This Week in Hospitality

This Week's Guest:

Alex Cabañas

What happens when the hotel front desk disappears, but hospitality gets more personal?

This week, Zach Busekrus, Ben Wolff and Edwin Kramer are joined by Alex Cabañas, executive chairman of Pyramid Global Hospitality and founder and CEO of Astound Ventures, for a conversation about the changes that could actually improve hotel margins.

Alex explains why he's investing in hospitality's own problems, from energy management and distributed power to the workflows that keep hotel teams buried in admin. His test for innovation isn't whether it sounds impressive. It's whether it helps owners make money and frontline staff do their jobs better.

They explore a future with lobby hosts instead of agents stuck behind screens, AI tools that put repair answers in an engineer's hand, and automation that connects sales contracts with banquet operations. They also ask what hotels should build themselves, what they should buy, and who has time to sort through the endless startup pitches.

Then the conversation turns to Expedia's rate-parity lawsuit. Ben explains why his direct guests generate higher average daily rates without a lower direct price, while Alex challenges the parity model and considers what AI-driven recommendations could mean for intermediaries.

Finally, Minor Hotels' Life Longevity concept sparks a debate about wellness beyond the stay. Should hotels collect guests' health data, connect with their wearables, or leave diagnostics alone? Alex closes with a different vision of personalization: guests control their data and share it when they want a better experience.

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

This Week’s Guest:

Shawn Cioto - Vice President of Operations, Dovetail + Co

Your Host:

Zach Busekrus - Journey

Shawn Cioto, VP of Operations at Dovetail + Co, explains why the owner of seven hotels is taking management in-house: large management companies often miss the small, on-brand details that make independent lifestyle hotels special, from coffee sleeves and key cards to scent, lighting and music. He describes how Dovetail decides between growing its Wayfinder brand (Waikiki, Newport and Bishop) and launching new concepts like its high-design pod hotel, and the whirlwind three-to-four-week takeover of Collective Retreats in New York. With guest acquisition costs climbing through OTA commissions, accelerators and paid media, Shawn's focus is monetizing guests once they're on property. One example is adding a casual second restaurant concept at a remote hotel so guests stay the second night instead of leaving for dinner. He talks about leaning on specialist marketing partners, a creative director and a brand lead, a viral video with their Catskills pizza chef, and surprise-and-delight touches for kids like Tiny the Turtle. With co-host Ben, he digs into balancing brand standards with fun content: standardize back-of-house processes, never the soul of the hotel.

On this week’s This Week in Hospitality, Zach Busekrus, Ben Wolff, and Edwin Kramer dig into hospitality’s search for consistency, growth, and better economics. Scott Eddy is away in Italy, so the trio gets straight to the news.

Airbnb appears ready to bring back a Luxe tier as it adds hotels and services to its platform. The hosts debate whether a badge and inspections can restore trust and deliver reliable stays, or whether the variety of vacation rentals makes consistency hard to guarantee.

They turn to hotel leaders’ claims that AI should help employees rather than replace them. Wyndham’s voice agent reportedly answers calls that often went unanswered, while the group asks which tasks should be automated, what work will shift, and where human judgment still matters. Ben argues that, for consistency today, AI may outperform people; Edwin raises questions about how fast-changing systems could affect guests and staff.

Next, Travel + Leisure and Wyndham’s Sports Illustrated Resorts partnership gets a developer’s-eye test: can loyalty and a famous name overcome a complicated ownership and operating model? The discussion then weighs Hilton’s Undergraduate brand and its ambition to reach 500 hotels against the limits of college-town demand and the risk of cannibalizing existing brands.

In Spicyville, the crew tees up allegations that Expedia’s terms may constrain hotels’ room rates elsewhere. Zach closes with ResortPass and the case for day guests: could pool and spa visitors deliver better economics than overnight stays? Plus, a call for owners considering a brand switch to get in touch.

