FNA 215: This Show is Spot On

Glenn: [00:00:37] I forgot to add us to the stage. It’s been a while. Hey! This is why we need Suzanne here. What do you got going on over there, Greg?

Craig: [00:00:49] Well, we’ve now got the official Glenn and Craig Friday night audit monkeys. They can push the button to get the show started. I like it. She wants her monkey.

Glenn: [00:01:11] Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Friday night Audit. The only show celebrating giving platform to us kooks, misfits, and monkeys of hospitality. Hey, Craig, what’s going on?

Craig: [00:01:24] How are you, brother? It’s been a while. We haven’t talked that much this week.

Glenn: [00:01:28] No, we really haven’t talked this week. I was another job, you know, last week, unfortunately, our guest had canceled last minute. Unfortunately for our guests, they are here this week. So reverse kind of a problem happening over there. But you remember that crazy travel story I told you last week, right? I’m happy to report on my way home, everything went really smoothly, and I even got home earlier than I originally anticipated. So yin yang of the travel universe is is making itself known.

Craig: [00:02:02] Well, it’s all on the wheel. Glenn goes around, comes around. Oh.

Glenn: [00:02:07] It sure does. So, Craig, how do you want to do this? You want to bring on our guest today and kind of pretend you know what’s going on, or I.

Craig: [00:02:15] Think you should do it. You know, you’re full of, you know, piss and vinegar right now. So, you know, let’s let’s get him out here.

Glenn: [00:02:21] And to be fair, I was filled with piss and vinegar, but just prior to the show, I got rid of half of that. So. All right, everybody today we got our friends from the company. Ocra. So I’m very excited. The really cool company I got number one, the official guests of the show. We got Mr. James Hansen. No, for parking for dollars. And then their SVP of marketing, Sarah Becherer. She loves that hotel parking and has got me so dang excited about something that I didn’t think I could be excited about. Guys, welcome to the show. Hi.

Craig: [00:03:03] Welcome to Be here. And so much to unpack on that intro between the monkeys and the vinegar and everything else. I can’t wait.

Glenn: [00:03:11] Listen, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I was like that. You should have seen me all day today. James. I was like, I was in hard mode, like all day long, like I can’t. First of all, I woke up at 4 a.m. and lay in bed for an hour just going, God damn, what the hell am I doing up at 4 a.m.? Then I came to terms with it. Then I got a lot of work done between five and noon, and then I. I tried to have a nap, fell asleep three times, didn’t work out. But then I started tapping into the energy. I’m like, damn, we got James, we got Sarah. We’re going to have a great show. I gotta, I gotta bring it for them.

Craig: [00:03:49] But every time. Yeah, that’s the shout out button. From now on, squeeze the squeeze the monkeys.

Glenn: [00:03:56] I gotta push this button first. I’m legally obligated, of course. Everybody, thanks so much for joining us. A great way to end the week. Thanks. And hey, cheers to everybody out there. So Sarah, that’s as you say, it looks pretty bougie. What are you drinking over there?

Sarah: [00:04:18] I’m I’m sipping on a little Fernet, you know, a little digestif after dinner. Drink something to wipe me down from this week.

Craig: [00:04:27] Artsy fartsy. We should swap spots.

Glenn: [00:04:29] First of all, the balls on you having an after dinner drink before cocktails even fully starts.

Sarah: [00:04:37] Listen, I only got so much in my liquor cabinet right now. It was this or malort. I’m not kidding. That’s the only two things in there, guys.

Craig: [00:04:48] So heads up.

Glenn: [00:04:50] Either you don’t drink at all or you all have a serious drinking problem.

Sarah: [00:04:55] I’m gonna let you roll the dice on that one, buddy. You pick.

Craig: [00:04:59] Yeah, I should have practiced. You can bring anything you want. Yeah, but it was full last week. That’s. That’s how I’m going to take it was.

Sarah: [00:05:08] It was fuller before I left for a business trip and left my houseboat at home. I’ll tell you that. But I still got a little bit in there.

Glenn: [00:05:17] So, James, what are you drinking over there, buddy?

Craig: [00:05:20] I thought you’d never ask. This is my my take on a Paloma. It’s a Palm Beach, Paloma. So I cut out the grapefruit put a different citrus in it. So I prefer a little mixture of lemon and lime. So it’s tequila. I like La Croix plain, right? So I put plain La Croix tequila and some citrus, and I’ve got myself a little play on Paloma. It’s refreshing because it is like about 105 degrees out tonight. Yeah. My sweat brow is showing it, but what better way to cool down a patio in South Florida than.

Glenn: [00:05:49] Hey, listen, I’ve been doing a lot of sweat and sweat related video content lately. So glad that you could be here and participate in that. I think it’s a new movement, so I’m excited about it, but I think we should. Craig, I think we need to reveal a little something about the Paloma over there. There’s a lot of debate about what the drink was, and I happen to have had dinner with them both in Chicago on Monday. We’ll get to that in in, in a minute. But you were out there. You were field testing the Paloma to see if it was the right way to go. Right, James?

Craig: [00:06:22] Well, you field testing, quality assurance checks, you know, making sure it’s up to snuff. I mean, listen, in Chi town, if you’re going to spend that kind of money on a cocktail, it’s got to be dialed in anyway. So, you know, I thought nobody better than me to make sure that it’s right.

Glenn: [00:06:37] Yeah. It’s like it’s it’s Craig if you want to order a second round, you have to get permission from your financial advisor. It was

Craig: [00:06:44] Yeah.

Glenn: [00:06:46] Actually, listen, James, honestly, for the prices in Chicago compared to what we see in New York and what I see in Vegas all the time, everything felt like a bargain. Fair.

Craig: [00:06:55] Really?

Glenn: [00:06:57] Wow.

James: [00:06:57] No, truly it did. Truly it did. And I’m, I’m, I’m just I’m ingesting totally in that because I just the last week I was down in Brickell area of Miami, and I feel like I needed to take a second mortgage out to have dinner at two of the spots that we went to. I mean, it’s like hyper inflation personified and in the south part of Miami. But, you know, in the spirit of supporting hospitality and tourism, you have to do it.

Glenn: [00:07:21] Yeah. When you yeah, these days, these places are so expensive. When you make a reservation, you also have to tell them what year you bought Google stock in order to qualify to a.

James: [00:07:30] Pack of cigarettes running in that city.

Glenn: [00:07:33] I, I think something it’s like 23 to 25 in Chicago or something.

Sarah: [00:07:41] Like in Chicago, we’re looking at about 17, but I quit two years ago, just so you know.

Craig: [00:07:47] I had to throw that in there, I love it. I just had to listen. You take that weekly habit, you go buy some of that Google stock. Aloha. And next thing you know. Yeah. To eat out of Miami.

James: [00:08:01] Hotel company stock with that money.

Craig: [00:08:03] Yeah. Right. Right.

James: [00:08:06] So you guys have got a fascinating business that you’ve launched. Tell us about it.

