the founding partner of the Mental Wellness in Hospitality series, on how the environments hotels create shape the way guests recover.

• Why every space triggers a physiological response the moment a guest walks in
• Why HVAC noise gets forgotten when sleep is what a hotel sells
• How to personalize a stay without running it on private health data
• Why the shift is moving from amenities to restorative rooms

A practical conversation for anyone who designs, builds, or runs the rooms where guests are meant to recover.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vwNGZprW5uo
The Sustainable Stay is powered by YouMind.

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

A room can look calm in a photo and still be biologically combative for the person sleeping in it.

In this Mental Wellness in Hospitality roundtable, part of The Sustainable Stay, host Arjan Eikelenboom explores mental wellness through design and architecture with Rod Eggleston of Delta Air Lines, Henri Munyengango of IHG, and Keith Dickey of Youmind. They cover why travelers arrive already anxious, the arrival experience and wayfinding, a 2021 study that put HVAC noise at the top of what drives sleep satisfaction, the trade-off between quiet rooms and owner ROI, how staff stress transfers to guests, and what happens when personalization turns into private health data.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NLxsOvK0OxU
Key takeaways: https://futureofhospitality.org/episode/biologically-combative-when-hotel-design-works-against-the-guest/
More from The Sustainable Stay: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWa-1xBFeqLw

The Sustainable Stay is powered by YouMind.

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

A lease can do more than collect rent. It can create value across an entire hold.

Adrian Flück co-heads hotel investment at Invesco Real Estate, which owns 34 hotels across Europe, every one held on a lease rather than a management agreement. Using the Tivoli Oriente in Lisbon as a case study, he unpacks a 2019 sale-and-leaseback with Minor Hotels, a hybrid lease that pairs a minimum guaranteed rent with a turnover top-up, and a two-phase refurbishment that lifted rate and performance.

What you will take away:

- Under a lease the tenant carries the operating company and the staff, the landlord carries the building, the rent and the turnover.

- A hybrid lease protects the downside with guaranteed rent while a turnover top-up shares the upside.

- The demarcation list ends the who-pays fight, here close to fifty-fifty, by splitting refurbishment between the FF&E reserve and the landlord's technical works.

- ESG becomes real when you collect 100 percent of energy data and benchmark it with BREEAM and GRESB.

"It will not change your ADR, but it helps with your tenant engagement and your employee satisfaction."

Inside Hotel Asset Management, for hotel owners, investors and asset managers, and for students weighing a career in the field.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rFoDLagqFx0
Key takeaways: https://futureofhospitality.org/episode/how-a-hybrid-lease-creates-hotel-value-the-tivoli-oriente-case/
More from Inside Hotel Asset Management: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXd-mdvWGkso

Sleep is the one thing every guest will do in your hotel, yet almost no one measures it.

In the second Mental Wellness in Hospitality roundtable, part of The Sustainable Stay, host Arjan Eikelenboom talks again with Jeremy McCarthy of Leisure Alchemy, wellness strategist Javier Suarez, and Keith Dickey of Umind about whether sleep should be a KPI. They dig into the first night effect, what poor sleep does to the brain, and why the biggest wins come from not interfering with sleep, preparing guests before they arrive, and training every department to understand recovery.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OnsymlaSprk
Key takeaways: https://futureofhospitality.org/episode/sleep-as-a-kpi-what-hotels-get-wrong-about-guest-recovery/
More from The Sustainable Stay: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWa-1xBFeqLw

The Sustainable Stay is powered by YouMind.

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

You are already resilient; you just have to decide to act on it.

Mohamed Massaquoi built his identity as an NFL wide receiver, then lost his hand in a 2017 accident and had to rebuild from the ground up. In this conversation he shares how he moved through the adversity in stages, redirected his competitive fire into leadership and speaking, and learned from a championship-winning high school coach and turbulent years in Cleveland what it really takes to lead people well. His message for anyone in the middle of something hard: if you live through it, there is an opportunity for an amazing life.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UWnd2mug-8Y
Key takeaways: https://futureofhospitality.org/episode/responding-to-adversity-resilience-leadership-and-purpose/
More from Unscripted Hospitality: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcxrIHh1V3-c

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

The best asset in that portfolio was the one nobody was watching.

