50 Shades of Hospitality

Hosted by 50 Shades of Hospitality

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Episodes

171

Latest episode

Oct 2026

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EN-US

About the show

A global podcast dedicated to learning from industry players around the world. These podcasts are a series of interviews with international hospitality and tourism industry professionals. I prompt our guests to share their personal experiences, as well as analyse the current trends, technology and innovations. The podcast’s goal is to inspire people in the field and to encourage young people to join this exciting industry. I am committed to evaluating the current educational and training opportunities for industry professionals in the hopes of finding solutions to the challenges the industry is now facing.

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60 recent

October 12, 2026Episode 4930 min

No Mind Advisory: Addressing Hotelier’s Technology Needs

This podcast is being sponsored by TRUSTmenti: trustmenti.com/beta-invite In this podcast, we speak to Nicolas Horvath about his international, multi-cultural experience and how he evolved in the hospitality field to become the founder of No Mind Advisory, a boutique consulting practice helping hotel technology vendors sharpen their commercial strategy and accelerate growth. Some of the topics we discuss in this podcast include why it is vital to have a performative hotel tech stack, why so many properties still run on legacy systems and what is finally driving change. Nicolas also explains to our listeners that innovation and efficiency need to go hand in hand how hospitality businesses can identify what they really need to move the needle. Nicolas also talks about why relationships and trust still outperform process-heavy sales playbooks in hospitality tech. Finally, I ask Nicolas, as an independent consultant, what hotel operators actually need from their tech vendors, and where he sees the gaps. Nicolas Horvath is a senior commercial operator in hotel technology with over a decade of experience spanning property management systems, revenue management, guest experience, and hospitality data platforms. He has held leadership roles at companies including Mews, Apaleo, and Duve, and most recently served as Chief Revenue Officer at Blent, a Swiss hospitality BI platform. Nicolas is now the founder of No Mind Advisory, a boutique consulting practice helping hotel technology vendors sharpen their commercial strategy and accelerate growth. Bilingual in French and English, Nicolas is passionate about raising industry standards and believes technology should above all serve one purpose: making hospitality operations genuinely more efficient. He is based near Paris.

September 28, 2026Episode 4840 min

DiscGo: Confessions of a Young Entrepreneur

This podcast is being sponsored by TRUSTmenti: trustmenti.com/beta-invite Ulkar Mammadzada recently launched her entrepreneurial start-up, DiscGo in the UAE and she tells our listeners all about this informational aggregator. DiscGo helps customers in the UAE quickly find offers available through the memberships/cards/apps they select — without opening multiple apps and searching one by one. We ask Ulkar to explain how she decided to embark on this entrepreneurial adventure after spending more than 10 years in corporate hospitality positions working in revenue management and hotel openings. Ulkar also explains how she left her native country of Azerbaijan at the age of 17 to begin law studies in England but ended up studying hospitality at the prestigious Hospitality Management school, Glion, in Switzerland. She gives our listeners all the best reasons why hospitality was the best choice for her and how she has been able to transfer her hospitality skills to her new company. Ulkar also explains how the multi-cultural environment at Glion shaped her career, her ability to work in diverse environments, her communication style and her open, humanist approach to business relationships. Her enthusiasm and dynamic approach to improving systems and her ability to have a holistic overview has allowed her to create an application that gives the user an optimum experience while making sure that the technology does not replace the human touch. Finally, Ulkar shares her frank evaluation of what it really takes to become a young entrepreneur, the daily “wins” that keep her on track and enthusiastic and how much she has learned in six months. Above all, she assures us that despite the every day challenges she faces, she wouldn’t change her decision for anything. Originally from Azerbaijan and having never traveled before moving to the UK at the age of 17, Ulkar ended up living in five countries by the time she graduated from Glion Hospitality Management School. After graduating, Ulkar decided to settle in the UAE for multiple reasons and she has worked for some of the largest hotel companies in the world: Hilton, InterContinental, Minor Group, Marriott (Design Hotels), as well as Kempinski. In February 2026, Ulkar decided to quit her corporate job to launch DiscGo, a tech startup without much of a technical background, but with a lot of passion and a knack for optimising systems. Her career has been built around analytics, commercial strategy, and people skills. Every move for Ulkar felt logical and natural in her career over the last decade, and she considers DiscGo as the next logical step.

