This Week in Hospitality

Special guest:

Andrew Humphries — Bridge Hospitality Partners
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-humphries-66a1918/

Are the biggest hotel brands still in the business of running great hotels, or are distribution and fee streams becoming the real product?

This week, Zach Busekrus, Ben Wolff, Edwin Kramer and Scott Eddy are joined by Andrew Humphries, partner and co-founder of Bridge Hospitality Partners. After decades in luxury hospitality, Andrew brings an operator's perspective to the hotel investment conversation, fresh from the GIOHIS conference.

We start with the Middle East: resilient demand, th...

Fifty episodes in, we're skipping the news and handing out the hospitality awards nobody asked for.

Zach, Ben, Edwin and a returning Scott Eddy each nominate, defend and vote across five categories. For "The Hotel I'd Steal," Scott and Edwin both take Marina Bay Sands - Edwin to bankroll a portfolio of tiny rural hotels with its profits - while Ben makes a play for Vermejo, Ted Turner's half-million-acre New Mexico reserve, and Zach stays closer to home with San Antonio's Hotel Emma and the Pearl District it anchors.

For "The Biggest Bet," Edwin backs...

This Week's Guest:

Alex Cabañas
Executive Chairman, Pyramid Global Hospitality
Founder and CEO of Astound Ventures
https://astound-ventures.com/

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 dis...

This Week’s Guest:

Shawn Cioto - Vice President of Operations, Dovetail + Co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-cioto-914264b/

Your Host:

Zach Busekrus - Journey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/

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 Do...

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 employ...

This Week’s Guest:

Dina Belon-Sayre - President, Staypineapple Hotels
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinabelon/
Explore Staypineapple Hotels: https://www.staypineapple.com/

Your Host:

Zach Busekrus - Journey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/

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 tr...

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...

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This Week’s Guest:

Jennifer Barnwell - President, Curator Hotel & Resort Collection
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-barnwell-a8689ba/
Explore Curator Hotel & Resort Collection: https://www.curatorhotelsandresorts.com/team/jennifer-barnwell/

Your Host:

Zach Busekrus - Journey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/

Recorded live at the Independent Hotel Show in Miami, Zach sits down with Jennifer Barnwell, President of Curator Hotel & Resort Collection, for...

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This Week's Guest:

Heidi Zimmer — Founder, Wild Rice Retreat
Connect with Heidi: https://heidi-zimmer.com/
Explore Wild Rice Retreats: https://wildriceretreat.com/

Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wolff/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iambenwolff/

Heidi Zimmer closed on her construction financing...

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...

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.
Before the full interviews roll out on This Week in Hospitality, this is the recap — the ideas that kept surfacing across every mic session, the moments that caught us off guard, and what these conversations say about where independent hospitality is actually headed.

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.

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 in...

TikTok Go was supposed to turn creators into a hotel distribution channel. Instead, a Skift investigation found dozens of AI-generated fake videos attached to real properties — fabricated suites, nonexistent amenities, faceless accounts — with one Sedona luxury resort racking up 17 flagged videos. The kicker: the hotel doesn't even sell through TikTok Go's booking partners. Scott says forget the AI part — someone can now recommend a hotel they've never visited, show rooms that don't exist, and disappear while the property deals with the fallout.

Then Airbnb quietly drops the most telling number of the year — testing reduced host fees as low as 6% wh...

Hotel sales in the US are up 28% in the first half of 2026 — and a meaningful chunk of that activity is chasing bad Yelp reviews, not trophy assets. JMI Realty founder Drew Bridges joins the show to break down how his firm is using AI to source acquisition targets off terrible guest feedback. The specific deal: a Hilton Garden Inn in Austin bought for $100K per key that reviewers called "janky" and "a complete nightmare." Drew walks through the renovation math, why he's keeping the brand, and why only 184 of 789 US submarkets have outpaced CPI since 2019 — a stat that underpins his...

On this week's episode the guys are joined by Alice Sherman, CEO of HVS Executive Search! Alice Sherman has placed some of the most powerful executives in hospitality. As CEO of HVS Executive Search, she's seen thousands of resumes, sat across from hundreds of owners, and walked the halls of Congress to lobby for the industry. Her message to the business? You're still hiring wrong.  

Years of experience is the most overrated qualifier in the industry. Cover letters are dead. And the best talent isn't chasing the big brands anymore — they're running toward independent, luxury, and boutique properties where they...

