Aloha {{first name |}}!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Hawaiʻi Hotel Hui Insider.

This issue turned into a lesson about math. Hawaiʻi hotels are busier than the bottom line would suggest, and the bill for all that cheap debt is starting to come due. Meanwhile, the man behind Expedia tried to buy his way out of AI and couldn't make the numbers work either.

We also have our unfiltered take on the HTA Tourism Conference, new leadership at Prince Resorts and OUTRIGGER, and much more.

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Mahalo for reading, and as always, thank you for being part of the Hui.

Lots to unpack. Let’s dive in.

Mahalo,

Dan Wacksman
Hawaiʻi Hotel Hui Insider Editor-in-Chief 😄

I always look forward to the HTA Tourism Conference. It's a chance to catch up with industry friends and learn a few things. This year was... different.

First, the move to Hilton Hawaiian Village. I actually liked it. The vendor area got more prominence, changing sessions didn't require an escalator expedition, and you bumped into more people (literally). The danger? People might discover they like the new place better. (We were told 2028 is still the target for the Convention Center. Fingers crossed.)

Then came the speakers.

Chief Joseph Pfeifer opened with a powerful, deeply moving account of 9/11 and Hawaiʻi's role in helping first responders and their families heal. Humble, emotional, and heavy. I wish he had leaned even harder into the healing and restorative power of Hawaiʻi, because we all needed a lift afterward.

Enter Nick Adams. Literally, to his own walk-on music.

Adams, the Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism and Values, was there to talk about the future of U.S. tourism policy. Instead, we got an "Alpha Male" personality, with a thick Australian accent, telling an audience of tourism professionals how great U.S. tourism is doing, blaming Canadians for not traveling, offering some rather obvious observations about Japan, and displaying what I thought was a remarkable lack of understanding of Hawaiʻi, its history, and its culture.

I almost walked out. I briefly considered heckling. Instead, like a slow-motion train wreck, I couldn't look away.

But one of the comments on my LinkedIn post asked the better question: Who booked this guy?

Hawaiʻi tourism is dealing with declining international visitation, affordability, airlift, community sentiment, and some very real questions about its future. This was our chance to hear about U.S. tourism policy, and this was who they put on stage? I'm sure there were politics behind the booking. Still disappointing.

The star of the general session for me was Noor Ahmad Hamid, who shared lessons from other destinations across Asia-Pacific. Between his interview with David Uchiyama and the audience Q&A, he gave us a lot to think about. I would have loved to see him in the Nick Adams slot, when the crowd was bigger, and the politicians were there.

Then there was the session many of us actually came for: the 2027 North America and Japan marketing plans. It was canceled without explanation. The coconut wireless was buzzing about some sort of contract issue, and I wish someone had addressed it at the closing session. It was odd, to say the least.

Besides that, great conference! 😉

Last month I attended three different industry events, and despite very different audiences, I kept hearing versions of the same story.

Hawaiʻi hotels are still generating plenty of revenue. The problem is that more of that revenue is getting eaten up before it reaches the bottom line.

At AHICE, Mike Perkins from Colliers showed Waikīkī hotel revenue up 7.1% over the trailing 12 months, while EBITDA increased just 0.6%. Labor, utilities, insurance, F&B costs, and other expenses are absorbing much of the growth.

In other words, RevPAR can look pretty good while the owner's economics don't.

And that's before we get to the debt. A lot of hotel loans originated or refinanced during the cheap-money years are approaching maturity in a very different interest-rate environment. We flagged this last year when someone in the know told us to “start watching the debt at a lot of the Oʻahu and Maui hotels.”

Hilton Hawaiian Village is a good example of just how big the numbers can get. Owner Park Hotels & Resorts just repaid a $1.275 billion CMBS loan that was due November 1. And this isn't a struggling hotel. HHV led Park's entire portfolio in EBITDA last quarter, while revenue was up 15% and EBITDA was up 13.3%.

A hotel can be performing well and still have a major financing issue to solve when its debt comes due, and selling isn't necessarily an easy answer either. Perkins pointed to a stubborn bid-ask gap. Sellers remember valuations from when money was cheap. Buyers are doing the math using today's rates, expenses, and profits.

We're seeing capital move in other ways too. Romer House Waikīkī, which underwent a major repositioning and reopened in 2024, is currently raising equity. And remember the Manago Hotel? We mentioned this quaint Big Island hotel back in July when it was listed for $5.75 million. It recently sold for $2.62 million. Clearly there are property-specific factors at play, but that's still quite a haircut from the asking price. Rumor has it that the pork chop recipe was part of the deal!

