Stephen Barth: The Legal and Leadership Wake-Up Call Hotel Owners Can't Afford to Miss

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 00:03

All right. Hello, thanks for checking in everyone. Drop your bags. I'm Chase Keller. Welcome to the Room Key, where everyone is normal until they check into a hotel. That beauty of a quote comes from today's guests. have Stephen Barth. And if you've ever worked in the hospitality industry, you already know truer words have never been spoken. This episode may contain legal truths, emotional intelligence, and stories of hotel guests behaving badly.

Listener discretion is advised for those who believe hospitality is just smiles and clean sheets. Today's guest, Stephen Barth. He's a hospitality lawyer, a professor at the Conrad Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership, founder of hospitalitylawyer.com and Hospitality Law Conference. He's helped thousands of owners, leaders navigate risk and manage their people.

build better businesses through legal clarity and emotional intelligence. Steven, did I forget anything in there?

Stephen (: 01:08

No, you covered it all. Thank you kindly for having me, Chase.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming in. I'm excited for this. Now, Stephen, I love origin stories. Where'd you grow up?

Stephen (: 01:22

I grew up in Dallas, Texas and spent most of my years there, except for a short six, eight months up in the Northeast where I froze to death in the winter time and swore I would never live north of the Mason-Dixon line again. went out to Lubbock, Texas to Texas Tech University, go tech, guns up.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:49

nice

Stephen (: 01:50

studied out there for quite a bit and then just got this incredible opportunity to join the terrific Hilton College at the University of Houston and have been there 35 years now.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 02:08

Awesome. Who was Stephen prior to all of this, prior to the lawyer, prior to the college? What were some of the earliest jobs you had? Who was Stephen before all of this happened?

Stephen (: 02:25

Interesting question. I actually, except for one, I had a couple of jobs outside of restaurants and clubs. I was a construction worker for a while because my friend's father owned the company and I did some office supply delivery because my friend's father ran the company. And you can see a trend there.

And then there was a Jack in the Box close to our house that I could walk to. that was my first job in the industry. Then you may remember Bonanza Steakhouses or some of your listeners might. I worked there and then at some other restaurants, worked at the first Bennigan's in Texas and Dallas on, let's see, was on Northwest Highway. then, let's see, Chase. And then I got mostly into more of the

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 03:01

yeah.

Stephen (: 03:20

club and bar business. And that's how I put myself through school and then got into that business after I finished, stayed in it all through law school. And then when I got out of law school, I started developing my own.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 03:38

and developing your own. you were building, managing, what were you doing there?

Stephen (: 03:43

Right. Owned and operated. had a restaurant and nightclub. These are all out in Lubbock, West Texas. And then we had a comedy club across the street from that. And then we had called 82nd Street Live. And then right across from campus, we had a piano sing-along concept that was great fun. So that's kind of

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 04:09

Yes. Yes.

Stephen (: 04:12

how I got into this concept of marrying law and hospitality.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 04:19

Or you've got two polar opposites, feel like, where, now, law can certainly be fun, but it's also very long, drawn out, some would say maybe a little bit dry and boring, and then you've got all of this entertainment, comedy clubs, piano club, you take both polar opposites and bring them all together.

Stephen (: 04:45

Yeah, you know, and I wish I could tell you that I was smart enough to have done that on my own, but I was in seeing at the comedy club one night, Chase, and literally, and the chair of the hotel and restaurant school at Texas Tech approached me and said, Hey, man, I hear your lawyer. And I go, yes, sir. And he said, well, you need to come teach. said, teach what? He said, you need to teach my hospitality law class for my students. And I

had never heard of such a thing. Law schools don't have hospitality laws as subject. so to his credit, I guess, I said no. And then he came back the next year and made it worth my while. And then ultimately he ended up becoming the associate dean at the Hilton College. And I was very fortunate that he invited me to come down there and

apply to be a professor and I did and it's been a lovely career and relationship. see, I think we're right at 17,000 students later that I've had in my classes. Yeah. And it's some, extraordinary set of teaching assistants that I'm very proud of because they've gone on to do some remarkable things in their own right. So I'm very proud of all of them. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 05:58

Wow.

That's incredible.

Stephen (: 06:11

It's been nice, but that's how it happened.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 06:11

Nice. Yeah. Isn't it crazy how there's so many times, at least in my life, that the major turning points or big decisions just came sort of out of nowhere, out of an offhanded comment somebody makes or somebody comes into your life in a relationship that may not have meant anything completely changes the path of where you go.

And being open to those is important.

Stephen (: 06:42

Totally agree. Yeah.

Being open to those opportunities. agree. Listening. Yeah, you're so right. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 06:51

Yes, Not, you know, having your head down and focusing is so important on a lot of things, but also just, this is advice that I'm saying, but I need to take it myself is slow down a little bit and just look around, be observant of what's going on and what you can learn is crazy important. So you kind of mentioned that there was no, or there is no potentially

Stephen (: 07:14

I

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 07:21

law degree that has a focus on hospitality law because, I mean, as you've talked about, there are so many different pieces to what goes into hospitality law. And of course, you're looking at hotels, looking at restaurants, looking at the travel industry, How do you determine what it is, at least on the practice side or on the conference side or on what you do as a

as a professor, how do you decide what you're gonna focus on, what you're gonna teach, how you're going to organize everything together?

Stephen (: 08:00

That's a great question. And I do want to mention that there is a hospitality and tourism law program now at Washington School of Law at American University. It's chaired by my good friend, Steven Shapiro. So if your viewers are looking for it, he just finished. He hosts a two-week program every summer that's pretty intense, and it's focused on the real estate side.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 08:19

nice.

