 |
Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing PodcastSuite Spot Hospitality Marketing Podcast for Hoteliers by Travel Media Group Author: Travel Media Group & Ryan Embree
The best hotel digital marketing podcast in the hospitality industry. Language: en-us Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
181 – The Hospitality Show 2025 Preview with Alexi Khajavi
Wednesday, 3 September, 2025
The 2025 Hospitality Show is fast approaching! While it is only a couple of months away, it will take place in Denver, Colorado, on October 26-28. Alexi Khajavi, President of Questex—Hospitality, Travel, & Wellness, joins the Suite spot to discuss the upcoming event and what attendees can look forward to this year. Alexi shares insight on: New Interactive Zones & Networking at THS 2025 Questex’s Quest Zero Sustainability Initiative The Changing Landscape of Hospitality Digital Marketing and the Importance of Social Media for Travel 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. So happy to be with you today, previewing the 2025 Hospitality Show. Yes, it is that time of year, this year. We are headed out to Denver in October. We're gonna talk all about it, with a very frequent guest, a Suite Spot veteran at this point, Alexi Khajavi, Questex President, Hospitality and Real Estate. Alexi, thank you so much for being on the Suite Spot once again with us. Alexi Khajavi: Ryan, great to be here. Ryan Embree: Yeah. We're gonna talk about the Hospitality Show, but it is crazy to think that this, we had you back on the podcast in 2023 when this was first announced, and here we are today. You know, this is three years strong. This is the third year going into it. You know, I wanted to start with you. We've talked about your journey. We've talked about your role, some of the mentors along the way. I'd love to just hear from you, Alexi, if we could go back to that podcast in 2023. What do you think the biggest change in hospitality that you've seen over these last few years? Alexi Khajavi: I'd say it's half and half. I mean, on one hand, I think we were, we were absolutely correct and spot on in that hotel profitability and the complexity in hotel operations would only increase and would be in terms of achieving profitability would become harder, and more challenging. And I think we were right in that assessment and we continue to see a lot of challenges in the space. And now we're starting to turn into negative territory in terms of operating performance with RevPAR ADRs and occupancy, which is normal, right? I mean, this is a cyclical, industry and it's an industry that is dependent on the macro economy. So, we've had an incredible run, but I think looking back in 2023, we absolutely got that right. It was only gonna become increasingly more complicated and challenging, and that therefore profits would also be challenging in turn. What I don't think we anticipated was how massively AI would start to impact not only our industry, but our world. And it is increasingly becoming, I think it's, it's gonna have a much more deeper impact on, in a shorter time than what we anticipated back in 2023. And not all of that, by the way, is negative. There's a lot of positive opportunities that come out from AI, but I think we're all trying to figure it out right now in the hospitality industry. Could be both a beneficiary, but will certainly and undoubtedly be impacted by it. But those are two things that I think we got right, and one, I think we, we didn't anticipate the enormity of the impact of AI. Ryan Embree: Yeah, or the acceleration. I mean, in a industry whose technology adoption is typically slower than most, we're, we're up there right now, I mean, or at least hoteliers. And the market feels like hospitality is trying to embrace this maybe differently than other technological fads, right. And I think it's really, really cool to see, you ever want to explain the complexity of hospitality to someone who doesn't know hospitality? Go to the Hospitality Show and see all the vendors that are on that showcase list, and you're gonna see everything over there. And I think that's why hoteliers, I know I certainly I do,