Even new development reflects the changing equation. Of the 11 hotels in Hawaiʻi's development pipeline, eight are limited-service. At the Hawaiʻi Tourism Conference, Kevin Aucello of Powell & Aucello said lenders increasingly want the security of major brands, while developers favor hotels that cost less to build and require fewer people to operate. It's not just a Hawaiʻi phenomenon. Higher borrowing costs are slowing new hotel construction nationally and pushing developers toward less capital-intensive projects.

Demand remains relatively strong, but operating costs are rising while capital has become more expensive and more cautious. This doesn't necessarily look like a demand crisis. It looks like a math problem.

Read More

Prince Resorts Hawaiʻi has a new president, with Yusuke Ishii taking over from Shigeki Yamane, who is returning to Japan after leading the company since 2022. Ishii was promoted to VP at Prince Resorts Hawaiʻi in April after previously leading the hotel and leisure sector for Seibu Holdings in Japan. He now takes the reins of a pretty substantial Hawaiʻi portfolio: Prince Waikiki, The Westin Hapuna Beach Resort, Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and three golf courses.

Damien Hirsch is trading Orlando for Maui, leaving his GM role at JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek to become General Manager of The Westin Maui Resort & Spa, Kā‘anapali. By the enthusiasm of his LinkedIn announcement, “Aloha! (Yes, it’s happening!)”, we’re guessing he’s pretty happy about the trade. Aloha, Damien, and welcome!

May Cabauatan has a new gig as Regional Director of Revenue Management at Springboard Hospitality. Congratulations, May!

Brian Regula joins OUTRIGGER Hospitality Group as CFO, bringing plenty of Hawaiʻi hospitality experience with him. Regula comes from Pyramid Global Hospitality, where he oversaw finance operations for more than 130 hotels, and previously held finance leadership roles at Turtle Bay Resort and The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua.

Congrats to all and good luck in your new roles!

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*Hotel performance data will be published in the first issue of each month.

For the past couple of years, we've heard endless promises about how AI will make hotels more efficient. Now someone is actually building a hotel management company around that idea.

Sloan Dean, former CEO of Remington Hospitality, has launched AI Hospitality Group, a new operator designed from the ground up around agentic AI and automation. The company has raised $7.5 million, is designing operations for three hotels and expects to take over its first properties later this year.

The pitch is pretty simple: run full-service hotels with fewer managers and automate much of the administrative work that still happens through emails, spreadsheets, and meetings.

Dean isn't dancing around the labor implications. “You do have to destroy some jobs,” he told Skift. His target is primarily middle management and administrative-heavy roles. He says a hotel sales team of five or six people, for example, could become two or three, with AI handling things like RFP responses, displacement analysis, and CRM updates.

Dean believes the model can improve gross operating profit margins by 500 basis points. For those of us who don't speak fluent investment banker, that's five percentage points. (Although I have to admit, 500 basis points sounds way more impressive.)

Whether he can actually deliver that remains to be seen. But the timing is interesting because AIHG isn't the only company rethinking how many people it needs.

PMS provider Mews recently cut 15% of its workforce on its way to becoming "AI-native." Expedia has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs, and says AI lets smaller teams work faster. Booking hasn't announced AI layoffs, but CEO Glenn Fogel has warned that AI will likely mean fewer jobs, including at Booking, and wants every employee AI-literate so they can move into new roles. And Oracle, whose OPERA system runs a lot of Hawaiʻi front desks, has shed roughly 21,000 roles over the past year as it pours money into AI.

For years, hotel technology companies have been telling hotels that automation will let them do more with fewer people (though that never seemed to happen). It looks like they're starting to take their own advice.

If AIHG can actually deliver higher margins without sacrificing service, owners will start asking their current management companies why they can't. And a lot of managers will be wondering if they're the 'minus.

Barry Diller knows a thing or two about getting between hotels and their guests. He assembled Expedia, Hotels.com, TripAdvisor and Hotwire under IAC, then spun them off as Expedia in 2005. So when his company People Inc. (formerly IAC) offered roughly $18 billion in June to take the rest of MGM Resorts private, his reasoning caught my eye. Diller pitched the deal as a hedge against AI eating his media business. He argued that no technology can get between a person and the desire to physically be somewhere, like a resort or a casino floor.