Craig: [00:08:13] Oh, yeah. Fascinating is a word. Thank you for using that word. Fascinating. Riveting cash. Making people a lot of money. We’re in the as you can read on my little subheader there. We’re parking for dollars. So basically, you know, for a long time, the parking lots at hotels throughout our country, they sat dark and perhaps dingy and you know, underused and underutilized. So our co-founders Ethan and Nate came up with this amazing solution that we essentially built the GDS much like we have in our hotel room inventory, but we built that for parking. So hotel owners and operators are throwing their parking inventory onto our platform. That’s where we come into play. And we essentially distribute it through all the. I call them OTAs in the parking space. They call them aggregators, you call them moneymakers, whatever you want. But we’re putting it through all the channels, and now they’re able to resell these spots to non-hotel guests, and all of a sudden, poof, out of nowhere, you know, we’re generating a ton of new income and ancillary revenue. So it’s super exciting times. That was my 27 second elevator pitch.

James: [00:09:17] I love that.

Glenn: [00:09:18] That was great.

Sarah: [00:09:19] Yeah.

James: [00:09:21] You know, Glen and I were talking before you guys arrived. And you know, he knows this. I love to monetize every square inch of a hotel, but you’ve got to do it in a way where it’s not insulting to the guests. Or if you’re one of those, you know, really nice boutique hotels that is included in the community as the third and fourth bedroom. You don’t want to offend the residents either. And I think if you’ve got, I don’t know, a concert championship name, a sport game you know, plays anything coming around. You know, this is a great opportunity. Can, you know, conferences, all of it where this revenue is nothing but upside because you’re right, that parking lot is sitting there empty. I mean, we had a couple of hotels down in San Diego. We had so much additional room that we were carving out restaurant pads. Right. You know, and, you know, luckily they were select service. So, you know, we’re, we’re going to go eat the restaurant you want. You drove past when you came into the lot, you know, here.

Craig: [00:10:30] Sarah, can we carve out some some of our budget to hire Craig because that pitch was awesome. I mean, we could always use the extension.

Sarah: [00:10:39] That my entire marketing budget as far as I’m concerned. I will tell you that right into Greg. Let’s go.

Craig: [00:10:45] Oh, Glenn and I talked about it in Chicago. It’s like unused real estate space within your real estate. Your hotel, in this case, is money that’s not well spent. You got to be maximizing it. And to your point, you’re right. I mean, it’s got to fit in with what you got going on in the hotel, the neighborhoods, your to your point, if it’s an urban or downtown location. But yeah, concerts, you hit the nail on the head, the sporting events, these are all like massive opportunities for upside revenue. And right now everybody’s looking for that.

Glenn: [00:11:12] Yeah. After I left, after I left you, when I was in Chicago, I was at a hotel that had a parking lot, and I was looking at those empty spaces in a very different way than a.

Craig: [00:11:21] Dollar bill.

Glenn: [00:11:22] Y’all had before. And I started looking at those signs that said that are very static, right? And that we were joking, we were joking, we recorded a podcast and we’ll talk about that again later. We were joking about how hotel industry used to have seasonal rates, right? It’d be like September or October. Was this rate? It’s the same kind of thing. Two 0 to 2 hours. 4 to 6 hours. But it has no regard as to what is happening in the area. If there’s nothing or it’s just a street closed off for a shopping mall or, you know, you got Taylor Swift in town, you know, so yeah.

Craig: [00:12:00] Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, it’s, it’s the, you know, the whole dynamic pricing model. You gotta teach it, gotta use it and take advantage of it when Demand’s there.

Sarah: [00:12:08] I’m glad you’re looking at parking differently. Glenn. That makes me happy.

Glenn: [00:12:11] Yeah, it’s.

Sarah: [00:12:13] It’s.

Glenn: [00:12:13] Exciting.

Sarah: [00:12:15] Parking is just like a hotel room, right? You can’t sell Monday’s parking space on a Tuesday, like, super perishable asset. So we’re helping hotels monetize that.

James: [00:12:24] I love that, and you and you’ve got an app that everybody just downloads, goes right to you, goes, oh, these guys have got parking next to the event that we’re going to.

Craig: [00:12:34] And now you’re now you’re thinking even steps ahead of where we’re at. Craig. We actually we rely on our partners because if you think of the big aggregators out there, just like we’ve got Expedia’s and hotels.com and booking.com in our space, the parking space, no pun intended. That was a cheap one, but a free one. You’re getting it nonetheless. Wait a minute, Craig. All right. I’ve been waiting. I teed that one up. Greg. What happens is our partners who are providing the visibility, whether it’s through the apps or the websites, partners like Spothero, Parkwhiz cheap airport, parking.com, all these reservation driving sites, they’re the ones out there that have the big marketing dollars and getting presents. They build out the great apps. What happens is because we’re a GDS and we have our revenue management solution layer there, you can be a, you know, a big fan of one of those particular aggregators and book through their app. Once that reservation happens, it’s passing through our channel. We’re doing all the optimization, so to say, an app that we’re not a consumer facing side of the business. Our solution, we’re like sort of the middle layer in between our middleware, if you will, connecting the hotel empty spots with those players that are out that in that space. So whatever they choose to book, they’re going to end up touching some part of our solution and software. And the flip side is from the business, the, the B2B side of it, our customers, the hotels, everybody, we’re helping them just lift those revenues and in many cases, unlock them completely if they haven’t been.

James: [00:14:03] So I’m loving it. And Sarah, since you’re going to send all of your advertising dollars to me, you know, Glenn and I split that. So you need to send us t shirts to wear during Friday night audits so that we can promote the show in every Friday night.

Glenn: [00:14:19] I would honestly, I’d prefer you to send me some monetizable parking spots.

Sarah: [00:14:24] That’d be how I. How would I send you some more random objects for the back of your office here, here’s my contribution. I got a handle shaped like a hot dog.

Glenn: [00:14:34] Oh, well.

James: [00:14:36] That’s on it. Not ketchup. Like our former producer.

Sarah: [00:14:41] Well, we were we were just in Chicago. You don’t put ketchup on a hot dog.

James: [00:14:45] No. You don’t, you don’t.

Craig: [00:14:46] Yeah.

Sarah: [00:14:47] Absolutely not.

James: [00:14:48] I’ll give you my address once we’re off the air.

Sarah: [00:14:50] Yeah, absolutely. I’ll see you.

Glenn: [00:14:51] Some stuff you might not realize, but our our very dear producer Dave was with us a long time, but he insisted that ketchup was the only way to eat a hot dog, so we had no choice but to cheat for that. I know. I mean, he was with us through thick and thin during Covid and really was instrumental in helping us start the show and all, but ketchup was a little too much.

James: [00:15:16] One more time and it’s going to be Beetlejuice. Okay. You know, he will. He will hear it.

Glenn: [00:15:23] What’s what? What’s Once kid. Once Dave’s kid drops out of karate, he’ll be, he’ll be, he’ll be back. But we’ll see. We’ll either get a black belt out of it to protect us, to protect us, or they will be back. I’ll come back with better pockets.

James: [00:15:36] With the black eyes. I think what we get.

Glenn: [00:15:39] Yeah.

