Dear Round-Up Readers,

Who else is getting excited for Thanksgiving?  It's my favorite holiday! Though I desperately miss being with my family in New York, we celebrate in London with F&Be columnist Sloane Warren who makes an excellent feast. In addition, this year I am hosting a "ThanksGALving" (get it?) with some girlfriends. If you have a female chef at your property or within your circle of friends, have them email Thanksgiving recipes (emily@hertelier.com)!  We are hoping to offer up some Thanksgiving recipe inspo over the next two weeks. 

Wow, it has been a busy week with the NYU conference, the International Hospitality Institute's "Global Hospitality Summit" and the conclusion of COP26, let's get to the news.

• NYU Hotel Investment Conference, which is normally held in June, happened in New York City this week. The five-month delay due to COVID-19 seems to have attracted more attendees with over 1,100 people gathering to discuss industry issues.
  • Overall, CEOs and C-suite executives were highly optimistic about travel's rebound.
  • Conference chairman, Loews Hotels CEO Jonathan Tisch, spoke about the return of business travel, the role travel plays in overall economic recovery, and how the industry will embrace corporate social responsibility and equity issues long-term.  Some outtakes:
    • On adapting to technology: "During COVID, millions of people learned they can work from anywhere. If workers don’t need to be in the office, how can the industry encourage them to stretch out vacations, work away from home while spending time with family, and enable them to be just as productive?”
    • On Labor: "Top talent has great power to decide where they will build a future career. If travel and hospitality are to be an employer of choice, our industry must make progress—to incentivize, recruit and develop a diverse range of talented team members and leaders.”
  • Labor shortages, diversity, and inclusion were hot topics discussed in several sessions, with Marriott President Stephanie Linnartz, noting at her panel that she was the only woman on the stage and that no people of color were speaking. “We need more people of color and we need more women. We need more diversity,” she said that Marriott has made progress in driving inclusion, moving the company’s goal to get gender diversity at the leadership level from 2025 to 2023. “At the senior levels, as you move up the ranks of seniority—that's where we need to push additional diversity." 
  • For more covered at NYU, click here and here.
• Internationational travel is back to the US! Monday, November 8th was a big day with international travel resuming to the US from 33 countries, the WSJ did a summary of what this means for cities from New York to LA and JLL Hotels & Hospitality CEO Gilda Perez-Alvarado offers an industry outlook in an excellent interview with Bloomberg TV.
• FUNNY: Iceland parodies Mark Zuckerberg's 'Metaverse' in a tourism video that went viral. If you've not seen it, watch it here.

On hertelier this week:

• COP26 has come to a close: wondering what happened? Read our stories!!  We recap pledges made by our industry and offer an explainer on the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism.
• With topics like the climate, diversity, equity, and inclusion top of mind, columnist Nancy Mendelson unpacks "Do Shared Values Matter in the Workplace?"
• And with labor issues at the forefront, we interviewed Kristina Snaith-Lense, GM of the Upper House Hotel in Hong Kong, about her career with Swire Hotels and how she's stayed with one company and moved quickly up the ranks versus moving around. 

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Have a great week,

Emily