Stephen (: 08:29

So your viewers might have an interest in that, Chase. But as you mentioned, hospitality law is at a 10,000 foot level. You've got hotels, have restaurants, you have meetings, you have events, have cruise ships. The travel piece is a little outside the scope of hospitality because it's a little broader.

But certainly hotels are part of the travel equation, but I typically don't spend too much time on airlines. And I have another vertical in my work area is called travel risk mitigation, where we do devote more time to the travel side of things. But the hospitality law side, you're so right. know, it's got franchising, management agreements, labor and employment.

It's got lost property, it's got found property, it's got all your insurance and risk issues, safety, security. Every part of the law you could imagine bankruptcy at times, right? Negotiation, arbitration, mediation, litigation, liability, lawsuits, torts. And so when I sat down to write my textbook,

30 years or so ago, that's what, you we didn't have AI to tell me how to organize it. So we did, we created an outline that kind of covered all of those things and it's got 15 chapters in it and it walks you through, you know, how to get started, how to create an entity, how to franchise agreements, meeting contracts, management agreements, and then.

labor and employment and the liability side of it, how to prevent that. I'm a big prevention of liability. And of course, the food and beverage side, I failed to mention that. That's a big component, not for all hotels, but for some. today, Chase, as you know, being in this business, it has evolved quite dramatically because today you've got many, many long-term stay properties.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 10:26

Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 10:37

Right.

Stephen (: 10:41

So what does that mean from a legal perspective? Are they transient guests or are they tenants? And what does that mean in the law? And then you've got, of course, litigation around human trafficking. You've got in-room safes today. And how does that impact the limited liability statutes that are different in all 50 states? So there's so many things going on so quickly, it's just hard to keep up with.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 10:41

Yes.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 11:05

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I feel like a lot of the biggest hotels, the biggest, you know, hospitality firms, the resorts, obviously they have one, you know, I'll call it a benefit. They've, benefit out of the hard pieces that have come from it, but they've had the benefit of

battle testing a lot of these things that have come in. They've had so many guests over so many years. What are some of the biggest things that maybe even some of the smaller hotel owners, the medium hotels, know, 150 room hotels that obviously don't see nearly the number of guests, the number of problems to learn from that, what are some of the lessons that

Maybe a smaller hotel can learn off of some of these big hotels that have battle tested so many issues.

Stephen (: 12:09

Sure. Happy to comment on that. Before we go there, though, I want to, as we were talking about, really about evolving. But to your question, those big brands today, they operate very few hotels, relatively speaking, because they've all morphed into the franchise model. When I talk to hotel people today, very few of them

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 12:25

Sure.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 12:29

Yes.

Stephen (: 12:34

If they really understand their business will say, well, we're in the hotel business. No, no, no. They're in the technology business and franchise business. They just happen to be selling hotels and hotel rooms. So I, know, for your viewers, those that are in the business that owned a hotel, maybe two, it's a totally different model than it was 35 years ago, even. Right. And even for them, it's more of a real estate play.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 12:43

Yeah. Yes.

Stephen (: 13:05

than a hotel play, often, not always, but often. But more directly to your question, if somebody asks me to say what are the key lessons learned for innkeepers probably over the last 20 years, I would say slips, trips and falls are still the number one way that our guests are injured. Most of those happen in the bathroom, guest room baths because Chase, as you know,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 13:07

Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen (: 13:33

for the longest time, every hotel room had a bathtub. Even though we even did a study on this at the college, even though fewer than 5 % of our guests actually laid down and took a bath. So there really wasn't a reason to have those bathtubs. And when you added in the research that most accidents and injuries to guests and employees occurred getting in and out of the bathtub, now you're seeing this enormous shift away from bathtubs.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 13:40

Yes.

Stephen (: 14:02

Not totally, but you might have four or five bathtubs in a hotel today where you used to have 150, right? So slips, trips and falls, the need to walk your property on a regular basis. I suggest going into our guest rooms every single day as a lesson learned. The more often we go into our guest rooms, we've learned the fewer bad acts go on in our guest rooms, whether it's trafficking, prostitution, meth,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 14:20

Hmm.

Stephen (: 14:30

meth creation, etc. Terrorist attacks. You saw what happened in Las Vegas, that tragedy with the country music festival, because he had his do not disturb sign on the door and they just weren't going into the room. So we can't let that happen in a transient guest in keeper relationship. So you get in there. A couple of other things would be we do not give out a key without an ID.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 14:39

Right.

Stephen (: 14:59

I don't care if they're a Hilton Diamond member, a Marriott top member, that Bonvoy member, whatever that is, everybody has to show an ID before they get a key. I don't care if it's a little old woman that's 85 years old. So you got to show an ID because we have way too many episodes, Chase, of a key being handed to somebody in a room that's already been checked in or where they're not supposed to have access to. So that's another one.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 15:07

rate.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 15:25

Yeah.

Stephen (: 15:28

If a guest or an employee says call 911, we call 911. We do not go check out the situation. We don't ask questions. We get professional help on the way. Once that's in play, then we can go check it out and administer the aid we've been trained to do. But those are kind of the top ones, you know, and then of course you've got all the labor and employment.

things we've learned, I could go on. you know, I could do a whole semester on this.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 16:02

Right, right, and you often do, right?

Stephen (: 16:04

Yeah, I do. Yes.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 16:07

That's perfect. When it comes to managing a property, whether it's maybe like a 200 room independent or an economy hotel, how does your advice maybe shift towards a 300 room resort? Like what are some of the major differences if you were talking to two different hotel owners next to each other?