September 14, 2026Episode 4731 min

Inspiring Women in Hospitality

This podcast is being sponsored by TRUSTmenti: trustmenti.com/beta-invite In this podcast, Naureen Ahmed, podcaster, hospitality leader and changemaker, shares her inspiration for creating the global platform and community, Inspiring Women in Hospitality. Naureen explains her motivation for bringing women together and explains to our listeners why women are often underrepresented in senior positions. Several years ago, Naureen noticed that there are so many talented women in hospitality, yet they often lack the visibility their voices and leadership deserve. Inspiring Women in Hospitality is a global platform designed to shine a light on the stories, voices and leadership of women across the hospitality industry. In this interview, Naureen also discusses the importance of communication and ways that women and men can improve these skills in a way that allows them to truly connect, influence and be remembered. Given her own global education and career, we ask Naureen about multi-cultural intelligence, and how she has navigated her education, career choices and experiences through this multi-cultural lens. Having grown up across multiple countries, Naureen has always been drawn to people, cultures and connection. She tells our listeners that hospitality felt like a natural path to her because it was one of the first places where she truly felt she belonged. Naureen Ahmed is a hospitality leader, changemaker, and founder of Inspiring Women in Hospitality, a global platform amplifying women’s voices and advancing gender balance. With 20 years of experience across hotel operations, strategy, and analytics, she blends insight and empathy to create meaningful change. A graduate of EHL, Naureen began her career at The Landmark London before moving into international leadership at STR. Her podcast has featured over 200 women worldwide and grown into a thriving online community. Through storytelling, connection, and development, Naureen creates space for women to lead with authenticity, confidence, and impact.

August 31, 2026Episode 4625 min

TRUSTmenti: Real Leaders and Real Guidance

This podcast is being sponsored by TRUSTmenti: trustmenti.com/beta-invite In this podcast, Tanja Stegmüller introduces our listeners to her new entrepreneurial adventure, TRUSTmenti. TRUSTmenti is a global, remote-based mentorship platform designed specifically for the hospitality industry. Co-founded by Tanja and Diego del Paso, it aims to combat high turnover and talent retention challenges by connecting rising professionals and students with seasoned industry leaders. The hospitality industry loses people in their first 12 months because the gap between education and real-world practice is never properly closed. TRUSTmenti is committed to creating a bridge: a mentorship platform connecting hospitality students and early-career professionals with experienced practitioners, built around skill development, confidence, and the operational knowledge no curriculum fully teaches. During this interview, I also ask Tanja about her global career and her hospitality specialty, which is luxury hotel pre-openings. Tanja is happy to share some of the lesser-known details of how a hotel pre-opening materialises and how she has had the opportunity to experience these pre-openings from different perspectives. But pre-openings are only half of what has drawn Tanja to hospitality. The other half is the work itself - no two shifts the same, no guest like the last. As a Swiss national, Tanja also shares her ideas on why Swiss Hospitality Management schools are considered the best and why they continue to attract a diverse and global student body. Tanja Stegmüller grew up in a small town in the Swiss Alps with an early and persistent urge to see the world, a pull that would go on to shape an international career across luxury hospitality in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. Over the years Tanja has worked with some of the industry's most celebrated names, including Emirates Palace, Mandarin Oriental, and Katara Hospitality. Alongside this, she has built a rare specialism in pre-openings, having been part of eleven hotel and resort launches, and, more unusually, having experienced them from three distinct vantage points. Tanja started guest-facing during the opening of the Bürgenstock Resort on Lake Lucerne, one of Switzerland's largest luxury launches in recent memory. In Dubai, she opened an entire portfolio of EMAAR properties at Dubai Creek Harbour as the right hand to the Area General Manager, observing pre-openings from the executive side. She then moved into operational leadership as Director of Operations for a new opening in Bern. Based in Switzerland, Tanja holds an Executive MBA in Global Hospitality Management from Les Roches. During her studies she co-founded TRUSTmenti, a platform connecting hospitality talent with experienced mentors, born from her own conviction that the managers who entrust people with real responsibility early are the ones who truly shape a career.