Craig: [00:15:41] He’ll come back with fatter pockets. Less less going out to karate and more to other resources now. So

James: [00:15:48] Where’s where’s the majority of your parking at right now? Is it coast to coast? Is it the northeast? Is it Chicago only is, you know, where where are you up and operating at this point? I gotta tell you, this business model a lot. I think you’re on to something not just an urban, but suburban areas like the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, where you’ve still got a lot of big parking lots, whether it’s at a junior college or I’m sorry, I’m showing my age, community college or university you know, and various other Industrial parks, hotels, restaurants, shopping centers. So where are you operational now?

Sarah: [00:16:37] Well, we’re all over the United States, all over North America. Currently occurs live at 700 locations. Our software is live and we work with, what is it now 50 plus national and regional parking operators. We team up with them. And last year we made about $28 million in net new incremental revenue for 115 locations that we were working with God. So we got some.

Craig: [00:17:05] Hotel locations.

Sarah: [00:17:06] And scale, as you say. But to answer your question, I mean, we find a lot of success in hotels that are located near really big points of interest. So like airports, convention centers, event venues busy downtown urban corridors, because like James mentioned earlier, all those apps and websites that people use to find book and pay for parking, like if there’s a high concentration of people using those apps and there’s a lot of demand for parking, then we’re going to help the hotels capture that demand. So usually that’s around like, hey, I’m going to this event. I’m going to log on to spat here, or I’m going to find a parking spot or airport parking is huge too. If you’re a hotel near the airport, there’s plenty of demand for people who are looking to park near that airport.

James: [00:17:47] Absolutely. Now, how about now? I’m working with a group now. You know, the hotel industry just in North America is leaving over $120 billion on the table by not taking care of Craig.

Glenn: [00:18:03] Craig, where is this table that keep, keep I keep talking about I was going.

Craig: [00:18:08] To ask, can we get a piece of.

Glenn: [00:18:09] The heck? We gotta get 1%. Everything else we gotta find Glenn.

James: [00:18:15] It’s covering your pool right now.

Glenn: [00:18:18] But no, no, that that’s taking my money away. Oh.

Craig: [00:18:23] The inverse there.

James: [00:18:24] So are you guys also providing handicapped spots as well?

Craig: [00:18:31] Yeah. So we cover the gamut for the spots. And a lot of it’s dependent upon Craig what they have available at that, you know, per location. And it’s not just spots only you know those channels. They do a really great job. Those aggregator partners I’m talking about of really describing each venue and its unique shape and form. So it might have EV chargers, it might have certain amount of accessible spots. Yeah. I’d also add just like a little bit of a point on that, especially you mentioned a couple of those like sports venues, for example, something we’re experiencing and still will through this weekend with recently with the World Cup is these hotels, we happen to have locations in each one of these markets that we’re hosting, the seating games and all the brackets, these hotels that are taking advantage of what we’re doing from the revenue management side. I mean, ten-x in the type of revenue that they would normally sell that spot because yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s ridiculous to see the numbers. And I don’t want to misquote, but there’s hotels that were, you know, comfortable taking 20, $30 for a spot. Then World Cup comes in there and we’re showing them demand and saying, you get $100 a spot, $200 a spot, whatever it is.

Glenn: [00:19:35] Yeah.

James: [00:19:36] Yeah. I mean, you know, Glen used an example earlier, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen in town. It’s like, oh yeah, here we go. You know, and I, I walk a couple extra blocks to gain a little bit better freeway access. Okay. And get get.

Craig: [00:19:52] In and out quick. Yeah. That’s a big driver.

Glenn: [00:19:55] Yeah.

Sarah: [00:19:56] Yeah. The ingress and egress is huge. And also a lot of hotels that are already running shuttles. Right?

James: [00:20:01] They’re speaking my language. Did you hear that?

Glenn: [00:20:04] Yeah.

James: [00:20:05] I’m loving.

Glenn: [00:20:05] It. He likes those those those words. That’s for sure. And I think the fact of the matter is now I’m pretty sure that this is probably why there’s so much excess space is because Americans love cars. A lot of jurisdictions say you need to have X amount of parking spaces for X amount of square feet. Your structure is. Which is typically led to. According to data out there, an excess of parking to begin with that was never needed. So you got all that extra stuff anyway. You might as well, you might.

Craig: [00:20:37] You might as well monetize if the opportunity is there. You know, we remain from the steadfast from the point that if there’s transient demand like Sarah alluded to, or we can see from those partners that somebody buying parking, well, then that’s an opportunity, right? If you’ve got a lot, you know, we’ve got the opportunity and we have the solution to monetize it.

Sarah: [00:20:54] That’s every square inch of the property is your parking lot.

James: [00:20:58] That’s it, that’s it.

Craig: [00:20:59] And we’re really hyper focused. Greg, on hotels, to your point, I heard you slip in the educational and institutional type stuff, but not to say that’s not on the roadmap. There’s parking needs on university campuses, obviously, like you talk about with the colleges we’ll get there, but we’re we’re big on the crawl walk run approach. So right now we’re yeah, I mean, we’re doing it and who knows where the next endeavor and sneak preview. I think we’re moving a little further up in North America. And I’m talking to our friends just north of us.

James: [00:21:30] I.

Glenn: [00:21:31] I’m pretty, I’m pretty tapped into the community. So yes. Yeah, I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say.

Craig: [00:21:39] Yeah, yeah, we’re excited about it.

Glenn: [00:21:41] We’re talking you’re going into dog sled spots as well. You know, I.

Craig: [00:21:46] Went up there for a site inspection and I realized that I’m first not a very good dog. Sledder is that the right term or is it like a jockey of dog sleds? So I’m not good at that.

Glenn: [00:21:57] That’s right.

Craig: [00:21:58] I couldn’t think of the word. I’m not a very good musher. I’ll stick with snow.

James: [00:22:03] That was good. That was.

Craig: [00:22:04] I’ll stick with sales and things like that. But who knows? I mean, if you can park it, we can monetize it, right? So let’s go.

James: [00:22:10] Well, yeah, I mean, you get the family that shows up in the RV that’s the size of a semi, you know, and, and, you know, that’s a whole different pricing schedule. And yeah, we, we had a hotel up in Studio City that tour buses for some of the other bands and, and when during pilot season, back in the day, we’d get the B-list directors, actors staying at the hotel as well. And we had a huge amount of parking and we had the largest public pool, I guess you would call it, other than an Olympic size pool. And we monetize the hell out of that. We’d have the neighbors come in. We let them use our pool for $25, plus they had to hit a food and beverage minimum, you know?

Craig: [00:22:56] Yeah. I mean, every opportunity you see it all the all the time now.

James: [00:23:00] Yeah. Now, I don’t know if anybody noticed, but James said a word and Glenn’s eyes opened up.

Glenn: [00:23:08] Yeah.

James: [00:23:09] It was brackets.

Glenn: [00:23:12] I so yeah. Or if you want to move to the to the brackets.

James: [00:23:16] It’s a good time. I mean, I saw the excitement and the smile on your face, Glenn.

