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Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hotiers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for listening. Today we have another episode of our exciting series, TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. If you’re just joining us for the first time, we are absolutely loving this series. We are bringing the brightest and best in our industry, those people and groups that are pushing our industry forward into 2023 and beyond. We’ve got a great guest with me today, before I introduce him. As always, you can always find our episodes anywhere you’re finding our podcast, but also on YouTube. So check that out and let’s go ahead and get rolling with the episode. So I will introduce our TMG Hospitality Trailblazer of the day. That is Patrick Pahlke, Chief Commercial Officer at Sage Hospitality. Patrick, welcome into the Suite Spot.

Patrick Pahlke :
Hello, I’m super delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Embree:
We’re excited to have you, you’re the guest of honor today, so let’s go ahead and open it up with a question for all of our first timers on the Suite Spot. We know we work in an industry where people can come from anywhere and they have some, sometimes some strange journeys in order to get to where they are today. So tell us a little bit about your journey to Sage Hospitality Group. Was it more the traditional way of maybe starting at the front desk and working up or completely outta left field? Cause we’ve heard those stories on this series as well.

Patrick Pahlke :
Yeah, no, mine is a long one. I would say so. First of all, as you can hear from my pungent accent, I’m from Germany originally, and, I had, I had the opportunity of living in different countries as a child with my parents. And, at one point, when I was six years old, we stayed, we lived in a hotel for, for three months, and that hotel was my playground and the general manager of that hotel was like a god for me. It was in Jakarta and it was the Hilton International in 1981. Still remember very well. And I said to my parents, I want to be that guy one day, Mr. Schutz Sandorf was his name. And yeah, just kind of stuck to my childhood dream, you know, did an apprenticeship, entered the industry in Germany in the mid nineties. Worked in different places in Europe. At one point I studied, in Lozan in Switzerland, hotel management. Then, ventured out to Asia, stayed in Asia for 16 years, worked all over the place, mostly in the, in the five star field with Hyatt International. Worked with Mandarin Oriental as well. And then, in 2015, I ventured into the lifestyle space, you know, coming from the bigger brands, moving to a smaller company, commune hotels at that time, they don’t exist anymore. They became two roads after a while and then two roads got acquired by Hyatt. Yeah. And, and once you make that move to the independent lifestyle space, you know, and, and you realize, you know, that entrepreneurial spirit that they, that they have, you know, from having a great idea to implementation when there’s not much red tape in between. Once you get used to that, it’s pretty addictive, you know. So since then I’ve never looked back, kind of stayed in the lifestyle space, moved to the United States four years ago to join a company called Proper Hospitality, very innovative in the luxury lifestyle space, helped to build up that brand and, joined Sage one and a half years ago, in summer 2021 to basically rebuild their commercial team from scratch and, you know, build it out in a way that is in line with the company’s growth, which is really to focus in on the lifestyle space as well.

Ryan Embree:
Well, your story certainly hits a lot of marks when it comes to hospitality, first, a global story, right? You know, we always hear about that about our industry and two, you know, you lived the hospitality life, right? It’s like, you know, sometimes we hear that in, in our industry of, you know, it’s just not a life or a lifestyle or a job. You have to actually live it. So hearing somebody’s story that actually is living in a hotel for a little bit of time, like I said, you, you checked off all the marks there. That’s a very interesting story. Now, I do wanna kind of talk about this last couple years. I mean, this is another question. We’ve done almost a dozen of these and I get a very different answer each time I ask it, but everyone was kind of experiencing the same thing over the past couple years. So, you know, what lessons do you think the hospitality industry in general learned? And were any of those lessons applied to your role now at Sage Hospitality Group?

