185 – International Luxury Hotel Association: INSPIRE USA Preview

Tune in to this special episode of the Suite Spot to hear from two very special guests of the International Luxury Hotel Association. First off, President of the ILHA, Barak Hirschowitz, and Co-Founder of the association, Jonathan Edelheit, join the podcast to preview the upcoming INSPIRE USA conference taking place on December 10-11, in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

These two luxury hospitality experts discuss several important topics in this episode, including the humble origin of the ILHA, how the luxury hotel market is leading the industry in innovation, what attendees can look forward to from INSPIRE USA 2025, and much more.

Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, episode 185, and from the title we are previewing another hospitality event. One of my favorite things to do look at, and this one, it’s a first timer for me, not certainly for our guests. I’m gonna bring them and we’re gonna talk all about it. The Inspire USA event hosted by ILHA, the International Luxury Hotel Association. My two guests with me today, Barak Hirschowitz, President of the ILHA, and Jonathan Edelheit, co-founder of the ILHA, Barak, Jon, thank you so much for taking the time and checking into the Suite Spot with me.

Barak Hirschowitz:
Well, thank you. It’s wonderful to be here and great to meet you.

Ryan Embree:
And we’re excited about it, excited about the event, but before we get into that, I wanna just start with a little bit of hospitality background. We always love to kind of start there. Hospitality’s such a funky industry. People come from different brands, they come from different backgrounds. Sometimes they fall into it, sometimes they fall into the industry with a summer job, sometimes they’re born into the industry. So I figured let’s go ahead and give our Suite Spot audience a little bit of background into your hospitality journey and what led you to the ILHA Barak. We’ll start with you and then go to Jon.

Barak Hirschowitz:
Yeah, thanks. So I started in the industry in the late, late eighties, early nineties. I went to Johnson Wales. I started as a, I started in culinary, as many people do in the hotel industry. And those were interesting times because back then there were really only a couple of places you get a degree in culinary arts. So it led me to, you know, travel abroad, which was great. I started, just before I went overseas, I did an internship at the Grand Floridian, which believe it or not, was still a fairly new hotel back then. And then started working abroad internationally, moved eventually to more the hotel side of the business. I worked in South Africa for some very well-known hotel brands. Sun International. Sun International is Saul K’s original brand that he had when he was still based in South Africa. So that, you know, today we know him for Atlantis and we know him for one, um, one and only hotels. But, um, back then he had Sun International, so I worked with him. I worked for a company called Halian Hotels, which had, uh, luxury hotels in, in South Africa, and actually a few up Africa as well. And, um, I had an opportunity, I guess my sort of real push, first push into luxury was in the late nineties. I got to help open a hotel called Bushman’s Klu in South Africa, which is a luxury safari lodge. The year, within a year of opening, we, um, we became a member of Relay and Chateau, which was a pretty prestigious, uh, pretty prestigious organization. And after I left a couple of years later, the hotel went on to win Best Hotel in the world, um, travel and Leisure. So, you know, that was a, it was really a, a great opportunity to see the best of the best in the world. I still to this day think it’s probably the most luxurious property I’ve ever stayed in, and still the best service, uh, that I’ve ever seen in any hotel. So it was great to be able to work in a place that had that level of, of, um, of luxury and, and, and guest experience. And so I think everything that I see compares to that time back then. So that’s really how I fell into the luxury hotel industry or came into luxury hotel industry.

Ryan Embree:
What an incredible story and journey, one of the questions I pose all the time on this to my podcast guest is, your favorite hotel that you’ve ever stayed in and to be able to work for the number one hotel or have at one point, probably an easy answer to that question. Then, Jon, let’s, let’s move over to you. Where is your kind of background, and hospitality and brought you to ILHA?

Jonathan Edelheit:
I think it was definitely an interesting path over to the ILHA, originally, out of law school, I actually went into the health insurance industry, and then I was the first one to implement corporate wellness programs, employee health and wellness before was employee health and wellness. I, eventually, um, got very passionate about options for healthcare and founded the Medical Tourism Association, which operates all over the world as the Global Trade Association. And, and interestingly that’s, there’s a big segment of luxury, uh, travelers in that who are traveling, who have a lot of money to travel for the best healthcare in the world, stay at luxury, uh, hotels, and also engage in luxury kind of wellness activities. And so, uh, from that space, we, we dealt with a lot of governments, tourism boards, luxury hotels around the world. And that was a little bit of my segue, um, not not sharing the full story of like how Barack and I met and, and the founding of the ILHA, but came in from kind of a, a different side of it and, um, you know, but very passionate about it. And you mentioned about, um, you, the comment about your favorite luxury hotel. When you say that, I feel like it always evokes in all of our minds, you know, we get this visual of a specific hotel or specific experiences that really make us love certain properties. And I feel like that’s something that the luxury side has, that the other side doesn’t have, where, you know, there’s that the, they’re so focused on these special moments in every single detail that it really, I feel like almost seers into your brains and emotions, like some of those special things. And you notice it when it’s not there at properties.