Glenn: [00:23:22] I, you know, I love a smooth segue, so I’m gonna pivot and we’re gonna go right to where we are. So Sarah, as you may or may not know, we’ve been doing big pet peeve competition. We started with 32 of the things that annoy us most of all in hotels, and we’ve whittled it down through a mix of online polling, LinkedIn questions, incredible deep discussions, hours of deliberation. I could go on and on, but now we’re down to our final four horsemen of hospitality misery. So we’re down to water pressure, roulette. Never know what you’re going to get right. The outlet dessert got, you know, you still can’t find these these outlets over there constantly hitting, hitting lamp switches. I had. Oh my God. I had a lamp switch situation at this hotel that I was at recently. An identical dispenser bottles. All right. So I’m sorry, I gotta, I gotta tell, I gotta tell this story. So there’s a hotel that I, I stayed at this this week that I’m, I’m not gonna mention and couldn’t turn off the effing light. There was. I’m like, I’m looking all over this thing. I’m like, where the f is this goddamn light switch? And listen, I I’ve seen him everywhere. I’ve seen him on the bottom. I’ve seen him on the cord. I’ve seen him stuck inside all, you know, everywhere. So I’m looking, I’m like running my fingers across everything. Nothing. Then I notice it’s like plugged into some sort of device that’s plugged into the wall. So I unplug it and it goes off, and then I plug it back into a regular light and it goes back on. I’m like, all right, so it must be connected to some sort of switch somewhere, right? But there’s also no actual switch on the lamp.

Craig: [00:25:22] Right?

Glenn: [00:25:23] So I go and I plug it back into the thing with the and the light pops on. So I’m looking around the room, I’m looking around the room. And finally I find all the way at the other end of the room, around the corner, I hit the button and it goes off. So I figure out how to how to turn it on. But in all of my years of light switch misery that at this particular time was the worst one I’ve ever seen. And I understand why it is in now in the in the final Four horseman over here. Now.

James: [00:25:57] Glenn, I think the next time you check into a hotel and you get into your room, just set up your DJI camera, put the mic on and immediately start hunting for light switches. Okay, because we are in a visual market now. Okay. And I know you’re walking around going, I’m, I’m above average intelligence. Why can’t I find that fucking switch? Sorry. Gotta have that.

Glenn: [00:26:34] That’s.

Craig: [00:26:35] I have to ask, can you add a caveat to. I think it was the fourth one, which is the bottles. Yeah. Because my first take on this one is I’m with you on the identical dispenser bottles and I, I don’t it might have been you and I talking about when they positioned them also in the wrong place.

Glenn: [00:26:53] That’s right. Yes.

Craig: [00:26:56] You know what I’m talking about.

Glenn: [00:26:57] I know exactly what I’m talking about. The particular the particular hotel I was in on a Monday night had three walls to choose from. Now, they went so far as to, put the put the plumbing in in a way that was really smart. You could turn on and off this this the switch, right? To be able to not get that splash of cold on you. It was on the other side. But then instead of putting the lotion and the shampoo and stuff above it, they put it on the wall with where the the water was coming, coming out. So when you turned on the shower, you had to like put your hands through the running water to get your shampoo and conditioner. So now all of a sudden you have to be a Cirque du Soleil performer to figure out how to get your hands out without losing shampoo. Right. I’m a guy that needs conditioner, and I can’t risk losing it all to the drain. Moving it around.

James: [00:27:56] I can’t risk losing it.

Craig: [00:27:58] Yeah, it happened to me. That’s I. It happened to me. I think I know the hotel and they were positioned and I also had them. I had a little bit of the pressure issue. And I also had the the bipolar temperature control where like one millimeter to the left goes scalding and then half a millimeter to the right is like an ice machine. So you, you’re like trying to slide your hand through. Do I, do I risk hypothermia or do I want third degree burns? And am I going to get anything out of the product?

Glenn: [00:28:26] I actually the hotel we were at, to be fair, had a team of NASA scientists on call that would come up and give you the calculations necessary to get right.

Craig: [00:28:37] Yeah, sir. It’s going to be extra if you like conditioner tonight, because we’re really only here for the shampoo. Oh, you want body wash? The body wash is on the far right, sir. Right.

Glenn: [00:28:47] But first you have to have to. But first you have to figure out how to turn on the lamp.

Craig: [00:28:51] Yeah. Yeah. First test is. Do you know where the switch is? If you do, then maybe you can shout.

Glenn: [00:28:58] So Sarah, we haven’t heard from you. What do you feel about general pet peeves in hotels and the final For pet peeves of 2026.

Sarah: [00:29:09] I gotta say, this might be controversial, but I think two of these wouldn’t have made my top four. I think with the identical.

Glenn: [00:29:16] So hold on, Sarah. We’ve had heartbreaks along the way. We’ve. Yeah, I’m.

Sarah: [00:29:20] Sure, I’m sure we have. It’s kind of like when you do a Halloween candy like bracket or something and the Kit Kats are out.

Glenn: [00:29:26] Right. That’s what happened here. Yes.

Sarah: [00:29:29] So identical dispenser bottles. I always bring my own shampoo, conditioner, etc. to your hotel, so this one doesn’t bother me too much, but I understand.

Glenn: [00:29:39] Oh. Hold on. That’s why. That’s why your hair so lustrous, isn’t it?

Sarah: [00:29:43] Yes, yes.

Glenn: [00:29:44] Look at that. It’s very.

Sarah: [00:29:47] It’s very expensive.

James: [00:29:50] Yeah, but his forehead is growing.

Sarah: [00:29:52] Yeah. The other one. I think maybe it just speaks to a deeper sadness in my own life, which is the water pressure roulette. I just resigned myself to whatever comes out of that thing. And like, if it’s really weak, like I did something to deserve that. You know what I mean?

Glenn: [00:30:08] Like, yes, if I, if I must, I just bathe in my own tears.

Sarah: [00:30:11] Yeah. I’m like, maybe I just need to cry in order to like, get more water out of the shower. But I’m working on I swear to God, those lamp switches, those will be the death of me. That drives me absolutely bonkers. And I know this is like, this is going to make me sound so brand new, but this is a long time ago. This is a long time ago. I remember the first time I went to a hotel and I had to put my key card into like the little thing in the near the door in order.

Craig: [00:30:37] To check.

James: [00:30:38] Our controller.

Sarah: [00:30:39] I spent three days in the dark. I swear I could not figure that out. I could not figure it out until finally I was at a conference and one of my friends came in my room and he was like, Sarah, you can put literally any card in that slot paper, in that slot.

James: [00:30:57] You put your business card in there. Yeah. It’s amazing.

Sarah: [00:31:00] It really it was sad. I was like doing right by the window. I was using my phone camera. It was really pathetic. So I’m gonna go.

James: [00:31:10] That’s really funny because. When those things first started appearing here, they’d already been in Europe for a few years. And it had been years since this. I was initially in Europe. And when I went back and those come into play and had no idea, nobody said anything at the front desk and I just came in. I’m throwing my stuff everywhere and it’s like, nothing works, nothing works, nothing works. So I go downstairs, the guy goes, well, did you put your card key into the. Wall? And it’s like, what slot? What are you talking about?

Sarah: [00:31:50] I’m telling you, I.

Craig: [00:31:51] Feel.

Sarah: [00:31:53] Like you said earlier, I am of at least like normal intelligence. I don’t know if it’s. But. And I should be able to figure this out. This is pretty. This is impossible. This is an impossible thing for me. I was a suspicion task, as they say. I was just putting that. Just really doing my best.

