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 everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining, watching us. If you’re watching us from our YouTube channel or joining us from any of the streaming platforms that you’re listening to, if you did find us, you know, we’ve got a great guest today, someone that really doesn’t need any introduction. Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Chip, thank you so much for, being on the Suite Spot with me today.

Chip Rogers:
Hey, Ryan, it’s so good to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Ryan Embree:
Really technically not your first time on the Suite Spot. Last time we were together, Chip, we were in Las Vegas on a busy trade show floor after a very successful hospitality show. About six months removed from that now, what type of feedback are you getting about that event and maybe give us some insights into what you’re looking for from the next one in October in San Antonio?

Chip Rogers:
Well, first feedback was the opening party, seems to have taken on historic status. As folks who have been, at that property know that the nightclub TAO and we packed it out, there was a line that lasted, some estimates over two hours long to get into it. And so you, you almost created that, fear of missing out. But people absolutely loved the opening party. And from there it went to, an incredible lineup of keynote speakers. And what we tried to do is make sure that we are entertaining you, informing you yes, hitting on those things that are unique to the hotel industry, but also remembering that everyone’s a person, they have outside interests too, and, and could we get speakers that are funny, inspiring, educational. And I, and I think we hit all that. In fact, the most popular speaker that we had, Admiral McCraven, it was interesting. I was at an event literally last night and it was a political event and people were talking about, oh, you know, these two candidates that this seemed to be the two candidates running for president. And someone said, if there’s a third party candidate, why don’t we just get Admiral McCraven? And I’m like, that would be great, because now I know the guy and if he became president, that would be kind of cool. But it’s that type of level of speaker that we had that I think really set us apart from many of the other shows that you go to. And so from the trade show floor, that was just amazing. We sold it out in year one to the speakers. And again, starting with that incredible opening party, it, it was quite an event. And, you know, Las Vegas always has something special for everybody. We’re gonna try to redo that again in San Antonio. San Antonio, a very unique place. One of the most visited cities in the United States for people that are going on a leisure trip. And so we wanna make sure we’re capturing that, that you’re coming to the event, you’re going to have fun, you’re going to be entertained, you’re gonna learn something, you’re going to network with the entire industry. Again, in Vegas, we had, about 3,700 attendees. We wanna get to 5,000 for this event in San Antonio. So we’re super excited. It’s a little bit later in the year. The weather will be good. It’ll be in October. And make sure that everybody listening and watching right now shows up in San Antonio.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, well, guilty as charges being one of those individuals in, in that long line. And, and certainly can attest to that, that opening party Chip and like you said, you know, the entire event from inspiring to informative, and so you really hit all the check marks on there. Really excited to see you in, in San Antonio, and I love the parallels that you brought there between Las Vegas and San Antonio. You know, Las Vegas obviously a very unique place for, for hotel and travel. San Antonio, very different with the leisure market over there as well. So I think they’re wonderful venues to kind of start this hopefully first, and second of many of these, these incredible events here. But one of the topics that really kind of rose to the top in that first hospitality show was staffing, right? And I think it’s still a headwind and a challenge that our industry is going through, and continue to kind of see, you know, what advice would you give hotel listeners that are really struggling with staffing and retention right now? Are there resources that AHLA can provide as far as getting more people into our industry? Because it’s such incredible industry as we, as we both know.