Ryan Embree:
Well, 100%. And that’s why you hear with, uh, especially the luxury sector. I mean, you have generations sometimes going to the same property or hotel that say, you know, my grandparents, I grew up here going to this luxury resort, you know, my parents then brought me, now I’m taking my kids here. You know, really in depth, uh, connections to our guests and travelers that you’re absolutely right, Jon, I think the luxury sector has, and, and it’s such a privilege to be in that space because you really get to emotionally connect with your traveler there. But I love hearing both your stories because it’s a, a, it’s a parallel of what we hear all the time in, in hospitality. One, uh, person that went to school for hospitality and culinary, and then the other one that went to school for something completely different and found themselves. And it’s the perfect mix and match, and that’s what makes our industry hospitality. So great. We’ve had the pleasure on this podcast. We’ve spoken to founders of management companies, you know, even a couple new brands, which seem to be popping up every single day, but I believe this is the first time that we’ve had founders of a hospitality association. So I wanna know what kind of goes through, you know, your mind, what’s the inspiration behind saying, Hey, let’s start this and, and give us kind of that, that background story about the ILHA. Jon, we’ll start with you.

Jonathan Edelheit:
Sure. I think what’s interesting about it is, is probably not many people that are like, let’s go start a, you know, let’s go start a nonprofit trade association, right? But I think you have to be passionate about wanting to bring change and wanting to bring innovation. You know, so you know, how ILHA was, was born, and I’ll tell my side of the story, and then Barak could share his is, you know, we saw this, this very specific fit within medical tourism with the medical tourism association within the luxury hotel segment. And that there needed to be deeper ties and connections to the space because everything needs to be integrative. Someone’s traveling for healthcare with their family, and they’re staying at a luxury property. Like it needs to be interconnected, it can’t be fragmented. And so we decided this was an area that we really needed to have deeper involvement from the luxury hotel side. And so I had reached out to Barak to speak at one of our conferences. And then I’ll let Barak maybe segue in from, from there as we, uh, you know, continue the line of the story.

