Matt Talks Hospitality: Real conversations for innovative hoteliers

Up until a few years ago, Cole Rubin managed a $19 million residential portfolio of around 200 properties across Airbnb and Booking.com. He lived the midnight guest messages, the missed calls, the inbox chaos. That firsthand pain led him to build Conduit, an AI agent platform for hospitality. Guest requesting a late checkout? An agent checks availability, takes payment and updates the cleaning team, all without a human in the loop. Cole joins Matt to talk late checkouts, AI agents and the future of hotel guest communication.

How should small hotels think about building and investing in a tech stack when they don’t have the data, the team size or the budget of large properties? Elise Roberts is the Managing Director of Happiness Hospitality, the operator behind The Gallivant, a beautiful boutique coastal hotel in East Sussex that holds a MICHELIN key and VisitEngland's Small Hotel of the Year. Elise joins Matt to talk about why 18 systems are not too many for a small hotel, what every hotelier should ask before buying software and how independent properties can outrun the big chains.

Why can you order an Uber within seconds but booking a hotel room still feels like filing a tax return? That is the question Frédéric Robles could not let go of. A tech and antitrust lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell and Amazon, he walked away from law in 2021 to build Namastay, a modern booking engine now live in over 400 hotels across 42 countries. He joins Matt to talk about why most hotels are stuck below 15 percent of direct bookings, and how payment optimization, including digital wallets like Apple Pay, can shift that number.

Hotel gyms. A dead space or a great investment? Matt talks to two experts with opposing views to settle the debate. Lou Zameryka, Global Head of Hotel Enterprise and Connectivity Partnerships at Airbnb, has worked at Booking.com for 17 years and has spent his career at the intersection of travel and wellness. He says hotels are sitting on an opportunity they can't see. Borivoj Vokrinek is Strategic Advisory & Head of Hospitality Research at Cushman & Wakefield, and has advised on hundreds of hotel investment projects across three continents. He sees hotel gyms as wasted real estate and a cost that rarely pays off. Tune in.

Recorded live at Mews Unfold in Amsterdam, this bonus episode brings Matt on stage with three hoteliers who've each rethought what a property is supposed to be like. Stijn Soolsma from Aedes, Josef Vollmayr from Limehome and Mirco Weber from AMANO Group talk through the operational decisions that come with breaking the standard model, what it takes to build a team that believes in a concept before it is proven, and how guests respond when you get it right.