Chip Rogers:
Yeah. One of the things that we work on literally every day is to try to change the narrative of what it means to work in the hotel industry. You know, during the pandemic because of economic conditions, you know, when you get down to 15% occupancy, you just can’t hold onto employees or you might actually lose your business. And that set us back. A lot of people left the industry with a bad taste in their mouth, and that was unfortunate. But they’re coming back. In fact, I was just at a meeting two days ago with a lot of the leaders in our industry, and they’re telling me that the problem of finding people is much less impactful than it was just six months ago. And definitely more than it, than it was a year or two ago. And so it’s starting to come back. I think some of the folks that left our industry and, you know, went and got high paying jobs at working for Amazon or Walmart stocking shelves, they began to realize that, hey, I’m missing that human element. I’m missing that work environment where every day is slightly different or even dramatically different than the day before. I’m missing the daily experience that I get in the hotel industry. And that’s really what we have the opportunity to sell. I was just five minutes ago talking to somebody in my office about the specific industry uniqueness that we have. Think about working in a hotel. First of all, you could work in a great property. Your skills are transferable. So if you wanna work in that hotel for your entire career, you can, or you can go work in a hotel halfway across the world. And so you can travel, but the beauty of the job is that you’re meeting people when they are experiencing usually great things in their lives. Whether it’s a wedding event, a family reunion, an important business trip, a baseball team that’s traveling. I mean, these are wonderful things that you get to be a part of in making those memories. You can’t get that in every industry. And so we, we remind people that’s a benefit, that’s a bonus of this work life experience that you’ll have in the hotel industry. Plus the pay is pretty good. I mean, the, the pay rates now are higher than they’ve ever been. But if you’re, if you are an employer, and you mentioned this a moment ago, you gotta do a few things. First of all, you’ve got to make sure that when someone’s applying, that if you’re ready to offer them the job, you do it on the spot. You can’t wait three days, five days, seven days because they’re gone. They’re gonna go work somewhere else. Second, people have experienced now instant interactions, whether that be personal interactions or financial interactions. And so they wanna get paid instantly, they wanna make sure that if I’m working today, pay me at the end of the day, don’t make me wait two weeks, three and a half weeks, whatever. And so things like instant pay, things like benefits of providing some sort of transportation, a lot of people, housing is so expensive now they need transportation. Things like meals on the job offering benefits to employees for staying at the hotel or if you’re in a brand staying at other hotels within that brand. All of these things matter. But one of the key things that we’ve seen working with our partners at actable is that the three week number is really important. You’ve gotta stay with the employees, make sure they’re properly trained, make sure you’re standing beside them. But at three weeks is when the average housekeeper leaves their job more than at any other point during their employment history. And so making sure that you’re providing them the support services is absolutely critical.

Ryan Embree:
Well, that’s a fantastic stat and some amazing tips that you’re giving there Chip. And I think you’re right. I mean, we, we’ve got so many stories to tell in our industry and being able to have channels to share them, right? Places like social media, which we’re gonna talk about, you know, online reputation sites as well. Just go on and, and, and point applicants to maybe some reviews or guest stays or even testimonials at your hotel to say, Hey, this is what it’s like working at my hotel or our hotel and being a part of our brand. Those are kind of the strongest things of saying, I wanna be part of this in my everyday life. But I think some of those, those hiring tips are, are spot on. And you know, I’m happy to hear too that, you know, it feels like we might be getting that momentum back because I know that AHLA and, and a lot of us have really put a lot of time and effort to try to showcase this incredible industry that we work in. But one of the things that’s also helping is the technology in our industry, right? And that was also a really hot topic, obviously not just that the Hospitality Show, but you think about things like AI, ChatGPT, these, these seem to be always trending on social media sites. But I, I think we have a complicated relationship with technology Chip because as you pointed out, we are a people serving people industry. So you can get all that technology in another place, but at the end of the day, that human connection is really why people fall in love with our industry. So what is your kind of prediction on technology and, and how it kind of implements into our industry over the next, you know, few years or even decade?