Patrick Pahlke :
Yeah, I think, I think a lot of us hoteliers can write a book about the last three years, right? And everything that has changed and what we’ve learned. But I would say if I was to sort of synthesize it down, the number one thing we’ve all learned is that maybe it was something we already knew, but we honed in on it more, is that flexibility and the willingness to innovate is essential to navigating difficult business environments. Our company has always been willing to do things differently, but any sense of rigidity or needing to clinging to how things were done in the past really had to go out of the window in 2020. Obviously not just with Sage, but with hospitality companies as well. And I think that we will always have to remain open to doing things differently and looking, for new ways to solve ever-evolving challenges that we face in our industry. An example of, you know, flexibility as well, if we look at it from a people and culture or HR perspective is, you know, us having implemented, hybrid work models, for all home office employees, we have been experimenting with this as well across our properties just to implement more flexibility. I think also, you know, not making all people move to headquarters, is also a thing that a lot of hotel management companies have learned. You know, the team that I have built over the last one and a half years is really, is a total hybrid. Half of them are based in Denver and the other half is all over the country. And I think it’s totally fine, you know, to work in this environment, you know, you just have to make sure that once in a while you bring everyone together in person to make sure that we, that we have an opportunity form proper relationships, you know, that you cannot, that you cannot establish via Zoom.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, and I think you stumbled on a topic we’re gonna be covering here in a minute, talking about group and business travel in those, you know, getting everybody together in a certain location. It’s kind of how, how that business travel is evolving. And, and like I said, we’ll touch on that later, but you mentioned in your journey about how exciting it can be when that red tape is removed and that red tape wasn’t over the past couple years, it wasn’t removed because, you know, we wanted to, as an industry, it kind of had to at a necessity and it made us move on a lot of stuff a lot quicker than maybe we felt comfortable as an industry doing. But it certainly has opened our eyes to a lot of stuff. You know, one of the things we talk about all the time is guest preferences when it comes to cleaning the room. You know, we didn’t realize, I don’t think there’d ever be a situation where we kind of remove that from the guest experience of, Hey, you know, we might not come into your room every single day. You might have some brands try to trial that, but no one’s gonna make that pivot so quickly. We had to do that during the pandemic and we learned some lessons from it. So super, super interesting to kind of hear those lessons and how they’re applied. And, you know, one of the things that, that we also had to adapt to and our guests had to adapt to is technology, right? So I think the best analogy or parallel is, is, you know, when we go into the airports and we see, you know, maybe most of the majority of the people using those apps and, and electronic boarding passes, but you still have those people that are holding the paper tickets. And I think that’s a great correlation to the hotel industry because obviously more people are adapting the, the wireless check-in or the keyless check-in, rather, you know, some people still like coming to the front desk and having that conversation. So how do you balance that technology with, you know, the foundation of our industry, which is people serving people?

Patrick Pahlke :
Yeah, I mean, you, you’re hitting the nail on the head. It’s, it’s exactly all about that balance, right? I mean, we of course never wanna lose the humanity aspect, right? In the hospitality experience, but we also wanna make sure that the guest is getting convenience and a more seamless experience that they desire more and more, right? I’m not saying it’s just a generational shift that wants a more tech forward approach, you know, but it’s just people all, all kinds of travelers, all demographics, they like to have options, right? So, in the past, I would say those check-in kiosks, you know, you would never see them at true luxury hotels, but now we’re really contemplating to have optionality for check-in also at, more elevated properties, you know, because that, that desire is just there. Another example is our property Catbird, which is our boutique extended stay brand that we have recently launched here in Denver, and that we will be rolling out across the country. They have a great example of how we’re approaching this. The hotel has a lot of tech forward amenities and integrations, including a self-guided check-in process via kiosks that we have in the lobby. So guests who does not wanna interact with staff doesn’t have to. However, staff is always available as well in the lobby to connect with guests, making it a much more, informal interaction and creating a sense of home for our guests. And then I think, the same also applies for just guest communication in general, right? Some guests really prefer to have a chat option, right? Where you get a text message on your phone, during pre-arrival, also during arrival, where sort of a, a chat concierge, you know, tells the guest, you know, whatever you need done, if you need restaurant recommendations, if you need to find something in the hotel, if you wanna request turndown service, just text us. You know? And then there’s other guests who prefer to speak to guest service agents. So I, I really think it’s about having that balance and about having optionalites for guests.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, you bring up a couple interesting points. One of the things that we are so quick to be able to say, well, this is a young generation thing, let’s go ahead and target that younger traveler when it comes to technology, but looking at a way of segments as well, right? The luxury segment, which usually we are trying to obviously cater as much as we can to those guests because they’re paying a little bit more than other properties, but we want that, that kind of white glove service. But at the same time, they might have that experience of, I just wanna get to my room and check in, and that’s their white glove experience.