Glenn: [00:32:11] Speaking of Sisyphean tasks I keep going up the hill to get the beer, and they keep running out. I’ll be right back.

James: [00:32:18] Okay. Bye, Glenn.

Sarah: [00:32:20] Bye.

Craig: [00:32:21] We’ll stare at the money table.

James: [00:32:22] Yeah, yeah, there we go. Stare at the money table. So how long have you guys been in operation now?

Sarah: [00:32:30] The company has been around since 2018. We actually started out as parking operators, like as a company that actually parks cars.

James: [00:32:38] Makes sense.

Sarah: [00:32:38] Yeah. So we have really, really deep roots in parking. So our founders were actually in college, they were in accidental college. And they created the company as the result of a script camp, like an entrepreneurial boot camp.

James: [00:32:52] At Occidental College.

Sarah: [00:32:55] In California.

Craig: [00:32:56] Yeah.

Sarah: [00:32:57] Yeah. So they wanted to solve the problem.

James: [00:32:59] Back to California. But don’t tell Glenn that.

Sarah: [00:33:02] Yeah, you know what? All roads lead to California. All of them. This podcast is otherwise. But you might know parking around the LA Coliseum is, like terrible, right? Yeah. So that was the problem that they were out to solve. And then when we first started the company, we built this software for ourselves to help us manage all of those OTAs, like all those aggregators, right? Like managing editor easier. And then when Covid hit, this might surprise you, but people stopped driving and parking places. So ain’t nobody doing that. So at that point, we decided to figure out.

James: [00:33:41] We’re drunk the whole time, so we don’t know.

Speaker 5: [00:33:44] Oh, seriously?

Glenn: [00:33:46] Not that. Not the whole time.

Speaker 5: [00:33:48] Yeah. Yeah.

James: [00:33:50] Clean it up. Clean it up.

Sarah: [00:33:53] People wanted to buy the software we made, so we pivoted and became a B2B business. And then a couple of years ago, we entered the hospitality space in earnest, working with hotels. Yeah.

Speaker 5: [00:34:04] It’s been a fun ride.

James: [00:34:05] The fun of this industry is how did you find hospitality or hospitality, find you in these incredible stories with these incredible companies and these outstanding individuals that Glenn and I have had the privilege to meet. Like every day for the past 30 years, you know, it’s just, it’s fun. I, I’ll be at a conference for, I don’t know, commercial real estate, anything other than hotels. And I’m on a panel and.

Glenn: [00:34:38] Say, you should have said a construction for backing up beeping noises.

Craig: [00:34:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James: [00:34:47] You’re right. Yeah. So I start out by telling everybody, first of all, I’m sorry, I work in the best part of commercial real estate and that’s hospitality.

Craig: [00:34:56] That’s right.

James: [00:34:57] I explain to them why. You know, and they’re all going, oh, you can make money doing that.

Speaker 5: [00:35:02] It’s like, yeah.

Sarah: [00:35:05] Yeah.

Craig: [00:35:06] 100%. We can sell your parking too. So we can turn that commercial asset into a kind of income generating. Oh, you yeah.

James: [00:35:14] Yeah. You look at some of the low rise office parks, you know, down here in Orange County, California, one and two stories with massive parking lots. And they’re two minutes from John Wayne Airport and nobody’s there on the weekend. Yeah. I think that’s an opportunity.

Craig: [00:35:36] You know, Craig, we also have the friendliest business in general tourism and hospitality as a whole. Yeah, the hotel industry man. There’s not many. There’s not many. Like we have people within our organization that are, you know, relatively new to the hospitality and hotel side of the business. And having a few of them go recently with us to High tech and some other more recent conferences. And they’re like, man, everybody’s so nice. You could just walk up and introduce yourself and they’re not going to blow you off and you can have a conversation. Oh, I have a, you know, they’ll blow you off, but that comes later. Yeah. They’ll blow you off later. When you go to follow up with an email or call you back. That’s right. Sign the contract party with you before they blow you. That’s right, that’s right. Particularly if you’re paying the bill. Right. You know the credit card. Everybody wants to party. No. Just everybody that paid the bill for me over the last 30 years when we’re all paying the bill for you. Come on.

Sarah: [00:36:31] It’s a pleasure.

Craig: [00:36:32] All right, quick anecdote about our hospitality while you guys are sipping your services and cocktails. See, I was at a show a couple years ago, as Sarah alluded to, relatively new to the hotel space, right? A couple of years now and a few years back, I was at a hohocon when we had it in Orlando. If you guys remember it was a big to do. So the block party night, we rented out the the space that has the I, which is the giant Ferris wheel there in Orono. I don’t know if you remember, I do. We all out there in the scorching South Florida sun. And of course, as I didn’t make it over there because it was in the scorching South Florida sun and I needed a bus to get smart. That was too much fun. Yeah.

James: [00:37:13] Oh, I wasn’t there. I’m afraid of alligators.

Craig: [00:37:16] Yeah.

James: [00:37:18] You missed a torrential downpour.

Craig: [00:37:20] A Florida storm came through and everybody scattered. Like turning the light on. And the cockroaches down here, the palmetto bugs, we call them scatter like crazy. So we all scattered into a bar and.

James: [00:37:30] Iguanas at that point. So.

Craig: [00:37:33] Well, we weren’t quite that far, but by the way, there’s an iguana pizza place around the corner. So every time we have that issue where they freeze and fall out of the trees, this guy shout out to pizza, puts iguanas on his pizza and you can get an iguana pizza. Wow. Mojo, you gotta look it up. El presidente from Barstool store.

Sarah: [00:37:50] Check it out. I hate that a lot.

Craig: [00:37:52] The iguana part of it, or the El Presidente part?

Sarah: [00:37:55] The pizza part.

Craig: [00:37:56] Oh, rather than them just get shot and killed and thrown out into the Everglades. Yeah. Put it on the pizza. So, yeah, we were soaking wet at the bar. I’m bellied up to the bar. I turned to my left and there’s a young guy here and he’s. I said, I like we do. We introduce myself to him. I said, what do you do? And he says, I sell parking. And that was that was the first time I met Ethan, who’s our co-founder. And I go, you sell parking? And I turned. It feels like that feels like the beginning or the beginning of the the biopic. What do you do? I sell parking.

Sarah: [00:38:27] We call that credits. Yeah.

Craig: [00:38:31] That’s right, that’s right. And I was sold. He sold me. I mean, I was with a hotel company at the time, and I turned to my CEO at the time, I said, we need to get this guy set up selling our parking spot. So I fell in love with the solution immediately, hence why I’m here today.

James: [00:38:45] There you go.

Craig: [00:38:46] He sold me.

James: [00:38:47] How how does your former CEO feel? You know, left him and he found a new bride. Okay.

Sarah: [00:38:56] Yeah.

Speaker 6: [00:38:56] To be fair, he’s also a former CEO, so I don’t think he gives a fuck anymore.

Craig: [00:39:01] Yeah. Now he doesn’t. But at the time he’s like, really? You’re leaving a hotel space to go in technology and none of this, all this, you know, at the end of the day, man, that’s what we do. We’re still in hospitality. We’re still servicing our guests, our partners.

