Creating Unique Hotel Guest Experiences: Podcast

25.08.2023 - 13:19 / skift.com / Adam Stacey / Colin Nagy / Liz Lambert

In today’s travel landscape, travelers are seeking more than just a place to rest their heads; they are craving experiences that leave a lasting impression, with wellness and sustainability at the forefront of their minds.

For episode two of the Skift Ideas Podcast, Colin Nagy sits down with renowned hotelier Liz Lambert for a candid conversation around creating unparalleled guest experiences.

With an illustrious career as a hotelier, designer, and innovator, Liz has left an indelible mark on the hospitality landscape whilst creating some of the most intriguing lifestyle hotels in the United States. 

Join us as we explore Liz’s philosophies around creating a sense of place, the importance of community in hospitality, the innovations transforming the construction landscape, and what we can expect for the future of hospitality.

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Colin Nagy: Hi everyone, welcome back to the Skift Ideas podcast. Thanks for tuning in. I’m Colin Nagy, and today I’m joined by a hospitality legend, Liz Lambert. She’s a partner at Lambert Maguire Design, a partner at MML Hospitality and was the founder of Bunkhouse Group. She is a visionary hotelier, a designer and innovator who has created some of the country’s best and most interesting lifestyle hotels.

Many of them are favorites of mine, and they’re known for their very distinctive design, uses of space and integration with the community. So I’m super, super happy to have Liz with us today.

Liz, thank you for joining.

Liz Lambert: Hi, Colin. So happy to be here.

Nagy: Cool. So I just wanted to tee off and kind of understand what you’re working on lately. You have your hand in many things, but just kind of set up the audience with what you are working on.

Lambert: Oh my god, so many things. It does seem like these days I’ve been really busy lately with doing all kinds of different things. You know, when I joined MML here a couple of years ago, we did our first hotel together, the Hotel St Vincent in New Orleans, and I’m continuing to work on that. We have a new general manager there and it’s been, it’s been really, really exciting to be in New Orleans and be doing a hotel that has so much such a big food and beverage component.

And it’s one of those hotels I feel like just gets better and better, the more layers we put on it.

Nagy: It’s one of your more ambitious projects in terms of scale, right? I mean, it’s a large, large undertaking. I mean, I remember I saw it in its earliest phases and I was kind of like stunned by how ambitious this was. And so it has to be some learning experiences and what you’ve been doing there.

Lambert: I mean, I think so. I think one of the things that’s different