Hotels win lenders with more than rooms

The "heads in beds" strategy is getting a serious update from both the boardroom and the bank. We’re looking at why lenders are finally falling for hotels with diverse revenue streams (hello, F&B!), why the secret to a productive meeting is actually better questions and why the "wild west" of AI is finally getting some regulatory guardrails.

Different departments, same goal: building a property that’s as resilient as it is resonant.

And in your inbox later this week: A Mint Pillow Q&A with Kaleigh Wiese—a problem solver, creator, entrepreneur, and educator focused on the niche needs of owner-operated independent hotels.

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Poking fun at the booking anxiety.
Kayak is having a little fun with the modern travel planning ritual: open 47 tabs, read 23 reviews, then second-guess your booking five minutes after hitting “confirm.” The new “Got That Right” platform positions the metasearch site as the antidote to the analysis paralysis.

Stop letting third-party delivery apps hijack your margins.
The beta results are in, and turns out guests spend significantly more when they can tap their way through a digital cart at their own pace.

Back off.
We all love a "surprise and delight" moment, but there’s a massive difference between remembering a guest’s favorite wine and tracking their off-property GPS coordinates. Are we building a deeper connection with our guests or are we just building a creepier database?

No-no-no-notorious.
Roomza’s new "Room of the Day" feature is a VIP pass to the world’s most famous (and infamous) guestrooms.

Pretty as a peach.
Take a look at these six “sit-and-stay-awhile” spaces in the South.

Trust the hotel management experts. 

We provide security-first cybersecurity and IT management trusted by hotel management companies to keep back-office and front-desk technology running smoothly and securely across their properties.

New Orleans’ Hotel Saint Vincent takes its cues from the raucous city around it, then dials everything up a notch. The hotel's most buzzed-about detail—a psychedelic, marbled Voutsa wallpaper—wasn’t found in a modern catalog; it was found in a 160-year-old accounting book. Designers Liz Lambert and Larry McGuire blew up the traditional Florentine marble patterns from the orphanage’s original financial ledgers to create a signature motif that now appears on everything from guestroom headboards to silk Far West robes.

Why it matters: This "layered" design philosophy solves the problem of how to make a historic building feel current while keeping the curiosity alive. Rather than a standard historic restoration, the Hotel Saint Vincent layered Italian modernism over a 19th-century shell (of a former 1860s-era orphanage, no less). By intentionally clashing eras—pairing the building’s original grand staircase with 1970s Murano glass—they create a sense of discovery that feels collected over time rather than decorated all at once. (Domino)

Hotels have spent the last few years kicking the tires on AI. Chatbots here, pricing engines there, maybe a robot rolling down the hallway—but regulators are now stepping in with rules about how these systems treat people and handle data. Looks like governance is finally entering the chat.

Why it matters: Hospitality combines several factors regulators worry about: biometric data, payments, identity checks, and automated decisions that affect guests and employees. Global frameworks such as the EU AI Act are emerging, treating AI systems as auditable assets that must disclose how they operate and how decisions are made. For hotel owners, that means AI tools will increasingly come with compliance obligations—another reason to understand exactly what’s running behind the front desk and inside your tech stack. (Hotel Online)

Gone are the days when lenders underwrote the rooms and politely ignored the restaurant. Now, they're asking a question that used to come much later in the conversation: what’s happening on the F&B side?

Why it matters: Former Standard International CEO Amber Asher, who is now partner and chair of the hotel group for New York City-based Helbraun Levey, says lenders increasingly recognize that lifestyle hotels with strong restaurant partners can generate significant non-room revenue and draw neighborhood traffic. That combination creates a steadier income profile, which is exactly what cautious lenders want to see right now. (Hotel Investment Today)

You don’t need to run the meeting to stand out in one. Often the most respected voice is the one that asks the question everyone else overlooked.

Why it matters: From renovation planning to rate strategy, hotel decisions tend to unfold in long conversations with a lot of opinions flying around the table. A clear question can expose blind spots, test assumptions and turn a big idea into a practical next step. That kind of clarity saves time (and often a few headaches down the line), so keep a few smart prompts in your back pocket to help every meeting land somewhere useful. (Dr. Carolyn Frost on LinkedIn) 

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Mint Pillow is curated and written by Jennifer Glatt and edited by Bianca Prieto.