Speaker 6: [00:39:13] I think that’s a pretty good bet on your your career. You’ve had a lot of jobs doing that sort of thing. This is a cool, different sort of challenge. It plays into the whole industry. It’s going. And I love that you’re buying into something that you really believe in. Yeah.

Craig: [00:39:29] I mean, I get the unique lens, Glenn, and thanks for pointing that out. And I’m also buying into it because I love tech and I love how we can apply it in our space, you know, servicing our guests better and taking care of our, the human capital, which is our team members.

Speaker 6: [00:39:42] Wait. Hold on. You said you could apply tech better. You mean like easy to find light switches or different types of fonts.

Craig: [00:39:50] Ready for this tech? How about something that just tells you where the light switches are? I mean, that’d be crazy, right? Yeah, I can see that with the phone.

James: [00:39:59] On the.

Craig: [00:39:59] Wall, the phone underneath the bed with the phone light, like looking for a hidden switch under the side of the bed.

Sarah: [00:40:04] Like we need to add more lights, like lights that illuminate the light switches. Like just add another layer of lights. That’s my tech. Yeah.

Speaker 6: [00:40:12] I agree, I agree, there’s never enough light in hotel rooms.

Sarah: [00:40:15] Never.

Speaker 6: [00:40:16] I’m with you.

Craig: [00:40:18] I appreciate the city city hotel sometimes that have the floor to ceiling windows that you can open up. But I have an issue with it because then I feel like I’m showing the world everything.

Speaker 6: [00:40:26] Yeah. No. Well, the you you, you do take pride in yourself. And I respect that. But one of, one of the things that I find is those same hotels never seem to hire people that can measure the shades properly. And there’s always a massive ring of light around every single window. When I’m in a city.

Craig: [00:40:48] Lost art. Lost art.

James: [00:40:51] Experience. With curtains in a hotel room.

Speaker 6: [00:40:56] Oh dude I don’t. Don’t get me started with curtains for for real. You know, you know what happened that time, Sarah? As a as a child, I got.

Sarah: [00:41:07] Okay.

Speaker 6: [00:41:07] Oh, boy.

Sarah: [00:41:08] Oh, boy.

Speaker 6: [00:41:10] I got tangled in some curtains. And I, I almost lost a leg because it was really hard. It was really hard. And every time I go to a hotel and I see curtains, I still get, as you can see. Look, I’m really emotional.

Sarah: [00:41:28] And you’re falling apart over there, man.

Speaker 6: [00:41:34] Sorry. I just I just think about it to this day and it’s just, it’s really deeply affects me. The fact that my parents had enough of me and tied me up in the curtains has nothing to do with it. Not at all. They were innocent. It’s. Yeah, it was all.

James: [00:41:52] But it was constantly blowing you.

Speaker 6: [00:41:58] I’m just. I was just at a hotel last week, and I found a pet peeve that I forgot that I hated. And that’s where the p tack is obviously just below the window. Right. And then they have the whatever the sheer is. Right? But then the Hvac unit always blows right up and makes that sheer unit come flying out. So it’s floating around like a ghost the entire time, sucking up all the cold air. And you don’t get any cold air in the room. But I guess you get a show.

Craig: [00:42:34] And nobody figured out that the vent was coming out of the factory with its little vent shield pointed upwards.

James: [00:42:41] Exactly. Exactly.

Craig: [00:42:42] Who was designing? Probably the same guy that was measuring the curve.

Speaker 6: [00:42:45] That’s right.

Craig: [00:42:46] Probably him. We need to talk to that guy. Hey. New business idea. We’re designing the new versions of tax, and we’re going to learn how to use a tape measure.

Speaker 6: [00:42:56] Our new business is called Inches and Angles. We’ll get that stuff done properly.

James: [00:43:00] Yeah. We only measure once and it’s always too long or too short. So there.

Speaker 6: [00:43:04] You go.

Craig: [00:43:05] There you go.

Speaker 6: [00:43:06] Leah. Hey. What is James jumping in the pool? We’re going to. We’re going to Leo.

Craig: [00:43:11] It’s getting close.

Speaker 6: [00:43:12] Yeah. You know, I think I think before we wrap up for sure, maybe prior to shameless plugs, you could jump in there and then. There you go. Come and do come and do a final pitch for your for your business. All, all wet and stuff like.

Craig: [00:43:26] All right, fair enough.

Sarah: [00:43:27] That’s a great idea. Yeah. Like that’s iconic. I’m not jumping in anything. I’m staying right here. Right.

Craig: [00:43:33] Well how have you.

James: [00:43:37] Been to something? Tell us how you discovered this industry. How did you get into parking and into hospitality?

Sarah: [00:43:46] That was the most impeccable segue I have ever heard.

Craig: [00:43:49] He’s the king. That’s why I said it.

Sarah: [00:43:51] I want to jump into something.

James: [00:43:53] Okay.

Sarah: [00:43:54] I’ve been in parking for a minute. Nine years, I guess. Wow. Of my career in parking. I actually started working for a company called Spot Hero, which is one of those aggregators, one of those parking OTAs we talked about earlier. I thought it just looked like a cool tech job when I lived in Chicago. And it was it was a very cool tech job. But when I got deeper into the industry and I was working with all of these parking operators, I became obsessed with parking. It’s a fascinating industry. It’s like commercial real estate on the smallest possible scale, just like we’re it’s, it’s a smaller room and we’re turning it over more often. And the cost is high, but it’s the same principle. And I just found that like, really fascinating. And the people I worked with were so interesting and so like obsessed with the industry that I fell in love with it. And I’ve gotten really involved in it over the years. I’m, you know, on the advisory board of Women in Parking, which is an organization I care a lot about. And I founded a group called the Parking Collective, which is parking plus marketing marketeers. Yeah. And yeah, it’s just something I really like. I honestly don’t see myself not parking for sure.

Craig: [00:45:11] So you’ve really parked yourself in this industry.

Sarah: [00:45:13] I’ve really parked myself in this through on the through on that parking brake. And you know, I’m also a really good parallel Parker, which I think helps. I think you have to be good at parallel parking in order.

Craig: [00:45:24] So you’re an unparalleled parallel park.

James: [00:45:27] To be able to parallel park on both the right hand side and the left hand side.

Craig: [00:45:32] And it’s not easy.

James: [00:45:34] Glenn has heard me say this for decades. If you don’t know how to parallel freaking park, you shouldn’t have a driver’s license.

Sarah: [00:45:41] Agreed with you 100% backing you up.

Craig: [00:45:44] But I’ll tell you what. There’s nothing like that sweet, sweet feeling getting in that tight spot on the first shot. Oh, I love Greg. Greg, how do you feel about the vehicles that do the parallel parking itself, though?

James: [00:45:58] Okay. Is that a newer vehicle that I’ve had for two years? And it’s got that capability and I have never used it. Okay. The reason being.

Craig: [00:46:13] Because that’s because he had he valet parked his car. I was gonna say, you still trying to figure out the tech to turn it on? Is that what you’re trying to get? Like, Greg.

James: [00:46:22] You’ve been to my. No, I, I know how to turn it on. I do.

