The Lights On Podcast

Kin Sio
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Marketing

The Lights On Podcast features conversations with hospitality leaders about the commercial strategies that drive hotel performance and growth.

  1. 6d ago

    She Wore a Wig To Grade Your Hotel With Stephanie Leger

    Stephanie Leger is the Founder and Chief Excellence Officer at First Rate Hospitality, a consultancy specializing in hospitality training, service evaluations, and operational improvement. With over 20 years of global hotel industry experience — including work with The Ritz-Carlton, Mandarin Oriental, AAA, and Forbes Travel Guide — Stephanie has trained more than 20,000 hospitality professionals. Her hands-on approach helps hospitality teams build stronger cultures and deliver consistently exceptional service. In this episode… A hotel stay is rarely won or lost in one dramatic moment. It is shaped by the small details guests notice before check-in, during every interaction, and long after checkout, so what does an undercover inspector really look for when deciding whether a property delivers genuine service excellence? According to Stephanie Leger, a luxury hospitality expert and former incognito hotel inspector, the answer is consistency that still feels human. From ensuring website photos match the actual property to handling a delayed room with care, she explains that every interaction adds to the guest's overall impression, and rigid scripts can quickly make service feel robotic. When hotels train their teams to communicate, anticipate needs, and show genuine interest, they can earn stronger reviews, greater loyalty, and better financial results. In this episode of The Lights On Podcast, Kin Sio is joined by Stephanie Leger, Founder and Chief Excellence Officer at First Rate Hospitality, to discuss how undercover hotel inspections reveal the true guest experience. They explore why she wore a wig, how small service failures compound, and how hotels can make standards feel less robotic. Stephanie also shares advice on onboarding, communication, and natural front-desk upselling.

  2. Aug 6

    The Long Game of Hotel PR With Melissa Benhaim

    Melissa Benhaim is the Founder of Benhaim Public Relations, a Miami-based consultancy specializing in travel and hospitality PR for independent hotels and tourism brands. Since launching her firm in 2019, she has helped clients earn coverage in outlets such as The New York Times, Business Insider, and Travel + Leisure.  Melissa is a three-time Smart PR Best Pitch winner and an HSMAI Adrian Award recipient for a social media campaign that generated a 150x ROI. She began her career in hotel operations at Four Seasons before moving into hospitality PR, giving her a practical approach to helping independent hotels build visibility and compete with larger brands. In this episode… Independent hotels earn national media by running two clocks at once. Long-lead features can take a year or more to land, so they run alongside shorter-lead placements that keep the property visible in between. Impact gets measured through referral traffic and guest surveys. Kin Sio sits down with Melissa Benhaim, Founder of Benhaim Public Relations, on The Lights On Podcast to break down how hotel PR actually works. Melissa started in hotel operations at Four Seasons before crossing over to the agency side, and that background shows up in how she builds campaigns. Her Travel + Leisure feature for Flamingo Lodge and Restaurant in the Everglades began with an editor query in January 2024, moved through a writer visit, a separate photographer visit, and rounds of fact-checking, and ran about 14 months end to end. The payoff was an eight-page print feature plus an accompanying online piece. A New York Times "52 Places to Go" mention for the same property produced a visible spike in website visits the day it went live, and at least one guest who told the property team that is where they read about it. She also covers what works when the budget is small. A partnership with a local graffiti artist brought nine times the usual Sunday ticket sales for a museum client during a slow Miami August. A Christmas in July Facebook offer campaign spent roughly $750 and returned more than $110,000, work that earned an HSMAI Adrian Award. And the move Melissa pushes hardest costs nothing extra: use the CVB membership the hotel already pays for, and host the media the tourism board is already bringing into the destination.