Chip Rogers:
Well, If you wanna retain people, don’t make them do things they hate doing. And oftentimes things they hate doing are the very repetitive actions that perhaps technology can, can be an answer for. But I remember way back in the day when, when Burger King came out with that commercial, have it your way. In fact, I think they, that’s still one of their, their, their slogans. We have to think about that with guests. A lot of times it, it’s real easy and, and and somewhat simplistic to just say, okay, this segment of society wants this out of a hotel, this segment of society wants this out. That’s just not true. I mean, there are folks that are seniors who know just as good as anybody else how to use apps, how to do mobile check-in, and maybe they don’t want to talk to anybody at the front desk. They just wanna go straight to their room. There are young people who would love to just go hang out at the front desk and talk to people and really get an understanding of the culture of the hotel and everything that’s going around. So making technology available to whomever wants to use it, I think is absolutely critical. So you have to make it simple. You have to make it reliable, you have to make it understandable. And when you do that, people will use it when they want to use it. I mean, I take myself, for example, I’m in a hotel, gosh, three days a week. I’m probably one of the biggest hotel users you you’ll ever find. There are some days, you know, I want to go to the front desk and talk to somebody, talk to the the housekeeper, talk to the people in the hotel. And there are some days where I’m like, oh, I gotta get to my room ’cause I gotta do a webinar. I gotta do an interview, I gotta do something, and I just wanna go straight to the room. And so we have to be able to make that available to people. The second part of that, I think, and this is it, it’s going back to meeting the employees where they are. If you wanna retain employees, you have to meet them where they are in their life. If you say you’ve gotta be here five days a week from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM you’re going to lose a lot of potential employees. But the days of saying we have to clean rooms in that manner are gone. You just have to clean a room before the next guest checks in. And if you’re interacting with a guest through some sort of technology, I mean, simple things like texting, you don’t even have to have an app. But simple things like texting seem to be working quite well. If you know when the guest’s arriving, you know when the guest is leaving, then you can better plan your workforce. You can offer people in your workforce what they really want. I mean, let’s say somebody comes to your hotel and says, look, I, I wanna work for you, but I can work on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays and I can work from noon to 6:00 PM You’ve gotta be prepared to accept somebody like that. And how do you do that? You gotta be interacting with guests so you know what your workload is and where that person fits in. So technology is enormously important for managing the workforce and making their lives easier.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, I mean, what a complete answer, starting with the guests and the personalization. When I think about technology, especially over the past couple years, a lot of that adoption happened that you were talking about maybe that senior citizen learning, having to, to almost being forced to learn how to use that app, because that was one of the only ways we were able to do it during the pandemic. But you’re right, you know, there’s some of those times where that younger generations, you know, that’s why we’re seeing more and more of these hotels start to have more open lobbies so that people can congregate and have a good time for everything you’re saying is true from that guest side, but also the technology side when it comes to employees and the workforce making us more efficient as an industry, making your workforce more efficient and being more flexible, maybe that schedule that you just laid out, that was an automatic no a decade ago. We’ve gotta be more flexible now in our industry and figure out ways. And the good news is, is technology’s gonna help us potentially get there. So again, I love how our industry is growing, but it’s, it’s certainly not without its issues right now. Major issues. This is where AHLA comes in, huge advocate for hoteliers everywhere, you know, what are some of the, the most critical issues facing our industry today, Chip? And, how can we bring more awareness to them?

