Foundry Talks: The Hospitality Podcast

How to Turn One-Night Guests Into Three-Night Fans | Dylan Barahona

Dylan Barahona is the new general manager at Riverside Colorado [https://riversidecolorado.com/], a glamping retreat nestled in Poudre Canyon about 30 minutes outside Fort Collins. Riverside is owned by the same team behind the Mishawaka Amphitheater, the historic 1,000-person outdoor venue that beat Red Rocks for the top spot in Denver Westword's ranking of Colorado outdoor music venues. Dylan brings over a decade of hospitality experience spanning luxury hotels in Florida, VIP music festival programming including Electric Forest, and outdoor hospitality. He joined Riverside just six weeks before this recording and is already rethinking how the property drives revenue, builds community, and earns repeat guests. In this conversation, Dylan talks about why he is pushing guests to extend single-night stays into two and three-night trips, how he is curating "pre-parties" before Mishawaka shows to create a festival-within-a-festival feel, and what a potential donkey hike experience called Donkey Delights says about his approach to programming. He also shares his take on where AI genuinely helps in hospitality operations and where it falls short, including why no algorithm is going to walk up to a guest struggling with a fire pit and make a real human connection. Dylan also reflects on a stay at Rancho Santana in Nicaragua that shaped how he thinks about the difference between programming and memory-making. Find Riverside Colorado at riversidecolorado.com and follow Dylan on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dylan-barahona. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to Foundry Talks on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

What's Actually Wrong With Your Pipeline | Amy Infante-Still

If your hotel's sales plan is collecting dust on a shelf, Amy Infante-Still knows exactly why. Amy is the founder and CEO of GitGo, a hospitality B2B sales partner agency that has helped hotel owners, management companies, and brands build commercial engines that actually produce results. With over 20 years in the industry and more than two million buyer conversations under her belt, she brings a ground-level perspective that is hard to find anywhere else. In this episode, Amy breaks down the number one sales problem she sees across properties of every size: a pipeline that is reactive, unclear, and impossible to scale. She explains why sales, marketing, and revenue management so often operate in silos, what it actually takes to bring them together into one commercial operating system, and how to tell the difference between a leading indicator and a vanity metric. Amy also gets into the owner dynamic that shapes everything: how much to be involved, how to ask the right questions without meddling, and why transparency about an asset's goals can be the fastest path to better results. She shares what strong sales cultures actually look like from the inside, why on-site strategy sessions changed the way GitGo works with clients, and why building a commercial team is always an evolution, never a revolution. You can connect with Amy on LinkedIn at Amy Infante-Still [https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyinfante/] and learn more about GitGo at gitgogroup.com. [https://gitgogroup.com/] Foundry Talks is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Brand Therapy | Carly DeFilippo

What does it actually take to build a hotel brand that holds up over time? This week Rachel sits down with Carly DeFilippo, co-founder of Cognoscenti Creative [https://www.cognoscenticreative.com/], a branding studio run by two sisters out of Colorado. Carly and her sister Lauren got their start working in-house at major restaurant groups before launching an agency built specifically for independent and boutique hospitality properties. Carly shares how their intake process, what she jokingly calls brand therapy, goes way deeper than most operators expect. The goal is to surface what a property is truly about before a single logo or color palette ever gets made. She walks us through how they approach hotel naming (meaning comes last, energy comes first), what luxury actually means in 2025, and why having a clear and specific point of view might be the most underrated branding asset a hotel can have. We also dig into the New Orleans property they named after a Walt Whitman connection, the Outrider Hotel in Manitou Springs, and why the Surf Hotel in Buena Vista keeps coming up as a gold standard for cohesive brand storytelling. And Carly gets refreshingly honest about what Cognoscenti does not do, and why that clarity is what makes their client relationships work. Whether you are just starting to think about your brand or wondering if it is time for a refresh, this episode is full of practical perspective from someone who has lived on both sides of the business. You can find Cognoscenti Creative on Instagram at @cognoscenticreative [https://www.instagram.com/cognoscenticreative/]. Carly [https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlydefilippo/] and Lauren [https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurendefilippo/] are also both on LinkedIn and worth a follow.

Beyond the Beautiful Home | Edward May

Edward May has spent over 20 years in hospitality, from independent hotels in America to running chalets in Courchevel to knocking on doors in the Cotswolds in 2008 with an idea most people didn't understand yet. That idea became Hidden & Found, a company that brings full hotel-level service into privately rented homes across Europe. In this conversation, Edward gets honest about what actually separates a beautiful property from one that delivers. It comes down to care, and that always filters down from the top. We talk about what guests are genuinely craving right now, and why so many travel agents are over-promising and under-delivering because anyone can build a website and list homes without ever actually being on the ground. Edward's team is the one showing up, facilitating the stay, and course correcting when things go sideways. He also shares the Bali stay that stuck with him for over a decade and what it looks like to travel with the same family for 15 years. If you work in hotels or manage properties, this one is full of real perspective on the guest journey. Find Hidden and Found at www.hiddenandfound.com [http://www.hiddenandfound.com]

Behind the Lens and the Booking | Alex & Caroline Kittoe

What makes a traveler choose your property over the one next door? We talk with fine art and travel photographer Alex Kittoe and Fora travel advisor Caroline Kittoe about how visual content and trusted travel partnerships shape that decision before a guest ever walks through your lobby. Alex explains why shooting without a clear content strategy can be unsuccessful, and why knowing whether your photos are for a website, social feed, print ad, or billboard changes everything about how a shoot should be approached. He also challenges the assumption that reels outperform static content, sharing real examples where photo carousels delivered stronger brand consistency and storytelling. Caroline pulls back the curtain on what travelers actually say when they are choosing where to stay, and it is not what most properties expect. She talks about the growing influence travel advisors have on booking decisions, how a new generation of travelers is using advisors differently than their parents did, and what makes her confidently recommend one property over another. They also dig into why brands like Huckberry are winning with long form storytelling, how luxury yacht experiences from Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons are redefining guest expectations, and what independent hotels can learn from both. Find Alex's work at alexkittoe.com [https://www.alexkittoe.com/] and on Instagram at @alexkittoephotos [https://www.instagram.com/alexkittoephotos/]. Connect with Caroline on Instagram at @la.vita.di.lela [https://www.instagram.com/la.vita.di.lela/] or through her Fora Travel advisor page at foratravel.com/advisor/caroline-mccray [https://www.foratravel.com/advisor/caroline-mccray?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGndElfnkm9jazc1Uhu25lBoBYjJODdw_U7yEEMso3ku7qYmHTWQlxhL_6EHj4_aem_bl3waOZOzd3BsdIXPewUwQ].