Host of the Suite Spot podcast and Vice President of Marketing at Travel Media Group, Ryan Embree, breaks down the key takeaways from the 2025 Hospitality Show that took place in Denver, Colorado, last month. 

Ryan shares not only his opinion on some of the most prevalent topics from the renowned industry event, but he also shares what panelists, attendees, hoteliers, and others had to say about the conference and the state of hospitality. 

Tune in now to listen to the full episode.

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. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot Podcast, and we are fresh off of our 2025 Hospitality Show coverage in Denver, Colorado. We are back here in our Travel Media Group headquarters, a little bit closer to C-level in our Suite Spot podcast studio. Absolutely incredible event. Wanna first think Questex and AHLA as well as the city of Denver for hosting from end to end. So amazing from the programming to the networking to the industry professionals that we had the privilege of interviewing. You can find all of those exclusive interviews on our TMG YouTube page, make sure to follow along. But in today’s episode, we are gonna go with our top takeaways from the Hospitality Show in Denver. And it really started right off the bat. I mean, this was an end to end, just jam packed insights, trends, everything a hotelier could want. You know, this was billed as one of the most comprehensive shows in hospitality. And from all of the education sessions that we saw, the panelists, the conversations that we had, the networking that went on again, hats off to the teams over at AHLA and Questex, where I’ll start my key takeaways is really one of the first quotes that really resonated with me as an attendee on the first day. And this was I forget who I can attribute this quote to, but was talking about how we ended the 2024 Hospitality Show in San Antonio. And everything that has happened between then and the start of the 2025 Hospitality show, an election, you know, a tumultuous start to the year, with tariffs, international travel, almost seeing double-digit drops in some places between some countries. And then now we have a government shutdown here. So, so many things that the hospitality industry had to deal with. And, you know, I have the privilege of attending multiple events throughout the year, and never have I ever been on such a rollercoaster ride. It started at the beginning of the year in March where we met a lot of hoteliers that were kind of bracing for impact. They were coming down this hill. Projections didn’t look great. A lot of sentiment out there was not was not awesome. Deals were not getting done. It just feel very like a crawl. And then all of a sudden summer came and as we were kind of bracing ourselves for this just dip or this terrible kind of cliff that we were about to, to fall off, we kind of opened our eyes as an industry and said, it’s really not as bad as it’s being made out to be. And a lot of hoteliers, as we saw and we interviewed, talked to, had some really good summers, had some really good numbers, occupancy, looking across different markets, some of the markets that weren’t doing as well rebounded. And they were starting to see a little bit of glimmer of hope. And now here we are at the end of the year and it feels like those storm clouds are brewing again. And we’re bracing ourselves for a new year in 2026. And maybe it’s because we’re just looking at the numbers. It’s budget season. We’re starting to try to forecast like we love to do and have to do frankly in hospitality, but it just feels like that worry is coming over us again. But to that, I feel like it’s in these times where there’s a lot of creativity and ingenuity that starts to really spur and, and it’s these events that could be a catalyst for real change in our industry. There were a lot of industry leaders up on stage over these last few days at the hospitality show in Denver that presented some pretty interesting ideas when it came to housekeeping, staffing, the booking experience and really challenging the status quo. And it’s these types of events that can really start a conversation and build a foundation and momentum for true change within our industry. We saw that change happen very, very quickly during COVID because it needed to, it was a necessity. But now here we are and we can all feel it. We can feel the belts tightening from the hotel all the way to our guests and consumers. And this is when we need to start looking around and trying to come up some fresh ideas. And, you know, some of those might not even be within hospitality. I mean, one of the keynote speakers was Chris Barton from Shazam, and, you know, trying to get these fresh voices maybe outside of hospitality. Blue Origin was another speaker talking about space tourism, maybe looking for some new channels. You know, space tourism might not be a couple years down the line in your portfolio if you’re a management company right now. But is it a trend that you can capitalize on, right? Are there areas where this could be happening within the next decade? You’re positioning yourself in markets that are going to cater to that demand, which could exponentially increase. It was truly amazing