Barak Hirschowitz:
Yeah. So I think, yeah, definitely I’ll bring you up to how Jon and I met because we started as luxury hotelers for those of that have known us since the beginning. I think what happened when I went to hotel school was we were taught that this is how luxury looks, this is how it smells, this is how it operates, this is how it feels. This is a, we all know that vision. If we’re, if you were in hotel school, uh, you know, even I think of like Alex Soar, president for Europe and Middle East, he went to Lassan, same thing, right? So when he, when we were talking about this, when he was in hotel school, it was, you know, it was marble, it was white table cloth, it was French chef, and pretty much that was luxury, right? So luxury was a very easy to understand, very easy to build or, or vision of what luxury is. And the guest expected, right? Then the internet came along and changed everything, right? So it changed our industry and continues to change it ever since. So let’s say for 300 years, luxury hospitality or luxury hotel industry looked one way, and then all of a sudden it went in a million different directions. And so, and with that, so did the growth of the industry. So at that time, those of us who had started to reach a point in our career where we were making bigger and bigger decisions, often those becoming quite expensive decisions. We couldn’t rely on the information that we learned from, let’s say, the traditional associations in our country that were, you know, the kind of associations that have been going back forever. Or the schools, they were what they had taught us was starting to change. Those rules didn’t work anymore. And so we started to but the internet was, was coming around forums. I dunno if you’re, I’m sure you remember forums were kind of a new thing back then. And so in the early two thousands, we created a forum called Luxury Hotels. And the idea was we invited 50, approximately about 50 hotels that I knew through the industry that were all kind of working internationally for brands, operators, asset management. Some of them were getting to asset management then. And the idea was just to kind of crowdsource or brainstorm some best practices to take on some of these new challenges. And so luxury tellers became this forum. It was around the time LinkedIn was starting as well. So, we moved on, we decided, oh, this looks like a cool tool. I’m not kidding you. And we started our group on LinkedIn, we had to tell people what it was, right? So they were like, well, what’s that? I’m like, it’s just a platform, but it’s kind of cool for this purpose, right? So we started the group and uh, we started just crowdsourcing, asking questions, and it was like a, for the forum just took off. And we were the first hospitality or travel group to ever had a hundred thousand people on LinkedIn. This was quite a long time ago. And at the time, we were a top 100, uh, group. Actually, LinkedIn asked us this. They used us at, they, they used our group as their example at their annual conference. And so of what groups can do, and so to, I mean, there’s so many things, but just to give you like some simple ones from the early days, right? Back then, Chinese travelers were first starting to travel and stay in luxury hotels around the world. And many of the hoteliers didn’t know how to cater for that, right? So we created one of our forum topics was we invited a couple of the hoteliers, uh, Peter Gaston was one of our co-founders, was the time he was he just retired, but he was one of the senior people for Ritz Carlton and Asia based in Hong Kong and a couple of others. And we said like, what can we do for guests that are traveling? And I remember one of the first things that came outta that was, you should put disposable slippers in the room, right? And here today, every time I open like a cupboard in any luxury hotel around the world, and I see the, so this disposable slippers, that was like one of the first things that really, like, it’s a great reminder of like the early days of the organization, but it was, it was, it was things like wifi, should we charge for wifi, you know, all these kind of discussions. We even had, I remember there was a Swiss hotelier that had like four or five ski lodges and was looking, was starting a loyalty program. And he asked for a name, and I think he got like 120 names or something in 24 hours. And he said he was able to pick like two or three names better than any agency could give him, you know? And that’s when we realized, wow, we’ve got some power. So at that point, a lot of the people who were quite actively involved in the forum suggest that we start an association, and we were told, I started to contact some of the existing associations and other people out there that, you know, kind of were involved with associations. And they’re like, why do you wanna do that? You know, the associations are like trying to be what you are today, right? Because back before then, associations, you, you couldn’t only get business information from school and then later on through your company, or if you wanted to know what other people were doing, you had to go to an association, an association event, get the association magazine. But now we had these new online forums where you could share information and it was a little bit more opaque. I mean, it was a little bit more transparent, sorry, and easy to get. And so, but at the same time, I think you need that connection and just structure, because we were all just volunteering our time. And that’s, as Jon said, he invited me to speak at an event. He had a very successful travel association. I the event that I attended, I think he had about four or 5,000 people at. And we were chatting afterwards, and that’s when he, you know, he suggested to us that we start the association, or at least to give us the structure of an association. As Jon mentioned, he went to law school, and so he really knew the ins and outs of that. So we were able to kind of combine the best of both worlds, which is this very large audience that we have, but then take in some of the structure of an association so that we could really employ some people to help this thing continue to grow.

Ryan Embree:
Well, it’s incredible foresight to see, I mean, LinkedIn in the early days, I remember that was just a big job board for a lot of people for you. So for you to see the foresight to say, Hey, let’s use this as open forum. Let’s stop. You know, Jon, you mentioned fragmentation of the industry sometimes and silos that what that we sometimes find ourselves in, but to exchange those ideas because the luxury traveler today is truly international, and the luxury segment. So to make sure that you’re sharing those ideas, seeing those trends, and I’m sure a lot of those get brought up at the, what we’re previewing today, the inspire USA, event that we’re gonna turn our attention to December 10th and 11th, 2025 marks the 16th edition. It’s gonna mark the first edition that I will be going there. Almost positive you guys have been at every single one. Maybe talk us through the evolution of what year one looks like in comparison to year 16 and what the, and what we have in store for in Vegas this year.

Jonathan Edelheit:
Cool. Well, Jon, you were pretty heavily involved in year one, so let’s give you, uh, let’s give you the, the start on that one.

Jonathan Edelheit:
Yeah, no, I mean, I think year one was interesting. I forget what city that took place in Barak, but,

Barak Hirschowitz:
DC.

Jonathan Edelheit:
Okay. Because I remember Orlando, we had the elephant. We had a 10,000 pound elephant to come in the room. Her name was Roxy. And that was a theme around the elephant in the room. The industry was this topic. But, you know, when we started, it was, you know, ILHA, you know, was built out at the same time as we were holding our medical tourism conference, because part of the purpose of that was to lend the expertise of, you know, running a trade show is not easy. You know, the executive producers, the management, the space, there’s a huge investment in, in organizing it to launch it. And so, you know, I, you know, it, it’s always exciting and stressful when you’re in events because it’s not just, you know, from the first events, I feel like is the hardest. But at the same time, as you grow, I almost feel like there’s more pressure in year 16 than than previous years, because you always have to be better, right? You’ve gotta bring in, you know, better speakers. You have to have growth. You have to really dive into innovation and what people want. So the first year, it was a smaller event, but great in the fact that it’s new, right? So people come, everyone’s passionate, and every year we’ve really, um, striven to, you know, grow and make the, the, the attendees more diverse, bring in always better speakers, you know, and, and stay on top of what’s going on in luxury hotels and travel all around the world so people can get everything. ’cause like you said, is back in the day, I feel like luxury travel was almost like very siloed in the type of people that would travel. And now it’s a very diverse industry. I’m sure there’s people who still potentially don’t under, uh, understand it because you also have segments of luxury that like, where wealthy people can’t afford those luxury hotels because there’s all these different segments going. What I’m excited about is just, you know, some of the niche in our events going forward, focusing on all these areas of personal experience and the breadth of where we’re seeing luxury, luxury go. But I’ll, I’ll turn it over to Barak.