Stephen (: 16:33

You know, I think the fundamental aspects of operating the hotels are going to be very similar. You know, you've got everybody has the fundamental duty to operate your hotel with this concept known as reasonable care. So we're the good news is we're not the insurers of our guest safety, but just like every business in the United States, we have a responsibility to operate with reasonable care. So how do we do that? Well,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 16:55

Mm-hmm.

Stephen (: 17:02

We comply with the law. We comply with our own policies and procedures. We hire good people by checking their application for veracity, drug testing, background checks, and then you train those people. And look, I know all the innkeepers out there are training their folks on how to check in a guest, check out a guest, and maintain the guest room, clean the room.

What I'm talking about is train your people on the fundamental aspects of safety and security, fire safety, and many of the things we just talked about. So my expectation is that warn of unsafe conditions, et cetera. You've got to get at any property, you have to get all of your team involved in creating a culture of safety and security.

And so that wouldn't change even as you scale up. Now, what might change is you'll have a more robust closed circuit TV system, right? That maybe is monitored a little more frequently than in other situations like the casinos in Las Vegas, for instance, right? Where we've all learned security from those folks.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 18:09

you.

Stephen (: 18:23

But typically in your hotels, 150, 200, even 300, you're probably not monitoring those TV systems. It's only there as a deterrent and to learn from what occurred. you may have, this is where AI could come in to help. You may have a security robot with three or four cameras on it that

you know, is going through your parking lot, right? You may have undercover security at the larger hotels and resorts. And again, it's probably going to depend on the socioeconomic level of the hotel. The higher, you know, four-star, five-star, you would expect security, uniformed and not, or plain clothes. But at all hotels,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 18:55

Hmm. Da.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 19:10

Yeah.

Stephen (: 19:21

You would expect relationships with police. You would expect them to be using closed circuit TV systems. You would expect them to be using electronic key systems. But you would also expect all of them to have significant master key controls. Because when it cuts down to it, your electronic key system is only as good as your master key system.

Right? No master key ever leaves the property has to be checked in and checked out every day, restricted access to those master keys. So these are the types of things we talk about on our website, on our blog. You know, your viewers can go and watch these episodes that we create master keys first 15 minutes after an accident. What's the difference between a transient guest and a tenant?

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 19:51

Okay. Yep.

Stephen (: 20:14

You know, all of that fentanyl in hotel rooms, a big issue today. know, overdosing, it's a big issue. you know, and so it's difficult to say where it stops and starts, but as you morph into the higher level of luxury, I think the expectation of the guest fairly is a more robust security response. If you're into resorts, perhaps a doctor.

on staff or nearby, right? But going back, know, everybody can have a relationship with the police. can use their, speaking of AI, they can use their license plate reading system that ties in the police department. I suggest having a reserved parking place for the police, no matter how big your property is. Invite the police over to do a walkthrough of your property so they can point out.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 20:52

No.

Stephen (: 21:09

things for you, know, areas and they can talk to you about the trends that are going on in the city. But when you have those relationships, they help you in so many ways. Donuts will only take you so far, my friend.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 21:24

Absolutely. if, again, the power of the collective, if you have every hotel that has a good relationship with the police, then the police have a much better idea of what's going on and able to help everybody out. just having those relationships are huge.

Stephen (: 21:45

And, and chase, yeah, especially today we're having law enforcement go into hotels. Often it's ice, you know, with search warrants or not, but you know, if you have a prior relationship with law enforcement and your community, I think you're going to be able to manage that much differently than if you don't.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 22:04

Absolutely. What would you say to an owner that is skeptical about needing a lawyer or an attorney until something goes wrong?

Stephen (: 22:14

that is such a good question. You asked good questions. So I was just at a conference and I was just making this point to a group of innkeepers. Look, back in the day, you could have, because you know, Chase, being in Iowa, a lot of hotels are in small rural communities. And so typically they'll rely on a lawyer for real estate, franchising, management agreements, labor and employment.

immigration. just cannot do that today. have to have lawyers are specialized just like all the vertical integration and hotels, right? All the sub brands from the big brands to capture different markets. Law firms have done, or lawyers and law firms have done the same thing, And especially today, you need to have a relationship. Just for example, an immigration lawyer,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 22:48

Right.

Stephen (: 23:11

so that if ICE walks in, Immigration and Customs Enforcement walks in with a warrant, your staff knows what to do and they've got a phone number. If they can't reach you, they've got a phone number right there to get their immigration lawyer on the phone. And it just has to be a franchise attorney, not such a sense of urgency, right? A transaction attorney, not such a sense of urgency, but in this day and age,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 23:35

Yeah.

Stephen (: 23:40

liability challenges, immigration challenges, you need specialists to be able to guide you. And you don't have to pay them if you're not using them. You just need to take them to lunch or breakfast, get to know them and then say, hey, if something comes up, can I call you? And they'll go, yeah, this is how much I charge. You can go, great, I'm ready. Because it'll be worth every penny. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 24:01

Right, and geographically speaking, you look at the majority of the country, right? I mean, if you're in Dallas, Houston, New York, Chicago, you probably have access to pretty much every type of attorney that's quote unquote local, but a lot of the areas, yeah, I live in Iowa, but in a lot of areas of the country, you probably don't have

locally to where you can take them out to breakfast, again, all of the different types of attorneys or good attorneys that have a good breadth of knowledge about multiple subjects, how important is it to have all attorneys in your local geographical area or have them have good relationships with specialists that work on a national or regional level?