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

This Week’s Guest:

Dina Belon-Sayre - President, Staypineapple Hotels

Your Host:

Zach Busekrus - Journey

Dina Belon-Sayre, President of Staypineapple Hotels, opens with a story from a Portland snowstorm when she waited tables herself, fed a stranded hotel and received a thank-you check from a guest. Her point: any Staypineapple employee is empowered to make the same call. She traces her unusual path from theater, psychology and criminal justice studies through hotel design, construction and a decade in sustainability consulting, to spotting a five-story painted pineapple from her Seattle office window and joining the company ten years ago. She rose from director of real estate to president. Dina explains the upside of a playful, edgy brand (the "Naked Experience," no navy blazers or scripts) and the occasional offended guest, and why it's fine not to be for everyone. She describes hiring for emotional intelligence, critical thinking and a willingness to be authentic. On growth, she notes owners are risk-averse, Staypineapple hasn't franchised without management because service is the brand's through-line, and the company may package tools for other independents. Her soapbox: AI and LLM booking could run over independents within 18 months, and collections may need to become their AI intermediary at a fair cost.

Scott is in Sicily, so Zach, Ben Wolff and Edwin Kramer take the docket. Edwin checks in from a new boutique hotel on Spain's Costa Blanca, and Ben is fresh from the glamping show.

The first story: Hilton's CIO says AI assistants have put online travel agencies under real threat, yet he expects personal AI agents to become commissionable channels too. The crew asks what "direct" even means when an agent that never sleeps keeps rate-shopping after the booking is made. Edwin says post-booking shopping could be a bigger disruption than the booking itself. Then Booking.com tightens how much guest data, including phone numbers, it passes to hotels.

Next, Lola, the new AI travel assistant from Kayak's co-founders, wholly owned by Booking Holdings. It has a free tier, a $5 a month membership and a $25 a month VIP plan, and both paid plans need a 12-month commitment. Edwin thinks it could make the OTA stronger. Ben is highly skeptical that anyone will pay up front for perks.

Then Choice Hotels buys RV club Harvest Hosts for a reported $130 million. The crew talks about farm hospitality, RVers who eventually want a real bed, and what IHG and Wyndham do next.

The closer: Europe's new anti-greenwashing rules took effect September 27. Edwin explains why they are hard to police and why hotels may go quiet about sustainability instead.

Plus spice of the week: a hot September in southern Europe, and why this is the moment to experiment.

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

https://roompricegenie.com/

This Week’s Guest:

Jennifer Barnwell - President, Curator Hotel & Resort Collection

Your Host:

Zach Busekrus - Journey

Recorded live at the Independent Hotel Show in Miami, Zach sits down with Jennifer Barnwell, President of Curator Hotel & Resort Collection, for a macro read on the independent upscale and luxury segment. Jennifer says performance is finally on an upswing after several muted years, but owners are squeezed by costs on every front: consumer goods, labor, property insurance and especially health insurance, alongside persistent staffing gaps in a 24/7 business. She walks through the three technologies Curator has piloted and now runs across member hotels: overnight cleaning robots for corridors and public spaces, guest texting platforms, and AI voice agents that take basic calls off the front desk. The heart of the conversation is Curator's positioning as a "third way" between the big brands and rep/affiliation companies: an owner-centric, light-touch membership built on vetted vendor deals and cost savings, plus consumer marketing that drives direct bookings. Zach pushes on the distribution question, what it would take for a collection to deliver 10% or more of a property's bookings, and argues that AI search makes this the moment for collections as trusted sources for independents.

https://roompricegenie.com/

This Week's Guest:

Heidi Zimmer — Founder, Wild Rice Retreat

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

Heidi Zimmer closed on her construction financing the day before the country shut down in March of 2020.

Then lumber tripled. She had to cut an entire building from the plan. And the business she'd underwritten, roughly seventy-five percent group retreats and twenty-five percent leisure, opened in 2021 and flipped almost exactly upside down.

Heidi has spent more than thirty years in real estate development, much of it building artist housing and creative spaces around the country. Wild Rice Retreat sits on a hundred and fourteen acres of dense forest on a seventy-foot sandstone cliff above Lake Superior in Bayfield, Wisconsin, about as far north as you can go in this country. The land was once home to a James Beard-nominated restaurant designed by the architect David Salmela. Heidi took one look at it and knew it needed to become a place for healing. She brought Salmela back and built a thirty-one-room retreat that blends Scandinavian and Native American traditions.