Barak Hirschowitz:
So, and although our event was quite small, as Jon said, you know, at the first event, it was actually a large event. So what happened was, and this is the benefit of partnerships, right? So by meeting Jon, they already had four and a half thousand people coming to their travel conference. So he gave us space and the expertise and the lift to be able to build a co-located show within his show. So the amazing thing was that even though our show was a segment of his, you know, a smaller part of his show, and we did that for about three years before we were able to kind of really have the size to go out on our own. But those first couple of years were great because people who attended the event for them, I mean, they were able to attend basically two events in one. We had some really high powered, high level speakers because of the size of Jon’s event, and that really gave us a lot of cloud in the early days. So, you know, I can’t thank Jon enough for taking us and helping us have kind of those training wheels in the early days and make us, we were able to bat a lot bigger than we you know, than we were at that time. So that was great. I think it really helped us.

Jonathan Edelheit:
Barak, I just had the flashback to, I think it was after the three years, Barak said, Hey, listen, we, we need to be in a luxury hotel now, because we were doing it in convention centers, right? A luxury hotel conference can’t really be in a convention center.

Barak Hirschowitz:
Although I say I say that. And now it’s interesting because, and, and I know we’re the topic of this, this, this, uh, podcast is on the INSPIRE USA, but I’d like to mention that we inspire, Europe is returning for its third year, and it’s actually next month, uh, in November. So it’s, it’ll be the 12th and the 13th in Prague. And Prague is, we’re very excited because Prague doesn’t normally get larger conference. They’re obviously, it’s a very, very busy tourism city, probably one of the best, and busiest tourist cities in Europe. But they don’t get a lot of meetings there because large meetings there because of the hotels that are quite small. And so for us, even just to find a hotel that could hold more than a couple of hundred people was difficult. So we partnered with the grand with the Park Hyatt there. However, the event is actually taking place in the Czech National Bank headquarters Congress Center. So it’s their former, their former, stock exchange commodities exchange, which is the most beautiful you can imagine. The bank uses it, and Moody’s just had their European conference there. So it’s this very beautiful royal building, and it’s right across the street from the hotel. So we’re very excited to be having that there. But yeah, and that’s only because we’ve, there just wasn’t the capacity for us there, um, in luxury hotel, but fortunately in, uh, in the us there is, and so we’re, we’re back in Vegas again this year, um, at Resorts World, and we’re really looking forward to, to that.

Ryan Embree:
Well, that’s what I was gonna say, and Jon, to your comment, you know, you say bigger and better. So I’m expecting two elephants this year, uh, in Vegas, but you know, I don’t know.

Jonathan Edelheit:
I dunno if they’ll let us in the convention center. Where we either Orlando, our executive producer thought we were crazy, and it took about a couple calls over a month, and she was like, oh, you’re serious. And then two weeks later, she called back and said, you won’t believe it, Jonathan, but there’s an elephant sanctuary outside of Orlando, and we can get the elephant in the convention center. Said, we’ve never had a request like this before, but then they approved it.

Ryan Embree:
Hey, there you go. You know, and anything can, especially in Vegas too, anything can happen. So let, let’s try to make it happen. But I do wanna talk to you about that location is everything in hospitality when you’re talking hotels, but it, the same can be true with a successful hospitality event returning to Vegas this year. Barak, why, and maybe you can speak specifically to Resorts World, why was just this makes the perfect venue, for Inspire USA this year?