Stephen (: 24:58

Yeah, that's the key. You're right. Exactly. They're not going to have access to all those different disciplines in their area. So you look for somebody, a law firm that has a regional or national presence. So for instance, if you're looking for labor and employment and immigration, Fisher Phillips is a law firm that we work very closely with and they can manage things in all 50 states. And what typically happens to your point, is if

if the lawyers in California that you contact and your situation is very local, they will find a local attorney or as close as they can to help guide them around the culture, the judges and the local law. But you get that, so you get that national powerhouse and all of their resources plus the guidance of local council, even though that local council may not be in that exact discipline.

they can still be very helpful in guiding that national law firm. Does that answer your question?

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 26:04

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, it's the relationships that you are building, hopefully prior to having any kind of issues.

Stephen (: 26:05

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen (: 26:13

Right. Yeah, it's crucial.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 26:17

Yeah, jumping a little bit over to air quality. I know you've written a lot about air quality, specifically, you know, smoking, it's, you know, cigarette vaping, all that fun stuff, and how even non-smoking hotels can have a big air quality issue. Can you speak on a little bit of some of the issues that hotels specifically are having with air quality?

Stephen (: 26:46

You've done your homework, my friend. Yeah, you've done well. Yes, Chase, we made a mistake. I say we, it wasn't me, but it was a whole bunch of us that pushed hotels to go smoke free. And, the Westin Hotel was one of the first, was probably the first chain to do it. And some of your viewers probably remember

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 26:50

I try.

Stephen (: 27:15

how awful it was to be on an airplane that allowed people to smoke. And so we know it's just not the right thing to do. I don't know who ever thought having a lighter or a lit cigarette at 30,000 feet with a tube full of oxygen was ever a good idea. nevertheless, you know, it lasted a long time. But with hotels, yes, making them smoke free, tobacco free, now of course, vapor free, marijuana smoke free.

I still believe that's the right thing to do. The challenge we have, Chase, to your point is that hotels continue to hire people that smoke. In some states, you can not hire people that smoke. Some states you can't. And so, but when you hire people that smoke because of the secondhand smoke, in other words, somebody breathing in the smoke is in the off the lit cigarette. That's the first hand. The second hand is the smoke that's

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 27:49

Mm-hmm.

Stephen (: 28:15

on their exhale, that's on their hair and their clothes, their skin. And when they go into an elevator after a cigarette or a guest room, or your guests do that, that is going to transfer into your upholstery, into your ceiling, into your bedding. And it is most challenging to ever get rid of it. It gets into your walls, it seeps through the floors. It's challenging. And so,

You know, we, where we used to restrict guests that smoke to certain guest rooms or, or a floor. Now people that smoke stay throughout the hotel and they contaminate the air quality with the secondhand smoke or vape in all of those guest rooms at a hotel. Do you see? And that, that's we.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 29:11

Yes.

Stephen (: 29:12

did not think that through when we started pushing to go tobacco free. And that's unfortunate. And then today with vaping, of course, most people I know that vape, they don't think that there's chemicals in vape. They are very inaccurate. The chemicals in vape are just as poisonous as they are in cigarettes. And of course, the challenge is,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 29:16

Right.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 29:31

present.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 29:40

Ugh.

Stephen (: 29:42

that is much more difficult to detect in a hotel room. So it really puts a burden on your innkeepers to manage those processes. So you get a lot of guests that maybe go into a guest room, they start sneezing or their chest gets tight, their nose begins to burn. Even though the room's been cleaned, it's very difficult to get rid of all of those chemicals.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 29:47

Right?

Stephen (: 30:10

And, you know, hoteliers have some challenges, not just with that, not on air quality, but I mentioned fentanyl earlier. You know, if somebody's using fentanyl in a hotel room, it's nearly impossible to totally clean that from all the surfaces and crevices where it could be. So if you've got toddlers, you know, crawling on the floor on countertops, oh goodness, we've had some horror stories. Tragic. Yeah.

Fortunate. yeah, air quality, but believe me, but look, there are things innkeepers are doing, right? They're using, like there's a brand out there called Pure that uses tea tree oil to filter the air in hotels. You know, the other mistake we made is everybody panicked when people were falling out of, off of hotel balconies and opening the windows and falling out. And so, okay, we sealed all the windows, but that means we don't ever get any fresh air into the rooms now.

And it makes it that much more difficult to get clean air into the guest room. So I'm a much bigger fan of windows that at least open partially, right? So that the guests can get some fresh air into the room. And I like air filters in rooms. I think there's things we can still do more ubiquitously to bring better air quality to hotel rooms. I think it's going to be a big issue going forward.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 31:39

Yes, I agree. Now, obviously you have the issue of just hoteliers wanting to take care of their guests, which is obviously a good thing. And hopefully they're all that.

Stephen (: 31:49

Yes.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 31:55

oriented, but what are some of the potential legal risks as far as the hotel air quality and what they're doing and how do they mitigate some risk on that side in order to take care of things?

