Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

Travel Media Group & Ryan Embree
  • 4.8 (19)
  • Marketing
  • Biweekly

The best hotel digital marketing podcast in the hospitality industry.

  1. 2d ago

    220 - The Hospitality SHE Suite: Jenna Fishel

    What helps a woman build a lasting career in hospitality and find her voice as a leader? In this episode of the Hospitality SHE Suite, Cassady Quintana welcomes Jenna Fishel, Chief Commercial Officer at First Hospitality, to talk about growing into leadership. In their conversation, Jenna shares an honest perspective on finding your footing as a leader and why recognizing what’s possible for your career is essential. They discuss the power of supportive relationships, the courage to pursue new opportunities, and the importance of helping others grow. They also reflect on the responsibility companies have to retain talent, the value of voicing your ambitions, and the trust behind new opportunities. Tune in to learn how to build a career on your own terms with Jenna Fishel.

  2. Oct 21

    219 - Suite Success: A Hotel Reputation Management Mini Series with Andrea Stokes of J.D. Power

    As part of the Suite Spot’s Suite Success: Hotel Reputation Management mini-series, Ryan Embree welcomes Andrea Stokes, Practice Lead of Hospitality Intelligence at J.D. Power, to explore the latest insights from 30 years of hotel guest satisfaction research. Drawing on data from more than 100 hotel brands across North America, Andrea shares what the findings reveal about the connection between brand consistency and guest trust, the evolving role of AI in hotel search and discoverability, and how booking channels can influence the guest experience. The conversation explores what today’s travelers value most, the encouraging trends emerging in overall guest satisfaction, and the opportunities hoteliers have to stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape. Andrea also offers practical insights for hotel owners and general managers looking to strengthen their guest experience, while looking ahead at how AI and personalization could shape the future of hospitality. Tune in to discover what the latest research reveals and what it could mean for your property’s reputation and long-term success. https://youtu.be/MQUF83nkxZc Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree, here to introduce a brand-new mini-series that we have just launched, and we have our first guest. I’m so excited. This is part of our Suite Success, a hotel reputation management mini-series. And joining me today, Andrea Stokes, Practice Lead, Hospitality Intelligence, J.D. Power. Andrea, thank you so much for joining me on the Suite Spot.  Thank you. Very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.  Yeah, we’re going to have some fun today. We’re going to talk some data, some analytics. But before we jump and dive into that good stuff, this is your first time on the Suite Spot. Appreciate you joining us. With that being your first time, love to introduce you to our audience a little bit, share a little bit about your hospitality journey. And listen, you’ve got a really unique role over there at J.D. Power that you get to look at all this hospitality data. What led you to your role over there?  Yes, thank you. So I’ve been with J.D. Power seven years, actually just last week. So very exciting. Started about six months before the pandemic. So that was an interesting first run at J.D. Power. But prior to Judy Power, I worked at Marriott in the insights group there. And then, of course, before that, had worked at different research agencies focused on the travel and hospitality industry. So I have a long background in consumer survey research, customer experience research, marketing research, and was able to kind of apply all of. my training in that area to the hospitality industry specifically. So very exciting.  As you know, J.D. Power is a third-party unbiased view of customers. And we say we are the voice of the customer. We will conduct studies in many, many industries. Of course, many people know the automotive industry, which is J.D. Power’s bread and butter. But we’ve actually been doing work in hospitality for three decades. So we just published our 30th North America hotel guest satisfaction study in July. So it’s very exciting time. I’m very excited about three decades. J.D. Power, we don’t have many industries, right, that we’ve covered for that long. So it’s a great year.  Incredible. Congratulations, first off. And I’m sure, I mean, what an industry to follow, especially in the time span that you’ve been there and how much change has rapidly been happening within hospitality. You know, 30 years of surveys. I’m sure that we’re going to talk about maybe looking into the future a little bit. That amount of change might be just condensed into the next couple of years based on how quickly our industry, technology and AI is really changing the aspects. But I love the hotel guest satisfaction survey because I do think it obviously keeps us. at a compass and a north star to what hospitality is really about and get back to the core of people serving people, which I think sometimes can be lost with all this AI and technology speak. You mentioned that the survey’s now turning 30 years old. Can you give a little bit of background on how it’s structured and compiled?  