Airbnb just partnered with TripAdvisor to bring 425,000 experiences onto its platform — a move that signals Brian Chesky isn't just dabbling in experiences anymore, he's building a second business inside the first. The crew breaks down what this means for the future of in-destination travel, why the real unfair advantage might already be sitting inside every host's guidebook, and whether this is Airbnb's best play in markets where short-term rental bans are tightening the grip on its core product. Edwin brings the European perspective: Barcelona's courts just sided with the city, 10,000 units disappear by 2029, and the ripple effects are spreading.   Then the...

This week we're joined by Sarah Kopit, Editor-in-Chief of Skift — the publication that fuels basically every episode of this show — and she came ready.

We open on the story all of hospitality shared this week: Aman's brand-new, $6,000-a-night Amanvari turning away independent reviewer Ryan Walker at the gate on night two, then calling the cops on his driver. Scott and Sarah are inclined to give Aman the benefit of the doubt. Ben isn't — he thinks it might be the canary in the coal mine for a brand scaling faster than it ever has.

From there we get...

Sonder is back — sort of. Eight months after going bankrupt and stranding guests mid-stay, the brand name has been bought by a Vancouver affiliate firm that paid for one thing: search equity. The buildings are gone. The trademarks and 70+ domains remain. And because large language models still route travelers to Sonder’s optimized pages, that name is now targeting $100M in gross booking value over the next year. We get into what it means when a dead brand outlives the company that built it.

Then: Fora’s $1B valuation. The travel advisor platform keeps scaling the human-agent model...

Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta went on record defending the brand's 28-property portfolio — and the panel has thoughts. Is the multi-brand arms race really about guests, or is it just an elaborate play for developers and distribution? 

Edwin makes the case that independent hotels have a competitive advantage no loyalty algorithm can replicate. Scott drops the hottest take of the episode: loyalty points have become hush money for operational failures. And Ben shares a story about a boutique hotel that turned a jackhammer nightmare into a lifelong brand loyalist — no points required.

Then the World Cup post...

This week, the squad breaks down Norwegian Air's World Cup Instagram stunt that cost next to nothing and generated more brand equity than campaigns with budgets a hundred times the size. Eivind Hammer Myhre, who leads comms and marketing at Norwegian, joins us live to walk through exactly how it happened — the 25-minute brainstorm, the one phone call to get sign-off, and what came after when the whole thing blew up overnight.

Then we get into the Ennismore story. Skift's Rafat Ali floated a thought experiment this week that reads less like an op-ed and more like a...

James McBride, Co-Founder & CEO of NIHI Hotels, joins the core four for a wide-ranging conversation on what it actually takes to build a legendary independent hospitality brand — from the jungles of Sumba to the halls of the Ritz-Carlton.

James traces his career across some of the most storied names in luxury hospitality — Ritz-Carlton, Rosewood, the Carlisle, YTL — before partnering with Chris Burch to build NIHI Sumba, now widely regarded as one of the world's most exceptional and emotionally resonant hotel experiences. He breaks down the difference between operating inside a behemoth brand versus building something from scratch, and wh...

Zach, Scott, and Edwin dig into three stories reshaping the industry this holiday week. First: Skift's The Big Squeeze Part 2, which spotlights a family in Iowa who let their Wyndham franchise expire, renovated their Super Eight, and beat their old revenue numbers — no flag required. With 1,200+ economy agreements hitting end-of-term by 2030, the off-ramp is more viable than ever. Then: Bass Pro Shops quietly acquiring Cheeca Lodge in the Florida Keys for a reported $300M — a masterclass in brand ecosystem building that's staying firmly in its lane. Finally: Brian Chesky's reported shadow AI lab, what it says about the limits of b...

Sean O'Neill of Skift joins the roundtable this week for a conversation that cuts straight to the fault lines running through the hotel industry right now — distribution versus identity, brand proliferation versus brand meaning, and the wellness promise versus wellness delivery.

The panel leads with Pali Society's decision to bring its 16-property California portfolio into Marriott's Design Hotels ecosystem — the single largest addition in the program's history. Edwin draws the line everyone in the independent space is afraid to say out loud: using Marriott as a marketing channel is smart; slowly operating for Marriott guests instead of your own...

This week opens in full TWIH chaos: Zach and Scott are somehow a mile apart in San Antonio and still not together, Ben is on the Connecticut shore debuting smarter-looking glasses, and Edwin is back in Barcelona sweating through a muted AC situation.