Barak Hirschowitz:
Yeah, so we had a wonderful event last year in Las Vegas. We’ve been we were a few years ago, we were at the Four Seasons Las Vegas, which we loved. It was a great event. They just, we just outgrew the space that they have there. Vegas is a, you know, Vegas is one of those places where you’re when you grow, if you get too big, I mean, if you get too big for the regular hotels, you still have to get a little bit larger to get into the very big spaces. So it’s kind of awkward and it can be tricky to find the right space. And last year we did with the Fountain Blue, we were very excited to be one of their first events from their opening, and we really enjoyed it. We try to change it up every year just to have something a little bit different. But Las Vegas was so successful for us that people just felt we should, we’ve never kept it in the same place two years in a row. We’ve always moved it kind of East Coast, west Coast, and, um, I chatted and so we, you know, we, we decided to, let’s, hey, let’s, we loved it. It was just so great being in Vegas, and it was easy for people to get to and there. And so we decided to look around, see what was there, and the weeks that we normally would do it at the Fountain Blue was, had already been booked from a year earlier. So we knew we were gonna have to be in a different location. Went over to Resorts World, checked it out, and while we were there, carnival uh, cruise Line was actually having a conference there. Arnold Donald, who used to the previous CEO had actually, um, been a speaker at one of our conferences previously. Uh, uh, and so I, I met a couple of his people there, uh, and they said, oh, come in and have a look around. And the space was perfect for us. So we, you know, we approached them and we’re very excited. It’s kind of a, it’s kind of a fun space because the area that we’re in is, it’s there, you know, the, the, there’s the normal convention side, and then there’s the part we, where we are is, is kind of like where the, a lot of the restaurants and things are. So it’s got a very engaged feel. Often I think you feel in meeting spaces, like you could be anywhere in the world. You know, meeting spaces tend to look a lot similar. What I’m very proud of this year is that both of our events are one in Prague and the one in Las Vegas, they don’t feel like they’re in convention space. So the space, for instance, that we’re in is multi, it’s kind of multi-floor, very unique space, but it’s also got views full floor to ceiling, you know, instead of looking at banqueting walls, we’re looking at floor to ceiling views of the strip. So, very excited about that.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, you can’t get much better than that. And that’s the beauty of having those connections made. You know, you might have a connection having a conference or convention in the Hotel next door, and you can go ahead and poke your head in and maybe see if it’s right for, for your association. So, uh, very cool. Jon, any thoughts on, on returning back to Vegas this year?

Jonathan Edelheit:
I’m excited to return back to Vegas, and I’m also excited, while the Fountain View Blue is a beautiful property just opened, I think a lot of our attendees also, they wanna experience other luxury hotels. They want to see everything that they have from the rooms to like, you know, just all the different aspects of it. So I think it’s just cool to be able to move around and showcase that. And I think the thing that excites me the most is we’ve really created this special place where the VIPs in the industry, you know, the owners, the asset managers, the hospitality management companies, the GMs can come together in like kind of an intimate group and share innovation and connect. And I think we’ve fostered a really great environment where it’s not in any way clique-ish. It’s like you can, you know, you, you could be standing there and meet the CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines or, or Virgin Hotels or the owners, uh, you know, someone who owns a hundred hotels and, and just like a normal person, and you can have a conversation. And that’s one thing I really love about our show is, you know, we’ll participate in shows in the hotel space, but I feel like there, there’s these big exhibitions where just you’re just meeting exhibitors. It’s mid-level people and you know, you’re just, you’re learning of our products, but there aren’t decision makers. And I just love the fact that we bring those decision makers that kind of share what they’re doing that’s special and that we can kind of impact the industry, but bring it together in more of an intimate setting. And we’ve also always tried to really control, um, that while we have sponsors, you know, that it’s, that it’s a limited number of sponsors, that it’s the right sponsors and that, you know, there’s that those right connections take place.

