Dear Round-Up Readers,

It’s been 32 days, a month of war which has forced every fourth Ukrainian out of their home, creating over 3.3 million refugees, the Washington Post offers a look at this new normal, as “a defiant nation is forever changed but adapting.”

A few other links you may find useful:

• Galyna Petrenko, commercial director Hilton Kyiv, continues to post daily updates including images of the women in the Ukraine Army and her hometown where she is currently staying.  

• Have you heard of “deepfakes”? These are fake videos made using AI that look convincingly real, and now are being used to spread lies in this war.  This CNN explainer is worth a read. 

• For the latest on charities and ways to help, Unicef has launched a new campaign focused on helping children and families. 

On to other news––

Women in the news from this week: 

• Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, died of cancer on Wednesday at the age of 84. The political pioneer not only shaped Western policy but also opened doors for the women who came after her.  Read this tribute in the New Yorker which recounts highlights of her career as the first “most powerful woman in US history. 

• Elusive work-life balance for women is a topic that continues to make headlines this month. Following on the press from Reshma Saujani’s new book, this week CNBC ran a short with Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox, who says, “she relied on her late husband Lloyd Bean to help take care of their two children, missing activities for work while scaling the career ladder. And she credits her career success to the strategy.”  We are going to explore the strains of working with young children with new moms on hertelier this week, but in the meantime suggest reading Ursula Burns's memoir, Where You Are is Not Who You Are.

• Sexism in the wine industry is explored in this article for the Daily Mail by Helen Nicklin, wine journalist and co-host of the Amazon Prime show, The Three Drinkers. Despite how wine is often marketed towards women, her experience has been that the business of wine is dominated by men.  She shares her struggles and why she hopes to change this for the next generation of women. 

Other business stories to consider:

• The benefits of WFH’s very casual dress: WSJ explores new research which indicates that the relaxed “work from home” uniform improves productivity.  “Forget dressing for the job you want, dress for the environment you are in,” which makes for interesting reading as companies head back into offices/more hybrid work.  

• BTW, the WSJ also reports on the insane prices for lunch food, read “The Price of a Lunch Salad Went Berserk While You Were Working From Home.”

Travel news from the week:

• Three major industry conferences were held this week, Hunter Investment Conference in Atlanta, the Hotel, Restaurant & Catering show in London, and the Skift Europe forum, also in London. Overall, despite the war in Ukraine and ongoing supply chain issues, reports from all events seemed hopeful.  Quick round-up: 

  • Castell founder Peggy Berg was the recipient of the Hunter Conference Award for Excellence

  • Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin at Skift Europe explained why they won’t pull out of Russia, that the Middle East is booming, along with more domestic travel and other trends he’s seeing across the world. Being more nimble, how to avoid overtourism and other trends from Skift, here. 

  • Lots of discussion about the labor shortage and recruitment trends at the Hotel, Restaurant, and Catering show. 

• Travel Agent Central reports on two interesting studies: 

  • Amex Travel data shows “spending on travel is outpacing pre-pandemic levels with 86 percent expecting to spend more or the same on travel in 2022 compared to a typical year prior to the pandemic...and tourists want to travel more frequently, with 62 percent of respondents planning on taking two to four trips in 2022 and 76 percent of respondents agreeing they plan to travel more with family in 2022 than they did in 2021.”  

  • In a study commissioned by Travelport and conducted by Toluna Research, thousands of respondents from seven countries said they would be willing to give up some of their favorite things (concerts, spa treatments, movies, sports and going to restaurants) for six months or longer in order to travel.

• From ice skating and curling to boxing, this story by Skift about how hotels have gotten creative to fill ballrooms and other empty spaces during COVID and shoulder seasons was really interesting.  

On hertelier this week:

Welcome to our new subscribers! The story in Forbes "How Women Are Changing The Hotel Industry, keeps bringing new readers! Super excited to have you here.  Also, check out the graphic at the base of this email, our engagement on LinkedIn is top of class for hotel news sites, despite having a fraction of the followers!  I was literally shocked, but so pleased to see this data.  Thanks for all your support!!!

• Big news for women in hotels–AHLA Foundation and the Castell Project merge! We got the scoop first!

• Introducing a new column, “secret hertelier”!  Don’t even ask because I’ll never tell, but here’s where we will be sharing memorable encounters with the famous and infamous.  The first installment is about the legendary Paul Newman. Do you have any tales to share?  Just reply to this email! We’d love to hear them. 

• Feeling out of place? This week Nancy unpacks why being out of your comfort zone is the new comfort zone. 

• St. Julian Hotels & Resorts debuts.  A new ultra-lux hotel brand debuts with a 50/50 board of directors, we speak to the women of the board, Leticia Proctor, Andrea Belfanti, and Frances Kiradjian, and the CEO, Dr. Jeffrey O.

LISTEN UP It has been a beautiful sunny week in London which means, I listened to a bunch of podcasts while walking.  Here are three not to miss:

• Sadly the Taliban has reneged on its promise to reopen schools for girls, The NYT podcast “The Daily” interviews girls in Afghanistan about what they are doing now and how they have managed to find education online. An important but heartbreaking issue that makes you appreciate our freedoms and why we need to keep fighting for women's rights. 

• For creative ideas on how to drive F&B revenue: listen to wine expert Michael Green on Susan Barry’s Top Floor podcast, I also really enjoyed the episode with Lenny Moon, CEO of FlyCoind, a new rewards program using crypto.

• I’m going to be on the popular hotel pod, “No Vacancy with Glenn Haussman” this Thursday (please tune in at 5 pm ET!), and in prep, I listened to the episode with Jennifer Barnwell, President of Curator Hotels. Really impressed with all the innovations and options Curator offers independent hotel operators in purchasing and marketing.

Are you still here? I'd love to hear from you. Why do you read hertelier and what would you like to see covered? Is there someone you'd like to suggest for a profile?  My goal in 2022 is to get to know more of our readers, just reply to this email. I am a real person 😃 

Finally, today is Mother’s Day in the UK, and I am grateful to be safely celebrating with my family. To all our UK readers that are mums (as they say here!) hope you have had a joyous "Mothering Sunday"!

Have a great week! 

Em