August 17, 202626 min

Creating Equitable and Sustainable Food Systems

In this podcast, Nicola Gryckza informs our listeners about equitable and sustainable food systems in the hospitality industry and how she became, in her words, “a change-maker, dreamer and social entrepreneur”. As co-founder and leader of the Social Gastronomy Movement (SGM), Nicola connects communities globally to drive equitable and sustainable food systems. Her background includes pioneering solutions to combat food waste, advancing educational content for underserved communities, and consulting in the social enterprise space. The Social Gastronomy Movement cultivates connections, collaborations and partnerships that strengthen our individual and collective capacity to co-create an equitable future, inclusive society and healthy planet. SGM advocates for positive changes in local food systems so that together we move towards global progress creating a new ecosystem for change. With experience at the World Economic Forum, TIME Magazine, and Gastromotiva, Nicola brings a unique multi-stakeholder approach to her work. With a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management, and an Entrepreneurship specialization from the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, a Masters in International Negotiation and Policy Making from the Graduate Institute, and an MBA with a specialization on social enterprises, her passion lies at the cross road of grass root activism and policy making, especially in fields of food, agriculture and education. Since 2016 she has started to work with innovative solutions to stop the vicious circle of food waste, such as a food surplus product line, online educational content for underprivileged communities and tech solutions to scale impact globally, involving the powerful convening power of chefs. Most of her career was in the development world, continuously focusing on solutions through a multi-stakeholder approach. She started her career at the World Economic Forum, working with Strategic Partnerships and later within the Latin American Centre for Regional Strategies, and has since worked for TIME Magazine, as the CEO of Brazilian social enterprise Gastromotiva during the internationalization and expansion, as well acted as a consultant in a variety of areas. She sits on the board of social organizations such as Catalyst2030 in Holland and Mater Foundation in Switzerland, while actively coaching and supporting young women and social entrepreneurs around the world. Most recently she is also an entrepreneur in residence for the prestigious the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne / EHL Group. Nicola has become a motivational speaker and consultant at renowned organizations and events such as IADB, FAO Latam, WFP, WEF and SxSW among others.

August 3, 2026Episode 1632 min

The Future of Hospitality Training: Why Knowledge Isn’t Enough Anymore

Alison Magee-Barker is the Founder of ImmersiV XP , an immersive behavioural learning platform that combines virtual reality, AI and realistic workplace scenarios to help hospitality businesses recruit better, onboard faster, build confident teams and deliver consistently exceptional guest experiences. Rather than simply delivering training, ImmersiV XP allows employees to practise real-life workplace situations in a safe, engaging environment where they can learn from their decisions before facing them in the real world. The platform helps improve leadership capability, customer service, sales performance, confidence, employee engagement, retention and operational consistency. In this episode, Alison shares why traditional hospitality training is no longer enough, what inspired her to create ImmersiV XP, and how immersive learning is helping hospitality businesses tackle some of the industry’s biggest challenges – from recruitment and onboarding to leadership development, retention and creating high-performing teams. Alison is also the Founder and CEO of AJ Lakes Consultancy and AJ Lakes Training Academy Ltd , an award-winning consultancy, coaching and training business that helps hospitality leaders and businesses achieve exceptional commercial results while creating greater freedom, profitability and long-term sustainability. With more than 35 years of hospitality leadership experience, Alison has worked across every level of the industry, from frontline operations to Hotel General Manager, leading businesses through economic challenges, industry disruption and transformational growth. She has coached and trained hundreds of hospitality business owners, managers and teams across the UK and is passionate about making hospitality a career of choice once again. In this conversation, Alison shares practical insights into the future of hospitality, exploring how AI, immersive learning and behavioural change are reshaping recruitment, training, leadership and guest experience. She challenges leaders to rethink how they develop their people and explains why investing in human potential, supported by the right technology, will be one of the biggest competitive advantages for hospitality businesses over the next decade.