Stephen (: 32:12

It's a fair question. I think first we have to look at the chemicals we're using in our cleaning products. I think that's probably the first thing we need to do. Second thing we need to do is think about how we're cleaning our rooms, how we are filtering the air. There are methods that are out there today that can clean for the most part.

secondhand smoke and vape and marijuana smoke from the air. But you've got to realize you have to be wiping down your walls. You've got to be wiping down, you've got to be really cleaning your comforters and your sheets, if you're not already, of course, any carpets, things like that. So

And then you use substances that absorb those like the smoke, like tea tree oil, like I mentioned, it's a natural product that kind of a natural cleansing product. And some of these groups use it when you're in your air conditioning system and they return air. And so it filters the air. So those are the things you can do. I think probably Chase, I haven't seen litigation against

a brand for air quality, but I can imagine a scenario where maybe a child walks into a hotel room and maybe their nose begins to bleed because of the chemical residue from cleaning products or prior guests were smoking and the room wasn't cleaned properly. Certainly with fentanyl, you know, we've have seen those challenges occur and litigation ensue.

not so much air quality, but just cleanliness in general. those are very challenging circumstances for the innkeepers. Yeah. But I hope they do focus on it because I think there's a real value add to have air, clean air in your hotel rooms.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 34:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 34:20

Yes. And of course, I mean, we just went through COVID, which brings up a whole separate topic, but also very related, right? I mean, how it's obviously very difficult sharing air, making sure everything is clean, clean for something that, you know, we're still trying to even figure out what it is. It's very difficult task for these hoteliers.

Stephen (: 34:48

lot of diseases are airborne contagions. And so you have to be mindful of that today. know, Legionnaires, Legionella, you know, we have those outbreaks and though and you and when you're talking to your insurance broker, you need to be sure they have an excluded coverage for what we call pollution cases, Legionella, things like that, because you'll be left holding the bag if it is excluded, because it's probably not included. It may be

It first blush in your general liability policy, but it's probably excluded somewhere down the line. So you need a broker that really understands your business. And yeah, it's challenging. It really, really is challenging.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 35:34

Yeah, yeah. How often do you have... Please. Please.

Stephen (: 35:36

You know, while I'm on that topic, Chase, if I may real quick, know, carbon monoxide is another area that, you know, air quality, you know, if, you're running any type of fossil fuel equipment, whether it's fireplaces or your pool pump, you, you absolutely need to have CO monitors in your rooms. today you can buy smoke detectors and CO monitors combined, but in some states require them.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 35:44

Great.

Stephen (: 36:05

Some cities require them, those are catastrophic injuries and deaths. Because CO, carbon monoxide, you can't smell, you can't feel it, you can't taste it, and all you know is you don't feel well. And so what do most of us do when we don't feel well? We stay in bed. Well, that's the worst thing you can do with carbon monoxide poison. You have to get out and get fresh air.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 36:27

Yes.

Stephen (: 36:34

Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 36:34

Yeah, yeah, and that's obviously been in the news here very recently.

Stephen (: 36:39

Yeah. Yeah. But the baseball player, baseball player son in Cabo San Lucas was awful. if that, listen, if it happens at the high end resorts like that, it's like we talked about, scale often doesn't matter when it comes to safety and security.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 36:46

Yeah, yeah, it is awful.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 36:58

Right, right, exactly. All right, jump in topic again. Another topic that I know you are very passionate about, that I'm very interested to hear a little bit about, is emotional intelligence.

Stephen (: 36:59

Yeah. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 37:16

Hotel staff running the front desk has to be one of the most difficult jobs to do, at least do well, other than maybe a airline check-in desk, Where you are having to not only constantly manage your own emotions, but you are managing all of the emotions of the guests, the other workers around you.

Stephen (: 37:23

Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 37:44

Give me a 10,000 foot view of what emotional intelligence means overall, especially when we're talking about our tel staff.

Stephen (: 37:55

Yeah, sure. So in a nutshell, emotional intelligence is self-awareness, right? What are your triggers? How do you typically react? React being the key word to those triggers. And then self-regulation, you know, instead of reacting, how can I respond positively to these circumstances? Empathy, which is exceptionally important in the customer service industry. And then

you know, using those tools, you know, to negotiate, solve conflict, right? And to turn a difficult guest experience into a good one. So you get a customer back. Yeah. And it's not an easy thing to do, as you pointed out, because customers today, I think are more demanding. They're less patient. Time is more valuable. They're paying a lot of money.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 38:42

Right.

Stephen (: 38:54

So the expectations are higher, the sense of entitlement is higher. So it's challenging. But I think one of the key lessons from emotional intelligence that I would share with your audience is that you're only going to get one skin. So I suggest we be darn careful who we let get underneath it. And the other thing is if somebody says something unkind,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 39:17

Hmm.

Stephen (: 39:23

It's one of my favorite analogies is driving down a freeway and somebody cuts you off. What's your first reaction? No sign language. You know, no sign language, please. Right. Well, everybody gets mad, angry, chase them down, et cetera. But here's the key point to that chase. If we don't react to that, what happened? And the answer is nothing happened. We go on with our good, peaceful day, productive.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 39:34

Right.

Stephen (: 39:52

Right? And so we have to realize that it's our reaction to things that bring significance to them. If we don't react to somebody yelling at us or if we don't react to somebody saying unkind things about us, man, we go on with our day. Now, I'm not suggesting that front desk people sit there and tolerate bullies or unkind people. But there are

better ways than others to manage that. Hey, I'd love to listen to you, but when you're yelling at me, I can't hear you. Or can we take it down a notch? I'm here to help. I'm trying my best as you are to try to find a solution. And that's the last piece of the puzzle chase in that big nutshell I'm talking about, about emotional intelligence is a lot of people don't understand conflict resolution.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 40:38

and

Stephen (: 40:50

Conflict resolution is about finding solutions to things. And the way you find solutions is you meet the needs of the people that are in the conflict. If you just meet one person's needs, you haven't solved the conflict. You got to meet everybody's needs involved in the conflict. And so most people today have watched way too much CSI. So if they get into an argument with a significant other or somebody at the hotel,

They immediately go to the documents. They immediately go to a text message on their phone. I told you this or you didn't say that. see, that's not trying to solve anything. That's trying to be right. Solving conflict is never about being right. Solving conflict is about meeting the needs of the people involved in the conflict. Like if I go to a hotel and they want to walk me,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 41:31

Yes.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 41:37

Root.

