The Hotel Daddy Podcast
Hotel Daddy is a podcast featuring in-depth interviews with hospitality movers and shakers, offering candid conversations that reveal how the best in the business became the leaders they are today. Listen in for inspiration and behind-the-scenes stories from the best in the industry.
Hosted by T. Blake Danner, Executive Producer, Stephanie T. Bryant, Production and Engineering by David Jewell. Associate Producer, Nelson Luis Ortiz, with original theme music composed and produced by Evan Jewell.
Episodes
9 episodes
Brad Wilson, Chairman ACE Hotel Group - Great Hotels Win When Creativity Meets Operations Discipline
A motel becomes a resort, a brand becomes a destination, and suddenly the whole industry gets permission to think bigger. We’re joined by Brad Wilson, chairman of Ace Group International, a leader who’s helped shape modern lifestyle hospitality...
Hotels as Hosts, and Airbnb Hotels, Rethinking Travel Platforms with Lou Zameryka
Hotels once treated online travel as a threat, but then it became the engine room of modern distribution. Now the next shift is here: Airbnb and hotel brands are learning how to work together, and the real competitive edge is no longer just inv...
Bashar Wali Longing for Belonging
A robot can drop a towel at your door, but it can’t make you feel welcome. That’s the line we keep coming back to as I sit down with hotel founder Bashar Wali to talk about what the hospitality industry gets right, what it gets dangerously wron...
Outside, On Purpose
What if the most valuable amenity isn’t a butler or a points upgrade, but time you can feel? We sit down with AutoCamp’s Chief Commercial Officer, Bryan Terzi, to trace a career that moves from Starwood and W Hotels to SBE’s celebrity-fueled ni...
Small Town, Big Hospitality Vision: Kat Bangs on Designing Emotion In Hotels
Emotion is the real currency of hospitality, and Kat Bangs knows how to design for it. Blake sits down with the creative mind turned small-town hotelier to explore the choices that turn spaces into feelings, lobbies into communities, and career...
From Pirate Kitchens To Radical Candor: A Chef's Journey into Fine Dining at Scale and Life as an Out Trans Man
What if a single bite could send you home again? Chef Ollie Walleck joins us to explore how memory, empathy, and rigor can reinvent what a kitchen feels like—and what guests taste on the plate. From his start as a teenage cook chasing the servi...
Building Salt Hotels With Heart, Design, And Community
What does it really take to walk away from a marquee role and build a brand that feels personal, principled, and wildly creative? We sit down with David Bowd, co-founder and CEO of Salt Hotels, to unpack the decision to leave the world of iconi...
How A Michelin Star Chef Builds A Life Around Food, Travel, And Wellness
The best restaurants don’t just serve plates; they build worlds. Chef David Myers joins us to unpack how a driveway farm stand, a passport full of stamps, and a Michelin star shaped his approach to food, leadership, and life. From Los Angeles t...
Building People Culture Balanced with Compliance
Step into the lobby with us and meet Victoria Fabio, a people and culture leader who grew up roaming the Gramercy Park Hotel and went on to transform workplaces across Soho House, Four Seasons, The Sydell Group, SALT Hotels, and CORE. Her story...