Absolutely. So we go out to the national marketplace US. We do include about 10% Canadians as well. And we ask our guests about a past 30-day hotel stay. So it’s a very recent hotel stay. And we cover over 100 brands in the studies across all segments. And then we’re asking about, again, that recent hotel stay. Basically, we want to dive deep into the guest experience from the time the guest walks through the door and until the time they check out. We do include some survey questions around reservation and booking, loyalty programs, et cetera. So we cover a little bit more, but our core benchmarks for the industry and what I think the industry really looks to J.D. Power for is the benchmark in guest rooms, in food and beverage, in staff service, hotel facilities, and other amenities, also connectivity. So we cover all of that.  And we do capture guest ratings, not only at the high level for each one of those areas, but we dive deep into kind of the core table stakes for the guest experience, but also some other areas of the stay. So it’s quite a comprehensive survey. I know you’re probably used to getting those quick surveys from some of the hotel chains, but we definitely dive a little bit deeper than most of those survey programs that the chains conduct.  And the industry really does look to us for that deep dive data. It’s maybe not something that they get all the time. And of course, we offer all of the data on all of the brands where any hotel group or hotel chain, they can look at their competitors as well. So we have that third party unbiased view. And that I think is – as I mentioned, it’s really the voice of the customer, the bread and butter of J.D. Power. And we’re able to provide the industry with that view.  Well, it’s a great measuring stick, comprehensively, for all brands and really how you stack up against your competition and just seeing how the industry. I mean, to hear over a hundred brands, I mean, that’s just the sheer size that hospitality has grown to, which is incredible. And all of the ancillary things that come with a hotel stay. I love hospitality. You probably love it being in the industry. There are so many facets to hospitality. It’s one of those very, very unique verticals where it’s very difficult to measure because there’s so many variables within a guest stay.  Now, I had the privilege of seeing you kind of present your findings at the Hotel Data Conference in Nashville. One of the main takeaways from that presentation, which I loved, was the relationship between trust and consistency. Can you elaborate a little bit on these factors and how they correlate in the study?  Absolutely. So we have a few different ways of measuring consistency of the guest experience in our study. So we have a question about basically rate the brand on consistent versus inconsistent. It’s a seven-point scale, so very basic. And a guest can just provide a rating at the brand level. But then when we look at all of the individual states that we’re capturing for a brand, we can also look at consistency of all of the ratings across the board from all of the guests who are rating a particular brand.  And what that allows us to do, we use statistical analysis to kind of determine that consistency. And we do see a brand could be very inconsistent where you have overall guest satisfaction ratings on one end or the other end and everywhere in the middle. But you also see brands where the ratings kind of cluster together, either very positively or potentially negatively. So you see the consistency there. If a brand has consistent high ratings for guest satisfaction, usually that correlates very highly with that it’s a trusted brand.  And because we also have a question around do you feel the brand is trusted or not trusted? And we can kind of cross that data to provide a really good picture to the brand of a consistency. And as you know, the brands provide brand standards to their owners and operators. And we are able to kind of provide that view to brand leaders around, hey, are your owners adhering to brand standards? Are they providing the consistency that guests do expect? And often, when guests select a brand, they’re looking, they have experience with that brand and they’re looking for the same level of experience that they’re used to getting from previous stays with the brand.  We in hospitality like those happy surprises, not the surprises as I was not expecting this, or this was not consistent with the brand that I thought it was. And it goes back to exactly what you said, Andrea, about those brand standards that I’m sure would be fascinating to watch, especially over those COVID years where those standards got a little bit more relaxed from time to time just due to the financial constraints. But here in 2026, a little bit more removed from that. I’m sure there are some very interesting trends you’re seeing there between that trust and consistency.  Now, one of the biggest themes, and we talk about it all the time on the podcast, is AI search and discoverability, right? And you have some fascinating data, because obviously this is probably something a couple decades ago, we were probably talking about signage or maybe what you were looking at on the side of the road on billboards, right? And now we’re in AI search and discoverability. You have some fascinating data in the survey on sources used for hotel search and research. Could you share some of those findings? And then particular