Barak Hirschowitz:
Sorry, John, I was gonna jump in. Um, I’d also just feel like this is a good time to, just a big shout out to, um, Encore and Cvent our event partners. They, um, well, obviously Cvent has, they, they do all of our, you know, our ticketing and registration, and they’ve made that really easy. But Encore, they have been supporting us over the years with, with just amazing innovative, uh, event tech. But I try to push the boundaries a little bit every year and try to think outside the box on how we can do this. Last year we wanted all stages in one. I think for us, when we can speak to this, I think, you know, it really lends to networking when you can keep people in the same area. And I think one of the problems with events and event spaces is often you’re spread out all over different places. So we pushed them last year, um, or not pushed them, we challenged them last year to come up with ways to keep everybody in the same space. And so they created these stages within spaces, um, so that you never had to leave the main space to go to any meeting space. And it meant doing something that was very unusual and it was very successful. And so when we met this year, they were like, what are you gonna do for us this year? What are you gonna, what’s, what’s the challenge for this year? So I said, well, this year we are going to, I said, you know, to be honest, conferences are great and they’re really important. Um, and it does, we, we do try to keep ours limited. We’re not trying to be an expo, but at the same time, most people can’t go to them, right? And we have to be respectful that our audience and our community, most of them are not gonna be able to attend this event, right? If you have 500,000 people that are in one way or another, connecting with you and your content and what you guys do in participating, there’s no way. So what we do is we give away everything, all of our content’s given away. It’s all recorded, and it’s all shared for free to everyone that’s out there that wants it. We’ve always done that. And so this year, to make that easier, we, our challenge to encore and, um, Helen and Brad from Encore, who have really, and their teams, was to create stages that were actually recording studios. So this year, all the stages are actually recording studios, and they’ve, they’ve built them to look like TV studios. So when our, and also I said, we don’t want anyone to feel like when you have multiple stages, there’s always like, oh, we wanna be on that stage or the stage. I said, each stage has to stand on its own at its own level so that when somebody speaks, whether they’re in, you know, the bigger room, I guess you could say, or the smaller. So we took these unique spaces that they created and we really built, like for instance, to me, the one that’s standout is a full on, it’s a full recording studio in an all in kind of a converted, um, they use it as meeting space, but it’s a converted, uh, retail luxury retail space that’s right next to us. And, but it’s all glass. So people from the whole, so while there were gonna be, you know, it has seating as a stage would normally have, but it’s built like a TV studio and it’s all glass, and you can see it from across the Mall of Resorts world. So as people are at restaurants and shops, they’re gonna kind of that times square effect where you, you’re in Times Square and you watch them shooting TV shows, it’s gonna look like that. So we’re really excited about that part of it this year.

Ryan Embree:
Well, it’s so cool. Another example of you guys breaking down barriers and silos, again, to give that content out and share that with everyone. Especially, I mean, right now we are at a really unique time in our industry where, I’ve talked about it on the podcast before about, I think hoteliers are, yeah, I’ll create a new term here, like FOMOT, which is like the fear of missing out on technology. And they are really, really nervous about, am I implementing technology enough or are my competitors ahead of me? So it these intimate settings that you’re talking about, you know, like Inspire, USA, these are great forums and opportunities for hoteliers to talk about that challenges that they’re having, the wins that they’re having, you know, and, and actually get a better sense and calibrate where they sit in trends, issues, and challenges that they’re having in the hospitality space. And that’s what we’ve craved and missed so much when events kind of disappeared, uh, on us, uh, a couple years ago. So, really excited to do that. And, you know, looking at the speaker list for the event, it’s really a who’s who in luxury hospitality. We could almost have an entire episode based on this agenda that I’ve seen so far. But Barak, Jon, what, what sessions are you most excited about, uh, seeing in this year’s educational programming? Barak will start with you.