Patrick Pahlke :
Yeah, I mean your, your business traveler and luxury hotels is a, is a great example, right? Your five star hotel road warrior, they also exist, you know, your CEOs, they don’t wanna chit chat upon checkin, they just want to get there, get their key and get up to the room, you know, so just having that optionality.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely. And, and you know, one of the things we talk about on this digital marketing podcast when we’re talking about social media is always listening on your social media platforms. Because you’re right, Patrick, this is a way that guests are communicating with you and they almost take that chat and behind their phone if you haven’t answered to them in, you know, a couple seconds, that’s almost as bad to them as someone not being at the front desk, or that’s what they’re equating that to. So you need to make sure you’re listening on all forms because they might feel more comfortable chatting you behind their phone than they would actually coming to the front desk. And we’re learning more and more that guests are feeling that sentiment. So we talked a little bit about it, the business travel trends, right? So what does that look like this year for you? And has Sage hospitality have made a shift in how you’re, you’re trying to target these business and group travelers, which have really kind of still been sluggish in comparison to leisure travel?

Patrick Pahlke :
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say last year was really the year for business travel to ramp back up. You know, it was, it was a slow ramp, but it happened. And I’m very pleased to say that now we are already at a point, you know, where we can see business travel levels almost back to 2019. And to be honest, I get, I’m getting a little bit tired of always comparing to 2019. I would like 2022 to be our new benchmark, right? But, you know, one, cannot help but still looking at the at the pre covid past. So it, it’s, it’s back, but it is slightly different. So the first thing that we’ve observed was that your average length of stay across the board for business travelers has actually increased, which is, which, which is great for us, you know, I mean, hotels are always striving to have a longer length of stay for, for, for transient guests. And, I think we can attribute this to bleisure travel, you know, it’s just, there’s just more and more extensions that we see for business travelers who will stay on for the weekend, or business travelers who would normally have their Friday as a work from home day, and then they choose to work from the pool or work from the lobby of the hotel. You know, especially when you’re operating a lot of lifestyle or boutique properties that have a natural attraction to the leisure traveler. I can see how that, how that really attracts business travelers, you know, to just extend a bit. So, so that, that’s one observation. Another one is that targeting business travelers. I think already for last year and the year before when we saw the first signs of BT coming back a little bit, the approach of our sales teams is still a lot more localized rather than centralized, you know, because a lot of the big global accounts that might still have restrictions in place, they’re a little bit more relaxed on a local level with allowing travel and a lot of small to medium sized companies as well, you know, have shown to be more flexible already at the onset of business travel coming back. So I can still see a much bigger focus on those small to medium sized accounts ever than as compared to before. Unfortunately, the, the tech industry has been, has been hit a little bit recently, as we all read in the press, right? That naturally has some impact on travel as well. But I, I see that as more an isolated industry. We we’re seeing a lot of increased travel in all other industries, and also in talking to our partners, you know, who have a lot of interesting data, you know, like the Expedia of this world, we’ve learned from them that travel budgets have actually been increased across the board. And I think it was 70 something percent of all respondents that were asked were actually expected by their employer to travel the same amount or more than in 2019, you know? So having news like that is obviously very encouraging, you know, and especially for a company like us that has mostly urban properties, you know, that’s obviously our bread and butter, you know, so we want to make sure that we nurture this, this segment as much as we can. You know, now that that business travel has come back.