Chip Rogers:
Well, workforce as we’ve been discussing, continues to be a challenge, but it’s getting better. Reminding people that we’re the, probably the one industry in the US economy that whether you have a GED or PhD, anywhere in between there, there are jobs for you. There are careers for you, not just a job, but actual career. So we always wanna focus on that because that’s a lifeblood of hospitality, is having that incredible workforce that engages with the customer. But when you think about what challenges the industry is facing in general, particularly on the public policy side, activism is hurting us. And what I mean by that is you’re getting people elected to offices, whether it’s your local school board, your city council, congress, that they come to their job not as someone who wants to be a public servant, but someone who has an axe to grind or they have a single issue they care about to the exclusion of every other issue. We’ve really gotta figure out a way to change that in the United States. I know that’s a much larger problem than we’re ever gonna solve by me talking to your audience, but we have to begin electing people who are truly public servants, because what we’re seeing is the policies that are being made by folks that are activists are made usually ill-informed. And particularly in places like California that has become so anti-business, so difficult to run a business. It’s not just chomping at your margins, it’s putting your business in a position where you might not be able to even succeed at all. Like you might go out of business. And when that happens, all it does is prevents future entrepreneurs from saying, Hey, I want to invest, I want to start a business. And that’s what we, that’s the American way. Like we need people willing to take risks. And so when you see policies being made, I’m gonna give you a perfect example. Right now in one of the California towns, they’re working on a ballot measure. When I say they, organized laborers working on a ballot measure, they would mandate a $30 hour minimum wage starting would mandate a maximum of 3,500 square feet clean in a single day for a housekeeper. When, by the way, the average in the industry is about 5,000. So it reduces it all the way down to 3,500. It would mandate that if they go over 3,500, you have to pay double time. So that $30 an hour will go to $60 an hour. It would mandate that every room is cleaned every day, regardless of whether the guest wants it or not, which is ridiculous. We should always be serving our guest for what they want. That’s the part of hospitality. And it would prohibit contract labor. And so you set up all those conditions, all those anti-business conditions, and what you’re doing is creating an atmosphere where hotels financially cannot survive. They can’t charge enough because the rate you would need to charge is so high that the guest or potential guest is just gonna go outside that city and stay somewhere else. And you’re gonna put those hotels out of business, then you’re not gonna have jobs for those people in those local communities because the hotels won’t be there anymore. They’ll be on the outskirts of town or in the town down the street. And so bad public policy made by people who just don’t understand how business works. It’s really hurting our industry. We’re fighting it anywhere and, and everywhere. I mean, we talked about shifts just a moment ago. Today’s worker wants flexibility. The gig economy there is, there’s close to 60 million people in the gig economy that’s gonna grow globally to a hundred million in the next five years. Because people want to work that way, that they’re telling us that’s how they want to operate. They want the flexibility, they want the freedom. Public policy is actually pushing the other way. You have a number of cities and states where they’re saying you can’t change someone’s schedule within two weeks of establishing it. And if you do, you have to pay them double time. Well, that’s, that’s untenable what happens if you have a snow storm in Chicago and the airport shuts down and all those guests have to go stay at a hotel there at the airport and they can’t get into the city. And you have to call in employees so that they can take care of the guests. But the law says you can’t change their schedule. I mean, it’s just not living in the world that we live in today. And so, I know this is a long rant and I apologize, but we elect people who don’t understand how business works. They have an axe to grind a single issue, they’re activists, and then they make really bad policy. And then we all sit around and scratch our head and say, why did they do that? Well, it all started with us making the bad decision of electing somebody who wasn’t prepared to be a public servant.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, I think super important issues raised there. And obviously trying to bring awareness to those issues is, is definitely goal number one. But what, what other piece of advice would you give maybe even to, ’cause I think sometimes hoteliers think maybe these, these issues are a fight for the brands or a fight for AHLA, but you know, what can an individual hotelier do and and what advice would you give them?