Stephen (: 41:45

You know, showing me a disclaimer that said we reserved the right to walk our guests, that's not helping me one bit. What do I need? I need a hotel room as close by as possible. Right. And that's what you need to be focusing on. Not, not well, we told you, dude, you're talking to the wrong guy about this stuff.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 42:07

Yes, yes. And I believe I've heard you say that big picture, 80 % of long-term success comes from emotional intelligence. What do you mean by that?

Stephen (: 42:20

That's what the research shows, Chase. You know, this is all stems, actually, emotional intelligence has been around for over 2000 years. The Kabbalah philosophy really kind of started it where they adopted the concept of our ego is our enemy. There's real wisdom in that thought process. And then it wasn't but about 25 years ago, I guess now, that Daniel Goldman, a professor at a small school up in the Northeast,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 42:40

Great.

Stephen (: 42:50

I think the story goes he was painting a house with another professor at a different school and they started asking, you know how professors are, know, they started asking about why are some of the smartest people in the world not running the businesses? And they touched on the fact that well, their emotions get in the way. They don't know how to interact with people. They don't know how to manage and self-regulate. They don't have empathy.

Right? so it's leadership is just, it's so crucial today to have emotional intelligence. see it, we're seeing it played out right before our eyes, how important emotional intelligence is or a lack thereof is. And, and so it's just crucial. And yeah, that's what the research shows is that 80 % of people's success typically stems from their emotional intelligence rather than their

IQ, their EQ, their emotional quotient, rather than their intellectual quotient. And the other cool thing about that is that your EQ, your emotional intelligence can continue to grow and grow and grow. Whereas your IQ capacity typically peaks between 14, 16, 17, 18 years old. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 44:14

That's incredible.

Stephen (: 44:16

Yeah, and listen, you teach what you need to learn the most. So that's why I got into teaching EI.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 44:21

You

That is a smart man right there. What?

Stephen (: 44:26

More by necessity than smart.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 44:32

Absolutely, I'm in that same boat as my wife will absolutely tell you. would you say, like what does emotional intelligence leadership or emotionally intelligent leadership look like in like a hotel setting itself?

Stephen (: 44:35

Yeah.

Stephen (: 44:54

So, you know, with GMs in a hotel, it's recognizing that you're really there to support your people. You're not there to control them. If you know, if you hire the right people and you train them, what you want to do is cut them loose. I have a good friend who's fond of saying, I'd rather say, whoa, than giddy up. Right.

I used a horse analogy, Texas analogy, yeah, the cowboy, you know, but that's true. Yeah, you turn them loose. You let them do their thing. You trust them. And there's a whole lot of emotional intelligence in that. A lot of people don't have the ability to trust their employees. And they also think, you know, if you look at an organization chart today, says, I'll bet 999 out of a thousand.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 45:18

Yep. Got it. I like it.

Stephen (: 45:42

will be top down, in other words, GM, AGM, supervisors, line staff, right? And then the owners. But that's so contrary to what is realistic in a hotel. And here's the reason why, and here's the reason why innkeepers don't realize it, is because ask your listeners, do you have customers embedded in your organization chart? And I'll bet you that they don't. But if you put your...

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 45:48

Yep. Yep.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 46:10

Mm-mm. All right.

Stephen (: 46:12

customers in your organization chart, you would never put your customers at the bottom, but that's who enter the employees on the bottom. They interact with those customers every day. It's not the owners in the GM. It's your line level employees. So that will teach you hopefully that you've worked your entire life to get to the bottom. Right. And so you flip that organization chart upside down. You put the ownerships at the bottom, then the GM, then the supervisor.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 46:36

Yes.

Stephen (: 46:41

and your line employees are at the top and your customers plug right into the top because now everybody is focusing on our employees and them delivering the best experience for our guests. Delta Airlines learned 20 years ago, the incoming CEO stood up at a conference I was at and in front of all of his business travel buyers, must have been 2,000 of them in the room.

He said, ladies and gentlemen, we've been wrong. We've been putting you first. We're his customers. We're no longer going to do that. We are going to start taking care of our employees because if we take care of our employees, they will take care of you. you can just, know, with Delta, we used to say Delta stood for don't ever leave the airport, right? Because it was, it was just really horrendous customer care and timeliness and things like that.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 47:35

Yes.

Stephen (: 47:40

But you look at them today, number one, number one, number one in business customer service. And they made that simple switch. That is emotional intelligence. And if you take it one step further, your audience builds hotels. Well, you would never put the foundation of a hotel on the top floor, never ever. It's the stability, it's the strength. You put it on the bottom and that's where effective leaders work from.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 48:02

Right?

Stephen (: 48:10

That, my friend, is emotional intelligence.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 48:10

Right, absolutely.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 48:14

I love that. That's gold. If, say, a hotel investor, a hotel owner is looking to improve their EQ, where would you suggest them go? Where do they start?