  3. Oct 14

    218 - The Hospitality SHE Suite: Rosanna Maietta

    Preparation is key for female leaders in the hospitality industry! Today on the Hospitality SHE Suite, we are joined by the President and CEO of AHLA (American Hotel & Lodging Association), Rosanna Maietta, to talk about her successful career and leadership style. Tuning in, you’ll hear all about what inspired Rosanna to get into hospitality, what her role at AHLA looks like, what she is focused on at the moment as CEO of the organization, and more! We go on to discuss Rosanna’s leadership style and how it’s evolved over the years through the ups and downs of the industry before we delve into some words of wisdom from Rosanna on how to move past doubting yourself as a leader. She even touches on the importance of being prepared to use your voice as a woman when you are given the opportunity, why mentoring the next generation of female leaders is essential, and what men can do to support women in leadership positions. Rosanna then shares some advice for the younger generation that she wishes she had been given early in her career. Finally, our guest tells us about her role in The Hospitality Show and what she’s looking forward to about the event. Thanks for listening!

  4. Oct 1

    217 - The Hospitality Show 2026 Preview with Brandy Rand

    Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

  5. Sep 9

    216 - The Hospitality SHE Suite: Kat Woods

    Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

  6. Sep 2

    215 - TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Charles Oswald

    Special guest and familiar face, Charles Oswald joins the Suite Spot in his return to the TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. As CEO & President of Aperture Hotels, Charles shares his insights on AI & technology in hospitality, capital investment challenges, and his vision for the Aperture Hotels brand.  Tune in now to the full conversation. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, here for another edition of our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. Technically, a look back on a few years back when we visited with this particular individual and company trailblazing and paving the way forward in hospitality. That is Charles Oswald, president and CEO of Aperture Hotels. Charles, thank you so much for being back here on The Suite Spot. Charles Oswald: Oh, it’s good to be back. Thank you. Ryan Embree: Yeah. You’ve been busy. It’s been a long time. I had to look back and see the last time we visited here on The Suite Spot. We did our original hospitality trailblazers, really in the infancy of Aperture Hotels back in December 2023. A lot’s changed on that since then, right? So catch us up a little bit. What have you been working on? There’s been some incredible growth that we’ve seen with your company. Congratulations on that. But catch us up since we last visited. Charles Oswald: First off, so at that time when we had launched Aperture Hotels, we were coming out in the, in the wake of the pandemic. So if you kind of think back where we were three and four years ago versus today, there were a lot of properties that had gone through this economic shock, and there were owners who were reeling from that experience, especially those that had corporate business travel hotels as opposed to those leisure destinations that benefited from the pandemic. And so during that time, Aperture actually went on and took on almost 30 different properties that we added to the portfolio, that were, driven by those owners who needed a new management company to come and take a look at their, their with fresh eyes and take a look at their top line strategies, their expense controls. And so we had a lot of properties, and they were 100% of those properties were not through acquisitions, but were actually just performance turnaround assignments where they were switching management companies, to somebody to take a fresh look. So, with all that said, we found ourselves, walking into properties that were on, like, the sixth or seventh year of a five-year hold strategy for private equity firms or high net worth individuals and so on. And that quickly turned into turnarounds, which the story from us lately has actually been sales, a lot of sales, 20 plus sales over the course of this last year. And so today, as we stand here, I’m actually more rebuilding the pipeline with a mix of more management change assignments, plus a few pipeline of new developments. And those new developments are mostly, like, 100 or 300 room soft brand properties across the country. So yeah a lot’s changed for sure. Really rapid growth, really rapid sales, and now more sort of measured one at a time growth. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and I wanna talk about that, because I’ve had the privilege to talk to some management company owners and leaders, and they’ve kind of echoed that same sentiment of not just growth, but strategic growth. And that seems to be where you are right now, too. So when you kind of take a look at. I know you mentioned that particular segment, but when you take a look at the hospitality landscape right now, what makes the right strategic partner for Aperture Hotels right now as you kind of enter this cycle where you’re trying to build back up a little bit? Charles Oswald: You’re right. The right partner, it’s about fit. And when you look at the experience of our leadership team, we’re really engineered towards compact, full service hotels, lifestyle, premium select service brands. They can be brand or independent. We’d like to partner with owners that have some