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This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ How you handle a mistake, a tense moment with staff, or an unhappy guest at 8pm says more about your company than any mission statement ever will. In this episode, Heather welcomes back Rachel Alday, co-founder of Abode Luxury Rentals, to talk about the leadership framework at the heart of her new book, Please Do Disturb: How True Leaders Show Up When It Matters Most, written with her longtime company culture consultants at Tandemly. Rachel walks through the three commitments: show up, make room, and build belonging. It is a deceptively simple framework, illustrated with real stories from running a luxury rental company, including the anniversary couple whose hot tub let them down on arrival night and what her team did instead of scrambling for a technician. Along the way, the conversation covers the service recovery paradox, why every guest and homeowner complaint has a thing behind the thing, and how to train a team so this kind of hospitality shows up consistently, not just when the founders are in the room. Key Takeaways The three commitments give hospitality a trainable shape: show up (be fully present, not typing while you listen), make room (hear the whole issue before your brain starts drafting its rebuttal), and build belonging (make deeper connection the goal of every interaction). The service recovery paradox: a guest who hits friction and watches you handle it well often ends up more loyal than one whose stay was flawless, because the problem created a chance to connect that a perfect stay never would. Ask for the thing behind the thing. The anniversary couple with the lukewarm hot tub did not want a repair at 9pm, they wanted quiet time together, so the team set up a private fire pit next door with blankets and spiced cider. Homeowner frustration usually has a root cause too. A flood of small complaints may trace back to one stressful moment, like re-entering banking details after a software switch. Find that, solve that, and the rest often dissolves. Train leaders first. Teach managers to use the three commitments with their own team, let staff experience it from the inside, and front-line people will carry it to guests and owners naturally. A company retreat compresses months of connection into a few days. Even with 5 or 10 employees, Rachel considers it one of the highest-value investments a hospitality business can make. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk are joined by Jason Gamel, President and CEO of ARDA, to talk vacation ownership, where the industry is headed, and what the data actually shows about owner satisfaction and sector health. From there, Sarah and Steve get into AI-generated video giving small hotel operators a marketing edge they never had before, why boutique hotel founders almost always sell and the ones who plan for it win, and Airbnb's appointment of a former Booking.com hotel executive and ex-president of Viator as its new Chief Business Officer. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down major shifts in travel distribution, pricing, and short-term rental strategy. The crew starts with Airbnb testing lower host fees for bookings generated through hosts' own links, with some reportedly seeing rates of 6% to 10% versus the standard 15.5%. The booking still happens on Airbnb, raising a bigger question around direct booking economics and channel mix. They also dig into an analyst estimate that Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) B2B room nights are way higher than Expedia Group's, Google completing hotel bookings inside AI Mode, and Delta Air Lines using AI-driven pricing to cut some fares by 20 to 40%. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I invited Simon on this podcast because his video, The Five Levels of STR Companies Explained, made me wince. He describes, almost line by line, the way I ran CottageLink Rental Management for the best part of 15 years: every contract in my head, every standard different, every decision routed through me. I got right up to that wall at 200 properties and never went through it. I sold instead. This conversation is honest about what that costs, and specific about what has to change before you can climb. Whether you are at five properties or 150, you are somewhere on this ladder. About the guest Simon Lehmann is one of the most recognized figures in professional short-term rental. He was CEO of Interhome, co-founder and chairman of Vacasa Europe, chairman of MadeComfy in Australia, and a board member at HomeAway and Breezeway. Through AJL Atelier he advises property management companies worldwide, with most of his one-to-one work in the 50 to 200 unit bracket. He hosts the STR Global Unlocked podcast and is launching the Simon Lehmann Academy, a self-serve curriculum built from 21 years of domain knowledge. Some people in this industry call him the Godfather. Key takeaways Below 50 units you are the system. Every standard, every owner agreement, and every exception lives in your head, and that is exactly what stops you growing past it. The first real hire is not a junior assistant or a VA. It is an operations person who can take 50% of the work off your hands so you can start being strategic. Saying yes to every property will cost you later. When operators finally analyze owner lifetime value and margin contribution per property, they typically find 20 to 25% of the portfolio is dragging the whole business down. Tier your owners internally, into three tiers, no later than 100 units. This is an internal exercise, not an owner-facing one, and it is the first step toward a single standard contract. The number worth building your reporting around is net margin contribution per unit. Most managers know how profitable the business is. Very few can tell you how profitable one property is. You have to fire yourself from the position that creates the biggest bottleneck in your company. Selling while you are still the operator means the buyer discounts the price by the cost of replacing you. Simon replaced 4,500 Swiss francs a month of software with tools he built himself, having described himself as technically illiterate six months earlier. The AI wall works the same way as the 50 unit wall. Once you break through it, it gets easier. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down how demand is shifting across every segment of hospitality heading into Labor Day weekend. The conversation opens with the latest Labor Day travel data: cruise ports and national park gateways are topping the destination list, the K-shaped spending gap is narrowing, and 77% of Americans planned to travel this summer. From there Sarah and Steve get into how Harry Styles' Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. residency is moving NYC hotel demand in ways that look more like a major sporting event than a concert, what Generator's new CEO means when he says premium at £40 a bunk, and why Bernstein analysts are calling Airbnb's growth structural rather than transitory with shares up more than 25% since Q2 earnings. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, and Michael Goldin are joined by Amy Kothari, the new CEO of StayTerra, to talk PE-backed STR consolidation, what the rollup model looks like when it actually works, and what it all means for independent operators. From there, the crew gets into Airbnb abandoning its decade-long build-it-yourself experience strategy and partnering with Tripadvisor instead, and closes with Expedia Group cutting eight senior executives in a single week as it reorganizes around AI and what that means for Vrbo hosts. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, and Michael Goldin are joined by Amy Kothari, the new CEO of StayTerra, to talk PE-backed STR consolidation, what the rollup model looks like when it actually works, and what it all means for independent operators. From there, the crew gets into Airbnb abandoning its decade-long build-it-yourself experience strategy and partnering with Tripadvisor instead, and closes with Expedia Group cutting eight senior executives in a single week as it reorganizes around AI and what that means for Vrbo hosts. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Most people in short-term rentals describe how they got started with a slight apology in their voice. They fell into it. They bought a place, put it online, and worked out the rest as they went. Jodie Odlin thinks that story has run its course, and this episode is about what replaces it. Jodie trained in hospitality management and worked in five-star hotels before she started a rental business in the Cotswolds. What she found when she arrived in short-term rentals was a lot of beautiful properties with very little behind them in the way of standards. She began collecting host stories in a book called Hospitable Hosts, and that first volume grew into five books, more than two hundred authors, a publishing house, a training academy, an accreditation system, and a three-day summit in upstate New York at the end of September. In this conversation Heather and Jodie work through what an industry standard would actually contain, why it has to leave room for the character of an individual property, how you hold standards together from eleven time zones away, and why the standards conversation has to include owners and guests as well as hosts. Key takeaways A workable industry standard sets a floor for cleanliness, safety, and communication, and then leaves room for everything that makes one property different from every other one. Setting guest expectations accurately in the listing and in pre-arrival communication protects a review more reliably than any amount of upgrading. Standards only survive the owner being absent if they live in a trained local team and a documented process rather than in the founder's head. AI guest messaging works best as a hospitality tool that is read every day, with a clear route to a human at the point where the guest says the problem cannot wait. Owner standards matter as much as property standards, because a property nobody is willing to invest in reflects on the manager's brand rather than the owner's. Holding a standard runs in both directions, and calling out a guest who leaves a property in a poor state carries less risk than most operators assume. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into how the hotel industry measures success, where capital is flowing, and who controls the information guests use to make decisions. The conversation opens with a new Skift analysis arguing that net unit growth, the metric every hotel brand has been racing to win for a decade, may have been the wrong measure all along. From there, Sarah and Steve get into Minor International's plan for a $1 billion hotel REIT spanning its NH Hotels & Resorts, Anantara Hotels & Resorts, and Minor Hotels assets, and what a major Asian-originated hotel capital raise signals about where global hospitality investment is heading. They also unpack Google's acquisition of Spirit Airlines' reservation data from bankruptcy to train its AI hospitality recommendations, and close with what the rise of creator travel content and Substack travel newsletters tells hotel marketers about where traveler trust actually lives now. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into how the hotel industry measures success, where capital is flowing, and who controls the information guests use to make decisions. The conversation opens with a new Skift analysis arguing that net unit growth, the metric every hotel brand has been racing to win for a decade, may have been the wrong measure all along. From there, Sarah and Steve get into Minor International's plan for a $1 billion hotel REIT spanning its NH Hotels & Resorts, Anantara Hotels & Resorts, and Minor Hotels assets, and what a major Asian-originated hotel capital raise signals about where global hospitality investment is heading. They also unpack Google's acquisition of Spirit Airlines' reservation data from bankruptcy to train its AI hospitality recommendations, and close with what the rise of creator travel content and Substack travel newsletters tells hotel marketers about where traveler trust actually lives now. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane each share the stat from Skift's State of Travel 2026 report that hit hardest for them, with Seth Borko, Skift's Head of Skift Research, joining to close with the bigger picture on where travel is actually heading. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane each share the stat from Skift's State of Travel 2026 report that hit hardest for them, with Seth Borko, Skift's Head of Skift Research, joining to close with the bigger picture on where travel is actually heading. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Five days before recording this episode, Heather added an AI agent called Viktor to her Slack workspace. Within the hour it had introduced itself to her entire team, worked out on its own that the podcast was central to the business, counted the back catalogue, audited which episodes had transcripts, and offered to fix the gap. It had also spent two thirds of her credit balance, and when she asked where the money had gone, the answer was not what she expected. That story is the way into a full account of the AI tools Heather is currently paying for: what each one does, what it costs, and whether it earns its place. The total comes to $329 a month, which is just under $4,000 a year, and it is a number she had never added up before preparing this episode. The second half is a practical method for auditing your own stack. Where duplication hides, what your existing property management software already does that you may be buying twice, why monthly subscriptions beat annual ones until you are certain, and how to hand the whole exercise to AI rather than building another spreadsheet. Heather also covers what is genuinely worth learning right now and what most operators can safely leave alone for another six months. Key Takeaways Most AI spending is not a decision. It arrives as a run of small, individually defensible choices, and it lands on top of a software bill that was already growing. When an agent runs on credits, the work you ask for is usually the cheap part. The expense sits in recurring background jobs and proactive activity nobody requested. Ask any metered tool, within the first week, where your credits went and what it does when you are not watching. A capable agent needs a scope brief before it gets access, not after. Decide what it can see, who can instruct it, and what it may do without asking. Per-seat pricing is where software bills quietly grow. A tool that costs $84 a year can cost $420 a year across a team. Audit by job, not by tool. Write down the job, then list everything you pay for that does it. Check what your existing platforms already do. Most PMS and operations tools have shipped AI features that operators are separately paying for elsewhere. Only take an annual plan once you are confident you will still be using the tool in a year. The discount is always offered when you are most enthusiastic and least informed. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into four stories about how hotels earn and protect their position right now. The conversation opens with IHG Hotels & Resorts taking a deliberately different approach to the owner economics conversation that Marriott International and Hilton started last week. While rivals cut fees and launched rebate programs, IHG is arguing that its eight-year technology overhaul is the real answer. From there, Sarah and Steve get into Google's new agentic AI inside Maps and hotel search and what hotel operators need to do right now to make sure their properties show up correctly. They also dig into Aman's decision to threaten a paying creator guest with police involvement, a video that reached 15 million views and became a case study in what happens when brand protection tips into brand hostility. And they close with how Spain built a full tourism strategy around a solar eclipse and what that model teaches hotels about manufacturing demand in slow periods. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into four stories about how hotels earn and protect their position right now. The conversation opens with IHG Hotels & Resorts taking a deliberately different approach to the owner economics conversation that Marriott International and Hilton started last week. While rivals cut fees and launched rebate programs, IHG is arguing that its eight-year technology overhaul is the real answer. From there, Sarah and Steve get into Google's new agentic AI inside Maps and hotel search and what hotel operators need to do right now to make sure their properties show up correctly. They also dig into Aman's decision to threaten a paying creator guest with police involvement, a video that reached 15 million views and became a case study in what happens when brand protection tips into brand hostility. And they close with how Spain built a full tourism strategy around a solar eclipse and what that model teaches hotels about manufacturing demand in slow periods. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down three stories about who is winning the race to control how travel gets discovered and booked. The conversation opens with Airbnb's Q2 earnings: nights and experiences booked up 9%, revenue up 11%, and 100 new features shipped in a single quarter using AI. Brian Chesky is calling it a compounding advantage that rivals cannot close easily. From there, the crew digs into why Expedia Group is doubling down on B2B, where gross bookings are growing at more than twice the rate of its consumer business, and what the Layla AI Travel Agent acquisition means for how vacation rentals get discovered inside bank and airline platforms. They close with Booking Holdings flagging Google AI Overviews on an earnings call for the first time and what it means when the biggest OTA in the world admits the search landscape is shifting underneath it. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down three stories about who is winning the race to control how travel gets discovered and booked. The conversation opens with Airbnb's Q2 earnings: nights and experiences booked up 9%, revenue up 11%, and 100 new features shipped in a single quarter using AI. Brian Chesky is calling it a compounding advantage that rivals cannot close easily. From there, the crew digs into why Expedia Group is doubling down on B2B, where gross bookings are growing at more than twice the rate of its consumer business, and what the Layla AI Travel Agent acquisition means for how vacation rentals get discovered inside bank and airline platforms. They close with Booking Holdings flagging Google AI Overviews on an earnings call for the first time and what it means when the biggest OTA in the world admits the search landscape is shifting underneath it. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Twenty-five years ago, Heather could get on the phone with every guest who booked her cottage in Ontario and ask one question: what would it take for you to leave saying this was the best vacation of your life? One answer led to a fishing rod, a tackle box, and a tub of live worms in the fridge for an eight-year-old visiting from England. That depth of guest knowledge became impossible once she was managing 200 properties. This conversation is about getting it back. Orlie Benjamin spent her corporate career in marketing at Victoria's Secret, American Airlines, NetJets, and Scotts Miracle-Gro before buying 78 acres near Hocking Hills, Ohio, and building her own vacation rental business. What she found was an industry with almost none of the guest marketing infrastructure she had taken for granted, and distribution channels designed to keep operators and guests apart. So she built Lasoh, an AI-driven guest portal, CRM, and marketing platform for short-term rental operators. Listeners will come away with a clear picture of what it means to know an incoming guest before they arrive, why the anticipation phase is the most neglected stage of the guest journey, and how to think about direct booking as a business strategy rather than a wish. Key Takeaways Revenue has three levers: the number of guests you have, how often they transact, and what they spend each time. Most operators only ever work on the first one, and they rent it from the OTAs rather than owning it. The anticipation phase is the longest stage of the guest journey, and for most operators it sits empty. The window between booking and arrival is where guest knowledge is gathered and goodwill is built. Three plain, open-ended questions sent before arrival will tell you more than any polished survey. Orlie deliberately made Lasoh's pre-arrival form look unsophisticated so it feels like a human is reading the answers. One is. AI removes three of the four steps: asking, capturing, and drafting the response. The human does the fourth, which is reviewing the reply and adding the judgement and flair that make it exceptional. Build the goodwill piggy bank before arrival. A guest who has been genuinely looked after in the weeks before their stay will forgive the thing that inevitably goes wrong. A guest arriving at neutral will not. If your business runs entirely through Airbnb, your customer is Airbnb, not the guest. Direct booking is a deliberate strategy that requires people, systems, and process, and it starts with deciding who your guest and owner ICPs actually are. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into what the major brands are actually doing to keep hotel owners from walking. The conversation opens with Marriott International launching a rebate program for owners ahead of a $125 million credit card fee increase, and Hilton cutting fees across seven brands in the same week. Two of the biggest brands in hospitality both responding to owner pressure simultaneously is not a coincidence. They also dig into what Club Med's 12% revenue growth and 18% rate increase teaches any hotel thinking seriously about a premium pivot, and close with Hyatt's pipeline delays and what they mean for anyone underwriting mid-tier development right now. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into what the major brands are actually doing to keep hotel owners from walking. The conversation opens with Marriott International launching a rebate program for owners ahead of a $125 million credit card fee increase, and Hilton cutting fees across seven brands in the same week. Two of the biggest brands in hospitality both responding to owner pressure simultaneously is not a coincidence. They also dig into what Club Med's 12% revenue growth and 18% rate increase teaches any hotel thinking seriously about a premium pivot, and close with Hyatt's pipeline delays and what they mean for anyone underwriting mid-tier development right now. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're ready to start turning today's guests into tomorrow's direct bookings, head to stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality and use code GOODMORNINGHOSPITALITY to get 50% off your first three months. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down three stories about how the STR discovery and booking funnel is being rebuilt from scratch. The conversation opens with Airbnb's next big move: tickets and a native wallet that would let guests store credits and spend across the entire Airbnb ecosystem. The crew digs into what a more financially sticky Airbnb means for hosts who built their businesses on the platform. From there, they get into Expedia Group's acquisition of AI trip planner Layla AI Travel Agent, which had already helped plan more than 135 million trips, and what it means for STR operators when the platform that distributes your listings now owns the AI layer that recommends where guests go. They close with Google's Q2 earnings and what AI Overviews appearing in more than 50% of travel queries means for how vacation rentals get discovered before anyone opens a booking platform. This episode is presented by StayFi. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners!