Pierre-Louis Bellanger and Maxime des Monstiers of Capital Hospitality Europe take Luc Boschmans through the full cycle of La Perouse, a nineteen thirties boutique hotel above the Baie des Anges in Nice. The institutional owner was busy with its big boxes. It took seven letters of intent, in the middle of COVID, before they were granted exclusivity.

Almost every call after that went against the instinct of the market. Rooms came out instead of going in, 56 down to 53. An F&B outlet was added instead of closed. The refurbishment ran seven months while building costs rose 30 percent, and the doors opened two days before the Monaco Grand Prix.

What followed: a four star beating five stars on revenue per available room, and EBITDA that moved from roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million at acquisition to close to 4 million at the sale.

The part most owners skip is how they timed that exit, and what they deliberately left on the table for the buyer.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rZ-aT6HrTyE
Key takeaways: https://futureofhospitality.org/episode/fewer-rooms-more-value-repositioning-la-perouse-in-nice/
More from Inside Hotel Asset Management: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXd-mdvWGkso

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

A hotel is an investment first, and someone has to protect its value for twenty years.

Rastko Djordjevic, Managing Director of JLL Asset Management EMEA, joins Luc Boschmans to explain what hotel asset management really is: maximising an asset's value across the whole holding period, not running the day to day. He separates owner, operator, and advisor, then shows the work through real cases, a renovation phased to the Olympics that lifted suite ADR by more than 40 percent, a hotel taken standalone during COVID, and how he matches a general manager to the moment a property is in.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/na9K41XsWuw
Key takeaways: https://futureofhospitality.org/episode/owner-operator-advisor-what-a-hotel-asset-manager-really-does/
More from Inside Hotel Asset Management: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXd-mdvWGkso

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

The fastest repositioning plans are built around the exit from day one.

Learn how a five-year hold, direct operations, and a deliberate no-brand decision turned a Barcelona hotel into a leisure-led asset.

In this episode Luc Boschmans interviews Emmanuel Dissez, head of asset management for Schroders Hotels, and Dario Filippone, one of the asset managers at Schroders Capital who has overseen the Grand Hotel Central in Barcelona since 2021.

- Build value against a defined hold period so the five-year story becomes a sale

- Keep optionality by not attaching a global brand, the flexibility the next owner pays for

- Take a hotel to direct operations to gain control over the repositioning

- Read the operation, not just the P&L, because the numbers are always late

Emmanuel and Dario share how they moved RGI from 64 to 108 and brought the hotel to market with the exit in mind.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nXPkQpighxs
More from Inside Hotel Asset Management: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXd-mdvWGkso

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

AI does not fix a bad pricing strategy, it just runs it faster.

Roz Hunter and Charles Pinard, pricing and revenue-management consultants at Simon-Kucher, break down how they read a revenue team from the inside and why most pricing problems are about trust and alignment, not the systems.

- Cut the morning screen count from eight to ten systems down to one source of truth and two screens

- Escape the one-brain trap where the whole company waits to be told to raise or lower prices

- Treat a room as a room on a date, so peak weeks like July or Christmas can carry a far higher price

- Build the price increase into the start of the booking curve instead of starting high and crashing it

- Use AI to challenge your thinking, with human oversight, because a black box is as bad as no box

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GkFFBEGT_IQ
Key takeaways: https://futureofhospitality.org/episode/pricing-strategy-revenue-teams-and-where-ai-actually-helps/
More from The Revenue Playbook: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHwS1iL3BLZA

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality

The rebrand only adds value once the segmentation and product are fixed.

Learn how a bold wholesaler cut rebuilt rate quality and moved RGI from 81 to 110.

In this episode Luc Boschmans interviews Sophie Richard, who leads European asset management for M&L Hospitality and chairs HAMA Europe.

- Cut a low-rated wholesaler base, accepting 13 percent occupancy loss to rebuild higher-quality rate

- Sequence segmentation and product before rebranding so the brand change adds value

- Treat aging product as a cleanliness and rate problem, not just a renovation line

- Review segmentation yearly rather than every five years

Sophie shares the full Brussels Midi case, from the segmentation cut to the four-star classification.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ShorHzWY1Mo
More from Inside Hotel Asset Management: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXd-mdvWGkso

Follow The Future of Hospitality for weekly insights into hospitality, hotels, and guest experience.

Disclaimer: This podcast shares stories, experiences, and opinions from hosts and guests. They are personal perspectives only and not statements of fact or official advice from The Future of Hospitality