The Modern Hotelier #109: Navigating Growth and Strategy in Hospitality | with Benjamin Rafter
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Steve Carran: Welcome back to The Modern Hotelier. We are excited to release this episode with Ben Rafter from Springboard Hospitality. David, what was your favorite thing from this episode?
David: Yeah, I thought he was great. I mean, what Springboard is doing, their independent hotel focus and his take on technology was, it was great.
Steve Carran: I agree. I also love his background coming from technology, now going to hotels, just brings a wealth of experience and a great background as well. But enjoy the episode.
David: Enjoy it.

David: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged hospitality podcast. I'm your host, David Millili.
Steve Carran: I'm your co host Steve Carran.
Jon Bumhoffer: And I'm the producer, Jon Bumhoffer.
David: Steve, who do we have on the program today?
Steve Carran: Yeah, David, today we have on Benjamin Rafter. Benjamin leads growth, strategy, and hotel revenue generation as president and CEO for Springboard Hospitality. Ben has an impressive career starting in technology before coming over to the hotel side. Welcome to the show, Benjamin.
Benjamin Rafter: Thank you. Great to be here.
Steve Carran: Excited to have you.
David: All right, Benjamin. So we're going to start off, we're going to go through a lightning round of questions. We're going to get to know you better, some of your personal background, your career, and then we're going to jump into some industry topics. Sound good?
Benjamin Rafter: Sounds great. Looking
David: All right. All right, great. So what was your first job?
Benjamin Rafter: First job was, uh, loading, uh, tapes on a mainframe for Western Hotels and Resorts when they were in Seattle.
David: Wow. Something you wish you were better at.
Benjamin Rafter: Oh, and a a anything? Um, something I wish I was better at. Communication. Coming from tech, it's hard.
David: Growing up, did you have a role model?
Benjamin Rafter: Oh, and parents for sure. Both. Both of them. Mom and mom and dad.
David: Okay, that's good. What's a luxury you can't live without?
Benjamin Rafter: red wine and internet.
David: What's a place you've never been to that you'd most like to go?
Benjamin Rafter: Ah, wow. That's a fun one. Montreal. A little obscure, but, but fun.
David: Yeah, absolutely. Alright, so you have your own late night talk show. Who's your first guest gonna be?
Benjamin Rafter: My first guess is going to be Barry Sternlich or Tom Selleck.
David: Oh, okay. Alright, good. Um, if you had a time machine, this is the last one. You had a time machine, you can go to the future, you can go to the past. Which way are you going and what year are you going to?
Benjamin Rafter: So I'm going to the future for sure. 25 years from now. We'll call it 2048.
David: That's good. Alright.
Benjamin Rafter: Sorry, 2049. We're almost to 2050.
David: I don't know, can't believe it.
Steve Carran: That was great, Benjamin. Now we're going to learn a little bit more about you and what makes you tick. So, you grew up in Seattle, is that right?
Benjamin Rafter: Yeah, yeah. Grew up in Seattle right as sort of, uh, you know, the tech world was expanding up there. The VCs were moving up to Seattle area, so it was a great time to be there.
Steve Carran: How did growing up in Seattle shape you into who you are today?
Benjamin Rafter: I thought April and May were miserable everywhere because in Seattle, it's still rainy and, uh, and terrible, but I mean, beautiful place, right? You're outdoors a lot, uh, you're out hiking around and as noted, it was really, the city was booming back then. Maybe, maybe a little bit like Austin. For Nashville or some of those now, you know, Seattle in the late 80s and early 90s was, was, was that place, right?
Steve Carran: The grunge era. I mean, you had Nirvana coming from there 
Benjamin Rafter: That's right. Playing just down the street in like little hundred, person capacity, uh, venues. It was, it was awesome. A couple of them are still there, but 99 percent are gone now.
Steve Carran: awesome.
David: Alright, so you went to University of Washington, tell us a little bit that, about that, what you studied. What was that like?
Benjamin Rafter: was trying to get done as quickly as possible to get started with, uh, you know, if you realize it, you realize like college is supposed to be fun, as well as educational. I forgot the fun part and just did the educational part. I was done by the time I was 19 or 20 and working, uh, you know, starting, starting my career, basically.
Steve Carran: So how long were you in college?