Stephen (: 48:28

Well, let's see. I would start with Daniel Goldman's book called Emotional Intelligence. I would listen to it rather than read it. I would do it on an audiobook. think that's where I would start. I have a brief e-book on

emotional intelligence, maybe a dollar, dollar 50. You can just Google it, you'll find it. But I think that would also be a good place to start. And then on my website, we've got a lot of stevenbarth.com. We've got a lot of emotional energy and emotional intelligence tips, maybe about 50 or 60, that kind of, you know, just daily to remind people of different things and

So yeah, I think if you do those things, and today though, Chase, emotional intelligence is everywhere. YouTube is gonna have a thousand videos on it. But I think if you take it in small pieces, know, emotional intelligence is all about re-scripting what's going on in your subconscious. it takes practice. It's a daily mindfulness thing. But I hope they do it. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 49:47

Mm-hmm.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 49:51

Awesome. I agree, I agree. So going back to obviously you're a professor at the Hilton College, I'm kind of curious because this is before my time, but I feel like the industry has changed a lot in the last few decades as far as even colleges having

any sort of hospitality degree certification and how is that changing the industry itself?

Stephen (: 50:30

the actual educational evolution itself or tied into emotional intelligence?

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 50:38

Yeah, No, yeah, so not tied to emotional intelligence itself, but just the evolution of these colleges saying that, we believe there's a big market and a need for us to educate anyone inside the hotel hierarchy. And how does that necessarily have affected the hotel industry? And you can probably speak on this better, but.

Stephen (: 50:57

I see.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 51:07

two, three, four, five decades ago, how prevalent were these sort of degrees or colleges teaching on it and how has that changed the industry itself?

Stephen (: 51:23

It's a very fair question. You're exactly right. 40, 50 years ago, our college was just getting started. School at Cornell, Purdue, you know, the big ones, the international hotel schools in Switzerland, Spain, they were around.

But it has evolved over time and it's going to continue to do so with the advent of AI. That's going to change the entire educational landscape in my opinion. know, AI is not going to take people's jobs. People that know how to use AI are going to take people's jobs. And so I'm all about

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 52:04

Yes.

Stephen (: 52:05

our students learning everything they can about AI and how to use it. I use it every day. People on my teams, I try to get them to use it every day. this evolution, your super instance, revenue management has been a big course in all of these 150 hotel schools around the USA and then again internationally. And that's probably going to go away in the next couple of years because AI is going to do that for you.

all of your distribution matrixes. know, Marriott is implementing software that actually assigns rooms to their guests on any given night for all their million guests that are staying there. So the front desk people at the individual hotels no longer have to do that. you know, there'd be a, in my opinion, I think it bodes well for students getting out of college because with AI,

They can ramp up to be a general manager relatively quickly. You no longer need to learn from your mistakes. If AI can teach you all of that in with a click of a button, you can say, I've got this situation, how best to handle it? Boom. And you've got it, right? Whereas today you've got people that have been in the business 30 and 40 years and they're like, well, I've been through all these things. So my experience is what's really my value add. Well,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 53:12

Yes. Great.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 53:18

Thank

Stephen (: 53:31

I'm a holder too, so I hate to say this, but I don't think that's necessarily the case anymore. Is there some value in somebody having gone through a lot of experience? And of course their relationships are valuable for sure that the younger people won't have and will have to generate. But man, from a situational awareness and the ability to navigate and lead people,

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 53:48

Yes.

Stephen (: 54:00

I think AI is going to shift that landscape quickly. Does that answer your question?

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 54:06

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And how the being able to marry both of those together, having the natural experience and battle tested employee, marrying that with good AI, good technology, the younger crowd, I think is going to be extremely important long term.

Stephen (: 54:34

I agree.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 54:36

Yeah. All right. Before we.

take off too much, I could jump into the AI side for an hour at least. But before we check out of the episode itself, I want to take care of a couple things. But we've got one more thing I want to hit real quick. It's time for what we call the wake-up call. It's a few quick hit questions to end with a bang here. What's one hotel experience that you'll never forget and why?

Stephen (: 54:45

Next time.

Stephen (: 55:12

Ooh, one hotel.

Let me think. I'm not sure. One's not coming to mind, so I must maybe I don't have one. A hotel expert. You mean just generally speaking, as a guest, you mean? As a guest? Yeah. as a guest.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 55:23

Ooh, I stumped ya.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 55:27

Yeah, yeah.

Stephen (: 55:34

You know, I've been so fortunate to have so many lovely experiences when people invite me out to speak. Um, that that's probably, I mean, they've, they've all, I can't pick out one single out one because they have been so kind and friendly to me. And I'm sure there's one out there that upstages all the others, but I couldn't mention, I wouldn't be able to come up with it today because I've been, you know, speaking to these groups for almost 35 years now and.

It's just been a delightful situation to meet these incredible hoteliers around the world and the customer care that they deliver. It's just been remarkable. So I guess collectively that would be my answer.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 56:19

Nice, I like it. Next one, what's a legal myth in hospitality you wish would disappear?

Stephen (: 56:26

The customer is always right. The customer is not always right. If you've got a customer harassing an employee or you've got a vendor harassing an employee or you've got a customer bullying an employee, they are not right and you need to step in and take action. That was an easy one. Thank you.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 56:29

Okay

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 56:46

Mmm. Mmm. I love it. I love it. What's one trait every great hotelier operator has in common?

Stephen (: 56:56

Patience.

Stephen (: 57:00

Patience and most likely empathy. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 57:05

I like it.

Stephen (: 57:06

Yeah, it's quite remarkable that, you you've got to know those people have been battle tested with unkind guests over their career. And, if you don't have patience and empathy, you're not going to survive at that level, especially with your employees. Right. It's like I told you, you know, like you said at the beginning, people are normal until they check into a hotel. It's that it's a dynamic that just other businesses don't do not have.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 57:34

Yes, absolutely. I agree. It's something that I certainly need to develop a lot more of, but everyone can definitely benefit from that. This is just a fun, creative one. No wrong answer here. If you were going to start a boutique hotel tomorrow, what would you name it?

Stephen (: 57:45

for sure.

