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Supporting Hospitality from the Inside Out

The hospitality industry continues to evolve, and the people behind it do so, too. Joining Sarah Dandashy on Say Yes to Travel was Dan Ryan, Co-Founder of Agency 967. Ryan is a lifelong entrepreneur, industry expert, and host of the podcast Defining Hospitality. After falling in love with hospitality, Ryan spent 20 years selling and sourcing…

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The hospitality industry continues to evolve, and the people behind it do so, too. Joining Sarah Dandashy on Say Yes to Travel was Dan Ryan, Co-Founder of Agency 967. Ryan is a lifelong entrepreneur, industry expert, and host of the podcast Defining Hospitality.

After falling in love with hospitality, Ryan spent 20 years selling and sourcing custom furniture and fixtures for hotels. Managing all aspects of it became chaotic, so he founded Agency 967 to be an intermediary. “I needed to simplify everything and work with the best in category companies, so I can shorten everyone’s journey. I’m a connector between brands and hotel designers.”

Ryan used those words “shortening the journey” throughout the show and are huge for his personal brand and agency. He took on new ways to do this during the pandemic, starting Blue Canary, a cleaning training platform for hospitality. “We created a culture of safety,” he added.

Ryan also started his podcast, which he was excited to do because of his natural curiosity. “It’s called Defining Hospitality because it means something different to everyone, and it even made me rethink what hospitality is.”

Ryan and Dandashy also discussed trends. “Smaller rooms are here to stay. The mature hospitality industry has much to learn from Airbnb. They can equally inform each other.”

On the minds of hospitality leaders, Ryan said, “The hiring crisis was a problem before and is now a serious structural issue. What work looks like after the pandemic will impact both business and personal travel.”

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If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

Lighthouse writer Joe Hanly published a ten-strategy hotel revenue management guide on Hotel News Resource on September 8, ranking real-time dynamic pricing first. Its most useful content is a test: a hotel whose rate changes mostly follow a competitor's move is running market-based pricing, whatever it is called internally. A companion explainer says audit the compset and rate plans first.

  • 01Market-based and dynamic pricing both watch competitors; the line Lighthouse draws is whether a competitor's rate is the trigger or one input alongside local events, booking pace and market trends.
  • 02Properties that have gone years without a structured rate-plan review often carry more active plans than anyone tracks, and those legacy floor rates and stay restrictions sit under any pricing engine layered on top.

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STR said summer 2025 was the weakest in four years so far

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STR said summer 2025 was the weakest U.S. hotel summer in four years: as of an Aug. 22 weekly report (with two weeks left), hotels had sold 1.4 million fewer room nights than summer 2024 and top 25 market weekday RevPAR was down 2.3% in mid-August. STR said business travel plateaued while leisure held up weekends. Hotel Dive reported widespread U.S. RevPAR growth in Q1 2026, making 2025 the comparison base.

  • 01Weekday performance is the cleaner read on corporate demand: in the week ending Aug. 16, 2025, top 25 market weekday RevPAR fell 2.3%, per STR; in that same STR update, non-metro and rural areas posted a 0.7% full-week RevPAR gain.
  • 02The 2025 demand loss was concentrated, not spread evenly: STR traced 45% of the economy-class decline to 10 markets, with Houston and Las Vegas alone near a quarter of it, so a national average can hide a very different local picture.
  • 03The gap between occupancy on the books and occupancy actually realized, flagged by CoStar in Las Vegas, Houston, Philadelphia and Orlando in June 2025, is a sharper thing for a revenue manager to track than headline RevPAR.

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Aimbridge's LIFT tool flags hotel staffing gaps before the financials do

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Aimbridge Hospitality has rolled out LIFT, an in-house labor tool, portfolio-wide. It puts forecasting, scheduling and on-floor actuals into one view, and pilot hotels saw the largest productivity gains in housekeeping and laundry. For owners, Aimbridge positions it as a way to spot staffing variance sooner than waiting for month-end financials.

  • 01Hotel Business describes LIFT as a proprietary tool that Aimbridge has launched across its own portfolio, which turns labor analytics into a point of comparison between third-party operators.
  • 02Housekeeping and laundry were where pilot hotels saw the biggest productivity gains, which suggests demand-driven scheduling tools have the most room to act in departments where daily workload swings with occupancy.
  • 03Aimbridge has not published numeric pilot results; the signal to watch is whether it releases labor-cost or GOP flow-through figures from the full rollout, which would give owners a real benchmark.

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