Podcast
No Vacancy Live!
Hosted by No Vacancy Live · EN
No Vacancy is home to the hospitality industry's top podcasts. We speak to the CEOs, influencers and leaders to go behind the scenes of the hotel and travel business.
76episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
How Hotels Are Getting Paid to Reduce Energy Demand
3w ago00:28:58Tap to summarizeHere'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.
Transcribe →Why the Most Confident AI Hotel Pricing Recommendations Are the Least Trustworthy
4w ago00:07:42Tap to summarizeKartik 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.
Transcribe →Hotels Are Asking the Wrong Question at Check-In
4w ago00:10:50Tap to summarizeHotels 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.
Transcribe →Hotel Data Breaches Are Getting Worse. Here's Why.
4w ago00:05:04Tap to summarizeMatthew 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.
Transcribe →FNA 213: At our Baikowitz-end
4w ago01:02:45Tap to summarizeDeena 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.
Transcribe →Curator Hotels VP on Why Labor Costs Drive Every Tech Decision
Jun 2600:06:30Tap to summarizeBrent Hayhurst, VP at Curator Hotel and Resort Collection, won't look at a new technology until he knows what KPI it's supposed to move. 💸 Labor is the largest line item on any hotel owner's balance sheet, and that's the number Curator's tech decisions chase. 🏚️ Curator skips the big splashy booths and goes straight to the fringes of the show floor, where the new ideas show up first. 🧪 A pilot that fails isn't wasted. Hayhurst treats it as proof the team needs a different approach entirely. ☎️ AI is already pulling phone calls off the front desk so staff can focus on the guest standing in front of them. More from the show floor at HITEC. #NoVacancyNews 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.
Transcribe →Why Your Hotel Manager Spends Hours on Dashboards (Hint: They Shouldn't)
Jun 2500:04:15Tap to summarizeSteven Moore, CEO at Actabl, says you shouldn't need to log in to answer your owner's question. 💬 Altitude, Actabl's new product, lets you have conversations with your data instead of clicking through dashboards and pulling reports. 📊 Instead of logging in, finding the right sheet, and comparing — "What were my labor expenses last two weeks?" takes a conversation. 👥 The payoff: get property managers off screens so staff can focus on what only they can do — physical interaction with guests and the building. 💰 The goal is profitability (down from pre-pandemic levels) without sacrificing guest or associate experience. The tools that do that create lower turnover and better engagement. From HITEC. #NoVacancyNews Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.
Transcribe →Why Aimbridge's CIO Says AI Doesn't Work Without Humans
Jun 2400:07:29Tap to summarizeKeryn McNamara, CIO at Aimbridge, told me AI fails the moment it replaces a human instead of freeing one up. 💰 She's bringing a labor productivity and forecasting tool to market within weeks, built on Aimbridge's scale and data. 🚪 Her go-to comparison: elevator operators disappeared, but new jobs replaced them. She thinks the same thing happens with AI in hotels. 🚩 Her test for separating real AI from marketing AI: ask partners who they're integrated with and who they actually know. ⚡ Her prediction for agentic AI hitting property management systems and point-of-sale: six months, not a year. 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.
Transcribe →Starwood CIO: AI Is the First Tech I Never Had to Explain
Jun 2300:10:08Tap to summarizeDenise Walker, CIO at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, started her career on a TRS-80. Thirty years later, she told me AI is the first technology she's never had to explain to anyone — people already see why it matters. 🏨 Smaller hotel companies can move faster than legacy chains that placed big AI bets last year, before pricing models and guest expectations shifted again. 🔐 Fear keeps guest data handled right and security practices tight — Walker calls it a good fear. 🛎️ Starwood wants AI to feel invisible, the way good technology always has. You don't think about water coming out of a pipe. ⚙️ Code written by AI still needs the same quality checks a floor full of developers used to run by hand. Catch the full conversation from the show floor at HITEC. #NoVacancyNews 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.
Transcribe →Why Better Hotel Revenue Doesn't Always Mean Better Profit
Jun 2200:07:48Tap to summarizeAt HITEC, I talked with Michael Grove of HotStats, which is now part of Duetto, about why hotel performance has to move beyond rooms revenue. Michael came with actual numbers on profitability, but the conversation went quickly into how owners and operators should read the business. Demand and rate only tell part of the story. Profit depends on where revenue comes from, what it costs to capture it, and which parts of the operation deserve more attention. We got into U.S. profitability, global travel shifts, food and beverage pressure, wellness, golf, ancillary revenue, and why Michael likes the phrase "performance engineering." I like that phrase because it gets closer to how owners and operators actually need to think. Revenue is one piece. Profitability tells a much fuller story. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.
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