Sarah: [00:46:26] Probably.

Craig: [00:46:27] Just a button.

James: [00:46:27] I look at it this way.

Craig: [00:46:29] Ironically, it’s located on a lamp switch, you know? Yeah, it’s it’s over by Glen. Switch somewhere. You gotta flip it.

James: [00:46:36] Yeah, it’s it’s. Yeah, it’s the interior lamps, which I can’t find. But my, my opinion on that is that’s a skill that I don’t want to give up. Okay. I may be holding the ghost on that, but I mean, I grew up reading maps and also Thomas guides. Okay. To find my way around. I started one of my first jobs was as a messenger. So if you couldn’t find north, south, east, west and you know you weren’t going to last. So I, I got really good at that. Now, when I got my first Mercedes, it had the, the digital map in the, in the dashboard. It was a CD and. I plugged the hotels in. If I was going to a city and I’d go see all the hotels in that city and see who was doing what. So I found that great, but I gave up my skills on maps. I’m not giving up my skills on parallel parking. I’m not doing it.

Craig: [00:47:44] I hear what you’re saying. Craig’s not relying that GPS too much. It’ll make your make your driving skills soft. You really you really lose track of all the icons that used to rely on before. You know that.

James: [00:47:56] That in in landmarks, you know, when you got past, you know, okay, if you’re going up in Glen, it’s the 405. And, and you see the Ikea, you know, you have just left Carson and you’re just that much closer to LAX and you may only be going 30 miles an hour, but you’re that much closer.

Craig: [00:48:22] You’re going 30 miles an hour. That’s pretty good. Yeah. That’s a high speed. That’s three in the morning only. Yeah. Yeah.

James: [00:48:31] Don’t tell anybody that because they don’t want to drop down to 25.

Craig: [00:48:34] Yeah. So guys, I want to I want to thank you as we’re, as we’re doing this on Monday, I was in Chicago and I got to record a podcast with you all. You had me on your brand new podcast. Spot on. I know it’s not plug a palooza, but I promise we talk about why I was in Chicago and all. So thanks for having me be a guest. That was a pretty awesome. I got to talk about myself for a while. Unlike unlike tonight at all, where obviously I haven’t said anything.

Sarah: [00:49:05] It was an absolute pleasure to have you and to take you out to dinner before and spend so much money on Chicago cocktails as apparently we addressed earlier.

Craig: [00:49:14] It was listen, I, I, I told you 14 rounds is typical, so don’t I thought.

Sarah: [00:49:23] I thought we were 15. I was.

Craig: [00:49:26] Monday.

Sarah: [00:49:26] Night. I had money on that man. Money on.

Craig: [00:49:30] That?

Sarah: [00:49:31] Yeah.

Craig: [00:49:32] I couldn’t even imagine how many variations of Palomas. I mean, there’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I had they had several different types of old fashioned. I don’t know what was going on in Chicago, because I went to a dinner the next night and that was I went to another place and they had a whole menu of all these different types of old fashions. It was like really, really riding the wave, riding the wave of trendy old fashioneds. Yeah. Everybody’s got them. Everybody’s got to spin their own version variation. I don’t mind it. Yeah. So Sarah, I love that you guys are doing a podcast for marketing. That’s pretty cool idea.

Sarah: [00:50:06] Yeah, I think actually I’ve been inspired by this conversation. I think I should start having episodes where I ask people high pressure conversations while they’re parallel parking.

Craig: [00:50:16] That’s a great idea.

Sarah: [00:50:18] Or I’m just like, listen, you have exactly this much time to pitch me your business, but you have to back into a parking spot. That’s exactly six inches longer.

Craig: [00:50:26] Than.

James: [00:50:27] That, and you had them sing a song so that you can do parallel parking karaoke as well.

Sarah: [00:50:33] Oh, and I can call it unparalleled Parkers.

Craig: [00:50:36] Oh, unparalleled.

James: [00:50:39] There you go.

Sarah: [00:50:40] I think, yeah, I think that’s the move. No, seriously. Glad it was so awesome to have you and so much fun. It was also my first time interviewing anyone. Literally ever could not have asked for a better guest. I’m super, super excited, man, and I’m glad your time means the world to me. Honestly.

Craig: [00:50:55] It’s going to be Glen. It’s going to be fun. That’ll be out in like 2 to 3 months or something like that. They have to, they have to stitch together different words to actually make me coherent. So the editing process is going to take yeah, it’s right after.

Sarah: [00:51:10] Where it’s just like one word. We’re making you say whatever we want.

Craig: [00:51:14] Thanks for having me today.

Sarah: [00:51:18] We’ll be out. It’ll be out sooner than that.

Craig: [00:51:19] Okay. That’s amazing. Glenn, we had a blast. Thank you for taking the time out to. You guys are great. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me out in Chicago. That was a real that was a real hoot. I really enjoyed being in his studio and doing it. That was a really nice really nice touch. And I enjoy getting to hang out with you guys personally and getting to know everybody a little bit more and the whole team over there. And I really think that this sort of thing is really about what hospitality is all about getting together, hanging out, getting to know each other, you know, building trust. And I think that what we were doing is kind of like the whole point of this show here as, as well. Like, so what I’m going to have to bring on the fake tears. Again, if I’m not careful.

Sarah: [00:52:01] About the curtains, think about.

Craig: [00:52:02] The.

Speaker 7: [00:52:03] Oh, no.

James: [00:52:07] The light switch. Glenn, find the light switch.

Sarah: [00:52:10] Find the light switch.

Craig: [00:52:13] Find the light switch. Glenn, find the light switch. That’s my that’s my my bad. Impersonation from Poltergeist. Go into the light. Caroline. Zelda Rosenberg. She was she was the actress that said that I believe. Zelda. Right. Zelda. Oh, it’s a good show. I still remember the static of Poltergeist, by the way. Haunted me. Yeah, that was really, really. That was really good. That was a really good.

James: [00:52:40] Time for James to jump in the pool. Or are we going to do Shamus first?

Craig: [00:52:44] Yeah. James why don’t you do you want to do the, the plugs and jump in the pool at the end or jump in the pool and then do the plug? No, I’d rather jump in the pool at the end because I think that makes that makes a whole lot of sense. You will join people that have done that before, such as Matt Hostetler, chief development officer of Red roof. I’ve been in, I’ve been in the pool. So I’m excited. We’ll, we’ll do is when you do jump in the pool, we’ll put you on we’ll put you on a single shot and all of that kind of stuff. All right, so now let’s do the part that all of you guys tuned in for. That’s right. It’s a palooza. Sarah. James, I don’t feel confident. I know what you do. Maybe you should tell. Tell us about Akra. Do you want me to start? Is there?

Sarah: [00:53:39] You can start and I’ll be your. I’ll be your hype man.