Benjamin Rafter: I was in college for a little over two years. I took 27 credits one year. Um, And so yeah, it was turbocharged.
Steve Carran: Very impressive. Very impressive. So, you're an adventurous guy. You've done spearfishing, rock climbing, you've climbed Rainier and the Grand Tetons. What's your favorite adventure you've done so far, and what's the one left on your bucket list?
Benjamin Rafter: list is to get over 8, 000 meters, one of the 8, 000 meter mountains. But there's a saying we had, which was never hire mountain climbers or scratch golfers or marathon runners because they're always doing something else. So the time it takes to climb 8, 000 meters is, you know, that's a 60 day commitment.
So it's on the list. It's going to be a. It's going to be a while for sure.
Steve Carran: Do you have a mountain in mind?
Benjamin Rafter: G2 in Pakistan, is a good one. It's, it's a little bit easier to approach. Definitely. Here's the thing, definitely not Everest because the whole point is to be out there with a limited group of people. And like you look at Everest and it's, people are doing it to check a box, right.
To tell, to tell somebody they did something. And that to me is just miserable. I'd, I'd rather be on a mountain with 10 people on it than a thousand.
And to answer the other side of the question, like the, the best trips like that, they're always the same. I don't know which one stands out, but it's when you have a group of seven or eight people, it could be five people, it could be three people, and you're just out there doing something. that's what makes these things special, right?
Steve Carran: sure. Absolutely. Absolutely.
David: All right, so I'm an ex GM. This is an interesting one for me. You put your cell phone number on all the hotel rooms you managed, and then you had stated that that was the most worthwhile thing you've done in your career. Why was that?
Benjamin Rafter: two reasons. It was a sense of pride for all of our team members. And you know, when we were five, 600 rooms, when, when we first did it, and, by the time we were 11, 000 rooms, it was a little bit of a different commitment, but keep in mind every day, like you were a GM, I have a hard time relating to maybe a housekeeper or something, right?
And you try to make, you try to get to know as many as you can. I know that when a housekeeper is cleaning that room and they see my cell phone number in it, and they're obviously the hardest working people in the industry, they see the cell phone number on it, they can call it if they want, and they're looking at it and saying, oh, you know, everybody in this company takes what we're doing seriously and appreciates it.
that was also a nod to, um, When I was coming out of tech and into the hotel industry, my business partner at the time, a gentleman named Mike Pollan, larger than life hotelier, literally, he's 6'6 so you know when Mike comes into the room, booming voice, right? And just sort of that style of GM, and he said, look, like all you tech guys, you just don't get it.
At the end of the day, there's still a guest in this room. Right. And you can run all the numbers you want, but don't forget there's a guest in the room. And so that was a nod to me appreciating that, Hey, particularly in Hawaii, somebody might've saved their whole life to, to come to Hawaii. And if they have a problem, they deserve the chance to, to talk to someone.
David: Yeah, I love it because I, I love it. You know, my, my day job is a CEO of LodgIQ. I give all of our customers my cell number. and I sit in on demos and I make sure that my staff gives it for any reason. I don't have that demo. and to me, it's just like you said, I mean, if there's a problem, I want to make sure that that client can get in touch with me.
I shouldn't be hiding behind. If they got to get in touch with me, they really got a problem. So that's the way I look at it. So I appreciate that you do that.
Benjamin Rafter: Yeah. And the same thing, it's, you're, you're ironically, you're crunching A lot of data with what, with what you do, so to, so to speak. And ultimately there's a consumer using that. Right. And, um, A lot of, a lot of, not a lot, but numerous drunk 2 a. m. pizza calls, uh, as well, right? People are going to call me, they know I am not round table pizza, but I, I know I had it on speed dial.
David: That's great.
Steve Carran: that's good. So, that's great. Now that we get to learn a little bit more about you, we want to learn a little bit about your career, how you got to where you are today. So, like you've mentioned, you started on the tech side. You were co founder of a company called LiveBid. which got acquired by Amazon, then director at Cambridge Technology Partners, and then president and CEO of Get2Hawaii and TravelWorm.
how do these roles help you in your current role today as president and CEO of a hospitality company?
