Behind the Stays

Sonder is back — sort of. Eight months after going bankrupt and stranding guests mid-stay, the brand name has been bought by a Vancouver affiliate firm that paid for one thing: search equity. The buildings are gone. The trademarks and 70+ domains remain. And because large language models still route travelers to Sonder’s optimized pages, that name is now targeting $100M in gross booking value over the next year. We get into what it means when a dead brand outlives the company that built it.

Then: Fora’s $1B valuation. The travel advisor platform keeps scaling the human-agent model — but the team digs into the product it hasn’t built yet, and why the “ShopMy for travel” affiliate layer is still wide open for creators who aren’t full-time advisors.

We also break down Google’s AI travel play. Fresh off its Q2 earnings call, Google is using travel to sell Wall Street its AI ad story — Direct Offers, IHG partnerships, AI Mode crossing a billion users, and checkout infrastructure that could let travelers book without ever leaving the search box. The question for operators: is Google becoming rented land, and a direct-booking competitor, at the same time?

Plus, The Odyssey effect. From Petra to the “White Lotus Four Seasons” to Bangkok’s Hangover Hotel, we get into how films turn destinations into demand — and what hoteliers should actually do about it.

Hosted by Zach Busekrus with Ben Wolff, Scott Eddy, and Edwin Kramer.

Like, subscribe, and let us know which story you’d unpack further.

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This Week in Hospitality is presented to you by Journey. Journey is a loyalty platform built specifically for independent boutique hotels and high-touch hospitality brands. Our mission is to give operators the same powerful rewards engine, data intelligence, and guest insights that major chains rely on — without asking them to give up the individuality, soul, or story that makes their property extraordinary. If you’re an owner or operator of an extraordinary, independently owned and operated hotel or residence — and you want to see whether your property is a fit for the Journey Alliance — you can learn more and apply at https://www.journey.com/alliance

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Key Topics & Timestamps

00:00 — Intro

06:02 — Story #1: Sonder's Brand Gets a Second Life Through AI Search

17:51 — Story #2: Google Wants to Own the Entire Hotel Booking Journey

32:16 — Story #3: The Odyssey Is Creating the Next Travel Boom

45:11 — Story #4: Is Fora Really Worth $1 Billion?

59:22 — Spice of the Week

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Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/

 

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrscotteddy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrscotteddy/

 

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wolff/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iambenwolff/

 

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinckramer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edwinkramer/

Connect with Glenn: linkedin.com/in/glennhaussman

Explore "No Vacancy": https://novacancynews.com/

Connect with Zach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharybusekrus/

Apply to join the Journey Alliance: http://journey.com/alliance/

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Meet Glenn Haussman — thirty years in hospitality media, a decade helming No Vacancy News, and one of the most recognized voices this industry has ever produced. He's been in the rooms, on the stages, and behind the microphone longer than most people in this industry have known what a podcast was. He's not just a journalist. He's a mirror for this industry, and he's seen enough cycles to call out the patterns most people are still too caught up in to notice.

We sat down together with no real agenda and covered a lot of ground. How to make Virgin Hotels cool again. Why Disney wins at hospitality but can't seem to crack the hotel business. The biggest opportunities sitting right in front of independent hoteliers today. Why the casino industry and the hotel industry keep operating in separate silos when they have everything to learn from each other. The future of creator-led businesses in hospitality. And why Glenn Haussman has seen Phish perform hundreds of times — which, once he explains it, makes complete sense.

We also got into the craft. What it actually means to listen in an interview. Why the magic lives in the moment you didn't plan for. And what it took to go independent in 2016, when convincing a hospitality executive to sit in front of a microphone without a notepad was still a genuinely hard sell. Thirty years in and Glenn is still going places this industry isn't ready for yet. This one hit different. Stay with us.

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Behind the Stays is brought to you by Journey — a first-of-its-kind loyalty program that brings together an alliance of the world’s top independently owned and operated stays and allows travelers to earn points and perks on boutique hotels, vacation rentals, treehouses, ski chalets, glamping experiences and so much more.
 
Your host is Zach Busekrus, Head of Growth at Journey. If you are a hospitality entrepreneur who has a stay, or a collection of stays with soul, we’d love for you to apply to join our Alliance at journey.com/alliance.

Subscribe to This Week in Hospitality wherever you get you podcasts:

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-hospitality/id1849637233
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@ThisWeekinHospitality

Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta went on record defending the brand's 28-property portfolio — and the panel has thoughts. Is the multi-brand arms race really about guests, or is it just an elaborate play for developers and distribution? 

Edwin makes the case that independent hotels have a competitive advantage no loyalty algorithm can replicate. Scott drops the hottest take of the episode: loyalty points have become hush money for operational failures. And Ben shares a story about a boutique hotel that turned a jackhammer nightmare into a lifelong brand loyalist — no points required.

Then the World Cup post-mortem. Bank of America's final numbers are in — $20 billion pumped into the U.S. economy, RevPAR up 90% in Kansas City, 55% in San Francisco. Miami crushed it. But three separate properties reached out to Scott after the final whistle with the same question: now what? No social strategy. No post-event plan. No follow-through. The panel unpacks what hotels actually got right, what they blew, and why this should be a wake-up call for independent operators ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

And to close it out — a game. It's Route 66's 100th anniversary, and CoStar toured the surviving motels still operating along the highway. The panel plays Keep, Kill, or Reimagine across six properties. Clark Gable's old room, a freshly rehabbed motor court with a paint can still in the bathtub, and a pink-walled Santa Monica hotel sitting on land worth more than the building. Scott wants to build a diner on everything. Edwin wants to preserve the soul. Ben's doing the math.