Barak Hirschowitz:
Well, I’m not gonna fall into that trap of answering that question, <laugh>. But I wanna, I think it’s important to kind of set for those people we’re, you know, I think for people who haven’t been to inspire, let me tell you what I think sets us apart, that’s different, right? So there are a lot of events out there, and we partner with many of them, right? And they’re all, you know, most of them are longer established than us, I would say some of them are newer. But what sets us apart is firstly that we have this advantage of, because we have this huge, our online audience, we don’t need our events to be. So for us, we always host the event at the end. Our event is always this inspire in Las Vegas, this event is always held at the end of the year. It’s held right at, you know, anything about hotel lifecycle. It’s held right after Thanksgiving, but right before the Christmas holiday start, right after, um, uh, ILTM. And so what happens is, there’s this weird thing, like the year is done, it’s finished. Everything you’ve done for the year is behind you. If you work for any company of any kind, you’re done. I mean, obviously if you’re in operations, you’re about to get hit with Christmas, but generally it’s that quiet period where you can say, the books are closed, everything’s done, and we’re about to go on vacation. So we catch everyone at like, I feel like I attend a lot of conferences, and I feel like they’re always, you’re rushing from one to the next. We have got this energy usually like, I mean, I was thinking like over the years, like the Eden Rock and the Biltmore and all the Christmas decorations already up, and there’s just this, you know, and the Hanukah just all the, like seasonal holiday decorations are up and the vibe is in. And so what happens is people come there and they’re, they’re in this mood already. Like, okay, I can breathe and I can actually focus and have a good time. The second thing that sets us apart is that we started this organization. Everyone told us in the beginning that you need to like, be specific. Like what’s your focus? I think our, our hardest thing that we had in the beginning was trying to get people to understand that we’re not, we’re a little bit of everything and not one thing. And there’s a reason for that. So this is the one event that you can come in and you can meet and sit in front of people who are very, very high level asset managers. People who are involved, who typically only go to real estate conferences or investment conferences. They don’t go to operational conferences, they don’t go to tech conferences, they don’t go to food and beverage conferences, they don’t go to wellness conferences. They don’t go to sales and marketing events like ILTM, right? Then you have the same people, heads of brands who only go to those kind of, you know, W-T-M-I-I-T-B type events. Then you have people who are very senior, but only go to technology events, right? And then, and so we can go down the line, but the thing is that our industry’s really split into, I would say design, investment and operations. I mean, sorry, the design investment and, and, and sort of asset side, real estate side of the business. Then there’s the ops side of the business, and then there’s the marketing side of the business. If I had to generalize, right? So I think most events fall into one of those three categories. And depending on what their level is, even if they’re very senior, they tend to go to those events in their category. So it was very hard to convince them to come to something that maybe only had a little bit in their category, but when they came, they got to meet people that they don’t normally meet, but at very high levels. But they also got to learn stuff. You know, there was a time you could, you could be in the real estate side of the business and not need to know what’s going on in marketing or investment. I mean in ops and vice versa. You could be in marketing and not really have to know what goes on in real estate, but the industry has been changing so fast and continues to just accelerate that. If you don’t have your finger on the pulse of everything, then you are not gonna be able to make those big financial decisions in your category. And so this event is the only event that I know of that brings together very high level people across each category. So you may come here and go, oh, there’s not enough for me. There’s only a few things on investment here, and I only go to investment conferences. You better come to this one because it’s for those that do come here and they come every year, they say, okay, now I understand it’s like a finishing school. It’s just you’re gonna start that new year in a few weeks with kind of a better, more well-rounded vision of what’s going on in the industry than just what they tell you at the, you know, in your siloed part of the industry. So that’s really cool. The other thing is, it’s really, it’s not, we, we, we kind of limit how big it gets because it’s the level of people we have don’t tend to come to expo type events and they love to network with each other and just hang out with each other. And so we keep it very small by that standard of events, um, just so that they can, they can network and they love it, and they come back and they see each other once a year and stuff like that. So that’s really cool and that’s different. And then the last thing I’d say is, Jon kind of touched on it, our partners are supporters. Our entire organization is, is supported by sponsors and partners. But we’ve realized that it’s not just money that they give us. They actually give us like the expertise to run. We’re expected today as hoteliers to be, to know everything about everything and every, that changes every month what the guests want, right? It goes from, this is innovative to like, you better have it, right? So they, they don’t, they don’t compare you to the other hotels anymore. They compare you to their homes. So if they use Netflix at home and they love to watch the show and they come stay in your Italian, they can’t easily put Netflix on the tv. Now think about this. That was something that was not important maybe two years ago. Okay? And so what we talked to them about is you need to know what is, um, I’m actually giving a talk about this next week, but in Texas, but you need to, you need to, well, we help them identify, I think we’ve learned over the years is what’s innovative versus what is now sort of expected to what’s mandatory. And that changes. So like, I mean, think of coffee, you know, like you, you, you could give, no one cared what coffee you gave in a luxury hotel room, let’s say six years ago, right? Maybe earlier then some hotels started giving great coffee. Today, if you don’t have an espresso machine in your room, they’re not happy, right? So think about that, like how quickly that goes from, and that’s because they have them at home. So they’re like, well, if we have this at home, why can’t you have this in a luxury hotel room? So beyond the fact that hotel rooms are showrooms, they’re also being compared to people’s homes. So that’s where our organization really helps. But I think also just the partners, the support sponsors, we stopped looking at the them as vendors and we started looking at them as experts at what they do, right? Who better to tell you what’s going on in the coffee industry and what the consumer demands than the top coffee companies in the world? We’ve also, you’ll probably noticed something a little bit different for us, we don’t really have an expo. We could have very easily with a ma you know, with an audience decides we have, we could easily have an expo, but we chose not to do it because it’s one of the reasons when you grow a large audience, you have, you really have to be, you need to respect their time. And we can’t over advertise to them. That’s how we grew. And so what we did instead was we found partners that we thought were the best, the business and our event is like a celebration for them. So they all come and you won’t see competing partners there, you see our partners. So we try to have one partner in each space. I gave some examples earlier. So you’re, you know, I think that some of the big expos are great ’cause they can show you everything that’s out there. But when you come to our event, you’re just gonna see the preferred partners of our organization. And, um, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting I think, ’cause we, we’ve spent time curating them and it’s, they’re great companies. Um, and at the same time, like I said, it’s, it’s a very, um, it’s just a, it’s, it’s a, a very, if you’re in the luxury hotel industry, it’s a great event to come and sit in front of some people that are very, very high level that you wouldn’t normally get to meet. They’re not in and out is what I mean. They’re not just popping in doing this session and going, they’re hanging out. So it’s, we create the space for that.