Benjamin Rafter: Yeah, Travel Worm, by the way, could be the worst named company in history. Um, associating worms with technology is, uh, never, never a good thing as we all know, but, uh, So I was that guy, you know, uh, sitting in a room running chemistry experiments while also figuring out, I wasn't a great coder, but coding and, um, we were on the cutting edge of, of technology with, with LiveBit and, after selling that and then after selling a second company, was just burned out on, on tech.
And so I ended up getting locked out of the industry, as part of the second sale. And it was like, okay, I'm, I'm ready to do something else. And based on my extensive knowledge of not even knowing what RevPAR was, but knowing that I could load a tape on a mainframe Weston circa 1994 or whatever, ended up getting back into technology and, and, and intro to Hawaii, and it's all been kind of magical from there.
David: And so from there, then you went on, you were CEO and president of Aqua Hospitality, then president of Aston Hotels and Resorts. Aqua Hospitality five fold growth in less than four years. What was your secret to that success? 
Benjamin Rafter: timing was interesting. So, I was in the Himalayas during the 2008, um, Market crash, election, um, the whole, the whole nine yards. And that's when we sort of came up with this idea of, growing Aqua, the co founder, Mike and I, or the founder, Mike and I, and we get back to Hawaii, the world's chaos, two airlines that served Hawaii are on the verge of going bankrupt.
Obviously a lot of financial firms are going bankrupt and suddenly owners are going, uh, Like, hey, I've got a debt payment coming due, and nobody, not that many people were responsive to them. And so we started picking up one or two because we were very, very focused on the bottom line and the one and two became three and four and five and six.
And suddenly, you know, we have 27 hotels, all in Hawaii, only ones on all six islands, six tourism islands. and I think it was because we, we just threw out the rules and really focused on generating revenue and helping owners get, get the bottom line. So then the market recovers and suddenly the market recovers and we're the, in terms of number of properties, we're the biggest, biggest hotel company in, in Hawaii.
it's just hard work. We didn't buy into any of these. We just. I mean, we were there. It's not really healthy because it's, it was the tech mindset coming through and you know, our entire team lived. Pretty much near Waikiki, which is a little bit rare. And you'd go home at seven or eight and then eat for an hour or whatever.
And then from nine to 11, you're, you're just thinking about how these hotels can, can do better. And it wasn't, it wasn't very healthy, but it worked.
Steve Carran: Yeah, absolutely. And then in 2018, you came to Springboard as their president and CEO. What made you come here? And for those that may not be as familiar with Springboard, can you share just a little bit more about the company?
Benjamin Rafter: Yeah. Springboard is, uh, 47 properties, mostly independent, 14 states. And what we're trying to do is make sure all the, all the hotels tell a story, basically. We think that. There, there are multiple types of audience in the, in the hotel industry, in the hospitality industry. There's some that want to stay at a Pilgarn Inn and it's consistent and it's the same every single time.
And that's great. but that's not what we generally do. We want hotels that tell a story about where they're at. And if you're staying in West Hollywood or Jackson Hole or, or wherever, Sedona, where we have hotels, we think you should know you're there. Right. And so that's what we do. Came over in 2018.
I had signed another non compete when we had sold Aqua to what is now Marriott Vacations. keep signing these non competes, which is hopefully I'm done with that, but, uh, and the non compete restricted the ability to work in Hawaii, but it didn't restrict the ability to do anything on the mainland.
And so, we sort of flipped the script and said, let's, work on the mainland and expand, and then when the non compete end, we've, we've gradually come back to, the white.
Steve Carran: Very cool. Very cool. Do you have a fit, uh, I guess, uh, I know you said independent kind of lifestyle. Do you have a type of hotel that you usually work with that is a good fit for Springboard? Yeah, absolutely.
Benjamin Rafter: 150 room independent in either a gateway market, or a, generally a drive to leisure or resort market. So we're in, great examples, we're in Jackson Hole, uh, well, nobody can really, Jackson Hole's in the middle of nowhere so it's hard to drive to, but you get the idea. And then Gateway Markets, Anchorage, we're, we're, we're reopening, we're just opening the first new downtown Anchorage, uh, project in, More than a generation, 4 5 in West Hollywood, Laguna Beach, San Francisco, Stowe, Vermont, Fort Myers Beach, uh, you know, that, that's, those are the markets, and Perfect Fit is, you know, 150 rooms, 200 rooms.