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This Week in Hospitality is presented to you by Journey. Journey is a loyalty platform built specifically for independent boutique hotels and high-touch hospitality brands. Our mission is to give operators the same powerful rewards engine, data intelligence, and guest insights that major chains rely on — without asking them to give up the individuality, soul, or story that makes their property extraordinary. If you’re an owner or operator of an extraordinary, independently owned and operated hotel or residence — and you want to see whether your property is a fit for the Journey Alliance — you can learn more and apply at https://www.journey.com/alliance

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Key Topics & Timestamps

00:00 — Intro
12:07 — Story #1: Hilton’s 28-Brand Defense and AI’s Loyalty Shift
33:15 — Story #2: Did the 2026 World Cup Actually Deliver for Hotels?
43:23 — 100 Years of Route 66: Motel Draft (Keep, Reimagine, Kill)

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Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/

 

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrscotteddy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrscotteddy/

 

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wolff/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iambenwolff/

 

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinckramer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edwinkramer/

Connect with Colin: linkedin.com/in/colinjamesnagy/

Connect with Zach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharybusekrus/

Apply to join the Journey Alliance: http://journey.com/alliance/

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The luxury hotel boom of the last decade produced more five-star rooms, more high-end brands, and more capital chasing premium travelers than any period in modern hospitality history.

It also produced a lot of hotels that feel exactly the same.

Colin Nagy has spent nearly a decade covering the business of luxury travel for Skift while leading global brand strategy for Instagram and Threads at Meta. He sits at a rare intersection — deeply inside the world of brand, culture, and consumer behavior, and deeply inside an industry he genuinely loves. That combination makes him one of the most clear-eyed observers working in hospitality today.

In this episode, Colin and I dig into why luxury has optimized itself into sameness — and more importantly, what the brands getting it right are actually doing differently. We get into the role hospitality plays in a world where AI is accelerating isolation and people are hungry for real human connection. We talk members' clubs — the ones worth betting on and the ones burning through capital without a clue. We get into the macro disruption question most operators aren't asking loudly enough. And we talk about what world building actually requires — and why so few brands are willing to do the work.

Colin isn't cynical about any of this. He's demanding. There's a difference. And if you care about where this industry is headed, this conversation will sharpen how you see it.

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Behind the Stays is brought to you by Journey — a first-of-its-kind loyalty program that brings together an alliance of the world’s top independently owned and operated stays and allows travelers to earn points and perks on boutique hotels, vacation rentals, treehouses, ski chalets, glamping experiences and so much more.
 
Your host is Zach Busekrus, Head of Growth at Journey. If you are a hospitality entrepreneur who has a stay, or a collection of stays with soul, we’d love for you to apply to join our Alliance at journey.com/alliance.

This week, the squad breaks down Norwegian Air's World Cup Instagram stunt that cost next to nothing and generated more brand equity than campaigns with budgets a hundred times the size. Eivind Hammer Myhre, who leads comms and marketing at Norwegian, joins us live to walk through exactly how it happened — the 25-minute brainstorm, the one phone call to get sign-off, and what came after when the whole thing blew up overnight.

Then we get into the Ennismore story. Skift's Rafat Ali floated a thought experiment this week that reads less like an op-ed and more like a deal memo left on the wrong desk — a potential distribution and loyalty partnership between Airbnb and Accor's lifestyle hotel subsidiary ahead of a $3.7 billion IPO. Ben, Edwin, and Scott dig into whether the math actually works for owners, who benefits more, and why Wall Street keeps struggling to put a number on cool.

And finally — Vrbo is launching sponsored listings. The beta is live. The full rollout is coming. And if you've been around long enough to remember what happened when organic reach died on Meta, you already know where this is going. Scott's spice of the week ties it all together: four stories that seem unrelated until you realize they're all asking the same question. How do you earn trust at scale? And what happens to the brands — and the platforms — that can't figure that out?

—

This Week in Hospitality is presented to you by Journey. Journey is a loyalty platform built specifically for independent boutique hotels and high-touch hospitality brands. Our mission is to give operators the same powerful rewards engine, data intelligence, and guest insights that major chains rely on — without asking them to give up the individuality, soul, or story that makes their property extraordinary. If you’re an owner or operator of an extraordinary, independently owned and operated hotel or residence — and you want to see whether your property is a fit for the Journey Alliance — you can learn more and apply at https://www.journey.com/alliance

—

Key Topics & Timestamps
00:00 — Intro
03:18 — Interview: Norwegian Air's Viral Women's Euro Campaign
26:53 — Story #1: Airbnb and Ennismore Hook Up
33:47 — Story #2: The Slow Death of Organic Discovery on Vrbo
39:52 — Story #3: South Korea Could Strip Hotels of Stars for Price Gouging
1:04:47 — Spice of the Week

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Your Hosts:

Zach Busekrus — Journey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/

 

Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrscotteddy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrscotteddy/

 

Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wolff/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iambenwolff/

 

Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinckramer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edwinkramer/