The busy summer travel season is just about wrapped up, which means the Suite Spot is due for another quarterly check-in with the American Hotel & Lodging Association to get the latest news and developments taking place in the hospitality industry.
AHLA President and CEO Rosanna Maietta joins the Suite Spot to discuss current hotel trends, industry challenges, the importance of mentors and mentees in hospitality, and more.
Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. So happy that you are listening to us here and ready to bring you another incredible episode with our quarterly check-in with AHLA in a preview of the 2025 Hospitality Show. It's my immense privilege to welcome in our special guest for today's episode, President and CEO, Rosanna Mietta. Rosanna, thank you so much for being with me on the back on the Suite Spot.
Rosanna Maietta:
Good to see you again, Ryan. Thanks for having us.
Ryan Embree:
Yeah, we're excited to talk about the Hospitality Show. We're excited to talk about AHLA. What we've been up to last time we were together was at NYU IHIF. Since then, the AHLA and the hospitality industry in general has been super busy, that super travel season, that hoteliers love to see travel all over the across the country. Catch us up on some of the top issues AHLA is focusing on right now and maybe some of the key wins that have happened year to date.
Rosanna Maietta:
Sure. It's been an incredibly busy summer. There's nothing like a quiet summer anymore. We've had a lot going on both in Washington and around the country. Obviously, the most important thing the administration has been focused on over the last six months of this year was passing the one big beautiful bill, which while it had many, many provisions tucked away in it, the ones that our industry was really focused on were those that impacted our small business community, our franchise community, and our employees. So we were focused on passing provisions like the 100% bonus depreciation and making that permanent, preserving the like kind exchange, deferring capital gains tax on real estate at point of sale. All those changes will help the industry reinvest and grow. But we also helped to promote the no tax on tips, which will support 800,000 employees in the industry who benefit from tips. And so we're working on what that guidance actually looks like once that detail is developed and how, and educating our employers on how they can roll that out to their employees, but also provisions around overtime and child tax credit and family medical leave. So all of those things, were really important to our industry. And so we were really pleased to help get that over the finish line. Outside of Washington, there has been a lot going on, whether it is advancing legislation in markets like Boston or Philadelphia on human trafficking training and prevention, which our industry has been leading on to working in Los Angeles, where we have seen over the last two years very intense work around pushing back against onerous regulations that would essentially increase wages for the industry by 40% overnight. Simply a situation we cannot, we cannot handle because demand is so low in Los Angeles, it's second to only San Francisco. And San Francisco in terms of occupancy, has been starting to see an uptick, whereas Los Angeles has not, it has not come back to pre-COVID levels. So we've been working really aggressively there with the business community to push back on that ordinance that has gone into law, but we are still working with city council to try to make some amendments that would make sure that the travel and hospitality sector is strong, especially in the lead up to some of these bigger events that we're anticipating next year,
