this.

And nobody is I mean, you know, this is a good point about all these brands, because even the sort of distinguishable luxury brands talk so much about their amenities and their sort of features like we have this, we have this, we have this.

The thin slicing of that, who cares? You have 300 thread count.

We have 350.

I promise you, there is no traveler making a decision based on the thread count of the pillow.

They're making a decision on their loyalty program, location, and how the brand makes them feel or how they anticipate it's going to make them feel when they're staying there.

And I'll tell you what, People are booking luxury hotels if they're not rich because they want to feel rich.

And you think this is going to work somehow.

If you look back at your track record, you have spent a decade with Starwood Hotels, and what was one lesson from that experience that still influences how you think and work today?

This is gonna make me sound like such an old lady, but I think the, something that I'm really happy about the way that it played out in my career is that I worked for Starwood just after revenue management, revenue strategy became a thing in hotels, and just before it became its own freestanding discipline that reported into the general manager.

And so revenue management always reported to me as, or most of my career reported to me as a director of sales and marketing, which meant that I had to really understand and learn revenue strategy long before there was great software to make it work, so when you're, like, doing everything manually in an Excel spreadsheet.

I, I think that that paid off in dividends across my career, both on property and as a consultant because I think I have a very deep understanding of that, that a lot of people may not have had the luck to experience, even though, you know, I did have to, like, break my wrist doing 10-key calculations in Excel spreadsheets of, like, pressing buttons over and over again.

So that's one, and then the other is maybe a little less serious but equally as lasting, and that is learning to say, "My pleasure," instead of, "You're welcome." I think that saying my pleasure instead of you're welcome on the surface is just a, a more, uh, sort of elegant way to express, to return the compliment or return the thanks, but I also think it is very telling in terms of how important communication is and how important, not just sort of like communicating, but how important the specific words that you use in the specific order to either make somebody feel important or make them feel less than.

And in the case of my pleasure, when you say thank you to me and I say my pleasure, that absolutely makes you feel better than you're welcome.

[laughs]

And, uh, thinking about those things, if you sit down with, with one of those hotel company CEOs today, where would you recommend they focus in their commercial investments over, over the next few years? If you see there's a, there's a gap, there's an opportunity, what are the things you would like to tell them and that they would be grateful for that advice?

What inspired you to create Top Floor and what gap did you feel that it filled in the hospitality conversation?

Well, the origin story of the show is sort of convoluted.

I was co-hosting a podcast about marketing with a good friend of mine, and he ended up having to shelve the show because he took a full time job and like they wouldn't let him do it or he was too busy or something like that.

And so we had to.

end the show but i knew i really loved the medium i was like oh this is so fun i love doing this and so i had on my big whiteboard in my office the word podcast written and i'm like i gotta think of a podcast what can i do how can i do it And during the pandemic, I was in this mastermind group with a bunch of women who all own hospitality related companies.

So there were five of us.

And we met once a month and just sort of talked about like, what's going on? What are you seeing in the market and whatever.

not you know what i mean After interviewing so many leaders in hospitality, what qualities do the best hoteliers have in common?