  3. Jul 30

    Why 94% of Hotels Are Invisible To AI Search With Nick Slavin

    Nick Slavin is the CEO and Co-founder of Curacity, a hospitality technology company that transforms media visibility into measurable hotel bookings and revenue. Under Nick's leadership, Curacity has generated $2 billion in verified bookings and revenue and established partnerships with Preferred Hotels & Resorts and The Leading Hotels of the World. The company recently launched VISTA, a platform that uses authoritative editorial mentions to improve visibility across AI search. Before co-founding Curacity in 2015, Nick served on the portfolio management team for Starwood Capital Group's $4.2 billion Opportunity Fund IX, focusing on real estate and hotel investments. In this episode… AI search is binary, not ranked. When a traveler asks Claude or ChatGPT where to stay, the model returns a short list of hotels it recommends, and everything else effectively disappears. Slavin cites industry data showing 94% of hotels are invisible in these AI results, largely because their websites lack structured data and the authoritative third-party coverage that large language models trust. Kin Sio sits down with Nick Slavin, CEO and Co-founder of Curacity, on The Lights On Podcast to break down why most hotels are missing from AI search and how independent properties can earn their way back in. Slavin has watched this problem take shape from the inside. Before founding Curacity in 2015, he managed hotel investments at Starwood Capital Group, including the Baccarat Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where he saw how hard it was to prove that top-of-funnel marketing actually drove bookings. That gap became Curacity's mission: connect the media and content that inspire a trip to the revenue it produces. Research the company ran with Skift found a revealing disconnect. 39% of hotel executives call digital ads one of their most effective booking drivers, while only 18% of travelers say an ad ever led them to book. Ask those same travelers about established media, and 81% say a recommendation from a trusted outlet drove a real booking. That authority now decides who shows up in AI answers. Slavin points to data showing 77% of hotel sites lack structured data and 71% of AI recommendations come from articles and reviews rather than hotel websites. Curacity's new VISTA platform measures how a property ranks across Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, then uses the company's decade of media relationships to earn the editorial coverage that moves those rankings. For independent hotels, Slavin argues, this is the first real opening in 20 years to take share back from the OTAs, and the operators who move early build a lead that compounds.

  4. Jul 23

    What Makes a Hospitality Brand Endure With Sean Dee

    Sean Dee is the Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at OUTRIGGER Hospitality Group, a Hawai'i-based company specializing in iconic beach resorts across the globe. He leads the company's global commercial strategy across marketing, sales, revenue management, brand, and distribution. Sean was named HSMAI's 2022 Corporate Marketing Professional of the Year and serves as Chairperson of the Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau, having also served on the HSMAI Americas Board of Directors. His leadership roles at Levi Strauss & Co., Hard Rock International, and Anschutz Entertainment Group shaped his expertise in brand reinvention and hospitality innovation. In this episode… Enduring hospitality brands do not survive change by abandoning who they are. They evolve by returning to what made people care in the first place, then deciding where to grow from there. Sean Dee, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at OUTRIGGER Hospitality Group, has run that play twice, first reviving Hard Rock International and now repositioning OUTRIGGER. Kin Sio sits down with Sean on The Lights On Podcast to break down how brands endure. When Dee joined Hard Rock in 2003, the brand was ten straight years into decline and had drifted into a museum, an academy, and Hard Rock food served on Delta flights. His team tracked down the original founders, Peter Morton and Isaac Tigrett, to understand what the 1971 London cafe was actually built on, then rebuilt the brand around one ownable idea: delivering experiences that rock. They widened the music from a narrow hard-rock genre to hip hop and other genres, opening the brand to younger, higher-spending guests. Dee estimates the enterprise value grew to roughly six times what it was when the turnaround began. At OUTRIGGER, Dee applied the same discipline. He narrowed the company from a mix of airport hotels, mid-market flags, and the three-star Ohana brand down to beachfront Outrigger Resorts, positioned where local culture meets world-class hospitality. Under KSL Capital Partners, which acquired the company in late 2016, OUTRIGGER now runs 31 properties, including 13 beachfront resorts across all four major Hawaiian islands plus Thailand, the Maldives, and Mauritius. As Chairperson of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, Dee also makes a pointed case on tourism: the problem was never the 10.4 million visitor peak, but the tens of thousands of illegal vacation units operating in residential neighborhoods, while visitors already contribute a billion dollars a year in tax revenue.

