1020: Inside The Boca Raton: Repositioning a 100-Year-Old Luxury Resort
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Release Date: 03/10/2026
FNA 208: Seeing Red
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Red Roof Chief Development officer Matt Hostetler kicks back with Glenn, Craig and Dr. Producer Suzanne as they kick off the weekend with some drinks, stories from the road and another round of our Hotel Pet Peeves.
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1029: How Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Turns Meetings Into Repeat Leisure
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Food and beverage drives nearly half of annual revenue at Hollywood Beach Resort. Glenn Haussman tours with , Director of Sales & Marketing. The property is managed by our friends at ! 🩴 The flip-flop entrance sets the tone and drives social content 🏖️ The boardwalk + beach location fuels energy and local demand 👨👩👧👦 The guest mix shifts by season: couples vs families vs groups 🏢 Meetings live on the 9th floor with ocean views and a 10,000-square-foot ballroom 🔁 Meeting attendees return later for leisure stays with family Thanks to for supporting...
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Front Desk Upsells Cut Turnover by 40% and Raise Pay
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Front desk upsells didn’t just add revenue — they cut turnover by 40% in one operator’s portfolio. In video 2 of this series, Geoffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group, and Sloan Dean, former CEO of Remington, break down how hotels train front desk teams to build rapport, tailor offers, track performance, and pay incentives that actually keep people. 🧠 Train the conversation: ask a few questions at check-in, then match the offer to the guest’s reason for travel 📊 Use data for daily coaching: agents see their stats, managers coach in real time, performance improves...
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Hotel Profitability vs RevPAR: The Shift Revenue Teams Need
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Hotels don’t need another system; hotels need the systems they already run to talk to each other. I talk with Alex Zoghlin, CEO of Duetto, during Duetto PERFORM about profit-first revenue decisions and connected hotel data. 🧩 Disconnected systems force teams to act on partial data 💰 Profit-first decisions require coordination across departments 🔗 Better access to existing data beats adding “one more tool” 🤖 AI speeds integrations and shortens decision cycles 🎯 Dynamic pricing and build-your-own packages lift total revenue and GOP Want the weekly roundup of news, videos,...
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Hotel Profitability Squeeze: Why Ancillary Revenue Matters More Now
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Profitability keeps getting squeezed even after years of strong revenue growth, so hotels can’t live on RevPAR alone. I’m at PERFORM at Margaritaville Resort, and I talk with , CEO of , about what his data shows right now—and what hoteliers can actually do about it. 📉 Michael says cost pressure stays the story: labor, wage inflation, loyalty costs, and credit card costs don’t go away 💰 He points to the opportunity: ancillary revenue grew 5.8% globally last year while RevPAR grew about 2.5% 🧠 He pushes a total revenue per customer mindset instead of obsessing over rooms...
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FNA 207: The Shah- Shank Redemption
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Oliver Shah is a first time guest, and we suspect after having drinks with Glenn, Craig and Suzanne itll be his last. Join us for some laughs and Happy Hour fun where Glenn is at Margaritaville Resort Hollywood Beach.
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Duetto PERFORM: Why Revenue and Profit Need One Operating Model
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
I’m at PERFORM at , and I grabbed , CMO at Duetto, to explain what Duetto built this event to do. 🚀 Duetto built PERFORM to give “hotel performance” its own space—not a back-room trade show conversation 📈 Olly lays out the idea: connect revenue and profit into one operating model, one story, and ultimately one technology 🧠 Duetto pulled in voices from outside hotels—airlines and casinos—to push new thinking on revenue + profitability 🛠️ I like the focus: actionable takeaways you can actually implement, not theory 📣 Duetto plans to publish key takeaways for people...
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AAHOACON Collegiate Championship: Hotel Management GM Simulation
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
Last week, Suzanne Bagnera brought one of 11 student teams from nine schools to the AAHOACON Collegiate Championship, and the students ran the kind of decisions real GMs deal with. During AAHOACON 2026, where No Vacancy was the official podcast, I interviewed Suzanne Bagnera, PhD, CHA, CED about the competition and what she saw as the professor who brought the students. 🎓 Year three of the Collegiate Championship, with teams from schools including FIU, Virginia Tech, Grand Valley State, University of South Carolina, Cornell, Oklahoma State, and Kennesaw 🧠 Russell Partners ran an online...
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1028: Public-Private Hotel Deals: How Cities Finance Headquarters Hotels
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Public-private hotel deals don’t run on a private equity playbook. Cities use them to create demand and pull outside dollars into the market. Suzanne Bagnera, PhD, CHA, CED joins me, and we talk with Walter Peseski, Senior Vice President of Asset Management at Garfield Public/Private, about how these projects get financed and why brands matter. 🏛️ Why cities build headquarters hotels and convention-adjacent product 🏨 Why bondholders and ratings agencies push projects toward branded hotels 📈 Abilene example: a DoubleTree plus a demand curveball from the Stargate data center ⏳ The...
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What Great Partnerships Really Look Like in Hospitality
No Vacancy Live and No Vacancy News
They flipped the first Sonesta hotel in a couple of hours. That’s what a real partnership looks like when the operator needs speed and the vendor shows up. During AAHOACON in Philadelphia, I talked with Patty Jefferson from Visual Matrix and Chris Trick from Sonesta about how they built the relationship, scaled it, and kept it practical for hotel teams. 🤝 They started with trust, then proved execution fast with that first flip 🏨 The rollout now covers 120+ installs across multiple Sonesta brands 🖥️ They cut friction at the desk: move from two screens to one, so staff works faster...
info_outlineRepositioning a 100-year-old luxury resort hits different than building something new. You work with history, legacy expectations, and a modern guest who doesn’t care about any of that unless the experience delivers.
Suzanne co-hosts with me, and we talk with Daniel Hostetler, President & CEO of The Boca Raton, about how the property has managed a multi-year repositioning under new ownership — what they changed, why they changed it, and how they operate it day to day. I’m sharing it under #NoVacancyNews.
Here’s what we hit:
🏛️ They left a brand and run the resort independently under new ownership
🏗️ They knocked down a convention center, opening up land for a four-acre leisure-driven pool complex
🏨 They run five distinct lodging products across one campus (Beach Club, Tower, Cloister, Yacht Club, Bungalows)
⭐ They use Forbes standards as the operating baseline and build toward a multi–five-star goal
🎁 They push curated personalization: amenity closet + butlers instead of one-size-fits-all turndown
👥 Daniel talks promote-from-within and how they build consistency across a large team
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