In this week’s episode of the Hotel Moment podcast, Emily Goldfischer, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of hertelier, joins podcast host and Revinate CMO Karen Stephens to bring women’s influence in hospitality, especially hospitality technology, to the forefront. Emily explains how a work environment that promotes women in leadership positions also empowers those women to confidently make technology decisions that benefit your hotel. Women are pushing boundaries not just in the workplace but in the tech space — using data to connect with woman guests to curate an experience they can feel good about.
Tune in for an eye-opening conversation on the value of women mentoring women while encouraging hotel staff to work together, remain flexible, and see the bigger picture when it comes to making technology decisions for the future.
Meet your host
As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships.
Karen is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.
Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com
Connect with Karen
Transcript
Intro – 00:00:04: Welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting-edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.
Karen Stephens – 00:00:36: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today on the podcast, we are thrilled to have Emily Goldfisher. Emily is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of hertelier, an innovative online platform dedicated to empowering women in the hospitality industry. With a strong background as a journalist and entrepreneur, Emily has a deep understanding of the global travel and hospitality sector and its impact on various stakeholders. Hertelier aims to inspire women at all career stages by sharing valuable insights, lessons, and networking opportunities — particularly in an industry where women make up over 70% of the workforce, yet remain largely underrepresented in leadership roles. As a member of the inaugural cohort of female founders in hospitality, Emily is committed to driving change and fostering conversation that elevates women’s voices in the industry. So I truly enjoyed this conversation with Emily, and I think that you’ll quickly understand why. So Emily’s had a really great career, both in PR and journalism before she founded hertelier during the pandemic. So she interviews a lot of women. She brings a lot of knowledge, not only on how to excel as a woman in leadership and hospitality, but also how to apply some of the new technologies that are emerging to your everyday job. So I hope you enjoy. This is Emily.
Hi, Emily. Welcome to the podcast.
Emily Goldfischer – 00:02:02: Thank you for having me, Karen. I’m so happy to be here.
Karen Stephens – 00:02:05: I am really excited to be here as well with you, and talking to you. I’ve done some looking at your website. So I really want to get into hertelier, and talk deeply about how that came about. But first, I noticed that before you got into this, you’re a journalist by trade. So have you always been interested in championing women’s representation or what led you on this journey to bring you where you are today?
Emily Goldfischer – 00:02:29: Yeah, actually, I started my career in PR, and I worked in PR and hospitality PR, for, on the agency side, for many years and had clients like Hyatt Resorts and Royal Caribbean Cruises. And it was really a great, interesting time. And then I moved over to the corporate side and ended up doing the corporate PR for Loews Hotels for 10 years. And at the time that I worked at Loews, I look back now and realize how innovative and forward-thinking they were. There were two women in the C-suite there, Sherry Laveroni and Charlotte St. Martin, who really spearheaded a lot of the innovative initiatives that Loews was doing at the time. And in 2010, my husband and I moved to London for his career. And at that time is when I switched over to becoming a journalist because we were only meant to stay here for two years. And PS, 14 years later, we’re still here. We love it. But it was during my time as a journalist that we moved here. The Olympics was about to happen. So there was a lot of activity — particularly on the luxury market and the hotels — a lot of new buildings and the things in advance of The Olympics. So it was quite an exciting time. And I started to notice that women first, I was like, “Wait, where are all the women?” Like I was used to being at Loews where I had these amazing mentors and women, female bosses that I looked up to. And over time, I noticed that actually women were starting to get these top jobs at the bigger hotels within the hotel companies in Europe. And I didn’t feel that the trades were covering it in a way that was inspiring for other women. And the pandemic happened and everyone had a bit of time on their hands. So I spoke to some friends and colleagues, and actually with my former boss, Nancy Mendelson, who was the senior VP for marketing at Loews Hotels, we launched hertelier. And actually, I just had a look and we have interviewed over 600 women since 2021. And just actually, that moment, it was like the breadth of women that we’ve been able to talk to and learn from and share their insights is really gratifying just to have this platform for women to share and to speak out. So, yeah, it’s been a really interesting evolution. Of course, there’s still more work to be done in terms of gender equality in hospitality and in business overall. But that’s how we’ve gotten here. And I feel like we are contributing to progress.
