She Applied With Zero Experience — 26 Years Later She Built One of Europe's Leading Revenue Consultancies | Annemarie Gubanski

Katarina Alič Čretnik | She Left a 15-Year Digital Career for the Forest — Now She's Changing What Hospitality Wellness Looks Like

What does it actually mean to slow down and why are the most intentional hospitality experiences being built not in hotel lobbies, but in forests? Katarina Alič Čretnik spent more than 15 years in digital marketing before following a deeper pull toward nature. She is an ANFT-certified forest therapy guide and NLP trainer based in Slovenia, running Melisa Holiday, a nature retreat where guests arrive stressed and distracted and leave feeling something they had not felt in years. In this conversation, Katarina and Alicia get into what forest therapy actually is and why guests who walk through trees every day still feel the forest completely differently when guided. They talk about the emotional weight of nature, what it takes to leave a corporate career for something slower, and why the hospitality industry is sitting on a wellness offering it has not recognized yet. This one is for hospitality owners and operators who want to understand what nature-based guest experiences actually look like in practice. 🔗 Connect with Katarina Alič Čretnik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katarina-alic-cretnik/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/katarina-alic-cretnik/]🌿 Melisa Holiday: https://melisa.si/ [https://melisa.si/]🔗 Connect with Alicia Dick Wahlberg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg [https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg]📸 Instagram: @alicia_dickwahlberg

She Applied With Zero Experience — 26 Years Later She Built One of Europe's Leading Revenue Consultancies | Annemarie Gubanski

What would you do if you applied for a job you knew nothing about and told them exactly that? For Annemarie, that moment changed everything. She moved from the Netherlands to Sweden for love, stumbled into revenue management at Radisson with zero experience, and spent the next 26 years building one of Scandinavia's most respected consultancies. Today she runs Taktikon [https://taktikon.com/], organizes the Global Revenue Forum across multiple European cities, and teaches the next generation of revenue managers that you don't have to be a mathematician to be great with data. In this episode, Alicia and Annemarie talk about what it really means to bet on yourself before you feel ready, why revenue management is never a one-size-fits-all strategy, and how the best consultancy relationships feel less like business and more like family. For GMs, revenue managers, and commercial leaders who know there's always more to learn. 🔗 Connect with Annemarie Gubanski: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annemariegubanski [https://www.linkedin.com/in/annemariegubanski] 🔗 Global Revenue Forum Amsterdam — June 4th: https://www.globalrevenueforum.com/amsterdam-2026 [https://www.globalrevenueforum.com/amsterdam-2026] 🔗 Connect with Alicia Dick Wahlberg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg [https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg] 📸 Instagram: @alicia_dickwahlberg

From Dishwasher to Director — Why the Best Kitchens Run on Mentorship, Not Fear | Adam Mali

What separates a truly great kitchen from a toxic one? According to internationally experienced culinary leader Adam Mali, it comes down to one choice every leader has to make: do you lead with fear, or do you lead with humanity? Adam has spent decades at the highest levels of hospitality across Europe and North America — working alongside multiple Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire, shaping fine dining concepts for luxury hotel groups, and quietly amassing the kind of knowledge that only comes from time spent in both palace kitchens and the unassuming neighbourhood restaurants he loves most. A fluent French speaker with a deep affinity for European culinary culture, Adam brings a rare global perspective to a conversation the industry badly needs to have. He speaks candidly about the "badass chef" culture he once participated in, the moment a frightened young stage knocked over a bread starter and changed his leadership philosophy forever, and why hospitality is failing its own people through ghosting, burnout, and a profound lack of mentorship. This is a conversation about fine dining, kitchen culture, what great recruitment actually looks like — and the kind of leadership that builds teams worth staying for. 🔗 Adam Mali on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammalichef/ 🔗 Alicia Dick Wahlberg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg

From Athlete to Wellness Leader: How Guest Experience in Hospitality Is Being Transformed | Lali Jochmann

What does a national swimmer, a bouncer in Zurich, and a personal trainer in Singapore have in common? A masterclass in people, performance, and showing up under pressure. In this episode, Alicia sits down with Lali Jochmann, a Swiss operations and commercial leader with 15+ years building premium, service-driven businesses across Asia and Europe. Lali is currently completing his MBA while running Alchemy Personal Training and PEAK Gym in Singapore, and he is now setting his sights on bringing a new vision of wellness and longevity into European hospitality. They talk about why athletes make exceptional hospitality professionals, what hotels are getting wrong about wellness, and why the gym in the basement with secondhand treadmills is no longer good enough. They also get into longevity, strength training as a leadership tool, and what a truly transformative guest experience could look like in the Swiss Alps. Lali is actively looking to join the right team in a DACH-based wellness hospitality company. If that sounds like you, find him on LinkedIn or Instagram at liftwithlali. Connect with Lali:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lali-jochmann-24678494Instagram: @liftwithlali Follow Alicia on LinkedIn for more real conversations on culture, careers, and the people shaping hospitality, travel, tourism, and startups:linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg

Ask Why, Take the Risk: Julius Anders on Hospitality Careers, Numa, and Hiring for Judgment

Julius Anders has done it the hard way and the smart way. From hotel management school to Mandarin Oriental and Corinthia, through the lifestyle world of Mondrian London, and then six years at Numa scaling a digital-first, remote-operated hotel brand from zero to 160+ properties across Europe. He built the operational structure from the ground floor, led the European operations team, and eventually took ownership of the DACH market before stepping out to found J.Anders Ventures. Now he advises hospitality concepts, hospitality tech companies, and their service partners on unit economics, tech and AI integration, multi-site scaling, and remote operations — and he brings a point of view that is equal parts operator and builder. In this episode, Julius and Alicia get into what it actually took to scale a VC backed hospitality company through COVID, why the 80/20 principle is beloved in startups and dreaded in hospitality, and how those two worlds collide when you are trying to grow fast without losing the service quality that made you worth growing in the first place. They also go deep on careers. Julius's advice to anyone entering hospitality right now — whether you are 22 or 42 — is to ask why more often and take more risk than feels comfortable. Not because risk is glamorous, but because uncertainty, for those who believe in themselves, is always an opportunity before it is a threat. And on hiring: as automation absorbs the repetitive work that used to fill a shift, the human moments that remain carry more weight than ever. The industry cannot keep recruiting for volume. The winners of the next decade will recruit for judgment, warmth, and the ability to read a situation no model can. This is a conversation for operators, founders, career builders, and anyone who has ever wondered whether hospitality is still worth betting on. It absolutely is. Connect with Julius: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julius-a-anders-6517b318/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/julius-a-anders-6517b318/] Connect with Alicia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciadickwahlberg/] Hospitality Folks is produced by Folksnest — the hospitality hiring platform built for the people who run hotels, not just the systems that track them.