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down three stories about how the STR discovery and booking funnel is being rebuilt from scratch. The conversation opens with Airbnb's next big move: tickets and a native wallet that would let guests store credits and spend across the entire Airbnb ecosystem. The crew digs into what a more financially sticky Airbnb means for hosts who built their businesses on the platform. From there, they get into Expedia Group's acquisition of AI trip planner Layla AI Travel Agent, which had already helped plan more than 135 million trips, and what it means for STR operators when the platform that distributes your listings now owns the AI layer that recommends where guests go. They close with Google's Q2 earnings and what AI Overviews appearing in more than 50% of travel queries means for how vacation rentals get discovered before anyone opens a booking platform. This episode is presented by StayFi. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners!
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This episode started on LinkedIn. Gil Chan posted about hyperlocal property management, using VueStay Vacations, a newly launched company with 4,500 homes across eight states, built on centralized revenue management and marketing through the Casago franchise network, as his example. Richard Vaughton replied that hyperlocal is as much about owner relationships as local market knowledge, and that the relationship piece is increasingly getting forgotten. That comment is where this conversation begins. Heather's guest is Richard Vaughton, a short-term rental consultant with close to thirty years in the industry and a career built on starting, scaling, and selling companies: an Italian rental business grown to roughly 800 properties, a UK company in Torquay, a PMS technology startup, and a VP role at Stay Alfred during its collapse in the pandemic. The two have known each other for more than twenty years, and this is an unscripted, fireside-style conversation rather than a structured interview. Listeners will come away with a clearer, more operational definition of hyperlocal, a look at why some of the industry's best-known roll-ups have failed while others have scaled successfully by staying local, and a reminder that the piece of this business that most often determines a guest's review, and an owner's trust, is not technology or marketing. It is cleaning. Key Takeaways Hyperlocal is an operating decision, not a marketing word: it means real local staff, a genuine local reputation, and a company culture rooted in one place, not a national brand run by a distant account manager. The owner, not the guest, is the most important person in the ecosystem. Without a well cared-for owner there is no polished product to offer a guest in the first place. Large-scale roll-ups have historically broken at the point where they centralize everything beyond accounts and revenue management, while UK consolidators like Sykes Cottages, Awaze, and Travel Chapter have grown large by staying hyperlocal at a national scale, keeping local offices and local staff as they expanded. AI is freeing up enough staff time that teams can spend it on relationship-building rather than admin, such as calling every guest and owner after checkout with nothing to sell, just a thank you. Culture, trust, and local relationships are the parts of this business that resist mechanization. Reporting, revenue management, and communication can be automated; the relationship at the center of it still has to be built by a person. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into four stories about where premium experience is being redefined across the industry.The conversation opens with a one-year check-in on what actually happened after Marriott International bought the citizenM hotels brand. The answer: 50% of CitizenM occupancy now comes from Marriott Bonvoy members and all of it is incremental demand. From there Sarah and Steve get into IHG Hotels & Resorts becoming the third major hotel group to launch AI search after Hilton and Marriott, with a detail every franchisee needs to hear: IHG is now asking hotel owners to upload floor plans, videos, and updated imagery or risk being invisible in AI-driven search. They also dig into why Travel + Leisure Co. paid $343 million for two timeshare companies and why the CFO said they bought the deals for 100,000 owners, not the resorts. And they close with Southwest Airlines signaling that lounges are coming, the latest step in the carrier's full premium pivot.This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded wifi portals, email marketing, and guest data tools. Visit https://lnkd.in/giZWR52y to learn more.And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into four stories about where premium experience is being redefined across the industry. The conversation opens with a one-year check-in on what actually happened after Marriott International bought the citizenM hotels brand. The answer: 50% of CitizenM occupancy now comes from Marriott Bonvoy members and all of it is incremental demand. From there Sarah and Steve get into IHG Hotels & Resorts becoming the third major hotel group to launch AI search after Hilton and Marriott, with a detail every franchisee needs to hear: IHG is now asking hotel owners to upload floor plans, videos, and updated imagery or risk being invisible in AI-driven search. They also dig into why Travel + Leisure Co. paid $343 million for two timeshare companies and why the CFO said they bought the deals for 100,000 owners, not the resorts. And they close with Southwest Airlines signaling that lounges are coming, the latest step in the carrier's full premium pivot. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded wifi portals, email marketing, and guest data tools. Visit https://lnkd.in/giZWR52y to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane get into three stories about where the STR industry is headed now that the FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States is behind us.The conversation opens with Airbnb's partnership with CarTrawler for car rentals in five countries, the latest step in Airbnb's quiet transformation into a traditional OTA. It already has homes, hotels, experiences, services, and airport pickups. The crew digs into what that means for hosts who built their business around a platform that was supposed to be different. They also run through the final World Cup numbers for STR operators: rate gains were real across host markets but occupancy told a different story, and hosts who priced too high too early paid for it. They close with the Freddy Effect and what a German tourist who fell in love with Waffle House, Inc. House and Buc-ee's, Ltd.'s teaches operators about authentic guest experiences and word of mouth that actually moves markets.This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded wifi portals, email marketing, and guest data tools. Visit https://lnkd.in/giZWR52y to learn more.And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane get into three stories about where the STR industry is headed now that the FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States is behind us. The conversation opens with Airbnb's partnership with CarTrawler for car rentals in five countries, the latest step in Airbnb's quiet transformation into a traditional OTA. It already has homes, hotels, experiences, services, and airport pickups. The crew digs into what that means for hosts who built their business around a platform that was supposed to be different. They also run through the final World Cup numbers for STR operators: rate gains were real across host markets but occupancy told a different story, and hosts who priced too high too early paid for it. They close with the Freddy Effect and what a German tourist who fell in love with Waffle House, Inc. House and Buc-ee's, Ltd.'s teaches operators about authentic guest experiences and word of mouth that actually moves markets. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded wifi portals, email marketing, and guest data tools. Visit https://lnkd.in/giZWR52y to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Paul Anderson first appeared on the Vacation Rental Success Podcast in 2021, when he was running a guest house in Oxford and building a following on Instagram. Five years on, he returns as a coach and strategist working across dozens of short-term rental operators, and now a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force reserves. That mix of experience gives this conversation its shape: what the military taught him about briefing, decision-making and slowing down, and how those same lessons apply to the way operators are using AI in their marketing. The central argument is one Paul delivered on stage at Scale in Brighton, and it is worth sitting with. AI did not break marketing, it exposed the people who were never really marketing in the first place. When content becomes cheap and fast to produce, the operators who understood their audience all along pull ahead, and the ones who mistook activity for strategy get found out. Heather and Paul talk through his 10-80-10 protocol, his SMERLAC briefing structure borrowed from military planning, and why the real work in AI happens before you ever ask it to write a word. It is a practical, funny and genuinely useful conversation for any operator who has looked at their AI-generated captions and felt that something was missing. Key takeaways AI has not broken marketing. It has exposed the operators who were producing content without ever really marketing, because publishing posts, writing blogs and appearing in magazines are not the same as moving a guest from "I might visit" to "I want to stay there." The real work happens before you prompt. Paul's 10-80-10 protocol puts the first 10 percent into defining exactly who you want and briefing the AI properly, lets AI do 80 percent of the heavy lifting, then reserves the final 10 percent for inspecting and personalising the output. Define your perfect potential guest in granular detail. Go beyond age and income to how many cars they have, where they shop, even the colour of their hair, so you can picture one real person on the other side of the screen rather than a demographic. Use a proper brief, not a wish. "Write me 10 captions about my holiday cottage" is a wish. Paul's SMERLAC structure (Situation, Mission, Execution, Resources, Limitations, Ask questions, Check understanding) gives the AI what it needs to produce something useful. Followers are not the same as money. A client with 28,000 followers built through giveaways had almost no buying intent, while 52 people who genuinely want to book beat 52,000 who just think you are funny. Feed AI your real voice. Heather uploaded the handwritten manuscript of a book she wrote in 2005, unedited, and it changed everything the AI produced. Your idiolect, the phrases only you use, is what cuts through the sameness. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk dig into how hotels earn money and keep it. The conversation opens with Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta making the case that 28 brands is a data-driven strategy not sprawl, and calling out the hotel industry's default fix for unhappy guests: a pile of loyalty points at checkout. He says AI can catch the problem while the guest is still in the building. From there Sarah and Steve get into why Accor, Melia, and The Social Hub are circling student housing as a four-income-stream asset class, why micro-creators with under 20,000 followers are now driving real hotel bookings through affiliate deals, and close with Skift's Rafat Ali on the quiet reinvention of the hotel tax and the fight over who controls where that money goes. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded wifi portals, email marketing, and guest data tools. Visit stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley and Michael Goldin get into three stories making headlines across the STR industry. The conversation opens with Casago having sold nearly all of Vacasa's 32,000 units in just over a year, what the franchise model means for STR at scale, whether the Vacasa brand can become a real consumer platform, and how many units it actually takes to build a recognizable national STR brand. They also react to Airbnb paying $81.5 million for its first ever building in New York City, in the city where it is mostly banned, and close with Barcelona's pledge of not one tourist more and what the 2028 vacation rental ban means for operators watching overtourism regulation spread. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners! And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gil Chan came at the short-term rental industry from a direction most operators never consider. After 15 years in Silicon Valley, working with brands like Gap, Sephora, and Home Depot on their post-purchase e-commerce experience, he became an STR host - and immediately spotted a gap that his industry background made obvious. The tools that e-commerce businesses took for granted simply did not exist for vacation rental operators who wanted to build a direct booking website worth having. Crafted Stays is Gil's answer to that gap: a purpose-built direct booking platform that works the way a proper commerce site should, not as feature number 40 in a property management system's marketing materials. But what makes this conversation particularly timely is where Gil has taken the platform over the past year - deep into AI-powered search, website building, and the kind of content strategy that gets operators found in places Google's traditional search results simply can't reach. This episode covers direct booking strategy, how search is changing (and what SEO, AEO, and GEO actually mean for property managers), the Aria AI assistant Gil built into Crafted Stays, and how operators can start thinking about their online presence in a way that serves both guests and the AI systems that are increasingly mediating how people find places to stay. It's a practical, technically grounded conversation - and one that will stay relevant for some time. KEY TAKEAWAYS Direct booking websites built on WordPress and plugins were never designed for the live data demands of vacation rental commerce. Purpose-built platforms handle PMS connections, checkout, and mobile experience in a fundamentally different way. SEO, AEO, and GEO are three different things. Traditional search engine optimization gets you on page one of Google. Answer engine optimization gets you into the snippet at the top of the page. Generative engine optimization gets you cited when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude for a recommendation. Operators need to think about all three. AI-powered review analysis is an underused tool. Most operators check a five-star review and move on. Mining reviews for recurring themes - a screened porch that guests keep mentioning, a location detail that keeps coming up - surfaces the specific things guests value most, and those become the content anchors for the entire website. The Sightline Report that Aria generates combines property data, review sentiment, and third-party SEO keyword research to produce a strategic playbook for each operator. It tells them which keywords to target, which landing pages to build, and which guest personas to write toward - without requiring any marketing expertise from the operator. Building your AI business brain before you start using AI tools is not optional - it is foundational. Gil has been giving every new team member at Crafted Stays the same 40-page document about the business since he built it a year ago. The quality of AI output is directly tied to the quality of context you give it. The divide in AI adoption is getting wider, not narrower. Some operators are building sophisticated automated systems; others have barely touched ChatGPT. The window to build a real advantage by getting in early is still open, but it will not stay that way indefinitely. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down who controls hotel demand and what it costs.Skift's Rafat Ali lays out the deal thesis nobody has written yet: why an Airbnb and Ennismore partnership could close the $2 billion gap in Ennismore's IPO valuation. From there, they get into Accor and H World International's plan to link 430 million loyalty members, what the official government data says about FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States inbound tourism, and the one earnings metric that will tell operators whether hotel profits are truly broadening when Marriott International, Hilton, and Hyatt report Q2 this week. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners! And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley and Michael Goldin break down three stories about who is building the next layer of travel distribution and what it means for STR operators. The conversation opens with a Skift scoop: Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) is forming a formal B2B unit bringing together Booking.com, Agoda, and Priceline to take on Expedia Group, where B2B already grows at three times the rate of its consumer business. From there, Brandy and Michael dig into what Airbnb's hiring of OpenAI's first global VP of creative says about the company's bet that brand is its moat against AI flattening. They close with a Visa Economic Insights deep dive on the great wealth transfer — $8 trillion in inherited boomer wealth heading toward travel over the next 20 years, and what that means for who STR operators will be serving. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners! And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This episode almost wasn't the one you're hearing. Heather had already recorded, edited, and prepared social media for a different episode when a morning of reflection sent her down a different path instead. The trigger was rereading her own contribution to Brooke Pfautz's book Vacation Rental Secrets, written a few years back - an unusually honest account of the mistakes she made running CottageLink Rental Management, the property management company she sold four years ago. Reading it back, Heather noticed a pattern. None of the mistakes came from working too little or caring too little. Every one of them came from not having the tools to see clearly, document what she knew, or build systems that didn't depend on her being at the centre of everything. That reflection became this episode: ten specific, practical things she would do differently if she were running a property management business today, with the AI tools now available. This is a solo teaching episode, released the week the second cohort of the AI Ambassador Program opens. It is aimed squarely at operators who want to know, in concrete terms, what using AI well in a property management business actually looks like - not in theory, but from someone who has run the business, made the mistakes, and now has the tools to fix them. Key Takeaways Build a brand voice document before writing a single word of copy. Capture your tone, values, and the phrases that are distinctly yours before you ask AI to write anything on your behalf - otherwise inconsistency creeps in and your team, guests, and owners start to feel it. Stop letting every vendor demo convince you a new platform will fix your business. Your PMS is the one system that genuinely needs a professionally built, purpose-designed solution - but beyond that, a lot of what operators buy off the shelf could now be built to fit their specific business instead. Document every process before it only exists in your head. Talk a process through, out loud, while you're doing it and let AI structure it into a living SOP - the knowledge that only lives with the founder is a liability, not an asset. Build a genuine owner communication system, not just good intentions. Work through frameworks for the hard conversations in advance, and use AI to generate genuinely personal quarterly owner reports at scale, not a mail merge with names swapped in. Use AI to keep direct booking relationships warm, not just to build them. The follow-up sequences that go quiet the moment peak season hits are where most operators lose ground - AI can keep that infrastructure running consistently even when you're buried. Analyze reviews instead of just reading them. The most useful information is often buried inside five-star reviews as an aside - patterns that only become visible when reviews are aggregated and analysed rather than read one at a time. Build a real owner acquisition pipeline instead of relying on referrals. Referrals are a result, not a strategy - a proper follow-up sequence and a clear sense of the right-fit owner prevents leads from going cold. Build an institutional knowledge base, not just a folder of SOPs. Capture the reasoning behind decisions, not just the steps, so that judgement can travel with the business even as people move on. Treat AI as a thinking partner, not just a writing tool. The most valuable use of AI is stress-testing decisions before you commit to them, not just producing first drafts. Start with clear values and strategy, and let AI help you communicate them. Clarity about what you're building and who it's for makes every daily decision easier - and AI can help both articulate that strategy and communicate it consistently across a team. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down a week where the infrastructure of hospitality is being rebuilt from every angle.They open with the news of Mews cutting 15% of its staff and pointing to AI and what that means for hotel operators who depend on its platform. From there, the conversation digs into why extended-stay demand just hit a four-year high while the supply pipeline thins, a setup that could open real pricing power in 2027. They also unpack Hilton's new direct booking connection with Navan that bypasses GDS middlemen, and close with how British Airways, Delta Air Lines, and Cathay Pacific are wiring loyalty programs into concert venues and theaters and what hotels should be taking notes on. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners! And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley and Michael Goldin break down who is actually controlling the relationship between a traveler and a booking right now. The conversation opens with the race among Expedia Group, Booking.com, and Trip.com Group to become the trusted infrastructure layer for AI agents and what that means for STR operators who depend on Airbnb and Vrbo for distribution. They also dig into how Airbnb outreached Marriott International on FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States impressions while spending less, what Expedia's shoppable IShowSpeed video says about whether creator marketing actually converts, and what Cabo Verde's 800% surge in U.S. searches teaches operators about turning attention into bookings. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners! And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sab Mulligan came into the short-term rental industry from a decade in media production and another in tech education, and she arrived with a beginner's mind that turned out to be an advantage. What she noticed in those early industry conversations wasn't the passion for hospitality she'd expected. It was burnout, worn almost as a badge of honour. People competing over who'd taken the most 3am calls. She found that troubling, and it drove the approach she'd go on to build at Zzzing, a fast-growing property management company based in Malta. Three and a half years later, Zzzing has grown from 50 properties to 650, and their AI agent Zoe handles 90% of all guest communications across the portfolio. But what makes this conversation interesting isn't the scale or the technology. It's the philosophy behind it: that tech should be silent, and hospitality should be loud. That AI doesn't replace the human side of this business, rather it gives people more time and energy to deliver it. Sab and I talked about her TRT framework for designing AI policies, the seven guest moments that anchor everything Zzzing does, how they handled team resistance to AI adoption, and what she'd say to property managers still watching from the sidelines. Key Takeaways Tech should be silent, hospitality should be loud. The goal of AI in guest communication isn't to replace the host's voice. It's there to deliver that voice consistently, at any hour, across every conversation. AI amplifies what you already have in place. If your policies aren't documented, AI won't fix that. It will amplify the mess. Getting your foundations right before deploying AI isn't a delay,it's the work. Sab's TRT framework makes policy design accessible. Trigger (what initiates this communication), Reaction (how you would genuinely respond), Tone (the warmth, the friendliness, the examples), and Guardrails (when does the AI stop and hand to a human). The seven guest moments give you a map. Discovery, booking, arrival, access, during-stay, checkout, and come-back. Everything you need from AI slots into one of those seven buckets. Humanising the AI agent internally matters as much as externally. Naming Zoe and giving her a clear job description helped Zzzing's team understand where the AI started and stopped, which reduced resistance significantly. Test your own policies. Don't experiment on real guests. Make a test booking and run your AI through every scenario every few days. You are in the driver's seat and AI isn't taking over. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk are joined by Skift Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit to break down a question that is reshaping the hotel industry: is the brand still worth the price?Sarah Kopit joins for a special segment on her investigation into why hotel owners are quietly dropping the big brands as more than 1,200 franchise agreements expire by 2030. From there, Sarah and Steve dig into BWH Hotels' attempt to reverse years of room count decline by going upscale and overseas, Visa's new consumer travel portal that puts the payment network in direct competition with the banks it powers, and Sandals Resorts International's executive chairman shutting down sale rumors while committing $225 million to renovation at $1 million per key. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners! And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
Airbnb hosts and short-term rental operators are facing renewed questions around platform security after third-party research from Saily and NordStellar, cited in recent press coverage, claimed a sharp increase in Airbnb-related scam activity since 2023. In this episode of Good Morning Hospitality, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane discuss what account takeovers, fake listings, and guest trust concerns could mean for hosts and operators — while also noting that the underlying methodology behind the third-party data was not fully available in the coverage they reviewed. The hosts also discuss the broader travel distribution landscape, including why experiences-focused platforms like GetYourGuide continue to gain momentum while larger OTAs work to make experiences a more meaningful part of their businesses, and what Trip.com's cash position may signal about capital strategy in global travel. This episode is presented by StayFi & Bilt. If you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more about their special offer of 50% off for GMH listeners! And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
This Episode is Sponsored by StayFi Your ultimate tool for Vacation Rental WiFi marketing allowing you to collect guest emails automatically via custom captive WiFi login splash pages. Drive repeat direct bookings and convert your OTA bookings to book direct for their next visit. Visit https://stayfi.com/vrsuccess/ and use code VRSUCCESS for 50% off 3 months of StayFi service. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jodi Bourne is back for the latest installment of the new regular segment with Heather, built around a simple premise: AI is moving fast, and the two of them are going to keep working through it together, out loud, for listeners who want to come along. This conversation goes deeper into the practical mechanics of working with Claude. Heather and Jodi talk through connectors (MCPs that link Claude to tools like Gmail, Google Drive, Asana, and accounting software), skills (saved, reusable instruction sets that replace the old habit of copying and pasting prompts), and what both of them call their AI business brain - a structured foundational document that teaches Claude who you are, what you sell, and how you sound, before you ask it to produce anything. You'll come away with a clear starting point: build the foundation first, connect the tools you already use, and create one simple skill - Jodi's suggestion is a daily "morning coffee" briefing - before trying to do anything more ambitious. Key Takeaways AI output defaults to generic. The fix isn't a better prompt - it's a structured foundation document (Jodi calls hers the Hospitality Brand Bible; Heather calls hers her Business Brain) that teaches the model your business, voice, and audience before you ask it to create anything. Building that foundation properly is not a five-minute job. Heather recommends setting aside the better part of a day and using reverse prompting - asking Claude to interview you, question by question, until it has a full picture of your business. Connectors (MCPs) link Claude directly to the tools already in use - Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Asana, accounting platforms - so requests can be carried out end to end instead of copying information back and forth manually. Skills replace the old habit of maintaining a library of saved prompts. A skill is a reusable, named instruction set that automatically pulls in the right reference documents and brand voice without being told to every time. The recommended first skill for anyone starting out is a daily briefing - a "morning coffee" routine that summarizes email, flags anything unanswered, and reviews the calendar - because it is simple, immediately useful, and teaches the basics of how skills work. AI will hallucinate and occasionally get things wrong with total confidence. Both hosts were emphatic that nothing goes out the door - a guest bio, an email, an Instacart order - without a human checking it first. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When it comes to email marketing for your short-term rental, what makes it worth your while? In today's episode, I'm taking a deeper look into StayFi, a WiFi marketing platform commonly used by short-term rental owners. I'm sharing whether or not I think StayFi is worth it, and what other email marketing platforms I'd consider as well. Time-stamps:Wednesday Wins (0:57)What is StayFi and how do rates work? (2:15)Why StayFi isn't the best for your branding (5:55)Could StayFi hurt your deliverability rates? (7:27)20% off your annual subscription of Lodgify (10:20)You can't connect with guests before they book (11:27)StayFi vs. traditional email marketing platforms (13:33)Would I choose StayFi or a traditional platform? (17:52)Mentioned in This Episode:Use code “bmpod20” 20% off your annual subscription of Lodgify: brandandmarket.co/lodgify50% off your first year subscription to Flodesk: partners.flodesk.com/brand-and-marketEpisode 98: Marketing Your Short-Term Rental in 2026: The Spider Web Strategy: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/98-marketing-your-short-term-rental-in-2026Episode 31: Why Your Real Estate Business Needs to Utilize Email Marketing: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/31-why-your-real-estate-business-needs-to-utilize-emailConnect with Ali: Website: brandandmarket.coInstagram: instagram.com/brandandmarket.coBook a discovery call with Ali: brandandmarket.17hats.com/p#/scheduling
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down a week where hotel brands are redefining what they actually are. The conversation opens with Hyatt's lifestyle chief, Amar Lalvani, making the case that the smartest brand strategy is sorting guests by taste rather than price point — and showing what that discipline looks like in practice, including killing a high-profile Miami project because the developer wouldn't listen. From there, Sarah and Steve dig into Marriott International's move into branded apartment rentals under the W Hotels flag, a genuinely new direction for a business that already commands 30% premiums over unbranded properties. They also unpack what week one of FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States data actually tells hotel operators, with RevPAR up 24% to 133% across host markets but occupancy down in six of nine cities. And they close with Carnival Cruise Line's Q2 earnings, which posted record revenue while trimming its outlook, and with what the Middle East conflict tells operators about building geopolitical risk into forward-booking strategy. This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more. And if you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more.