Karen Stephens – 00:05:01: I love that story. I think what’s interesting to me — I had Shannon Knapp, who is the CEO of Leading Hotels of the World, on the podcast a little while ago. And she talked about her career, how it kind of snaked, and weaved, and bobbed, and how you have to be open to opportunity. And you really don’t know what one thing is going to lead to another. So it’s such an interesting path that you kind of laid out there to get to where you are today. And I’m sure coming across, I mean, 600 women since 2022, that’s a lot of wonderful stories. So what are some of the common cool themes that you see? I mean, are there themes that you can kind of draw? I know that’s a pretty big set of people, but what are the things that you see?
Emily Goldfischer – 00:05:41: There are some things. I just want to say, I listened to that episode with Shannon, and I just loved the conversation that you had and what she shared about, like you said, being flexible and willing to make a lateral move. It’s not always making that jump up. Really, I definitely remember that. And that is one of the things we hear from women that are successful in leaders, that they are flexible. And actually, and conversely, I would say that companies that are successful in nurturing and retaining women are also flexible. So for example, I did a panel at the Forbes Travel Guide Summit last year, and we actually had a guy — one of our male allies on the panel — and he talked a lot about how Marriott is being really intentional about allowing women to have flexibility, particularly if they’re mothers, and they need time during the child-raising years. We are seeing also a shift in gender equality in the home. And I think that that’s also one of the ways that we’re going to see progress, and women being able to stick to upward trajectory with their careers. I think another theme we see is women that are really — they’ve learned how to speak up for themselves. So when I interview more senior women — actually, we’ve interviewed women at all levels of their careers. So from entry-level to mid-career. But when I think about the more C-suite and VP level women that I’ve interviewed, they all credit finding mentors who’ve helped them shape their career, and also the ability to nurture sponsors. So people who will speak about you when you’re not in the room. And traditionally, this is another topic that women maybe have found challenging, but again, we’re seeing progress there. And this idea of advocating for yourself, that’s also very important. Learning how to speak up for yourself, learning how to keep track of all your accomplishments for the year, and then share that with the people who you work with and not just expect that your work will speak for itself.
Karen Stephens – 00:07:55: I’m laughing as you say that, because I do think that a lot of women — they really produce amazing amounts of work, such hard workers. And I think that there’s this thought that, “Oh, people will understand how hard I’ve worked. The company will recognize the sacrifices I make, and eventually, I’ll be rewarded for that.” And I think it’s important. I mean, I would love your take on this, but it appears to me, everybody is living their own lives and doing their own thing. And I don’t think people intentionally don’t think of other people, but you have to speak up for yourself and make sure that people understand what you’ve done and what your team has done. I find that as well. Women tend to talk about the team and bring all of that up. But can you talk to me a little bit more about the mentoring side of things? So how do you see women within organizations, what is the role of mentoring to make sure that newer generations understand how to advocate for themselves?
Emily Goldfischer – 00:08:47: One of the heartening things I see is that women who are at these kind of upper levels or even VP mid-level managers, they’re very intentional about making sure women who are in the early stages of their careers have a different experience than they’ve had. So I feel that women are very eager to mentor younger women. And also this idea of reverse mentoring is like, as you get further along in your career, like you can learn also from people that are in the early stages of their career. So the overall theme of mentorship is like, you can learn from others who have either trod in your footsteps or can show you the way. And I feel like there’s a lot happening in that area, particularly with the big brands. Hyatt, one of our partners, has their Women@Hyatt program. IHG has their women’s RISE program, which also is another partner of ours. So it’s really exciting. And I mentioned Marriott also has been great with flexibility, and Hilton also. There is a very conscious effort, I feel, from the industry to help women with things like mentorship, to provide them leadership training. That’s another skill that women maybe didn’t get in previous generations. So I do feel we are, I’m not a super optimistic person, but I do feel that companies have a real focus now on being more inclusive and really equipping women with the skills and strategies they need to help shape their careers.
Karen Stephens – 00:10:23: That’s great. So let’s talk a little bit about hertelier. So can you just give us an idea of – What is hertelier? And what are the resources available and how does the content that could be motivating for a woman if they see the site?
