As 2025 closes out, the Suite Spot wraps up with the latest inductee into the TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. CEO of Hotel Equities, Ben Rafter, joins the podcast to discuss all things hospitality and technology and how these two components come together to make the perfect guest experience for travelers.

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, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree here with a very exciting, informative episode continuing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. This is our series where we are talking to those industry leaders and brands, management companies that are paving the way forward. I’ve got an absolutely amazing guest, I’m excited to speak with him today. Ben Rafter, CEO of Hotel Equities. Ben, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot.

Ben Rafter:

Thanks, Ryan. Looking forward to it.

Ryan Embree:

Yeah, we’re gonna have fun conversation, talk all about hotel equities, but on the Suite Spot we do a little tradition where instead of just doing your normal bio, I actually like handing it over to our guests to kind of talk through their hospitality journey. because sometimes you get a little bit more insights. Us hospitality people, we got mentors. We come from different brands, sometimes fall into hospitality, quite frankly. You know, talk to us, our Suite Spot hotel audience, a little bit about your hospitality journey and what led you to your role as a CEO over at Hotel Equities.

Ben Rafter:

Sure, I fit into the fall into it category, without a doubt. I was a, uh, tech guy for better part of 15 years, mostly startups. Sold two of ’em and after selling, the second one was locked out of the industry for a year and got a phone call from a hotel guy. And he said, what are you doing? You want to come to Mount Everest with me? And just because nothing better to do for the next month. We packed up and headed over to Nepal and on about the third day he said to me, so what do you think of the hospitality industry and hotels? And it was dumb enough to open my mouth and give him my opinion that you needed to sort of fuse together larger than life hoteliers, which was his background and kind of quant tech data, guys like me. And over the next 20 days, we hashed out starting a hotel company literally on the side of a mountain, in this case. And after that ended, it was 2008, the market crashed. We had a new president. I flew to Hawaii and we started with four hotels in Hawaii. And it’s been nonstop ever since. So definitely not a traditional way to get into the industry.

Ryan Embree:

Yeah, yeah. You give new meaning to kind of climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak, when, when talking about that. But I think that’s what honestly makes hospitality so fascinating. Because yours, honestly, a lot of the majority of the guests we talked to Ben, hospitality was not their final destination, so to speak, what you were talking to. But I think it brings new perspective and obviously insights into an industry that, quite frankly, we’re gonna talk about it in a minute, but needs some more technology integration into hospitality right now. And to fast forward to today, obviously a strategic merger in May, 2025 with Springboard Hospitality. It’s been extremely busy second half of the year for you and your team, including a couple exciting announcements we’re gonna talk about in a second, Ben. But, you know, can you share some of the biggest kind of takeaways and lessons you’ve learned for the business, over this past six months? Maybe give us a state of the Hotel Equities as you would say.

Ben Rafter:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean one thing, coming from sort of independent and generally either gateway market or leisure focused. You learn how diverse some of these markets are and how much different it is running a courtyard or a Rest Inn or a Hampton in a suburb versus running a resort in the middle of Waikiki. And it’s been great kind of seeing both sides of the spectrum there. And then trying to figure out how initiatives or which initiatives work across the entire entity. And then which of ’em should be limited to $400 a night hotel or a select service hotel. And I gotta say, coming from the independent space where we’re all about content and drone shots and Instagram and social media and things like that, obviously walking into a suburban flagged select service hotel is a whole different, a whole different ball of wax, so to speak. So that part’s been great. We have great leaders in all of those divisions and it’s been great working with them.

Ryan Embree:

Yeah, I mean, just adds to the exposure, again, what you were talking about. And to add to that, right. You know, in October you were back on a panel discussing outdoor centric hotels at the lodging conference in Phoenix, we talk about the spectrum of from lifestyle, and now you’ve got this experiential glamping. This was the perfect topic for you and hotel equities, obviously through your management of postcard cabins, which is with Marriott’s new outdoor collection. Talk to us, how about how you guys are really capitalizing on this trend, experiential travel, that glamping that now even the big brands are trying to get into?

Ben Rafter:

Yeah, every, everybody’s trying to get into it. So we were on all of the postcard cabins, and that was kind of the feature point of Marriott’s launch of the outdoor, their outdoor segment. It’s one, it’s been great. It’s an area that’s growing two and a half, a little more than two and a half times faster than the regular hotel on the street. Now, of course, you break that down by segments it maybe two times and maybe three times. And it’s also so new for the brands that they’re trying to sort of get their arms around it. And because you, you just have to think when you’re staying in an outdoor experience, you’re not staying in a city. And when you search on Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt or whatever, the first thing you usually do is you type in New York City, you type in Seattle, you type in whatever. Well, if you’re gonna stay in the middle of the national forest where the nearest city is 2000 people and you don’t know what it’s called, like how do you even search for this kind of stuff? And then you combine that with staffing, where, the GM better have a pickup truck and be able to go to the nearest Piggly Wiggly or whatever to go find whatever’s needed because you may be an hour away from the nearest area to get the entity. There’s no Sysco truck driving by in the middle of the afternoon. And then high seasonality. And the big question I think for the industry is going to be how do you fill some of these things on a Wednesday afternoon in off season? Obviously we’re targeting groups in corporate and to make them kind of intimate experiences where 8, 10, 15, 20 people can get together. But it’s, it’s a totally different space. But the great thing is consumers are really interested in it because they’re interested in branching out from their traditional leisure stay, and now they can find this kind of stuff.

Ryan Embree:

I mean, listen, as someone who climbed Everest, right, I mean that is all about the experience. The destination and getting to that is part of the journey and part of the experience, which I think is why people love it. And they’re gonna do a lot of your marketing for you to be honest with you, between the storytelling that they’re doing on places like social media, now all of a sudden they’re telling your story and, and people are, are, are just really seeing this in a time where we’re gonna talk about in a minute, technology’s kind of taking over, but being like, Hey, maybe this is a nice little escape for me and, and something different that is going to be an experience. You know, we talk about that all the time. And a true experience.

Ben Rafter:

Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be outdoor travel. The great thing about this industry in general, and the way it’s evolving and I’m looking forward to talking more about technology, is that people want something more and more customized and more and more localized. It could be a food vacation, it could be outdoor travel, it could be adventure travel, which to me is a different category. And the way that we’re now interacting and searching for these experiences getting much more advanced and people can now find them. Versus before it was, I know I wanna stay outside, I’m gonna research some natural national parks, and where do I go from there? Right. And now it’s a wide open space.

Ryan Embree:

You wanna see how many segments our industry has gotten chopped up into go to any hospitality conference. And you’re talking about heritage, travel, food travel, like you’re talking about travel, that’s multi-generational travel, right? It used to just be business and leisure. Which one are you on now? There are so many different ways and priorities the way that people and travelers are looking at travel through a completely different lens than they did a decade ago. And I think a lot of that, to be honest with you happened. What happened in 2020. It’s interesting to see brands, management companies adapt to those and try to be at the forefront of that because it’s these emerging markets and trends are popping up and they’re becoming widely popular.

Ben Rafter:

Yeah, it got it, it was accelerated for sure. In 2020, I, there’s a comparison I like to make. Back, back when I was a kid and was learning how to ski, we had the little skinny narrow, super long skis. It was difficult. Snowboards came around and everyone complained about snowboards ’cause they carved up the moguls or whatever. I can’t remember what it was, but