Jonathan Edelheit:
Ryan, you know, you’d mentioned something before about tech and I, I think it’s important because one thing I love about the luxury segment is that they invest, right? And they’re looking at the most advanced tech and the most, you know, the best experience they can give. And I notice it ’cause I always stay at different luxury hotels. I don’t stick to one brand ’cause I wanna see what’s going on no matter where I travel, Latin America, Asia, you know, uh, middle East, and you know, and then you, you see stuff you love and then you go to another hotel and you’re like, oh, this is so frustrating, right? Like, uh, uh, especially stuff you can do with your phone. But also, I was recently at a show, um, I won’t say what show it is, but like, big, big, big hotel, hospitality tech show and you know, and there was all different tech there, you know, like from the robot making coffee and espressos and cappuccino to other things. And, and I was talking and I was like, you know, going through and saying like, oh, this would be amazing. Like if this was at a hotel, like it wouldn’t be just cool for me. But like my kids, anyone with family members would love a robot making their cappuccinos. And I’ll sometimes talk to like, go around to look what’s innovative, what would be good for the luxury space, and talk to them. And it’s funny ’cause it’s like, how’s your adoption going? And they’ll be like, well it’s, it’s, it’s not, you know, we’re having a hard time penetrating the hotel space. And it’s like, who are you selling to? And they’ll be like, well, we’re selling to, you know, the, they’ll throw out the normal brands like mid-market, right? Or, or lower market. And I’ll be like, well, have you talked to the luxury side? And and they’ll be like, no. And I’ll be like, but you realize like they’re the ones investing in all this new cool stuff where mid-market and the lower market. Like, they’re not making investments in that stuff. And I think it’s important if you’re doing something innovative in technology or just innovative in the hotel space, the luxury hotels are very successful. Post pandemic revenue’s gone up, everybody’s spending money. There’s different segments. These are the groups that are willing to push the edge on innovation. And then the mid-market and the others are looking at one luxury. Every fo everyone follows luxury to see what they’re doing. For me, an exciting thing for the upcoming conferences, uh, one of the sessions on longevity, everybody says they do wellness. And I think, um, you know, like every hotel and then you don’t know what, what true is wellness or wellbeing, uh, ’cause right? ’cause every hotel is doing something very specific and sometimes it’s not defined. And I think we have some really great brands and some innovators coming to speak. And I think there’s gonna be this big change in the industry about, it’s gonna go from maybe general wellbeing to like very, there’s gonna be a niche of very, very serious where it’s like people looking at, you know, how do I live longer? How do I, um, my, my maybe my quality of life. So maybe I’m 70, but I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m 50 a 50-year-old. Like, you know, you know, in the 70-year-old body reverse aging, reverse disease, we’re starting to see a lot of luxury properties around the world roll out stem cells to reverse disease and reverse aging. I went through stem cells about a year ago, um, in my biological age reduced by seven years. And, uh, and we’re seeing this huge investment in properties now, bringing clinics in and looking at, you know, mixing, um, not, I wouldn’t say healthcare, right? You’re not coming and, you know, and, and, and, uh, and getting something where all my knee hurts or I’m sick. It’s more of I wanna know what’s going on in my entire body and I want all the most cutting edge like, um, supplements or tests or things where I can learn like how to reverse aging, reverse diseases, live a better life for me or my family members. And, you know, being at the front of it, and in a lot of these conversations as these projects are being developed are in the conceptual phase. I’m super excited because I think we’re gonna see this wave of a lot of longevity, serious longevity pop up in luxury hotels around the world. It’s already starting, but the wave’s coming and then projects get launched around true serious intense wellbeing. And it could be a mix of western medicine and eastern medicine. And I think that also what we’re seeing is people realize they’re not getting this from their doctor. They’re not getting it from, if they have insurance, insurance isn’t really covering anything. And so what they’re looking at is, where can I go take a vacation, but at the same time get this like complete check-in. And then there’s another segment of it that I think that depending on the segment of the guest and the, the, the wealth, right? There’s this signal, um, a virtue signaling was like, you know what? I just spent 25 grand for this, right? I just went to this luxury hotel and I spent 50 grand for this experience and now I’m gonna live longer and my family’s gonna live longer and we’re gonna live healthier. But I’m excited to it because I wanna go stay at these properties. I want to go through these experiences.

Barak Hirschowitz:
I was just g