portfolio stable scalability. Preferably they own by that, I mean, they own more than one hotel, and there might be more than one opportunity there. You know, we wanna work with those owners that know what they’re doing, right? They’ve got some, some governance, sophistication, some decision speed. Hopefully, they’ve not just made bad investments when they’re turning over these properties, but really, they’re looking for some performance turnaround in a good investment. And preferably those are longer term holds. As you can tell, we did a lot of hard work for some turnarounds and watched them sell. And they sold largely to owners who had their own management. So that’s tricky for us, right? That leads us looking for more opportunities. So in terms of us in aperture and how we see ourselves in competitive points of difference is we’ve got a group that has hundreds of hotels of experiments. Myself, I’ve managed about 300 hotels now over the years, and they’ve ranged from little 60-room properties up to a thousand plus room convention hotels and resorts. And so what we bring is, we’ve got big experience in our leadership team, but we’re in a small package, right? A boutique-sized company that can give more corporate support to property ratio. And we’re very data-driven in how we use our decision-making tools to uncover those hidden business opportunities and the potential to drive market share and outperform GOP. Big experience, I’d say that corporate support, the data-driven decision-making process and tools, I think is really what sets us aside. And by the way, I’ll just mention that our average RGI that we’ve achieved in the first 18 months when you put us in place after another management company, the average RGI growth or repar index gains is actually just over 10%. So we’ve had, like, incredible turnarounds at the top line, which leads them to great bottom line improvements as well. Ryan Embree: Which makes it so much more impressive, too, with the climate right now. And these events that we go to would talk about operating and margins right now, and trying to be just efficient as possible, because costs are, are rising right now. It is certainly difficult to navigate, and I’m sure that experience that you’ve had has certainly lended itself to some great stories that you can then share to help grow that portfolio. And the other part of the experience that you were talking about is you have the data and the insights. And one of the places you find that data and insights is obviously hospitality events that are going on. I’ve had the pleasure of running into you at quite a number of these. If I’m not running into you, Charles, I’m seeing you up on stage conducting interviews or, or sharing some of your takeaways on LinkedIn after the event. You got a busy second half of the year. I wanna talk about these events, though, and how you kind of leverage them, right? So, why do you think these events, especially now, are so important? And then, how do you measure success of an event once it’s completed, whether that be a lodging conference, an investment conference, or whether it be, just an educational data event? Charles Oswald: Look, that’s a really good question. When you consider the time, travel budget, and the opportunity costs on an executive’s busy calendar to get out to these conferences and spend three, four days between the travel and the time out there, we’ve gotta be, we’ve gotta be very intentional, right, about how we approach it. So, I see value in going to these conferences because of deal sourcing and the relationship capital that we pick up. Also, I think there’s that market intelligence and the pricing signals that we get from those from this conference. There’s the access to capital markets. That was particularly important for me here recently as I was looking to as I’m in the process of acquiring a property right now in Phoenix, and when we needed to raise LP capital and we had those relationships these are people, again, we met at conferences. I think talent reputation, right, it’s important to get out there and continue to manage that. So those, those are a number of the reasons why we wanna get out to these conferences and why we think they’re important. But the measure of success, you’re right, for a data-driven guy, I wish I could put a specific number to it. Like, here’s the ROI from each of these conferences. It’s really difficult to. It’s really difficult to do, but I can tell you that, I do look back and, and aggregate those. I look at the management contracts we picked up, and I think of, “Okay, well, where did I meet these folks? And so what’s the average return?” And I can put a number to that. And I would tell you that in terms of the immediate return, what I’m looking for is if I can have three to five specific follow-up conversations, a result of that conference, then the trip was worth the cost. Ryan Embree: That’s great advice for young hospitality professionals out there. I mean, we have a great industry, and one of the coolest parts of it is you get to rub shoulders sometimes with those executives. So even those younger hospitality professionals that might be tuning in here, it’s a great piece of advice to when you can, obviously, try to get that exposure of networking and get out there because hospitality is certainly a big world, but it’s also a very small world, and you run into a lot of the same people. And again, this, just like you said, Charles, a lot of the stories, success stories, whether it be business relationships, some of those transactions could stem from sitting next to somebody at breakfast – Absolutely. On day two of a