Then the guys get into the real stories moving hospitality. CoStar and Tourism Economics upgrade 2026 RevPAR forecasts, but the panel is skeptical. Luxury keeps pulling away, select service is stuck below inflation, and Ben argues the real problem is product-market fit: too many boring midscale hotels charging more without giving guests a reason to...

Two of the biggest casino operators in the world became takeover targets in the same week — and the squad has thoughts.
Barry Diller's People Inc. just offered $18 billion to take MGM Resorts private, days after Fertitta agreed to buy Caesars. MGM's own CFO didn't argue the company was fairly valued — he argued investors aren't doing the work. Ben, Scott, and Edwin debate whether public markets are simply too lazy to underwrite experience-driven hospitality, and what the next-generation casino actually looks like.

Then: the deal that almost rewrote the industry. On a recent podcast, Airbnb's former Chief Stra...

This week opens at LE Miami — which Scott describes less like a travel conference and more like Coachella for hotel nerds — before the guys dive into the real industry tension underneath the party.

Hyatt tells investors to stop counting rooms and start counting fees, arguing that “empty calorie” growth is the wrong metric. But the panel digs into the contradiction: the premium story is Park Hyatt, Andaz, Thompson, and Alila — while the actual growth engine may be Essentials, all-inclusives, and credit card economics. Translation: hotel companies are increasingly distribution platforms, loyalty machines, and maybe even banks.

Then Hi...

Mews embeds Uber directly into its PMS, promising seamless guest transportation and a cut of ancillary revenue hotels have long been leaving on the table. The guys are skeptical — cool concept, questionable adoption, and the real winner might just be Uber’s data team.

Then Expedia announces B2A — a marketing function built not for humans, but for AI agents. Scott doesn’t mince words: AI is about to expose how hollow most hotel marketing actually is. Ben connects the dots to the accelerating rise of independent, story-driven properties that LLMs will increasingly favor over generic flag brands.<...

This week, Zach, Ben, and Edwin dig into the race to own the entire trip.

Airbnb’s summer release becomes the main event: rental cars, boutique hotels, Instacart, airport pickups, luggage storage, landmark experiences, and aggressive travel credits. The crew debates whether this is finally Airbnb’s super-app moment — or whether the company still can’t decide if it wants to be a homes platform or the best stays platform on earth.

That rolls straight into Expedia buying CarTrawler, Booking getting more aggressive, and Meta testing AI-powered trip planning from Instagram ads. The takeaway: whoever owns int...

This week, the guys trace one tension running through travel right now: everyone wants scale, but nobody wants the experience to feel scaled.

Airbnb opens the conversation with Brian Chesky admitting what most travel CEOs won’t say out loud: AI still hasn’t figured out travel. The panel digs into why chatbots don’t solve discovery, why travel planning is visual, emotional, and often multiplayer — and why the best AI in hospitality may be the stuff guests never see.

Then the conversation moves to safari, where Auberge joins the growing list of lu...

The hospitality industry was supposed to print money during the 2026 World Cup. Instead, nearly 80% of hotels across the eleven US host cities are pacing significantly below forecasts, with Kansas City operators calling it a non-event and Boston, Philly, and San Francisco not far behind. On this week's episode, Zach is joined by Edwin Kramer, Scott Eddy, and Ben Wolff to unpack what went wrong — visa friction, FIFA's extortionate ticket pricing, geopolitical headwinds, and a hospitality industry that mistook the World Cup logo for a marketing strategy. Edwin offers a sharp European perspective on why the math was always going to...

This week’s conversation pulls apart a reality the industry has been circling for months—but is now impossible to ignore: travel demand is no longer being created, shaped, or captured by the companies that actually deliver the experience.

It’s happening upstream.
What starts as a discussion around TikTok and AI quickly evolves into something bigger—a structural shift in how travelers decide. Discovery is no longer destination-first. It’s scroll-first. A piece of content sparks interest, AI compresses consideration, and by the time a traveler reaches a booking interface, most of the decision has already be...

Luxury hospitality has a credibility problem: the industry keeps charging more while delivering sameness, ceremony, and aesthetic shortcuts that increasingly feel hollow. Joining the quad this week is Bashar Wali—hotel operator, industry veteran, and one of hospitality’s most outspoken critics—known for pairing irreverence with sharp, experience-backed insight. He wastes no time arguing that the old markers of luxury no longer match what modern travelers actually value: time, privacy, ease, and the feeling of being genuinely seen.