to hear some of the stories that we heard at the hospitality show when it came to space tourism. But all that to say doesn’t necessarily need to be hospitality led for these hospitality innovation to come from. And I feel like it’s during these times, during these events where you’re going to see that we had several different conversations. One with a leader of landing place hotels, the brand leader of landing place hotels who saw an opportunity, to do things a little differently with a brand. And they’re seeing double digit. They already accumulated a double digit pipeline right now in development. It’s very, very interesting. We’re at, we’re at a, a kind of an inflection point in hospitality right now as we enter 2026 and we in into this kind of unknown. But it will be really, really exciting to see what type of innovation comes from this. Because I do think this is when people are gonna start getting creative. ’cause those margins are just too tight right now, right? Between staffing, construction costs. The demand is still there, but the profits are not being seen. And that was, there was no, it was not an error that the Hospitality Show started its programming with multiple sessions on profits and how these management companies, brands can work together and these owners assets can work together in order to see profit margin increase. Because right now it’s just slimmed over these last couple years. And it’s being felt, it’s being felt throughout the industry. You know, it was interesting to see some of the leaders that I spoke to and interview, got the opportunity to interview, talk about capitalizing on some of these trends that we’re seeing right now in hospitality, you know, personalization, multi-generational travel, experiential travel, right? Marriott announced recently it’s outdoor collection and, you know, lifestyle brands, all of this mixed in. And I think what’s happening right now is the traveler, the consumer is feeling that tightening in their belt, but they still want to travel. It was, it has not been taken away from them like it was in 2020, but they certainly have to do some more due diligence. And when they do travel, which they’re going to prioritize, they wanna make sure they make the biggest bang for their buck. So they’re gonna start prioritizing and maybe looking for those hotels that they feel can give them the widest and breadth of experience, right? Rather than just be loyalty to those brands. So those brands are seeing that they’re trying to capitalize on these trends and they’re exploring more into the soft brand lifestyle division. We had heads of man of a couple different management companies talk about, you know, the patterns that they’re seeing in consumer sentiment and what they want out of their experience. They want to feel like they’re having a localized experience. We’ve always talked about that on this podcast about how to try to tell your story, how to make your guest part of the story, part of your local community, how to give them that community first experience. But now guests are clamoring for it. They’re looking for it, they’re doing research, they’re doing research in different places. That was another big trend and takeaway that I heard a lot is hotels management companies. They’re starting to look at how guests are using the booking journey right now. And l and where does LLMs fit into that? They feel like they don’t want to be get left behind in a search, just like I’m sure when Google started to aggregate all these hotels online, they didn’t want to be on page two or page three, right? So how can, when a traveler searches best hotels in this market, or maybe a little bit more specific of a search your hotel be retrieved in those how can your hotel be a part of those results, right? And I think more and more hotels are asking that question. It’ll be really interesting to see where that goes. AI and technology, it feels like it has to be a part of every programming agenda and conversation that we talked about now. But it is starting, I feel like, to settle into two separate camps. One that really wanna prioritize the employee empowerment, right? How can I use AI and technology to empower my employees to do their job efficiently? Something that we’ve preached at Travel Media Group where we have several AI innovations that help the employee get some really deeper insights into its online reputation. But also, you know, there’s that second camp of, well, we’re gonna try to go guest experience first. What can I do with AI and technology in order to make a big difference on the guest experience? And I think those two camps actually go hand in hand, to be honest with you. If you empower your employees to improve the guest experience, one is gonna happen towards the other. It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship. But it is interesting to see, because you talk about AI and technology, I think the one thing that everyone can agree on hospitality is you don’t want to be left behind, right? And there was an interesting keynote that was at the hospitality show, futurist that was talking about hospitality and how you have to, you don’t wanna be the first one into the bear cave of technology. You’d rather be the second person exploring