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down three platform moves that sound host-friendly on the surface but deserve a much closer look. The conversation opens with Airbnb's first fintech product — a cancel-for-any-reason feature that auto-enrolled hosts without requiring an opt-in. Hosts still get paid, but still have to scramble. From there, the team unpacks what one week of FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States data actually tells operators about pricing strategy for the knockout rounds, with RevPAR up across all host markets but occupancy down in six of nine. They close with American Express's $700 million acquisition of TheFork and why dining reservations might be the next front in the battle for the guest relationship. This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more. And if you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more.
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Steve Turk and guest host Katie Cline break down a week where consolidation is happening at every layer of the hotel industry at once. The conversation opens with NORWEGIAN AIR UK LIMITED's $843 million bet to acquire Nordic Leisure Travel Group AB Group and own the entire travel value chain from flights to hotels. The number that explains the deal: NLTG's owned hotels are 25% of its holiday volume but 60% of its gross profit. From there, Steve and Katie dig into IHG Hotels & Resorts' CEO, making the case that eight years of tech investment is finally showing up in franchisee margins, and close with RealTime Reservation's acquisition of STAY and what unified ancillary revenue tech actually means for total RevPAR. This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more. And if you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more.
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down where STR demand is actually coming from right now and who controls the guest relationship as platforms make their next big bets. The conversation opens with the FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States booking story every operator in a host market needs to hear. Hotels priced up and set minimums and the surge has not arrived the way anyone expected. Short-term rental bookings tell a different story, with host market reservations more than doubling since April. From there, the team digs into Vrbo's launch of sponsored listings and what a paid visibility layer means for independent hosts, and closes with Brian Chesky's bet that creators are Airbnb's next big Experiences opportunity and what that means for the operators already building businesses on the platform. This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more. And if you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more.
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down why hotel AI is stuck on the wrong side of the ledger and what it will take to flip it. The conversation opens with Mews founder Richard Valtr making the case at Skift's Data and AI Summit that fragmented hotel data is the reason AI keeps cutting costs instead of driving revenue. From there Sarah and Steve dig into what Apple's rebuilt Siri means for how guests will find and interact with travel, Alaska Airlines' bet that Starlink wifi is a better loyalty driver than points for basic economy travelers, and why Delta Air Lines is expanding American Express card benefits without raising fees while every competitor goes the other direction. This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more. And if you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more.
Download the Guest Contact Info Capture Checklist Your Airbnb account can change overnight. Algorithm shifts, fee increases, a sudden suspension, and if your entire guest relationship lives inside the platform, you have nothing. In this episode, Tim walks through 10 platform-compliant ways to collect your guests' real contact info, legally, automatically, and without sending a single message that could put your listing at risk. The in-property QR code strategy that converts at the highest-intent moment of any guest stay — and why the offer matters more than the placement How WiFi login tools like Stayfi turn a giveaway you're already offering into an automatic email capture that runs in the background 24/7 Why your Stripe dashboard may already hold dozens of real guest emails you've never used — and how to start putting them to work The exact post-stay message approach that stays compliant with OTA terms while sending guests directly to your own contact form How listing on Google Vacation Rentals and VRBO direct changes the contact info equation entirely — every booking comes with real data by default If this episode helped you see your guest list differently, subscribe so you never miss what's next. Share it with a host who's still relying entirely on platform traffic — it could be the most important thing they hear this year. See you in the next one. Check out our videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ShortTermRentalRiches Grab your free management eBook: https://strriches.com/#tools-resources Looking to earn more with your property (without the headaches)? Chat with our expert management team: https://strriches.com/management-services/
On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down what AI is actually doing to travel economics and operations right now. The conversation opens with a story that stops you in your tracks: one traveler used Claude to run 881,076 searches on Etihad Airways to find one flight. The infrastructure cost of that search exceeded the commission. From there, the team digs into Brian Chesky's move to build an AI lab outside of Airbnb and what it signals about the platform's AI strategy, before closing with a look at what real AI adoption looks like at scale through Evolve's playbook of deflecting 60% of guest inquiries without human intervention. This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more. And if you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more.
Send us Fan MailThere are 10+ marketing and advertising channels which should you invest in? We break down a practical, trackable way to drive more direct bookings for outdoor hospitality using better creative, Meta ads, landing pages and email nurture. We also share what we have learned the hard way about OTAs, influencer marketing, pixels, and where AI can genuinely help operators and marketing teams. • prioritising high-quality video content over higher ad spend • treating Meta creative as the main driver of performance • allocating launch budget towards content creation and Meta ads • weighing influencer “exposure” against trackable paid social ROI • deciding when Google Ads and SEO are worth it for a property • building a direct booking funnel with landing pages and email capture • using Meta Pixel and conversion events to optimise for bookings • creating clearer customer avatars and committing to one niche • understanding creative volume and stage-based ads after Andromeda • benchmarking cost per booking against OTA commissions • using StayFi to capture guest details and enable upsells • applying AI for property knowledge bases, concierge replies and pricing ideas Learn more or book a call at hiddengem.media Follow @dustindeanbaker and @hiddengem.staysWe work really hard to bring you the best content from the best operators in our industry and we do it all absolutely free of charge. All we ask is that you consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so we can keep the momentum going. Simply go to the homepage of the podcast and scroll down till you see the stars. Thanks for your support and let's keep getting more people outside.This podcast is powered by Sage Outdoor Advisory the industry leaders in feasibility studies and appraisals.
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