Emily Goldfischer – 00:10:37: Yeah. So we run original content. We run about three stories a week. So it can be anything from an interview, a one-on-one interview, or we trend them in the industry. Everything we do is with this feminist slant. So for example, we also just had a story about gender kind of the relationship of uniforms, and women, and how women have to be in more restrictive uniforms than men, which can actually hamper their ability to do their jobs. So is this kind of conversation always with this feminist lens of, “How do we make the system better for women?” Because ultimately, that’s kind of our message, is like, actually, women are fantastic. And it’s just like the system wasn’t really built for women. Now, that’s not unique to hospitality. That’s unique to the business world. So that’s kind of what we’re about. So we run original content. We do some live events in York and London. We’ve done one in Miami. So we’re doing a bit more of that. We’re going to be doing some actually starting next year. We’re really excited about. We’re going to be doing online events through LinkedIn. So that’s something to be excited about. And this, I saw you just signed, you’ve signed up for it, but we offer a newsletter every Sunday, and it’s free. And I look at, kind of, the media landscape from business and hospitality news. And I pick anywhere from, let’s say, five to 10 stories a week that aren’t just in hertelier that are broad-based. What’s happening in the marketplace so that you can, as a woman in the business, kind of have your pulse on what’s going on and what are the trends for women in the workplace in general, not specific to hospitality? And then we also include in there everything we’ve run in hertelier, so that you have an easy way to see what we’ve been up to and get the opportunity to dig into some of the interviews we’ve done with women leading our industry.
Karen Stephens – 00:12:31: I love it. So curated content, this Sunday to help kind of navigate. I love that. I’m for anything that helps me get focused and get efficient. I love that. So in your opinion, what unique contributions do women bring? If we just talk about specifically the luxury segment. So you mentioned when you moved to London, that that was something that was kind of piquing your interest. Can you talk a little bit about what unique contribution they bring and also how they’re leveraging technology in that space?
Emily Goldfischer – 00:13:02: Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely seeing women get into the tech space, I think, in a really impressive numbers, and also very in creative ways. This week was World Travel Market here in London, and there was actually a startup pitch competition. And Vanessa Karel, who started this, an app called Greether. And it’s basically like as a woman traveling, you can go to a city and kind of basically hire a guide through her site. But like it’s a female to female thing. So she’s doing really well. And it’s just such a cool concept. And so that’s really exciting. But I’ve seen a lot of women, whether it’s utilizing technology in ways in hospitality. So one of the stories I love talking about is interviewing a head housekeeper, director of housekeeping from a hotel in England. And this was kind of closer to as we were coming off the pandemic. And there was still quite a labor shortage. And she started using this, I think it’s called ‘Indeed Flex’ or something, but it’s basically kind of like an Uber for housekeepers. So she basically could hire housekeepers on short notice, and get them in for a few hours. And what was fantastic about that is that she also is offering people who need flexible schedules, whether it’s moms who want to drop their kids off at school or pick them up, or actually it’s in York in Northern England. So there’s actually quite a few universities there. So I feel like women are really into adapting technology to solve problems. I mean, we’ve actually interviewed quite a few women — whether it’s shopping or tipping or just really reinventing ideas through technology. So I think that’s great because it’s like, I think there’s this perception like women aren’t into tech or whatever, but actually what I found is the opposite is true. That’s one of the ways. And on the luxury space, you’re definitely seeing more women in leadership roles. And I think where this is quite interesting is when you look at who buys luxury travel. And also when you look at the travel landscape in general, the fastest-growing market in travel, I think, is women over 50. So it’s like, I’m not saying men don’t understand what women want when they travel, but there certainly are things like safety concerns and what kind of amenities you want in the bathroom and stuff like that. And the lighting in a hallway, what kind of mirrors you have, just like things like that, that maybe women are a bit more sensitive to. And certainly what you all are doing, I think with the Customer Data Platform and really offering hoteliers like that rich information and data. And I mean, I’m curious about what you’re doing in terms of AI, and how you can then serve the customer better because you just are able to give them things that they’re already interested in.