Chip Rogers:
First of all, I would say 95% of the things we work on, the benefits of that effort flow to the individual hotel owner. Whether it’s fighting on taxes, property taxes, income taxes, occupancy taxes, or fighting against onerous regulations that make your margins frankly disappear. All of this ultimately accrues to the benefit of the owner. And so while at AHLA, we represent owners, we represent brands, we represent management companies, and everybody in between. Look, at the end of the day, we have to have a healthy owner environment. Hotels have to be profitable. If they’re not profitable, they do not exist. People don’t go into hotel ownership just because they think it’s cool. Maybe some people do, but ultimately, if you’re not making money, the business isn’t gonna be around for long. And so it ultimately has to accrue to the owners. So we always ask people, please get involved with AHLA. We’ve got like going on 20 different committees that people can be a part of. We are, next year we will have 20 localized events in cities around the US. We have the hospitality show in San Antonio. We have a number of other events. We have a advancing women in hospitality event in Chicago every May, which is now almost a thousand attendees a year. So these things are happening. So get involved, but also get involved locally for yourself. I’ve been saying this for going on a decade now to our industry. Adopt a politician, find somebody in your local community that’s in elected office that you can build a relationship with, then just offer to be a source of information for that person. So when that elected official has any question about tourism, about hospitality in general, or specifically about hotels, that you are the person that they come to, to ask the question. And when you do that, you can direct people in a very positive way. You can direct these elected officials to making the right decision. Sometimes elected officials make the wrong decision because philosophically they’re just not aligned with this. They’re anti-business or whatever. Most of the time they make the wrong decision because they just don’t know any better. You need to be the person that helps them know better. And the only way to do that is to build a trusting relationship with that elected official.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely. Information sharing, telling stories, obviously very powerful piece. I think one of the, the best ways that we can do that also is social media, right? And I think you do such a great job of sharing your story. You’re, you’re such a jet setter. I think you were in Florida a couple days ago. You’re, you’re all over the place. That’s a very unique story. But AHLA and your team over there do a great job of sharing their story and its mission as well. This being a digital marketing podcast, I think it might be refreshing to our listeners not to hear me preach about, you know, the importance of having a social media presence. Can you speak to that, today? And you know, when it comes to hotels and sharing stories of how powerful they can be, how important it’s to be on social media and sharing that to travelers and guests.

Chip Rogers:
Well, at the core of it, you just mentioned stories. Years and years ago, I did a lot of public speaking training and then trained other people as well. But the first thing I learned from one of the best coaches I ever had, he said, memorize three really good stories and then figure out a way every time you’re asked a question to attach your answer to one of those stories and that he said, they don’t have to even be your story. That could be somebody else’s story, but make the story compelling because that’s what people remember. They’re not remembering numbers. I mean, sometimes they will, but they have access to numbers any, anywhere they want being able to tell your story. So you make a human connection with the person that you’re wanting to persuade to do something one way or the other. And then of course, through social media, through anything digital, now you have the ability to amplify that story, right? We don’t, like, when we see things, it doesn’t matter what platform you’re talking about. We’re not making those things go viral because, someone said, look at all these numbers here I’m gonna show you this incredible chart that, that’s, that’s not happening. It’s people telling stories, human experiences that make things go viral. And you need to do that. Somebody mentioned just within the last week, I was in an event and somebody said, email is dead. Now I don’t necessarily agree with that, but the hypothesis that communicating that way is less important and that social media is more important, that is clear. That is a trend that’s not going to swing back, that’s not a pendulum swing. It’s headed in one single direction. So being able to create your story constantly tell your story, and do so in a way that exposes it to as many people as possible is critically important. Now, one of the traps that everybody falls into when they think about messaging is, oh, well I’ve told that story three times. No one wants to hear it anymore. No, no, no. If someone hasn’t heard your message at least six times, they probably haven’t gotten it. So don’t worry about overselling it. I’ll always remember, and I’m gonna date myself here. And for those in your audience that are, we’ll say 40 and older, you may remember this, years ago, a gentleman by the name of Steve Forbes ran for president. I was just with Steve Forbes last week. He’s doing well still. Super smart guy. When he ran for president of the United States, his one thing was anybody that knows him, the flat tax, and it didn’t matter what question you asked him, the answer was the flat tax. You could be talking about crime, you could be talking about immigration, you could be talking about taxes. Somehow his answer would go back to the flat tax. The reason that’s instructive was, is that everybody knew where he stood and what he stood for and what he was about, and that’s what he wanted to communicate. So when communicating, think about what message do I want to leave people? How do I do that in the best way possible through a story? And then how do I distribute that to get to the people that I ultimately want to hear that message.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, I think that’s fantastic advice Chip. And I think there’s a really strong parallel with what you said about sharing the numbers and remembering the numbers and then sharing a story. And that’s the reason in hotel marketing too. Sometimes guests are willing to pay more for a night’s stay because of a story that has been told because of a review that you read. So I think that’s so important to note there, share your story. I love the consistent message that you give as well. I think we sometimes as an industry obviously have so many things to do on the to-do list, making sure you have a consistent social message and share that story. All really great advice. One of the stories currently going on in our industry that I am really psyched about is sustainability and green initiatives. We just did an episode on this before. Lot of benefits obviously to, to everyone win-win situation. Tell us a little bit about the green initiatives or sustainability that AHLA is getting involved in.