Ryan Embree:
I’m sure you got a lot of listeners got their ears perked up with that, that stat that you’re sharing there and, and you make a couple really great observations. You know, one, even you mentioned at the beginning, looking in your own backyard for, for that, that business or group travel, because guess what, even though their headquarters are here, that doesn’t mean all of their employees are here, right? As, and that is becoming more and more common with this work from home. So just because a, a company is in your backyard does not mean that they do not need that space to meet or bring in their employees. So maybe those director or sales that are listening to this, it’s a good time to start calling on those and asking what that work environment looks like for them if they’re bringing anybody in. And the second point you make is that extended stay for business travel and that bleisure travel, and you are right on. And for those that are listening to this again, and sales and marketing, well, Ryan, listen, we’re getting some leisure travel, but we cater mostly to business travel. Well guess what? We also have to put in our marketing strategy, specifically social, maybe online reputation. We have to cater to those leisure travel because those business people might be bringing, their families might be bringing their kids. So those amenities that you have at your property, you know, of course we wanna show conference center, the business center, talk about the wifi that caters to that business travel, but we also want to mix in that marketing strategy, that social strategy, some of the amenities that might cater to that leisure side of things, because who knows that business traveler could be bringing their family for that little extended leisure trip as we talked about.

Patrick Pahlke :
Absolutely. And then you also asked about group. Sorry, I haven’t, I haven’t answered the second part of your question yet. So for groups, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s been a similar ramp. It came back a little bit before business travel already. I found that, you know, earlier at, at the end of 21, but mostly small to medium sized events at first. But now we can also see larger conferences finally coming back. I would say, some cities have brought back a lot of their bigger city-wide events because they have done a very good job of closely tying, you know, safety of the city, how do I promote that and infrastructure and all of that together. And that obviously helps hotels immensely to have citywide events back, right? And then for other cities, it hasn’t been a little bit more challenging, you know, where security and, and safety is still an issue. You know, that’s something that larger conference organizers are always sort of little bit more scared about. So it’s, it’s not the same in every market, I’m trying to say with the big city wides. But good news to share is, we actually just got some stats earlier this week from our BI team and, we have actually seen the number of group inquiries and confirmed group revenue surpass 2019 for this year, year to date. So that’s very encouraging to see.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely. We, and we love to hear that. Like I said, you know, I’ve said on this podcast before we, we did this podcast through the pandemic and we had to dig for that good news, and now it seems like we’re seeing more and more of these stats kind of pop up. So absolutely love to hear that. And, and you’re right. You know, we always talk about revenge travel, that’s kind of been the hot subject, but I would almost coin the term, you know, revenge events, these local cities and economies, they want these events back, in their area, the, the local businesses, the hotels, they want these events back and people are willing to travel to them. They’ve been missing out on these annual events that, that maybe disappeared over the last couple years as they start to roll back in. Huge, huge marketing opportunity to really lean into that and provide your, your travelers with the right channels to book directly with you so you’re not paying those commissions. So, we’ll stay in the news a little bit. I’ve recently seen, and this has kind of been a trend, a little bit of backlash with one of the industry’s biggest disruptors, Airbnb, you know, there was certainly a bunch of articles written on expensive fees, safety issues. There’s been a lot of, jokes about, you know, what hosts are requiring guests to do before checkout, which has kind of become a punchline. And more and more people are kind of appreciating, they’re coming back and, and appreciating what hotels have to offer because they’re not running into any of those issues. So how do you feel like our industry can really capitalize and, and continue on this growing trend and sentiment out there from travelers?

