Dear Round-Up Readers,

In London, we celebrated the Queen's Jubilee (hope you saw some of the pageantry or at least this video of the Queen with Paddington Bear? Adorable!) Exciting to see London busy again! My Mom is visiting, sharing fun stuff we've done in case you're headed here.  We enjoyed a new ballet version of "Like Water for Chocolate" at the Royal Opera House, and a fantastic meal across the street at Side Hustle, at NoMad London which has a strong female team––Exec Chef Ashley Abodeely, Kate Hart is GM, and NoMad's development executive is Michelle Walder, who we interviewed!  We saw several art exhibits and went to a new festival in the countryside called Kite where we saw (and met!) author Elizabeth Day and artist Ai Weiwei.

Loved the innovative new Afternoon Tea, by chef Jessica Préalpato at The Carlton House Jumeirah.  Jessica is the first woman to be named "World's Best Pastry Chef." She makes her beautiful pastries without refined sugar!  Amazing treat and I will be profiling her soon in hertelier. 

Enough about London, lots of news, so let's get to it! The big hotel industry action was in NYC this week with the 44th annual NYU Hotel Investment Conference!  Bringing you highlights (remotely) with help from conference chairman Jon Tisch and our friends at JLL! 

First some general business and women's news...

Business News: inflation keeps hogging the headlines. Last month, the CPI rose by 8.6%, the largest gain since 1981.  A sample of some price surges: airfares 37.8%, eggs 32.2%, chicken 19.3%, and milk 15.9% (source: WSJ)

• More on inflation: basically the cost of living is going up while wages aren't keeping pace, if you are wondering why this happens and what it means, read this excellent explainer in the NYT.

Women, business, life, and work: 

• Dark Side of Danish Restaurants: the darling of the global culinary scene worth £5 billion annually, is built upon a scary culture of abuse, misogyny, and worker exploitation according to a recent story in the FT by Imogen West-Knight.   She cites the work of Lisa Lind Dunbar, a veteran of professional kitchens in Copenhagen who has been sharing anonymous accounts of these practices. PLEASE READ THIS EYE-OPENING STORY! If you don't have access to the FT, email me. 

• The UK tests 4-day Work Week: 70 UK companies have signed on to trial the short work week, to see if it boosts productivity, cuts carbon emissions, and improves family life, without cutting pay.

• Punctuality Is Having a Moment “Fashionably late” falls out of fashion after more than two years of remote work, when, for many people, there was no good reason to be tardy, read more in the New York Times. A very interesting cultural shift!

• Six Forces that Fuel Friendship: good friends are important in life and work, a journalist who has been writing about friendship for The Atlantic for the past three years has identified six key themes: accumulation, attention, intention, ritual, imagination, and grace.

• Greatest Life Hacks: so many excellent tips in this round-up from David Brooks at the NYT must-read! One of my favorites, The biggest lie we tell ourselves, “I don’t need to write this down because I will remember it.”

Travel & Hospitality news:

• US removes COVID testing requirements! Demand is through the roof As of today (June 12) no more test results are needed to enter the country, the article cites many experts about how demand is going through the roof. 
• NYU Hotel Investment Conference: see our coverage below! The Points Guy offers a tidy wrap-up of key themes on the future of hospitality, from the labor crunch to sustainability and how this will impact the consumer experience. The trades reported: large bets and big spending on technology, pent-up demand offsets economic headwinds, and though rates are high they still lag inflation.

• NYU: Marriott Launches Diverse Hotel Ownership Program 'Bridging the Gap' New $50 million fund to support women and minorities in franchising! 

• Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt President and CEO, on CNBC ‘Squawk on the Street’ to discuss the acquisition of Apple Leisure Group, momentum on the group side, business travel, foreign demand in the U.S. is faring, and labor troubles.
• Work When You Want: Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin on CNN discusses their "come as you are" policy to attract workers and offer to work as little as one shift a week to cope with the labor shortage.

• Hybrid Work Hampers Recovery of Business Travel-Focused Hotels in Big Cities Costar looked at office occupancy and hotel occupancy and rates in  New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Chicago. There has been an uptick in people going back to work, midweek hotel occupancy is on the upswing though still behind 2019.

• More on hotel tech: CNBC reports on the automation boom coming to the hotel industry, from 24-hour check-in to texting for towels.

• Boutique Hotels––financing getting tough as rates rise and terms tighten reports Costar from the BLLA conference which happened off the back of NYU.

• Travel Is Back and So Are the Influencers, CNN takes a dive into hoteliers' tricky relationship with influencers especially as occupancies soar. 

• Travelers Ask, Cash, What’s That? in a transition hastened by the pandemic, increasingly you can travel abroad and barely ever handle a physical bill or coin, whether pounds, kroner or euros.

• From #SwedenGate to a food-less wedding, why are we obsessed with stories of hospitality gone wrong? Inspired by a recent Disney-themed wedding where the couple chose to have Mickey and Minnie instead of serving food at their reception, Salon looks at the cultural influences behind hospitality.

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. Lots of stories to share! 

• NYU Conference: we got the scoop from conference chairman Jonathan Tisch read highlights of his opening remarks, which included a mention of Davonne Reaves!  

• NYU Conference: 5 Takeaways from JLL's Stephany Chen and Zach Demuth The name of the game is "Let's Make a Deal," we get the scoop on the investment scene from JLL.

• How Carmen Otero said "I DO" and Grew Weddings Biz for the Sofitel Legend Santa Clara in Cartagena 2022 is predicted to have the most weddings since 1984, read how Carmen is attracting this lucrative market.

• Burned Out? Lean Out like Sheryl Sandberg Inspired by all the stories surrounding the departure of Sheryl Sandberg from Meta (Facebook), columnist Nancy Mendelson reflects on burnout versus depression. 

LISTEN UP: Very important, please take 35 minutes to listen to The Daily (NYT Podcast) breakdown of what the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard verdict means for #MeToo. Spoiler: not good news. 

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 😃 

Have a great week! 

Em