Stephen (: 57:59

probably name it after my daughter, Alex.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:03

I love it. The Al.

Stephen (: 58:05

Yeah, that's probably what I would do. Yeah. That's probably what I would do. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:09

Awesome.

What's one book you would recommend to every... yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stephen (: 58:13

Or you know another great name, I'm sorry Chase, another great name might be Hotel Near Me, you know, because everybody is in their search, right, in their GPS. But I stole that from somebody, I can't remember where I was, maybe Portugal, and there was a restaurant called Thai Restaurant Near Me, and that was the name of the restaurant. So they came up number one in search, right? It was great. Yeah. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:23

Googling? Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:27

You

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:34

that's beautiful.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:39

Yeah, that's genius, that's genius.

Stephen (: 58:40

But don't tell my daughter I said that. I would go with my daughter's name.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:43

Of course. All right, last one. What's one book you'd recommend every hospitality leader?

Stephen (: 58:52

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Yeah, it's by far and away, in my opinion, the best personal and professional development book that still to this day, Stephen Covey was a master. I had the good fortune of hearing him in person speak. I was mesmerized and his book changed my world and his second book, Things First, which is one of the habits, it just totally

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 58:57

Such a classic.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 59:15

nice.

Stephen (: 59:26

It took me from zero to a thousand in terms of productivity.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 59:34

That's so beautiful. My little side story, my kids' elementary school, they sort of have their school principles and all of their principles are sort of like rewording the seven habits. And the first time I heard about it, in, I don't know, second, third, fourth grade, I don't remember when they really get into learning what those school principles are. Of course, my...

Eyes lit up and I got excited. like, do you know where this is from? And I wanna talk about it. And they're like, dad, stop. We do this in school. I was like, no, we're diving into this. Of course, dad gets excited about things that the kids aren't always excited about.

Stephen (: 01:00:13

Yeah. Of course. Of course.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:00:25

Steven, you helped run and founded the Hospitality Law Conference, right? And you've got a couple locations, right? you've been at this for a while. I love it. Give us a 10,000 foot view of what the Hospitality Law Conference is about.

Stephen (: 01:00:34

Yes, now in 27th, 28th year. Yes.

Stephen (: 01:00:42

wow, yeah.

Stephen (: 01:00:50

Yeah, we typically host two a year. We host one in Houston in typically in May, late, late spring. And then we host the other one in September, October in Washington, DC. This year, it will be September 16, 17 at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington. It's a day and a half program in both locations. The first day, Chase, we focus on franchise agreements, management contracts, ethics.

food and beverage situations, labor and employment challenges, safety and security. Day two is a half day and we tag it as our masterclass on hotel and restaurant development. And the program in DC is called Let's Make a Deal. And it's everything you need to know. What's trending today, what's selling today, what kind of deals are being made, is it better to do a conversion?

How do you analyze the best conversion for your property today? What if I have one hotel and I want to get to five? What if I want to buy a portfolio of hotels? What about mixed use properties? How do I take that next level step? Where I'm a second generation innkeeper and I've got an MBA and how do I get that? So we try to merge the legal, finance and economics of

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:01:58

Yeah.

Stephen (: 01:02:20

developing hotels and operating hotels on that second day. And I want to extend an invitation to your viewership. know, if they're in the owner, investor, broker category, and they would like to join us through you, they'll be able to get a complimentary registration. If it's okay with you, we'll send you a coupon code and you can share it with your folks. It's limited capacity, so.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:02:45

Yes.

Stephen (: 01:02:49

The sooner they register, the better. The only thing we ask since it's complimentary is that before they register, they really think about committing to coming because they'll be, you know, by registering and not showing you how it works, they'll be turning another person away that could use the information. So that's all we ask. but it's catered very nice. And the army, Navy country club in Arlington, Virginia is spectacular. It's got a lovely view of the Washington monument. It's just a great place to go.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:03:03

Yes. Yeah.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:03:14

Yes.

Stephen (: 01:03:18

And it's a smaller conference. typically only have about 100, 125 people. But that's our goal, is to create a community of the lawyers, the financial people, and everybody in that space. The owners, Yeah, owners, investors, lenders, et cetera.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:03:32

Yeah, yep, absolutely. yeah, I will be there, obviously. Yeah, yeah, I'll be there. Stephen will obviously be there. And yeah, I'd love to have any of our listeners, our guests come out and to meet us and learn together, because this is absolutely right up the alley of most of our listeners.

Stephen (: 01:03:39

Yeah, I'd to have you.

Stephen (: 01:03:55

That'd be great Chase, I look forward to seeing you there and meeting them as well. Thank you.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:03:56

What?

Yeah, yeah. Stephen, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your journey, your experience, all of the, everything that you've built up over the decades. Anything that I've missed that you think our guests should hear.

Stephen (: 01:04:15

I don't think so. think we've covered it. Yeah, but thank you very much for having me. I love your concept and what you're doing and look forward to coming back sometime.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:04:19

Awesome.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:04:26

Yep, yep, absolutely for our audience any best way that they can find you, get a hold of you.

Stephen (: 01:04:32

Yeah, if you'll just Google Stephen Barth, Stephen with a PH, or you can go to HospitalityLawyer.com, or you can go to StephenBarth.com, or you can go to the Hilton College University of Houston website. I promise you they cannot miss me.

Chase Keller, CCIM (: 01:04:49

I love it. I love it. You're out there. You've been out there for so long Well, well, thanks again Stephen for hanging out with us. I'm chase Keller This is the room key and we'll see you next time

Stephen (: 01:04:53

I'm out there.