Patrick Pahlke :
Honestly, I think we just need to keep on doing what we’ve, what we have done for a long time, provide excellent service, provide really good amenities and most, mostly the great guest experiences, you know, which a, make our guests feel comfortable being in a hotel environment, and also inspire them at the same time. These are things, you know, again, I’m speaking from a lifestyle lens, you know, where our properties have great activations and things happening, you know, that again, we wanna inspire our guests, we want them to learn something while they’re staying with us, you know, so that’s kind of something that’s, I would say still pretty unique to staying in a, in a hotel. Yeah and then with a hotel, you can also look at the website, social media, et cetera, and, and you know exactly what you can expect when you book, right? You know that there will be housekeeping services, you know, that you will have staff to help you throughout this stay and, and so forth. You know, I think more and more guests are really realizing that part of the fun of travel is having access to those amenities and services. So for example, again, back to our independent properties, we have gear for borrow programs, you know, that help guests experience the destination. Like at Pierside in Santa Monica, which we just recently opened, the board shop offers surfboards and other things that are perfect for guests in a beach destination. Then here at Catbird in Denver, we have a playroom that offers similar items, but also things like small appliances that long-term guests might want to utilize, you know, for their, for their room to feel a little bit more like home and then great food and beverage offerings as well within the same space, right? I mean, the evolvement of the hotel restaurant is not what it was 20 years ago, right? 20 years ago, nobody wanted to go to a hotel restaurant. Right? Now, hotels are partnering up with really cool f and b partners to sort of elevate the experience. And in many, many cities now that you visit, the coolest restaurants are part of lifestyle hotels, you know, so that’s just something that you don’t have when you’re staying in a house. And then for others who seek more privacy and homey feel, they might still stick to staying at Airbnbs or Saunders or other providers. I honestly strongly feel that there’s enough room in the industry for both models to coexist.

Ryan Embree:
And what you said, I mean, obviously Airbnb and Saunder and all of those other companies really have embraced that technology that we talked about earlier, but it’s that customer service that we talked about at the very end, that customer touch, you mentioned it before Patrick, you guys have kiosks, but you also have people, real people there in case for any assistance. And that’s something that just Airbnb, you know, you have a chat and everything like that, and you can communicate with your hosts, but there’s that missing piece there. And, and I love what you said about setting expectations. We talk about it all the time. I’m sure my listeners are very tired of me hearing it. The better you can do at setting your expectations, those things that make your hotel experience unique, the more comfortable your guests are going to feel when they come on property. And actually getting involved in that whole experience. You know, there’s a reason that you’ve put those bikes in place, as you said, out in Santa Monica. It’s, you want your guests to experience the entirety of the experience, right? Not just a room and four walls. So the more that you can kind of market that property online and what the experience you’re selling, I think the better advantage that you’re gonna have over those Airbnbs and just that house or room that you’re sharing with someone else there. So let’s switch gears a little bit. I wanna talk about, Sage Hospitality and, and you know, one of the things that none of the TMG Trailblazers that we had on this have been stranger to has been the, the shortage in staffing that the industry has battled these past couple years. You know, a as I was doing, you know, I was looking through Sage Hospitality, I kept seeing and hearing this phrase of enriching lives, one experience at the time. Speak a little bit more about what that means to you, Patrick, and the importance of culture at Sage Hospitality Group.

