Matt Talks Hospitality

Can a hotel brand successfully scale while building social impact into its business model? The Social Hub, now certified as a B Corp, is built on the belief that a hotel can serve its city as much as its guests. The Social Hub’s Founder and CEO, Charlie MacGregor, shares what it takes to keep profit high and purpose alive as the company scales.

Hotels have spent years trying to convince guests to skip daily cleaning through towel reuse signs, drink vouchers or loyalty points. Having run large city hotels, Floris Licht saw firsthand how none of those ever worked. He ended up founding Hotels for Trees, a non-profit that turns skipped room cleans into forests. One skipped clean –⁠ one tree planted, with over 800 thousand trees planted so far. Floris joins Matt to explain how Hotels for Trees fits into hotel operations, from door hangers to the digital guest journey with Mews.

When hotel GMs receive hundreds of emails from software vendors claiming to be the best, judging new tech becomes difficult. That exact problem led to Hotel Tech Report, one of hospitality’s most-trusted review platforms. Its co-founder Jordan Hollander joins Matt to talk about what goes into hotel tech buying decisions. The episode lands as Mews wins Best PMS for the third year in a row and Best POS at the 2026 HotelTechAwards, run by Hotel Tech Report.

Can a hotel run with one seventh of staff and still outperform its peers? Bob W is built for the modern traveler who wants the best of both worlds: the consistency and reliability of a hotel, with the space, utility and local feel of a short-stay apartment. But what truly sets Bob W apart is its software-first mindset. Niko Karstikko, Co-founder and CEO of Bob W, joins Matt to explain how Bob W blends apartments, hotels and automation into a new hospitality category.

Cocoons and capsules sit at the heart of Zedwell Hotels’ London city-centre vision, where rooms are designed around sleep, efficiency and the realities of urban life rather than tradition. In this episode, Matt speaks with Halima Aziz, Head of Hotels at Criterion Hospitality, which owns and operates Zedwell Hotels, about turning forgotten city spaces into some of London’s most profitable hotel real estate, all while removing TVs, kettles and even windows from the rooms.