Craig: [00:53:42] We do so many things in the parking space for hoteliers, but I like to point out 2 or 3 things that are near and dear to me. Number one, we take an unused parking spot, parking lot, garage and we create a massive ancillary stream, ancillary revenue stream for owners, management companies. That single operator, no discretion there. If you’ve got an empty spot, we’ve got the the means to monetize it. Second thing we do is we create new value for owners because that owner has an asset and his business or her business is worth X The hotel business side of it is worth X. The real estate’s worth X. One thing they love is how can they easily increase value of that set of that said asset or hotel? We flip a switch, we start monetizing those parking spots and all of a sudden everybody loves to hear this. Cha ching! More value being created for their asset. The third thing we do is we simplify a rather older and antiquated process of managing multiple channels and doing all this work from the hotels level. We simplify that entire process by doing all of the hard work, by taking those spots, managing them through our GDS, doing the revenue management aspect, generating massive amounts of revenue and new income for the hotel management company ownership. And the best part about it is little to no lift on that hotel team. There’s no cumbersome training. There’s no, hey, it’s going to take 90 days to implement a year to roll out. It literally takes less than two weeks for us to come in there, push the magic buttons, get you connected and dialed up through our APIs to all those sellers. And within that month, we’re selling spots and generating.

Speaker 7: [00:55:26] That’s like literally less time than it took me to get home from Florida last week. It’s amazing. I love it. Hey, listen.

Craig: [00:55:35] When somebody tells me.

James: [00:55:36] Something and Glenn spins in the in the grocery store on Friday. So right.

Craig: [00:55:43] If, if I can sell something that’s going to generate income like this, which we do, and I don’t have to tell a GM or the VP of ops or the CEO or the owner of the hotel that, hey, I need a big lift on your team. It’s expensive. All that stuff. We got rid of all that. We’re simple, straight to the point, and we’re generating new source of income for you. And it’s going 75 to 85% of it, right to the bottom line. That’s how high the margin is on those unused spots 80, 75 to 85%. Tell me how much margin you’re getting on your your bacon cheeseburger. You’re selling in a restaurant or that hotel room.

Speaker 7: [00:56:17] Well, for me, I order a lot of cheeseburgers, so they’re doing pretty well, but Craig Azul hospitality is using them according to their website.

Craig: [00:56:28] That’s right. Yes. That’s right. Yes. So we partners.

James: [00:56:33] That that’s one of the California hotel management companies that I follow on a regular basis.

Craig: [00:56:39] And as you should.

James: [00:56:40] Mark and I go back to when Pam and Greg Friedman were selling F, F and E financing at GE. Okay. So that’s like 120 years ago now. Those guys get it right. They get it right with the food and beverage, with the experience, the hotel and monetizing on the appropriate level to not piss off the guest. You know, and yeah, it’s a great comment. I’m glad you’re working with them. And when we’re off the air, you let’s talk and and get you in front of our good friends over at Pacifica Hotel.

Craig: [00:57:23] Yeah, if you could, that’d be great. And shout out to the CEO at Azul and.

Speaker 7: [00:57:28] Check out get.

Craig: [00:57:28] Alvaro’s a great guy.

Speaker 7: [00:57:30] Yeah, getocra.com. Get ocra.com. Craig, you got anything? You got anything to show? Plug, promote. Push.

Craig: [00:57:41] Yes.

James: [00:57:42] We did not do. Glenn. No stuff this week. Well, we will do it next week. And. Glenn.

Speaker 7: [00:57:50] Yeah.

James: [00:57:51] Prep. It’s all about Africa, except for Toto. Okay. That’s all.

Speaker 7: [00:57:57] I might go fucking go see them on, like, on Sunday night. They’re playing right over here. Christopher Cross. I think I’m going to have to go.

James: [00:58:06] Yeah, you gotta go, gotta go. Yeah.

Sarah: [00:58:09] Wait, Craig, do you do trivia? Like, is that what that is? Okay. I’m a bar trivia host. If I had known, I would have come equipped to grill both of you. So I guess you’re just. Well.

Speaker 7: [00:58:21] Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on back.

James: [00:58:23] And then we will do bar trivia.

Speaker 7: [00:58:25] Okay. Either way back or.

James: [00:58:27] Or we could do this on my show and you can grill me and Glenn on that show as well.

Speaker 7: [00:58:34] But you could only ask us if you’re going to grill us. You can only ask us grilling related questions to throw a little wrinkle. You gotta have the theme. Sorry, you’re a marketing expert. I know we’re gonna grill it. Oh, that’s our new show, grilling while grilling.

Speaker 8: [00:58:51] And I’m gonna pass out.

Speaker 7: [00:58:56] That spicy wing show guy.

James: [00:58:59] Yeah, I like that better than than than Crocs and Birkenstocks. Glenn, I really do. That was.

Craig: [00:59:05] Interesting angles. I mean.

Speaker 7: [00:59:07] Yeah, but like for for what? I get older, we’re gonna change the name to Crocs, socks and Birkenstocks when I really am not cool anymore.

Craig: [00:59:14] Yeah, there we go. The young kids wear socks with them, too.

Speaker 7: [00:59:18] Do they? Oh.

Craig: [00:59:19] Yeah. My son wears socks with crocs.

Speaker 8: [00:59:22] Why? I don’t know.

Craig: [00:59:23] It’s a it’s a generational thing.

Speaker 7: [00:59:25] I don’t know, I’m too old to be part of tapped into the zeitgeist anymore. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on.

James: [00:59:32] But you know, Glenn, on the plugs, you and I and doctor producer director Suzanne will all be at the Memphis Lodging Summit.

Craig: [00:59:43] Yeah.

James: [00:59:44] So we’re looking forward to that. And Glenn and I are also and and Suzanne is going to be joining us at the lodging conference as well. I’m moderating a panel on adaptive reuse, which I’m really, really excited about. Yeah. So it’s going to, it’s going to be fun. We’ve got, we’ve got those coming up and we’re getting ready to drop our first episodes of season 12 of Click Connect. We’ve gotten 16 awards so far in 11 seasons, so, you know, pretty proud of that show.

Craig: [01:00:23] Amazing.

Speaker 7: [01:00:24] Excellent. So I was not proud of this show until tonight. But hey, good luck. Listen, I’m a green light. Drop us a line. Glen at No Vacancy news.com. Glenn. With two ns at no vacancy. News.com. Nathan, we are doing this most Fridays at 5 p.m. eastern. It really depends on our travel schedules. We try to keep it as consistent as we possibly can. And I’m also really bad at promoting when it’s going to be on as well.

James: [01:00:54] So when the fair thing is to say, when we’re out here on the on the West coast, we like to call it day drinking with Glenn.

Speaker 9: [01:01:03] Yeah.

Speaker 7: [01:01:05] I like that. All right. You can find me at the Evermore Resort in two weeks. I’ll be going down there for for nights, hanging out with my friends and shooting a bunch of content that you guys will see a couple of months after that. Then find me at lending con in Orlando on the fourth and fifth also. Yeah. Also after that, I’ll be at the Southern Lodging Summit. You talked about that. Then I’ll be at Hospitality America at the end of the month. And good keynote speeches coming up with my place hotels. I’ll be at hotel spaces and lots more coming up. Oh, including doing a massive general session over at the lodging conference. Guys, what a great time this was with you. So thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll be back next week. The one and only Friday night audit.

Speaker 8: [01:02:00] Oh, no. Glenn, no, don’t do that.

Speaker 7: [01:02:03] Seriously, we have to end.