  7. Aug 26

    214 - Hotel Data Conference 2026: Key Takeaways

    Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

  8. Aug 19

    213 - TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Emma Shaybani

    Vice President of Marketing at HEI Hotels & Resorts, Emma Shaybani, joins the Suite Spot to discuss the upcoming 2026 Digital Travel Summit taking place in Orlando, Florida on September 28-29 and how the HEI brand is leveraging social media, artificial intelligence, technology, and online guest feedback to better shape and optimize the traveler journey.  Tune in now and the Suite Spot looks forward to seeing you at the conference next month! Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. Very excited for our next guest in an edition of our TMG Hospitality Trailbazer series to set the table. This is that series again with conversations with people, organizations, and companies within the hospitality industry that are paving a path forward. I’m so excited for our next guest. And it also really seconds as a preview for the Digital Travel Summit happening in Orlando in September. My guest, this will be the first of a few times that we’re gonna be together. Emma Shaybani, VP of Marketing at HEI Hotels and Resorts. Emma, thank you so much for joining me on The Suite Spot. Emma Shaybani: Thank you for having me. Ryan Embree: Yeah, we’re excited. So we’re gonna talk about that Digital Travel Summit event. We were talking off camera. It’s a powerhouse event. Can’t wait. Some big players within the travel industry gonna be there. But before we do that, we’d love to introduce you to our Suite Spot audience. Maybe love learning about everybody’s kinda hospitality journey that led you to your role over there at HEI Hotel and Resorts. Emma Shaybani: Yeah, it’s a bit of an unconventional journey, I suppose. So, I moved from England, and I moved from England to Connecticut, and I was really looking for my next opportunity. I’d not worked in hospitality before. I’d worked actually for CBS back in London. I had a couple of my own businesses, so hotels weren’t necessarily part of my original plan. But I, I joined HEI actually in a reputation management role. And I think at the time, they just knew that they needed somebody to look after reputation management, but they weren’t exactly sure what I would be doing. So it started off really as me in a room responding to guest reviews. So it, it didn’t take too long for us to all realize that probably wasn’t the best use of my time. So I kinda went to my boss at the time, Brian, with a plan and I was like, “Hey, you know, it’s hard for me to, to respond to these reviews when I’m not at the property. I don’t know what’s happened. You know, really, we should empower the teams at the hotels to be responding to these reviews. And, you know, really, I can be there as kind of a, you know, backup support and making sure that we are responding.” Because, you know, the hotel teams know the guest experience the best. And I was really focusing then on monitoring the trends, opportunities, and that’s when I noticed that the same thing was kind of happening with social media. We had all these accounts. They weren’t necessarily active. So we took this kind of a similar approach with social media. And then from there, the role just kind of kept evolving. So every time we kind of solved one challenge, we’d notice something else that we could then tackle. Back then, we had 20-27 hotels, I think it was. And now today we’ve grown the team. There’s quite a few of us now, over 100 hotels, multiple brands. So it’s been pretty incredible, honestly, to, to grow alongside the company. And I remember back in the day, my biggest concern was trying to memorize these 27 hotels, and now somehow I seem to manage with a hundred and something. Ryan Embree: We love the unconventional journey in hospitality and kinda falling into it. But also, a lot of people we find fall in love with hospitality. And that’s why you hear about people maybe starting kind of in, you know, I was a bellman when I first started at a hotel and front desk agents, F&B, and then all of a sudden, here they are 30 years later into a career that they absolutely love. And your foundation actually mirrors a lot of what the Suite Spot is. We started as a digital marketing podcast preaching to hoteliers about the importance of things like managing your reputation, social media strategy, which we’re gonna get into in this conversation a little bit, because it is a constantly evolving and so ever important because those are places that can be touched prior to a guest arrival and have a real impact on bookings and the guest experience. But before we get into that, I want, I do wanna start about talking about that event, the Digital Travel Summit that both of you will have the pleasure of attending down there in Orlando at September 28th and 29th. Personally, could not be more excited for this event, bringing