Patrick Pahlke :
You’re mentioning our, our mission there, and it’s really, it’s really something that is at the center of everything for us at Sage, because our mission is our why, right? Enriching lives one experience at a time. Every business decision that we make is really made through that lens of our why. When we talk about that, we don’t mean just our guests obviously. It’s very important to Sage and our leaders that this concept starts with enriching the lives of our associates. That really comes first, right? When your associates are happy and they feel well taken care of and considered, we know that this translates into our associates taking care of our guests and enriching their lives. So when you, when you boil it down, our product is the guest experience, right? And so much of that experience is fundamentally built upon the interactions that guests have with our associates. Again, happy associates mean happy guests, and ultimately positive business outcomes. The media is also rife with stories right now about, you know, the great resignation and quiet quitting and the through line, you know, in all these stories that we see is when employees don’t feel supported and when they don’t feel engaged, they leave or stop caring about what they do. And I think that understandably hurts the business, right? People need to feel that their job is meaningful and that it contributes to the greater mission of the company. Again, this is a finding that I find, you know, we often said that is specific to, gen Z, right? Whatever you do needs to be meaningful. You need to understand why am I doing something and not just follow, but I think it goes way beyond just Gen Z. It’s just in general, anyone who works in any job, you know, I think should know how meaningful that job is and how it contributes to the greater mission of the company. Also, I recently read an article and in Harvard Business Journal that was about employees rather than customers or shareholders are the most important stakeholders in your organization, right? They are, after all where the work actually happens. Yeah. And that just requires that every employee is seen as a, as a full human being and not just a cog in the machine, right? I mean, Richard Branson made that statement a long time ago as well, that at his company, at at Virgin, it’s not the guest who comes first. It must always be the employee for exactly the same reason.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s gonna be those groups that really have a strong culture and strong mission of, of who they are and, and their why, like you’re talking about Patrick, that are gonna be able to keep those happy hospitality associates, which we know play such an important role in the guest experience. So, you know, really, really excited to hear kind of about the things that you’re doing over there at Sage Hospitality when it comes to recruitment and using and, and leveraging that, that culture there. So, as you know, this is a, a digital marketing podcast at Travel Media Group. We help hotels with their online reputation through review response and social media presence. I know your role as Chief Commercial Officer has some overlap in the social media and PR space. So how do you feel like social strategy has changed and evolved over hotels for the past couple of years? And what, what advice would you share to some of our listeners today?

Patrick Pahlke :
Yeah, absolutely. I would say, if, if we just go couple of years back, you know, social media used to be seen as a secondary or even a tertiary source of information for travelers as it would research a stay, you know, even when it was a primary resource. Most hotel companies have still seen it as a secondary or tertiary. So, you know, as, as with many other technologies, it always takes a few years for our industry to wake up. You know, CRM is another area that I’m passionate about where I think we were a couple of decades behind the curve, but back to social media, younger generations, I mean, use social media as a primary search engine as well now, right? So the stats say that nearly half of Gen Z uses Instagram and TikTok to search instead of Google, right? We have to acknowledge this, right? So being visible and, and having great content, you know, and, and again, giving a a good reflection of what the experience there is like, is so vitally important for our properties, you know, and, and having a strong social media presence and being very discoverable is, is just super essential. At Sage, we went from, in the old days, purely using it as a, as a brand building and awareness tool. It’s become an important distribution channel. Now that drives revenues, you know, way beyond just building awareness. And, yeah. One of the first teams that I implemented when I came on board was to make sure that we have a strong social media support team here on a corporate level that, you know, helps to educate our properties, how to drive better content, reposting, you know, who should be in charge of creating content, how to manage agencies better, you know, and directors of sales and marketing nowadays, right? Most of them, they come from a sales background and we encourage them to be open and to learn about all these new channels. And social media is a, is a very important one, right? So having the resources to train our property teams to better leverage that channel is super important.

Ryan Embree:
Well, and it, it’s certainly a new skill. Social media, things change at a lightning fast pace. I do consultations with them and they’ll be, we’ll talk about social media and the first thing they show is their Facebook that they just created. And I said, this is a great first start, but we gotta talk about Instagram, right? LinkedIn, how are you getting driving your group business? Why isn’t your hotel on LinkedIn? You know, TikTok now is huge. So it’s, it’s more than just Facebook out there if you’re listening to this, right? Obviously Facebook very, very important. It’s still is, but there are so many more eyes and so many different places. And the best part about social media is it’s free to be on there, but you have to be consistent when you’re posting. You have to have a strategy in place, because that’s the mistake that we run into a lot with our hoteliers, is it’s very exciting off the off the jump to create that account. But you’ve gotta stay posting, you’ve gotta have a content strategy ready to go there. So let’s talk about Sage Hospitality Group in the news recently. So, 18 Sage Hotels, were on the 2023 Best Hotel rankings list recognized by US News and World’s Report. Congratulations to you and your team. Patrick, tell us a little bit about what that accomplishment means.

Patrick Pahlke :
Thank you. I would say first and foremost, when we receive awards like this, they’re always a reflection of the, extraordinary work that is being done by our colleagues at the properties obviously. Without the work that they do to drive guest satisfaction and great ex guest experiences, these awards wouldn’t happen. And we’re of course super thrilled, you know, when, when one hotel wins an award, but to have so many properties included says to us as well that we must be doing something right, you know, and, and it says to us that people are taking notice of, of the way that we’re operating our hotels differently and, and creating meaningful experiences to our guests. And, and it’s the same, you know, for, for a lot of other awards, you know, the recent Travel and Leisure and Conde Nast Awards, you know, we’ve seen more more properties included than than ever before, you know, so it just, it shows us the trend where we’re trying to bring Sage as more of a lifestyle operator. It’s working.

Ryan Embree:
That’s great to hear Pat, and I’ll, I’ll do the padding on your back for you then, cause that’s, that’s a really great accomplishment. And maybe next time we have you on the podcast, well hopefully we’re talking about some more hotels on that list. So speaking of kind of Sage Hospitality in the future, you know, this is the TMG Hospitality Trailblazer series, right? We’re talking about industry experts and groups that are pushing us toward the future. So I’d like to leave this last question of just, you know, what, what would you say is next for Sage Hospitality as we look to the future? What would you like to see the portfolio accomplish in 2023 and beyond?

Patrick Pahlke :
Yeah, as I, as I just mentioned already, our key focus is really a very strong growth in the lifestyle segment. And that just doesn’t only mean for our independent properties, right? Our, our 60 properties are our subdivided into our independent collection, which will, soon hit 20 hotels, and then we have our branded hotels as well. But really talking about lifestyle that could be independent, it could be limited service, it could be hard branded, it could be soft branded. It’s really, for us, a focused growth versus an opportunistic growth at any cost. You know, a lot of hotel management companies, they just sign up whatever they can right to rake in the management fees, you know, and that is not the approach that Sage is taking. You know, we are a privately owned company and we will remain private so that we can sustain a focused growth. And again, we’re saying when a lot of the other management companies are trying to be everything for everyone, we’re really gonna zoom in only on, on the lifestyle space. And ultimately Sage, we want Sage to become the nation’s preferred lifestyle hospitality management company. And we’ve really built our operations and commercial teams accordingly over the last two years, you know, with experts that come exactly from this area of hospitality, from the lifestyle space.

Ryan Embree:
We’ll definitely have to keep a close eye on, on you, Patrick, your team and, and everybody over there at Sage Hospitality Group. So, you know, we covered a lot on today’s episode. Any final thoughts?

Patrick Pahlke :
No, I have to say I really enjoyed spending time with you and, hope that I could contribute something meaningful to your listeners. We need more of these conversations as well to share best practices throughout our industry, I believe. So what you’re doing is great and yeah, I hope that my, my German accent was not too distracting. I know that I sound like a bad guy in a Bond movie, so.

Ryan Embree:
I love that, Patrick. And, you know, thank you for joining me on this series. You know, this was, this was really exciting. And you know, obviously for any further information about Sage Hospitality Group and all the exciting things you’re doing for our listeners, obviously best place to find you is on, on probably your website and LinkedIn, right, Patrick?

Patrick Pahlke :
Absolutely, absolutely.

Ryan Embree:
Alright. Well, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot. We, we certainly will have to have you back. And thank you everyone for listening today. 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 reading 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.