Nice theory, but the financing didn't come together. People Inc., which already owns 27% of MGM, walked away on September 23, saying the mix wasn't working. Bloomberg reported Diller had trouble lining up the equity. MGM stock dropped about 10%, and the board says it's happy going it alone. The timing wasn't great anyway. Strip occupancy was flat in Q2 and rates were down 4%, so Vegas isn't exactly printing money right now.

Diller may be right that AI can't replace actually being somewhere. But AI-proof isn't the same thing as a good investment, and it sounds like the people he needed to write checks weren't fully sold either. Vegas demand is softening, costs keep climbing, and money isn't cheap. If that sounds familiar, it's the same math problem we laid out in our hotel owners’ story. The robots may eventually take over, but in this case, the spreadsheet ruled the day.

Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, and Airbnb spent a whopping combined $5.37 billion on marketing in Q2. Booking led at $2.37 billion (up 11%), Expedia spent $2.12 billion (up 10%), and Airbnb kicked in $875 million. That's a lot of money to make sure travelers find them before they find you.

Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin says traditional SEO still matters but is relatively soft, while social media and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) are among Expedia's fastest-growing channels. Expedia is already testing AI agents, agentic browsers, and even paid ads in ChatGPT.

The OTAs aren't waiting to see whether AI changes travel search. They're paying now so that when someone asks ChatGPT where to stay in Waikīkī, Expedia is in the answer. Hotels spent a decade fighting the OTAs on Google. The next round is getting recommended by the robot, and as always happens, the OTAs are showing up first and with much bigger budgets.

If you are a reality TV fan, you have definitely watched Catfish before.

It's easy to sit on our couches and think, how could anyone really fall for this nonsense? But now we're doing our own version of it. People are presenting AI-generated thoughts and words as their own, something some have started calling Claudefishing.

I pride myself on having a good eye for spotting AI-generated content, and there have been some cringe-worthy AI tells that I have been noticing recently. Some include:

When I saw an article from Substack CEO Chris Best, criticizing the AI slop cesspool that LinkedIn has become recently, it caught my attention. The article announced a partnership with Pangram, which would allow readers on Substack to scan text and be given an estimate of what percentage was written by a human or with AI.

As an avid LinkedIn user, I can attest that there have been egregious examples of AI slop recently. And it appears LinkedIn is listening.

Nine days after the Substack post, LinkedIn unveiled a new feature: “Seems like AI slop” as a feedback option on posts and comments. LinkedIn's own help page says the button doesn't flag a policy violation or trigger a report. It just helps LinkedIn understand what members consider low-value content.

And before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I use AI a lot! The trick is using it to help you ideate and create great content, not to replace you with a slop version of you.

Full list of 2026 Hawaiʻi Events

*If you have industry events to share, please email me at [email protected].

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Between our latest newsletter and a LinkedIn post that touched a serious nerve regarding Nick Adams’ keynote at the Hawaiʻi Tourism Conference, the Hui had a lot to say this week.

Let's dive into what you all had to say.

The HTA Conference & The Speaker Debacle
Unsurprisingly, our post questioning the speaker selection for the Hawaiʻi Tourism Conference struck a deep chord. Here is a sample of the feedback:

What else landed in the Inbox

Digital High-Fives

Got a hot take, a bone to pick, or deep industry lore to share? The inbox is wide open for your anonymous confessionals. Fire off your thoughts to [email protected], or comment on our LinkedIn posts, and you might just see your commentary featured in the next issue!

Hawaiʻi Hotel Hui was started by hotel industry veteran Dan Wacksman, CEO of Sassato, a Hawaiʻi-based consultancy that combines deep local expertise with a global perspective.

Our team brings decades of experience across operations, marketing, revenue, tech, and finance, all aimed at helping hotels and travel companies make smarter decisions and move faster. Whether you need additional expertise, extra horsepower, or just someone who thinks like you and moves things forward, we’ve got you. From local independents to global brands, we show up with a no-nonsense, results-focused mindset. To be blunt: we get sh*t done.

Recent projects include brand transitions, system selection (PMS, CRS, CMS , all the acronym soup), implementations, project management, feasibility studies, training, audits, and everything in between.

A lot of organizations deal with stretched teams, siloed processes, and messy tech stacks that stall important work. We fix that. Happy to chat if this hits close to home.