  5. Jul 16

    Service Over Structure: From #58 to #3 on Tripadvisor With Kiana Beimes

    Kiana Beimes is the General Manager of the OUTRIGGER Waikiki Paradise Hotel in Honolulu, a boutique property known for authentic Hawaiian hospitality. Under her leadership, the hotel rose from #58 to as high as #3 on Tripadvisor and completed a ten-month renovation while maintaining guest satisfaction and keeping her entire 60-person team employed. Kiana was named the 2026 Hawaiʻi Women in Lodging & Tourism Woman of the Year, recognizing her leadership, community engagement, and impact on Hawaiʻi's visitor industry. In this episode… How does a hotel climb from #58 to #3 on Tripadvisor while it's torn up by construction? For Kiana Beimes, General Manager of the OUTRIGGER Waikiki Paradise Hotel, the answer is service over structure: the team's service outweighs anything the building throws at a guest. Kin Sio and Keri Brown sit down with Kiana on The Lights On Podcast to unpack how she did it. Kiana took over a 443-room property as a first-time GM and inherited a 10-month renovation with no buffer floors and no option to close. She kept all 60 team members employed, held rates and occupancy through the summer, and trained her hosts to treat every complaint as a chance to build loyalty. When a wedding group was stuck waiting on half-working elevators, she left a cultural ceremony, ran back to the hotel, and personally walked guests up through the back-of-house service corridors with cold drinks in hand. The results show up in the reviews. The hotel moved from #58 to #3 on Tripadvisor, and guests now name individual hosts as the reason they'll return. Kiana breaks down the "problem solving, not problem reporting" culture she built, why she tells her team they have two goals (make revenue and earn good reviews), and the low-cost touches, handwritten welcome cards, shell leis, and lobby lei-making, that create memories without a big budget. It's a practical playbook for any operator working with a fixed building and a real budget: service is the lever you can always pull, and it's often the one that moves rate and reviews the most.

  6. Jul 9

    Intersection of Hospitality Technology and Profitability With Travis Weber

    Travis Weber is the Vice President of Sales for the Americas at Duetto, a leading revenue management platform that helps hotels maximize profitability through dynamic pricing and data-driven insights. Duetto has been recognized as the #1 Revenue Management System in the HotelTechAwards for four consecutive years, reflecting its strong reputation in hotel technology. Travis brings a unique perspective to hospitality technology, having started his career in marketing for the San Antonio Spurs, transitioned to ski resort sales in his hometown of Taos, New Mexico, and worked on the distribution side at Expedia. In this episode… Where should a hotel start with revenue technology? According to Travis Weber, VP of Sales for the Americas at Duetto, you start by naming the pain you want to solve, not by shopping for a tool. Identify the friction (aging systems, reactive pricing, missed revenue), then work backward to the fix. It is fine to start simple with a PMS or RMS and build from there. Kin Sio sits down with Travis on The Lights On Podcast to talk about the intersection of hotel technology and profitability. Travis has seen the commercial side from several angles: selling ski trips in his hometown of Taos, marketing for the San Antonio Spurs, and working the OTA side at Expedia before joining Duetto, the revenue management platform ranked number one in the HotelTechAwards four years running. His take on OTAs cuts against the usual frustration. Treat them as a marketing arm, not the enemy. They spend heavily to understand buyer behavior and remove friction, and back when OTAs started, many hotels raised rates roughly 20% to cover the commission, so the whole industry got a bump. If a booking is truly incremental, the commission is closer to a customer acquisition cost than lost revenue. Kin frames it with the iPhone: Apple sells direct, but you still find iPhones at Target, Best Buy, and Costco, because more storefronts mean more reach. On the systems themselves, Travis is direct that the biggest barrier is mindset, not budget. The smallest hotel on Duetto is six rooms, and vacation rentals use it too, so size is not the wall people assume. Above 100 rooms without an RMS, you are likely leaving money on the table: that is 100 rooms across multiple channels across 365-plus days a year, and a human revenue manager will miss something. He reframes the cost too, noting a 12-cent ADR change can offset the price of the tool. The bigger story is Duetto's acquisition of HotStats about a year ago, which pushes the focus from top-line RevPAR toward bottom-line profitability, the total-profit-per-guest thinking Duetto carried over from its start as a Las Vegas casino tool. AI, Travis argues, will not replace revenue managers. Its real job is breaking down the data silos that have kept hotel systems from talking to each other.

