What happens when two short-term rental investors decide to go all in on a 50-key hotel in the Arizona desert? We sit down with Adam Walz and Micah Thomas of Comeback Hospitality to hear how they made the leap from Airbnb operators to owners of The Wesley, Page's first boutique hotel.

In this episode, we talk about how they found the property off-market for well below the area's average price per key, how Page, Arizona sits within two hours of seven national parks and monuments, and what it really costs to bring a historic roadside motel back to life (spoiler: it involves a lot of plumbing, $50,000 in internet upgrades, and a third shipping container). They also open up about their approach to affordable luxury, the role AI is playing in their operations, and what it means to build in public from day one.

If you're a hotelier thinking about what it takes to raise the bar in an underserved destination, join us for this one.

Find The Wesley at thewesleyaz.com and follow Adam and Micah on Instagram. Listen to Foundry Talks on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

We are revisiting our conversation with Jeff and Austin Clegg of Redfish Lake Lodge in Stanley, Idaho because summer there is simply too special not to talk about again.

Crystal-clear glacial water, a natural sandy beach, canyon views that open up to what locals call the Gates of Heaven, and a family-run lodge that has been welcoming guests since 1929 -- this place is genuinely unlike anywhere else. But beyond the setting, Jeff and Austin share what it really takes to steward a legacy property on US Forest Service land. From managing multi-generational guest loyalty to building a seasonal team culture that keeps 60-plus employees returning year after year, there is a lot here for hospitality operators to take notes on.

If you have been on the fence about visiting, consider this your sign. Summer at Redfish does not last forever.

Dylan Barahona is the new general manager at Riverside Colorado, a glamping retreat nestled in Poudre Canyon about 30 minutes outside Fort Collins. Riverside is owned by the same team behind the Mishawaka Amphitheater, the historic 1,000-person outdoor venue that beat Red Rocks for the top spot in Denver Westword's ranking of Colorado outdoor music venues.

Dylan brings over a decade of hospitality experience spanning luxury hotels in Florida, VIP music festival programming including Electric Forest, and outdoor hospitality. He joined Riverside just six weeks before this recording and is already rethinking how the property drives revenue, builds community, and earns repeat guests.

In this conversation, Dylan talks about why he is pushing guests to extend single-night stays into two and three-night trips, how he is curating "pre-parties" before Mishawaka shows to create a festival-within-a-festival feel, and what a potential donkey hike experience called Donkey Delights says about his approach to programming. He also shares his take on where AI genuinely helps in hospitality operations and where it falls short, including why no algorithm is going to walk up to a guest struggling with a fire pit and make a real human connection.

Dylan also reflects on a stay at Rancho Santana in Nicaragua that shaped how he thinks about the difference between programming and memory-making.

Find Riverside Colorado at riversidecolorado.com and follow Dylan on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dylan-barahona. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to Foundry Talks on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If your hotel's sales plan is collecting dust on a shelf, Amy Infante-Still knows exactly why. Amy is the founder and CEO of GitGo, a hospitality B2B sales partner agency that has helped hotel owners, management companies, and brands build commercial engines that actually produce results. With over 20 years in the industry and more than two million buyer conversations under her belt, she brings a ground-level perspective that is hard to find anywhere else.

In this episode, Amy breaks down the number one sales problem she sees across properties of every size: a pipeline that is reactive, unclear, and impossible to scale. She explains why sales, marketing, and revenue management so often operate in silos, what it actually takes to bring them together into one commercial operating system, and how to tell the difference between a leading indicator and a vanity metric.

Amy also gets into the owner dynamic that shapes everything: how much to be involved, how to ask the right questions without meddling, and why transparency about an asset's goals can be the fastest path to better results. She shares what strong sales cultures actually look like from the inside, why on-site strategy sessions changed the way GitGo works with clients, and why building a commercial team is always an evolution, never a revolution.

You can connect with Amy on LinkedIn at Amy Infante-Still and learn more about GitGo at gitgogroup.com.

Foundry Talks is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

What does it actually take to build a hotel brand that holds up over time? This week Rachel sits down with Carly DeFilippo, co-founder of Cognoscenti Creative, a branding studio run by two sisters out of Colorado. Carly and her sister Lauren got their start working in-house at major restaurant groups before launching an agency built specifically for independent and boutique hospitality properties.

Carly shares how their intake process, what she jokingly calls brand therapy, goes way deeper than most operators expect. The goal is to surface what a property is truly about before a single logo or color palette ever gets made. She walks us through how they approach hotel naming (meaning comes last, energy comes first), what luxury actually means in 2025, and why having a clear and specific point of view might be the most underrated branding asset a hotel can have.

We also dig into the New Orleans property they named after a Walt Whitman connection, the Outrider Hotel in Manitou Springs, and why the Surf Hotel in Buena Vista keeps coming up as a gold standard for cohesive brand storytelling. And Carly gets refreshingly honest about what Cognoscenti does not do, and why that clarity is what makes their client relationships work.

Whether you are just starting to think about your brand or wondering if it is time for a refresh, this episode is full of practical perspective from someone who has lived on both sides of the business.

You can find Cognoscenti Creative on Instagram at @cognoscenticreative. Carly and Lauren are also both on LinkedIn and worth a follow.

Edward May has spent over 20 years in hospitality, from independent hotels in America to running chalets in Courchevel to knocking on doors in the Cotswolds in 2008 with an idea most people didn't understand yet. That idea became Hidden & Found, a company that brings full hotel-level service into privately rented homes across Europe.

In this conversation, Edward gets honest about what actually separates a beautiful property from one that delivers. It comes down to care, and that always filters down from the top. We talk about what guests are genuinely craving right now, and why so many travel agents are over-promising and under-delivering because anyone can build a website and list homes without ever actually being on the ground. Edward's team is the one showing up, facilitating the stay, and course correcting when things go sideways.

He also shares the Bali stay that stuck with him for over a decade and what it looks like to travel with the same family for 15 years.

If you work in hotels or manage properties, this one is full of real perspective on the guest journey.

Find Hidden and Found at www.hiddenandfound.com

What makes a traveler choose your property over the one next door? We talk with fine art and travel photographer Alex Kittoe and Fora travel advisor Caroline Kittoe about how visual content and trusted travel partnerships shape that decision before a guest ever walks through your lobby. Alex explains why shooting without a clear content strategy can be unsuccessful, and why knowing whether your photos are for a website, social feed, print ad, or billboard changes everything about how a shoot should be approached. He also challenges the assumption that reels outperform static content, sharing real examples where photo carousels delivered stronger brand consistency and storytelling. Caroline pulls back the curtain on what travelers actually say when they are choosing where to stay, and it is not what most properties expect. She talks about the growing influence travel advisors have on booking decisions, how a new generation of travelers is using advisors differently than their parents did, and what makes her confidently recommend one property over another. They also dig into why brands like Huckberry are winning with long form storytelling, how luxury yacht experiences from Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons are redefining guest expectations, and what independent hotels can learn from both.

Find Alex's work at alexkittoe.com and on Instagram at @alexkittoephotos. Connect with Caroline on Instagram at @la.vita.di.lela or through her Fora Travel advisor page at foratravel.com/advisor/caroline-mccray.

Jacki Brown has spent 20 years in marketing, from consumer brands like Shark Vaccum and Ninja Blender to the B2B hospitality tech world. Today she runs Jacki Brown Marketing, a fractional consultancy helping hospitality tech companies build the marketing foundations they need to actually grow.

In this episode, Jacki and Rachel dig into why so many hotel tech companies are getting their messaging wrong and what it takes to fix it. Jacki shares how she approaches positioning from both sides of the table, having marketed to hotels and now helping tech vendors understand how to reach them. They get into why narrowing your target audience is the hardest thing for founders to do and why it's non-negotiable, the number one thing Jacki does before touching any marketing strategy (hint: it involves the sales team), and how hotel tech messaging has swung from feature dumps to vague value statements and where it needs to go next. They also talk about why data fragmentation is still the biggest pain point she hears from hotels heading into 2026, the difference between selling to a management company versus an independent property, and what genuinely great hospitality looks like when everything else goes wrong.

Resources mentioned: Jacki Brown Marketing at jackibrownmarketing.com and her free training deck Introduction to Hospitality for Tech Leaders at jackibrownmarketing.com/resources/introduction-to-hospitality-for-tech-leaders