July 20, 2026Episode 1533 min

Beyond Service: Inspiring the Future of Hospitality

Maxime Blot, Meilleur Ouvrier de France (French Best Craftsman) for Hotel Reception, talks to our listeners about this professional honor and describes the demanding process of competing and winning this prestigious award. Maxime has worked in some of the most prestigious and luxurious palaces in the world and in this podcast, he describes his first few years of honing and perfecting his skills. Maxime also talks to us about his current job as a hospitality consultant and the Hospitality Insiders podcast producer and host. We find out more about what motivated Maxime to create his hospitality podcast and why he thinks his podcasts can support and motivate hospitality professionals. Maxime also shares his ideas on the current French hospitality industry and the kinds of challenges it currently faces. For Maxime, service excellence and the use of cutting-edge technology are the keys to improving hospitality service. Maxime Blot is a recognized leader in the world of hospitality, renowned for his commitment to service excellence and his innovative approach to guest experience. With nearly two decades in the industry, he has mastered the art of hospitality, earning the prestigious title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France 2023 in the category of hotel reception—one of the highest distinctions in French craftsmanship. As the founder of Hospitality Insiders , Maxime shares his expertise through consulting, training, coaching, and keynote speaking , helping professionals and businesses elevate their service standards. His deep understanding of guest expectations and operational efficiency makes him a sought-after expert for luxury hotels and high-end establishments. He is also the voice behind the Hospitality Insiders Podcast , the first French podcast dedicated to service excellence, where he interviews industry leaders and shares insights on creating unforgettable guest experiences. Passionate about craftsmanship in hospitality, Maxime embodies the idea that exceptional service is not just a profession—it’s an art. Whether advising hotel brands, coaching teams, or inspiring the next generation, his mission remains the same: to redefine excellence in hospitality, one guest at a time."

July 6, 2026Episode 1429 min

Hospitality Beyond the Tangible: Rethinking Value Creation

In this podcast, we speak to Mouna Ennour, the Managing Director of YALTEN, a consulting firm specializing in brand equity, intangible capital, and experience governance across hospitality, tourism, and real estate. Mouna describes her Hospitality Management studies in Switzerland and answers my questions about hospitality education today. Mouna goes on to describe what motivated her to create her own company and she gives our listeners her perspective on tourism, destination development and guest governance development. We discuss why operational excellence is no longer the main driver behind guest loyalty and how intangible value must be cultivated if hospitality and tourism businesses want to thrive. The discussion continues with the importance of family travel and the opportunities it can create for the hospitality and tourism fields. Children who travel with their families will most likely become future clients and hotels and resorts that prioritise family travel experiences benefit from their engagement. Finally, Mouna shares her thoughts on the future of hospitality and travel in an era of increasing personalization, technology, and changing traveler expectations. Mouna Ennour is the Managing Director of YALTEN, a consulting firm specializing in guest experience, place attractiveness, and hospitality governance. Her work focuses on the intersection of hospitality, tourism, destination development, and service ecosystems. She advises hospitality organizations, destinations, and stakeholders on how to transform infrastructure, services, and visitor journeys into drivers of performance, reputation, and long-term intangible value. Mouna is also the creator of Adam & Mia, an experiential brand developed at the intersection of hospitality, tourism, and family engagement. Her areas of research and interest include the Experience Economy, intangible capital, tourism development, hospitality strategy, and emerging approaches to territorial structuring and destination attractiveness. She is the author of two papers, “Tourism Through the Lens of Lived Experience” and “From Contemplative Hospitality to Structuring Hospitality,” which explore contemporary shifts in experience design, hospitality, and place development through the lens of sustainable value creation.