  7. Jul 2

    Human Touch in Hotel Tech Evolution With Bernard Tan

    Bernard Tan is the Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Castle Resorts & Hotels, a Honolulu-based hospitality management company operating a diverse portfolio of hotels, condominium resorts, and vacation rentals across Hawaii and New Zealand. With over 20 years of hospitality and consulting experience, he leads commercial strategy across revenue management, distribution, digital marketing, and technology. Originally from Singapore, Bernard began with an accounting background before pursuing his passion for hospitality. He is especially focused on helping hotels integrate technology, improve performance, and preserve the human touch in the guest experience. In this episode… As AI and automation collapse the travel booking journey, hotels face a real risk: turning every guest interaction into a commodity. Bernard Tan, Chief Commercial Officer at Castle Resorts & Hotels, argues the fix is empathy first, technology second. A guest can travel an entire day, checking in by phone, clearing security by facial recognition, boarding by a face scan, and never speak to a single person before reaching the front desk. That makes the hotel's first human welcome matter more, not less. Kin Sio and co-host Keri Brown sit down with Bernard on The Lights On Podcast to unpack the human touch in the evolution of hotel tech. Bernard runs commercial strategy across one of Hawaii's most complex portfolios: 19-plus properties spanning hotels, condominiums, and vacation rentals across five Hawaiian islands and New Zealand. His core argument is that the industry's biggest bottleneck is not innovation, it's integration, and that revenue management has outgrown rate-setting into a three-part discipline of optimization, distribution, and digital enablement. The conversation digs into the rate parity gap between sell rate and net rate, how AI is reshaping who decides what a guest sees, and why keeping a human in the loop still wins. Bernard also breaks down Castle's decision to affiliate two properties with Wyndham's Trademark Collection soft brand, how they protected each property's identity, and the early read on incremental revenue. He closes with practical advice for independent owner-operators staring at a messy tech stack: map every system first, hire for the full commercial spectrum, and remember that guests choose a destination before they choose a property.

  8. Jun 25

    How Michael Russell Turned a Distressed Maui Motel Into an Award-Winning Hostel

    Michael Russell is Co-founder of Howzit Hostels and Malama Capital, where he focuses on hospitality investing, hostel operations, boutique lodging, and experiential real estate. He has experience across short-term rentals, commercial real estate, and hospitality assets, with a focus on acquisitions, repositioning, operations, and portfolio growth. During COVID, Michael acquired a distressed one-star motel and transformed it into Howzit Hostels, growing annual revenue from $500,000 to $2.4 million and earning Hostelworld's 2024 award for #1 Small Hostel in North America. He also hosts The Hotel Investor Playbook, where he shares practical insights on scaling hotel investments. In this episode… Turning an overlooked property into a resilient hospitality business is rarely about the asset. It comes down to seeing value where others see risk, then operating with discipline through thin margins and shocks. During COVID, Michael Russell bought a distressed one-star Maui motel for $800,000 with seller financing and grew it into Howzit Hostels, a $2.4 million brand that earned Hostelworld's 2024 award for the #1 Small Hostel in North America. Kin Sio sits down with Michael on The Lights On Podcast to unpack how he did it. Michael, co-founder of Howzit Hostels and Malama Capital in Maui, walks through the full arc: a W-2 sales job in Hawaii to stack capital, buying single-family homes below construction cost coming out of the Great Recession, then jumping into short-term rentals in 2015 when Airbnb was still new. Each phase funded the next, and the through-line is a single question he keeps asking: where can I find value where others are not looking? That contrarian habit is what led him to a one-star motel nobody wanted and the design-forward hostel model he borrowed from brands in Europe and the mainland. He also gets honest about the hard parts: running 40 to 50 percent over the renovation budget, losing his own home in the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, and the slim-margin reality of hospitality that makes cash reserves and knowing your numbers non-negotiable. The back half turns practical on distribution. Michael treats OTAs as advertising partners rather than enemies, leaning on the billboard effect for discovery, while arguing the real prize in direct bookings is owning the guest relationship, not just shaving commission. He closes on building systems for time freedom, from calendar mastery to the email problem he still hasn't solved, and why his own podcast skips the sales pitch.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
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About

The Lights On Podcast features conversations with hospitality leaders about the commercial strategies that drive hotel performance and growth.

Information

  • Creator
    Kin Sio
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The Lights On Podcast (c) 2026
  • Show Website
    The Lights On Podcast

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