some of the travel industry’s biggest and brightest together in a very intimate setting, very excited about it. What are you most looking forward to about this event? And maybe what caught your eye and it drew you initially to this Digital travel Summit? Emma Shaybani: I think what immediately caught my attention was that it was an event that was dedicated solely to digital marketing as a whole. I think, while, while AI is, is transforming things pretty rapidly, and I think this was nice because it was a conference that recognizes digital marketing is so much broader than just AI. And we still have to think about search, paid media, websites, all of these things and how those pieces work together to essentially drive demand. So I saw that and then also I’m looking forward to seeing some of our friends that are there, some of the industry leaders that are talking. I think there was one of the sessions, a keynote that’s on event-driven travel, which is something that we’re investing heavily in at HEI, you know, things like concerts, festivals, major conventions. A lot of my team’s focus at the moment is setting up things like landing pages, targeted offers to really kind of take advantage of those experiences. ‘Cause we all saw what happened, with the Taylor Swift effect a few months ago. Ryan Embree: 100%. Emma Shaybani: Exactly. So I think that’s a really, a lot of the topics throughout the event are really on trend and really useful. So I think it’s, it’ll be good to bring everybody together. We’re all solving similar challenges, so that hopefully, you know, we can come away with some practical ideas that myself and the team can implement when we’re back in the office. Ryan Embree: Yeah, 100%. And to piggyback on that Taylor Swift effect, you got the World Cup that just happened this summer. You got the Olympics in LA in a couple more years. So no shortage of events coming to domestic US. Concerts are gonna continue to pop up. Sporting events across generations, younger travelers, but across generations still prioritizing those experiences at the forefront. And I think you’re absolutely right, Emma. It’s a very comprehensive event. It’s funny, back in the day when we started first talking about, you know, this to hoteliers with, with digital marketing, sometimes social media review responses, you, like you talked about in your story, it fell on the youngest person at the hotel, right? So who’s the youngest, uh, front desk agent? They probably know the best about social media. Now as digital marketers, we kinda cringe thinking about that. We put our whole stake of reputation on someone that we really didn’t train a hotel’s voice or anything like that. So it really has evolved. And I love your perspective on where we are with AI because you think about this emerging technology. Well, social media a couple decades ago was right there in that spot, and now it’s created roles within social media. So it’ll be interesting to get everybody in like you said, that room to, with the same challenges, trends, what are you seeing? And speaking of panels, I’ll have the privilege and pleasure of moderating a powerhouse keynote panel with you involved, Emma, called Building AI-Ready Marketing Teams: Knowing When to Automate and When to Go Human. For our Suite Spot audience, give us maybe a little bit of sneak peek of a preview on your thoughts on that topic. Emma Shaybani: I think, you know, I always encourage the team to really ask themselves kind of simple questions, right, when it comes to our use of AI, is if, like, if this task disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice, right? And if the answer is no, then we can probably find a way to automate that, you know? And I also think there’s a question of, is there value in the thinking or is there value in the typing? Because we do spend a lot of our time producing reports, producing presentations. And really, the value of having humans is the strategy, the judgment, the relationship building, and also the creativity. So we wanna make sure that, you know, humans are also, we’re remaining in charge of the decisions, but can we become more efficient by our use of AI? And we kind of split. We do something called the rule of 80/20, which is AI can get us about 80% of the way there to the finish line, right? It can gather data. It can generate drafts, mock-ups, website copy, summarize reports, but then it’s really like that final 20%, which is gonna create the real value. Human judgment, as I said, creativity, empathy. That’s where we need the human, human touch. And I think that’s really important when it comes to just overall guest experience as well, because while we’re using AI to get in front of guests, we’re trying to be the most visible or the top on Google or, you know, any of, any of. We really want maximum visibility, right, across all these channels. But when we get, when

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