the bear cave. And while I do agree with that, I do think it is gonna be those innovators that jump into kind of the deep end and try to integrate this stuff. I think guests right now, and consumers are out out of place where they’re still willing to accept a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to AI and technology, then they will be in, let’s say six months to a year. So it might be that first brand that goes all in that might be known as a trendsetter rather than saying, well, this was, this was rolled out prematurely. So we’ll be interesting to see more and more brands obviously rolling different things out. But I think, you know, they’re trying to go about this really systematically in hospitality as we know, a little bit late to the game with adopting some of this technology. I mean, you get to some of the hotels and some of the some of the technologies still very outdated. So you talk about rolling that up across a brand or a portfolio of hotels could take some time. So we’ll see how that plays out. You know, a couple great conversations. This is always a great show to look at the relationship between brands, management companies and owners, especially at a time, like I said, where profits are so tight, margins are so thin, who can bend a little bit more and what goodwill is that going to potentially serve in the long run here? I think there’s a jockeying for position between the brands right now. We’ve seen management companies, you know, sprout overnight and some really, really successful management companies start to make some strategic partnerships and start to get into areas that are trendsetting. You know, I think about hotel equities in the postcard, cabins, portfolio and play. I think it’s very interesting to see, and we’ll continue to see that because right now we’re at a place that just feels we’re getting a little stuck in our industry and we gotta figure out a way to kinda wiggle through it. And that’s where that creativity and ingenuity that I was talking about comes into play. And then finally, you know, my last takeaway from the incredible couple days that we had out in Denver was, first of all, what an amazing city. Denver, Colorado. And I love the fact that they actually, they had the mayor of Denver at the show was a part of the ribbon cutting ceremony. Rosanna Maieta from AHLA did a great interview with, the mayor of Denver and talking about how the city had teamed up with hospitality. And it was really inspiring and it was really cool to see Denver, you know, they talked about the importance of sports tourism. We were there during a Denver Broncos, Dallas Cowboys game. You could see that sports tourism dollar being spent all over the restaurants, hotels. So it is interesting in markets that might be a little bit more challenged right now, you know, we saw this last year with San Francisco, this year, Las Vegas. Can some of these city stakeholders come together with hospitality management companies, associations, professionals, and do some things to again, kind of get us unstuck in some of these markets that have been struggling? There’s other markets right now that are doing a fantastic job and we spoke to you know, some of the portfolio leaders that have assets in those, in those markets. And it was extremely compelling. Definitely suggests, if you haven’t already subscribe to our YouTube page, you can see all the exclusive content. We had eight incredible interviews with professionals, hospitality professionals, like I said, heads of associations, brand leaders and c-suite executives from multiple management companies. And it was just such a privilege and an honor to be able to, to kind of talk hospitality with them. So, you know, again, Denver was incredible, very excited about Miami next year. And if he didn’t get the opportunity, go check out my interview with Alexi Khajavi at Questex who did. I think one of the best ways we always have our, our hospitality show preview with Alexi, I think in the interview we had out in Denver was probably the best way to really hype up what Miami 2026 is gonna be about in a event that is so comprehensive. The independent hotel space is really bubbling up right now. Brands want to be independents, independents wanna act more like brands. There’s this, there’s this inflection point that we’re headed towards this fork in the road that we’re headed towards. And it’s all gonna culminate next year in Miami, an independent hotel capital of the world. We are very familiar, as you know, we head down there on an annual basis. I’m so excited that it’s right here in our backyard. We’re gonna take the bright line down. We’re gonna be bringing you so much coverage, exclusive interviews, and we’re gonna get, we’re gonna get a little bit more exclusive coverage and we’re gonna be doing a lot of stuff leading up to the show to prepare you for it. So I hope you’ll stay with me. Subscribe, follow, but to put a final bow on 2025 hospitality show. Incredible. Thank you again to AHLA and Questex for making this possible. Can’t wait to see what you have in store for us in Miami 2026. Thank you for listening to the Suite Spot, and we will talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree and we hope you enjoyed your stay.