June 22, 2026Episode 1341 min

How To Make Access to Hospitality Luxury Easier and In Tune with Our Times

In this podcast, Robert Recupero shares his extraordinary career path with our listeners and explains how this path led to the creation of Moomenti, a high-end marketplace for booking luxury hotel experiences. This entrepreneurial adventure was Robert’s answer to making hospitality luxury easier to navigate and enjoy. Early in his career, Robert worked at Swissport, which enabled him to learn essential service and leadership skills that have helped him throughout his career and triggered his passion for travel and hospitality. His move to Thomson Reuters, the multinational information corporation, as the Senior Vice-President of Sales and Services allowed him to hone his leadership skills and he brought these skills to JP Morgan Private Banking. In 2021, Robert started his own company, Moomenti and he explains his reasons and motivation for moving into the Luxury Hotel Experiences sector. Robert also describes how the hospitality sector is an ever-changing landscape that is creating new avenues and why technology is at the forefront of this movement. Robert’s broad experience allows him to evaluate and understand what travelers and guests are looking for and how to meet their growing expectations. Finally, Robert explains his bold decision to become an entrepreneur and what he has learned so far. Robert Recupero is an expert in organizational design, technology metrics, and user experience/customer experience (UX/CX). With an impressive career spanning senior leadership roles in banking, finance, and technology, Robert brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to his current endeavors. As a former Managing Director at JP Morgan Private Bank and Senior Vice President at Thomson Reuters, Robert has demonstrated exceptional leadership in banking technology operations and high-end client service. His strategic vision and expertise have driven significant advancements in these areas, making him a respected figure in the industry. Following his tenure in banking and finance, Robert transitioned to a successful career as a Senior Independent Consultant. In this role, he advised numerous organizations on organizational design, IT leadership, and governance, helping them navigate complex challenges and achieve their strategic objectives. Currently, Robert is the founder and CEO of Moomenti, a high-end marketplace for booking luxury hotel experiences. Launched in Switzerland, Moomenti is now expanding to Asia, Latin America, and the United States, reflecting Robert's innovative approach and global vision. Don’t hesitate to reach out to him should you want to know more about Moomenti.

June 8, 2026Episode 1242 min

Human Innovation in Hospitality: Meaning, Psychological Safety and the Courage to Lead

In this episode of 50 Shades of Hospitality , Crystal Cavin speaks with Jay Humphries , a hospitality advisor, educator, communicator and co-founder of HoCoSo, whose career has moved across hotel operations, corporate leadership, development, asset management, academia, concept creation and media. Together, they explore the idea of human innovation in hospitality : not innovation as technology alone, but as the design of places, cultures and leadership systems where people can think clearly, speak honestly, serve well and remain human under pressure. Drawing on more than 30 years in the hospitality industry, as well as their current work in mental health, resilience, Logotherapy, Compassionate Inquiry and human-centred organisational design, Jay reflects on why wellbeing, psychological safety and values-based leadership can no longer be treated as “soft topics”. In an industry built on care, trust, welcome and emotional labour, these are not side issues. They are the foundations of performance, service quality, retention and long-term resilience. Jay also shares the personal practice behind their work, including more than 1,000 cold-water swims. The image of Jay in a swim robe is not just a personal detail. It reflects a lived commitment to discipline, nervous-system regulation, ritual, resilience and the small daily choices that shape who we become. The conversation also looks at leadership in a more anxious and polarised world. Jay and Crystal discuss why values matter most when they are tested, why psychological safety requires both compassion and clarity, and why hospitality leaders must become more emotionally, culturally and ethically intelligent if they want to build organisations where people can truly belong. For hospitality professionals, students and alumni, this is a conversation about what the industry is really becoming: not only a business of hotels, travel, restaurants and experiences, but a human system that can either exhaust people or help them recover meaning, dignity, connection and possibility.