The conversation expands into a broader critique of ownership, brands, and the “muddy middle.” Bashar reframes hotels not as service...

The hotel industry is telling two very different stories right now — and this week, the squad unpacks both.

First up: a Skift deep dive exposes the brutal math crushing America's hotel owners. Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt are posting record profits while the people who actually own the buildings are hemorrhaging cash — franchise fees, loyalty fees, F&B fees, spa fees, stack an OTA commission on top and owners could be handing over 40% of revenue before paying a single employee. The panel doesn't hold back. Edwin calls it a deadlock. Ben calls it a hostage situation. Scott says the...

This week, Scott, Ben, and Zach discuss the growing disconnect between industry strategy and traveler behavior.

New data from Cloudbeds shows OTA share continuing to rise for independent hotels, even as operators double down on direct booking initiatives. At the same time, Hyatt tied executive compensation to improving direct channel performance—and failed to meet the target, underscoring how difficult the shift has become, even at scale.
In parallel, short-term rental data suggests demand has not weakened, but rather evolved. Travelers are taking longer to convert, prioritizing flexibility, and increasingly relying on platforms during moments of un...

This week, the guys unpack a massive shift happening across hospitality — and what it means for who actually owns demand.
Hotel executives are finally admitting what’s been true for years: discovery is no longer happening on their platforms. It’s happening on social, in group chats, and increasingly through AI. If you’re not part of the inspiration phase, you don’t exist.

At the same time, food is stepping into the spotlight as a true demand driver—not just an amenity. From chef-led concepts to destination restaurants, hotels are betting big on F&B to differentiat...

Hilton just rewrote the rules on growth—without buying brands. Marriott keeps flooding the market with more flags. And underneath it all, a bigger question is emerging: who actually owns demand in hospitality?

This week, we break down Hilton’s Yotel deal and what it signals about the future of “platformized” hotel brands, Marriott’s relentless expansion strategy (and whether guests even care anymore), and why distribution—not differentiation—is becoming the real battleground.

We also get into Four Seasons’ move into luxury yachts, Thailand’s push to own wellness travel, and how Netflix is quietly reshaping restaura...

This week in hospitality, three big shifts are colliding — and none of them are getting enough attention.
Hotel restaurants are no longer an afterthought. What was once a margin-draining “amenity” is now becoming one of the most powerful demand drivers a hotel can have. So what changed… and why are lenders suddenly bullish on F&B?

At the same time, Hyatt is making a major move into secondary and tertiary markets — a clear signal that distribution, not differentiation, is the game they’re trying to win. But does scaling faster come at the cost of brand soul?

And...

Travel’s power centers are shifting, but not always where the market expected. OpenAI stepping back from native checkout doesn’t save OTAs so much as reframe the fight: the real leverage may sit upstream, with whoever owns trip discovery and shapes intent before a booking ever happens. Scott argues the industry is still obsessing over the transaction layer while AI is quietly positioning itself to control demand itself.

That same question hangs over Airbnb. Ben and Scott both buy Raffi Asdourian’s thesis that Airbnb’s ambition to own the full trip now requires something more aggressi...

This week’s episode of This Week in Hospitality starts on a deeply human note, with the crew reflecting on the escalating conflict in Iran and the ripple effects being felt across the Middle East and global travel. Edwin, Scott, Ben, and Zach share firsthand accounts from friends and colleagues across Dubai, Kuwait, Doha, Beirut, and beyond — a sobering reminder that hospitality often becomes both refuge and frontline in moments of crisis. From bombed airports to stranded travelers to terrified interns far from home, the conversation grounds the industry in what matters most: people caring for people.

From...

The episode opens with a “ground truth” dispatch from Jason Henzell of Jake’s Hotel in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, laying out how community tourism, agritourism, and repeat-guest loyalty can anchor a destination—then how two major hurricanes force an operator to turn resilience into strategy.

From there, the hosts dissect Airbnb’s widening blast radius: airport transfers, grocery delivery tests, revived experiences, a bigger hotel push, and (again) a non-points loyalty experiment. Ben argues the ambition is coherent but execution has historically lagged—so the question is what Airbnb actually nails in the next 6–12 months.

Then the episo...