Gen Z, Millennials, and the Vacation Ownership Shift
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Release Date: 06/05/2026
The Hotel Titan Behind Loews’ Biggest Bets
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Jonathan Tisch helped shape Loews Hotels for 45 years, built some of the company’s most important projects, and still talks about hospitality as a people business before anything else. Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera cohosts this conversation with Jonathan Tisch, retired executive chairman of Loews Hotels, and we get into the decisions behind Loews Miami Beach, the long relationship with Universal Orlando, the Arlington growth story, and why hotel people still need to fight for more respect. Jonathan also shares one line from his first sales boss that stuck with him through every chapter of his...
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We Drove The Vegas Loop With A Casino Resort President
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We drove through the Las Vegas Loop in a Tesla with Cami Christensen, President/GM of Westgate Las Vegas, and she's got 25 years of stories to tell from inside one of Vegas's most connected properties. 🏨 Westgate is about to be the first Vegas hotel with direct airport access through The Vegas Loop. End of June. You step off a plane, hop in a Tesla, and you're in your room — no traffic, no surface streets, plane to room to convention center. 🎰 Westgate just partnered with Caesars to power their sports book with Caesars technology. Full circle moment: Cami started at the property 25...
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The Luxury Boom Is Reshaping Where Operators Are Betting
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Your mid-market property is about to get a neighbor it didn't expect. Bruce Ford, SVP of Lodging Econometrics, explains why 158 luxury conversions are coming — and what that means for everyone else. Luxury used to be exclusive. Expensive to build. Hard to convert. Not anymore. Brands are loosening their grip. Third-party operators are moving in. Mid-market properties are being stripped down and rebuilt as five-star, with new tech and new standards. And they're happening fast. Here's what worries operators: once a guest stays at the converted property next door with all the new tech,...
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Natural Language AI Just Changed Hotel Management Forever
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Your owners are making decisions blind. PM Hotel Group just fixed that. Steve Marino, VP of IT and Hotel Systems at PM Hotel Group, explained at HITEC how they're using AI as their competitive differentiator — not to replace anyone, but to move owners from reactive to proactive. Most owners aren't hoteliers — they're investor-class people who don't know how to navigate systems or run reports. So they wait. They ask. They get frustrated. PM turned that into natural language: "Give me my cost per occupied room across these hotels for the last three weeks." Instant answers. No friction. ...
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How Hotels Are Getting Paid to Reduce Energy Demand
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Here's obvious: Hotel energy prices aren't coming down. Rick West, CEO at Commercial Green Solutions, and Kenny Weston, VP at Commercial Green Solutions, explained why hoteliers need to stop treating utility costs as fixed. ⚡ The "double whammy" is real: your kWh costs are up AND your demand charges are through the roof. But there's $50 billion in rebates sitting in utility programs that most hotels don't even know exist. 🎯 It's not about spending millions on new infrastructure. One hotel cleaning a P-tack can save 17,500 kWh — paid for entirely by the utility. Multiply that across a...
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Why the Most Confident AI Hotel Pricing Recommendations Are the Least Trustworthy
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Kartik Yellepeddi, Chief Product Officer at Duetto, says AI in pricing is stuck at level one: algorithms that recommend prices. That's the problem. Building three levels is the solution. 🎯 Foundation (pricing and forecasting algorithms), layer two (explaining why the AI decided what it decided), and layer three (performance engineering that guides humans across sales, marketing, and distribution). ⚠️ The most confident algorithms are often the least trustworthy. AI has to earn trust by explaining itself, showing its confidence level, and flagging where it's struggling — so humans...
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Hotels Are Asking the Wrong Question at Check-In
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Hotels are asking the wrong question at check-in — and Alliants just proved it. 🔑 Apple Wallet and Google Wallet keys at Resorts World Las Vegas are table stakes. Member Pass is the real play: loyalty recognition built into the digital key so repeat guests see their benefits the moment they arrive. 🎯 One customer captured additional guest names from 13,000 out of 20,000 check-ins. Hotels book one name. Alliants helps capture the whole group — the difference between selling one spa package and five World Cup packages. ❓ Nobody's asking "What's bringing you to town?" They should...
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Hotel Data Breaches Are Getting Worse. Here's Why.
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Matthew Bright, SVP and Head of IT at Davidson Hospitality, made a promise not to talk about AI. He broke it 54 seconds in. 🔒 AI is making security worse and easier at the same time — phishing emails with zero typos, sophisticated language models doing the work bad actors used to do by hand. 🎯 Large hospitality companies getting breached makes the whole industry a target. People now understand what to steal. 👤 Your tools can block entry points. Your users are the real vulnerability — and they're more susceptible than ever. ⚙️ Basic security wins: strong network security,...
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FNA 213: At our Baikowitz-end
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is a cat whisperer, networking extraordinaire, and the funnest, loudest (the good kind) person you'll ever meet. She joins Friday Night Audit alongside myself, and from Toronto (where she's "in exile" from New York) and the crew immediately put her to work on the pet peeves hotel tournament. 🐱 The parallels between training introverted cats and introverted people are uncanny. Slow blink. Build trust. Don't stare. Feed them. Deena's done it for both species. 🍤 Hotel networking events are broken: greasy sticky fingers on the shrimp, then a handshake, then touching your phone. Someone...
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Curator Hotels VP on Why Labor Costs Drive Every Tech Decision
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Brent Hayhurst, VP at , won't look at a new technology until he knows what KPI it's supposed to move. 💸 Labor is the largest line item on any hotel owner's balance sheet, and that's the number Curator's tech decisions chase. 🏚️ Curator skips the big splashy booths and goes straight to the fringes of the show floor, where the new ideas show up first. 🧪 A pilot that fails isn't wasted. Hayhurst treats it as proof the team needs a different approach entirely. ☎️ AI is already pulling phone calls off the front desk so staff can focus on the guest standing in front of them. More...
info_outlineSeventy-three percent of new vacation ownership purchases now come from Gen Z and millennials.
That changes the pitch, product strategy, and member experience conversation for every company in vacation ownership.
During ARDA Spring Conference, I spoke with Gordon Gurnik, COO of Hilton Grand Vacations, about younger buyers, points-based flexibility, AI, and the experiences HGV builds around ownership.
🎟 HGV runs about 3,800 member experiences a year, so ownership means access, not just more space
🏎 At Elara in Las Vegas, HGV brings F1 into the owner experience with viewing areas, concerts, food, and beverage
🎤 Chef dinners, wine tastings, baseball suites, and private concerts create moments members may not arrange on their own
🤖 AI opens a path toward more personal recommendations, especially in markets like Las Vegas where too many choices can overwhelm a trip
👨👩👧 Points-based ownership helps younger buyers adapt as their families, schedules, and vacation habits change
Gordon also talks about why hospitality keeps people hooked: travel, food and beverage, construction, marketing, sales, entertainment, and the moments when guests create memories right in front of you.
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