What makes Wild Rice so interesting is what Heidi refuses to do. Everyone tells her she needs a pickleball court, Pilates reformers and the latest gadget. She tunes all of it out. There's no menu: food is simply out from ten to noon and five to seven, because guests, especially moms, arrive with so much decision fatigue that not having to choose is the wellness. And every day includes a creativity class, because, as Heidi puts it, in the Native American tradition there's no word for artist. To be human is to be an artist.

In this episode, recorded live at the Independent Hotel Show in Miami with my co-host Ben, we get into her three pillars of nourishment, expression and movement. We get into the twenty-five million dollar expansion that adds seventeen owned homes to the rental pool, and the Nordic spa she's building with a glass-front sauna facing Lake Superior. We talk about why same-week bookings are way up, and why she thinks trees are the most underrated wellness modality there is.

Her father used to say there's no problem a good long walk in the woods can't solve. Heidi built a business on it.

The full squad is back. Royal Caribbean is taking a 50% stake in Sandals Resorts for roughly $3 billion, and the crew breaks down why a cruise line wants an all-inclusive hotel brand. Edwin runs the numbers on who is really serving whose guests, and Scott, who has known the Stewart family most of his life, explains why cruise companies can't build ships fast enough and are coming ashore instead.

Then it's Airbnb's hotel push: just shy of 4,000 hotels on the new listing format, hand-curated and aimed at independent and soft-brand three- and four-star properties. Ben weighs in as an operator who knows the platform well, and Edwin asks what happens to hotels when short-term rental markets get squeezed. From there, Uber's hotel business: Dara Khosrowshahi says the traveler comes to Uber, Uber One has more than 50 million paying members, and the Blacklane deal hints at where a trip super app could go.

The closer: at Skift's first creator summit, IHG and Hyatt said they're giving up control of scripted creator campaigns. Scott says it's six years too late. Ben says social is now the best customer acquisition channel on the planet, and any brand that won't invest in it is choosing to hand its bookings to the OTAs. Plus spice of the week, from an Ibiza rave revival to the difference between building a brand and putting heads in beds.

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

Fresh off Independent Hotel Show Miami, Zach and Ben break down two days of conversations with eight owners, operators, and investors from across independent hospitality.

Whether you own a property, back one, or build for the people who do, consider this your shortcut to what the industry's sharpest independents are thinking right now.

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

Blake Danner has spent his career inside the rooms where lifestyle hospitality was invented. Eleven years alongside Ian Schrager opening the Clift, Sanderson, and Shore Club. Seven years as founding COO of the Sydell Group, where he helped create Nomad, The Line, and Freehand — 11 hotels in seven years. A stint running operations at Proper Hospitality. And now, as COO of AKA Hotels & Hotel Residences, he's running a 16-property luxury serviced residence portfolio where the entry-level monthly rate starts at $30K and the loyalty program charges $750 just to join.

This week, Blake makes the case that the mid-size independent operator isn't just surviving — it's winning. He explains why he's "completely unhireable" by big brands, what he learned from Schrager about staying culturally voracious, and the Andrew Zobler lesson he still carries: never sacrifice brand DNA, no matter how big the check. He tells the Delano pool story — suits outnumbering swimsuits — and why the Nomad once turned down a million-dollar group that wanted a banner over the front desk.

Then the crew digs into Skift's latest loyalty data showing credit cards and banks now outrank hotels as the most rewarding loyalty programs in the eyes of travelers. Blake's response: boo hoo. If your product is good enough, people will skip the points. The conversation turns to Neil Jacobs' new operating company backed by Constellation Hotels — his pitch for a "third way" between global management scale and solo passion projects. Blake co-signs the thesis and adds: AKA doesn't want 50 properties, and that restraint is the whole point.

Stream The Hotel Daddy Podcast

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM