Suite Spot host, Ryan Embree, breaks down the key takeaways from the 2025 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, which took place in Atlanta, Georgia, from March 17-19. This prestigious annual industry event provided valuable insights, numerous panels, and notable speakers from all across the hotel industry. Learn what critical factors are shaping hospitality in 2025 and beyond by tuning in now. 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. This is your host, Ryan Embree, fresh off our trip of covering the 36 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference. So excited to be, first of all, covering the event. It was an incredible couple days up in Atlanta, Georgia. Some exciting announcements, which we're gonna talk about that on this podcast. Some industry trends, insights, interviews. We brought it all to you. We came jam packed back with content, and really excited to share some of the key takeaways and issues that were raised. You know, we've talked about this before on the podcast. Love attending these events where we get all types of brands, owners, developers, hotel owners, individual GMs at these events, because all the ideas, topics, really important topics in our industry really float to the top. And, you know, you get a really fresh perspective about how everything, how everyone's feeling about our industry and this year maybe a little bit darker clouds than we hear in your years past, but also just how amazing our industry is. And, and, you know, I'm gonna start with my first takeaway. The theme, we talked about it on the episode with Sarah Moss, was Elevate your game. Love some of the programming that was involved. Molly Bloom, the poker princess who ran high stake poker games. The theme was incredible. Jesse Cole of the Savannah Bananas, everybody was wearing jerseys. He'd certainly brought the energy. If you've, if you've ever seen one of those games, there's a wait list now for a, a long amount of time to try to get tickets to those. But I think the, you know, there were, there were some receptions all around that, you know, gaming style and theme. But really, you know, my takeaway was that we're at a place where hotels really have to elevate their game too, and we're seeing it which is the really, really cool part. Hotels are getting creative with their f and b experiences, right? Utilizing different things sourcing because the cost has risen, the operational costs, the margins are becoming very thin for hoteliers right now. Whether it's the price of, of goods, whether it's the prices of wages right now hoteliers are elevating their game to get creative. They're getting creative to get deals done right? And it's events like Hunter and these investment conferences where you're in the room, so to speak, shaking hands, that really can be the difference between a deal getting over the finish line and not certainly a lot of talk about AI technology. You know, looking back on last year's takeaways and reading and, and listening to kind of some of my thoughts, I felt like we're in a much more comfortable place than we were a year ago. I still think our industry is still trying to figure out the best way to use ai, but I think what's happened is now our grand illusions of the transformation that AI can bring to our business, the expectations of those have maybe been just reeled in a little bit. And we're starting to take those baby steps in AI technology, and we're looking for things like operational efficiency to empower our employees, and even AI used by guests and travelers are becoming more frequent and prevalent. And really what that speaks to is the importance of a IO, right? And the what type of content about your hotel is out there. That's why UGC user generated content is so critical. It's so important because travelers are using this information on othe...