Chip Rogers:
So we created a program called Responsible Stay that is really meant to unite the industry around just general practices that every hotel can perform, whether it’s a very small, independent hotel all the way to the large luxury resort. And so we’re doing that for a multitude of reasons. One, to share those best practices, but also to communicate to consumers that, hey, if you’re going to a hotel, doesn’t matter. Again, if it’s this little small hotel here or this giant resort, you can expect this level of concern about sustainability. And it goes everything from water usage and power usage to, to not wasting food, everything that is operationally happening in that hotel. And so that, that’s really important. But one of the things that we announced, just a few months back is a partnership, a joint venture between ourselves and the Hotel Association of Canada around a program that is called Green Key Global. Now what Green Key Global does, it’s a third party certification that looks at the operations of your hotel and gives you a rating from one key up to five keys so that you can convey to consumers a standard that they can understand. Now, one of the reasons we want to do that, and this is for all of North America with our partners in Canada, is that we don’t want there to be 50 standards. I mean, that becomes problematic because then consumers, they don’t know what to trust. I’ve been telling this story and hopefully it, it resonates. It might be a stupid story and I’m not making any sense, but I’ll try. Remember the movie Elf, right? And in the movie, at some point, he is walking down the street in Manhattan and he sees this sign on the, the local diner and it says, world’s greatest coffee. And he walks inside and he congratulations him. He says, congratulations on having the world’s greatest coffee. Right? Well, there was no third party certifier as to whether that was the world’s greatest coffee. That was just the coffee shop saying, Hey, we got the world’s greatest coffee. We don’t wanna get to that point in hotels because then consumers won’t trust us. We don’t wanna just say, oh, we’re sustainable. We need to have a third party certification system saying, yes, you are sustainable. Here’s where you are on the scale, and here’s the things that you can do to get better on the scale. And so when we get to that point, we create a, an understanding by the consuming public that, Hey, I can trust this rating system and I can trust that that hotel is doing things that are important to me and doing the right thing. And so we think Green Key Global is ultimately going to be the standard across the entire industry. We certainly want to make it that way. Right now it’s offered to any hotelier that wants to avail themselves of it, and we hope to grow that so that we get to the point that the hotel, that this is just common, just like any other rating system amongst hotels. So the consumers can trust it. And when they’re saying, I’m making a purchasing decision based on the sustainability practices of an individual hotel, they know the source to look at to make sure that’s happening.

Ryan Embree:
And that’s why I was just gonna say, I mean, what we try to advocate and tell hoteliers on our podcast and and channel is that this is going to benefit you because this is gonna be a part of the buyer’s journey here. If it isn’t already, they’re going to start looking at this. They’re gonna start looking at that rating. I think that’s a fantastic kind of where you fit on the spectrum. And you also gave some great advice for maybe smaller hotels. Start small and work your way up there because being able to market that and educate your customer and your guests about the green initiatives and sustainable practices that you’re doing are only gonna benefit you in the long run. But really excited that initiative that you have over there, Chip and excited to start seeing those ratings on, on hoteliers. So if you’re listening, certainly, certainly get some more information on that as we enter this holiday season. Right. We’re recording this in November, Thanksgiving. This is also a season of charity. You at AHLA and and the team. You guys do such a great job, with charitable organizations. You have one particular story that comes to mind or a charitable organization that you wanna share with us in, in kind of like I said, spirit of this, this season?