Karen Stephens – 00:16:01: Absolutely. So we’re doing a lot of exciting stuff for AI. So thanks for mentioning that. I think, well, the first thing to know is that we are merging profiles to get a single profile of guests which is a really hard thing to do. So you need to be able to apply machine learning because you don’t want to get that wrong. Like the number one problem all hotels are trying to solve is, “When I come back, just tell me, “Welcome back.” That’s like the baseline. But you’re absolutely right, trying to make sure that you understand who the guest is in front of you. And then some other cool applications of AI are actually on the voice channel — helping our agents, reservation agents, whether they work for us or for our customers, understand when someone calls in, “What’s the right package offering to make? Have they been there before?” Because up until now, that’s been a very manual process. People are reading manuals, and trying to make sure that they get everything right. Whereas I think AI can really help with that. Where I don’t think it’s going to replace, or I hope it doesn’t, is that human-to-human touch. So I think if AI can facilitate all of the baseline steps to have a really engaging personal conversation, I think that that’s where we win. But that’s just my opinion.
Emily Goldfischer – 00:17:06: I mean, it makes perfect sense. Like if AI can answer the phone call of where’s the parking garage and when does it close or typical things that maybe you get at the front desk, and then it frees up that agent to really help the customer who’s there instead of having them wait for you to get off the phone. I mean, I just think technology is really going to elevate guest service a lot.
Karen Stephens – 00:17:29: Okay, so Emily, as we think about hiring trends for 2025, what qualities or skills do you believe will be most in demand in the hospitality sector?
Emily Goldfischer – 00:17:38: We’ve mentioned it before is flexibility. I mean, I think people that are eager, and engaged, and willing to try different things, not be stuck in. I need to do a certain pass. And equally for the employers to be flexible with employees, whether it’s the ability to work from home one day a week, if they’re not in a customer-facing job. I mean, I think these are the kinds of things both employers and employees are looking for. Flexibility would be number one.
Karen Stephens – 00:18:08: Absolutely. And what advice would you give to women who are currently navigating their careers today? So if I want to get up to a leadership position, I’m kind of stuck. Obviously, we’ve talked about some of the things, but what is your most direct path to trying to figure out how to navigate that?
Emily Goldfischer – 00:18:24: One of the things I’ve heard women say, successful women, is like you kind of build your personal board of directors. So it’s like, don’t just get one mentor. Try and get advice from different people who are concerned about you, who care about you, and can offer you advice either because they’ve paved the path themselves. Or maybe they’re in a different industry, but also less in the workplace that they can share. I think that’s probably. I like that advice I’d say.
Karen Stephens – 00:18:53: I love that. You know, I was just in New York City last week and we did a roundtable with Women Leading in Travel and Hospitality, which is a really cool organization. And one of the women on the panel, and I don’t recall her name, I believe she was the Chief Digital Officer at Amtrak. She mentioned having a board of directors, a personal board of directors, which I love that concept. So it’s one opinion is great, but having three or four with different opinions and then kind of taking the best out of that. I think is an awesome idea. Cool. So just a closing question for you, Emily. I’ve loved the conversation. And I do have to say that I also used to live in London. So it’s really fun. Our paths cross there by just a year or two. So I love it that you live in that big city. So how can those in the industry, both men and women, support the movement towards greater gender equality and salary parity in leadership roles? Because we know that there’s historically been an issue in achieving both.
Emily Goldfischer – 00:19:49: Thank you for this opportunity to speak because I actually think discussing the topic, talking about the progress women have made, and then also areas for improvement is really how we make progress, is like, awareness is the first thing. And really engaging men in the conversation too. I think it was a year and a half ago we started doing a male ally of the month, and really spotlighting the guys who are very much dedicated to gender equality. Because let’s face it, we need the guys to give us the opportunities until we do actually have the gender equality at the very highest levels. And I actually am really inspired too, about the tech space where you are, and seeing that like you, you’re the Chief Marketing Officer for this incredible technology company that’s really doing a lot to elevate guest service through technology. So I think as we see women in more powerful position, like I said, the women of this generation are really committed to making sure the women behind them, that they lift as they climb. So I really get inspired by that.
Karen Stephens – 00:20:59: Awesome, well, thank you so much. My guest has been Emily Goldfisher, who is the Editor and Founder of hertelier. Thank you for the conversation.
Emily Goldfischer – 00:21:06: Thank you. Enjoyed that, Karen. Thank you so much.
Outro – 00:21:14: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.