Chip Rogers:
Yeah, look, we, we do raise a lot of money every year. For almost 70 years we’ve given out scholarships to students that are in our industry that wanna build a career. And that’s important stuff, no question about it. About a year and a half ago, we started a fund that is meant to help people that have become the victims of human trafficking. And it is a tough subject. It it’s not something that people want to hear about, talk about, or even think about ’cause it can, can bring you down. The human depravity of having human trafficking is, is it’s about as low as you can possibly get, but it’s also reality. And so as we think about going and spending time with loved ones over this Thanksgiving holiday and then into Christmas and into the new year, we’re all blessed beyond probably what we deserve. But there are a lot of people that can’t enjoy that. They don’t get to experience that anymore because they’ve become victims. And what can we do as an industry to help them? So we started this fund. We’ve already raised about $3.6 million. Our foundation is matching it dollar for dollar. So we’re up over, over $7 million now towards this. Our goal is to get to $10 million as quickly as we possibly can. So we’re, we’re headed towards that, and then we’re using that fund. We started this year the first giving out of that fund to organizations that help these victims. And when you say help these victims, it’s everything from, okay, they just got rescued. Now, where do they go sleep that night? Where do they get their next meal? They have no money. Where do they get clothing? Providing those services to providing training and education and job placement services as well so that they can start a new life. Unfortunately, guess the best term for it would be recidivism, but the number of people that get trafficked that go right back into trafficking because they have no system supporting them, it is enormous. It is an it, it it’s something that should not happen and we can make a difference in those people’s lives. Imagine where you are in your life if you’ve been human trafficked. Just imagine what that would feel like to know that there is somebody there saying, I can help you escape and send you down a completely different path to a new life. We wanna be part of that. We want this industry to be part of that. We want to continue to do that year after year after year. And so that’s what we’re doing through our No Room for Trafficking campaign. We’re raising that, those funds to make a difference in people’s lives in a significant way.

Ryan Embree:
Such a critical subject that I think everyone in our industry can really rally behind. You know, and I’ve, I’ve seen even at the hospitality show, multiple brands get involved with this fund as well. So, certainly an important cause that you guys are doing over there at AHLA. So thank you for that. As we wrap up here, we’re actually coming to the end of the episode, but also the end of the year as we look to 2024. Any personal or professional New Year’s resolutions that you have for yourself or even AHLA as an organization? I know you, you’ve already mentioned some goals.

Chip Rogers:
For me personally, travel less, sleep more. Those are the two things I need to do. I would say I’ve been on the road probably by the end of the year, almost 300 days this year.

Ryan Embree:
It looks like it, like I said, from from your social media feed that that’s the story you’re telling right now is you’re doing a great job.

Chip Rogers:
Look, as an organization, we just wanna continue to be that voice that protects and promotes the industry. I mean, when we wake up my entire team, we have an amazing team here. That’s what we do. We look at this industry and we say it is important, really important industry, what can we do to protect it? And then what can we do to promote it? And we do that in a multitude of ways. Next year we’re gonna do that even more. We’re continuing to add team members, but that’s what brings us satisfaction is being able to do that for the industry.

Ryan Embree:
Well, certainly a fitting into the episode, talking about 2024. Any, any final thoughts on today?

Chip Rogers:
Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me. Always enjoy being with you on this podcast and, and talking to, to fellow hoteliers or anybody that’s in the industry. And people look and they ask how can they get involved? You know, just go to the AHLA website if you wanna see a lot of those testimonials about employees building careers here. We have a sister website called Thehotelindustry.com. Check ’em out and, and if we can help you in any way, please let us know.

Ryan Embree:
Well keep an eye on Chip and his stories that he’s telling and all the channels. Chip, we appreciate you joining the Suite spot. Hopefully, certainly not your last visit and really looking forward to seeing you in October in San Antonio as well. Thank you again, Chip for coming on the Suite Spot.

Chip Rogers:
Of course. Thank you.

Ryan Embree:
All right. And thank you to our listeners. We will talk to you next time on the Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.