Steve Carran: Love that. I was just in Jackson last year and it became one of my favorite cities. So, it is beautiful up there with the Tetons and it's, it's incredible. So 
Benjamin Rafter: if you've never been, you and I both, uh, are, are banging the drum. If you've never been, go to Jackson in the summer. It's, it's, it's
Steve Carran: Incredible. Incredible. 
David: putting it on my list. So you also own an investment company called Gerraro. Tell us more about that company.
Benjamin Rafter: Yeah, so after selling, Aqua, we, or I started saying, you know, let's, we really believe in these hotels. And. We spent an enormous amount of time modeling them and working for owners. so basically created a, an investment vehicle to invest alongside, uh, generally GP alongside a big, a big LP fund, private equity or, or high net worth. And so it's, it's been great. And it was just affirmation that, Hey, if we're going to tell an owner that a hotel is going to do X for NOI, we should, we should be able to put our money where our mouth is and, and invest alongside of them.
Steve Carran: So now we're going to get on to the industry thought side of things. Where, where do you think the industry going is in a few, in a few areas? So how do you see technology transforming the guest experience and what role does it play in your strategic planning?
Benjamin Rafter: should be doing more. I mean, this is where I was supposed to say, Hey, it's making the biggest difference in the in the guest's life cycle and journey. Um, but we have a lot of bad technologies out there and good thing about that is when the good ones do show up, you really know it and where I would like to see more investment is.
Just that, the front end at least, just that life cycle, using tech to enhance the life cycle. what does the guest want at the time of booking? What does the guest want from us during our communication with them before they arrive? How can we customize that stay? Like in a perfect world, we should know that guest X likes Clint Eastwood movies and the room configured this way at this temperature every single time and it should all be automated.
Right? We're not, we're not there yet, but conceptually it's not difficult to do.
Steve Carran: Is there any tech you're excited about? It's
Benjamin Rafter: Anything, well, the stuff I'm excited about, oddly enough, is, is not nearly, as exciting to the guest. I, I like, uh, how about labor management? How about, uh, housekeeping management, particularly in California? In case you haven't noticed, California is a pretty difficult place to, uh, to work. The ability to program someone's day to make their life better and to make, a hotel function better. Um, the amount, the strides that have been made technology wise there have been tremendous.
David: And so what practices are you implementing to drive sustainability within your properties?
Benjamin Rafter: depends on the property, obviously, and we've been saddled, Hawaii in particular was built out in the 1960s and 1970s, which was not a great time to drive stability, not a great time for architecture either, I might add, but, we're trying to implement technologies that have are measuring where we're losing energy, basically.
So energy should be abundant in Hawaii. It's sunny every day. we're obviously trying to do solar where possible. Rooftops here are not large. there's no rooftop decks either. Go figure that out. Uh, we should have a rooftop deck on every single hotel. But anyway, 
And so, just like how much heat loss we're getting through windows and putting on better window glazing, water technologies, all over the place, almost every building, those are the areas where we're focusing on because energy is so expensive here.
We're talking 0. 35, 0. 40, 0. 42 a KW, which for context is probably four times more than a lot of the mainland cities. Thank you very much. And so knowing that we're losing 20 percent of our energy through windows that were built in 1968 are the areas we're targeting, right?
David: Got it. 
Steve Carran: That makes sense. So, you know, one thing that we have, I feel we've talked about almost every episode for the past year, over a year, is staffing shortages. what strategies are you guys implementing to not only but retain, uh, hoteliers?
Benjamin Rafter: So, my take is that it starts with, with culture, right? And the reality is we have a finite number of people that can and will work in the hospitality industry. What always just kills me coming from other industries, namely tech, is that if you're picking a random hotel, how many of those front desk agents, how many of those housekeepers know actually which management company they're actually working for? And I think if you build a strong culture so everybody knows they're part of something bigger, whether you're hourly or salaried or manager, you're going to retain. People, and that's two thirds of the problem. It's like there's the business adage where, you know, keeping an existing client is always easier than going and finding a new one.
Well, it's the same thing with internal employees. And so we haven't had enormous problems with, uh, employee retention and employee staffing. We have some, like everybody else. The problem we're seeing now is housing costs. Right? And so, keep in mind these markets, Hawaii being one of the more expensive states, but Jackson Hole, almost impossible to house people.
So, we're committed to either converting rooms, which is extremely painful, for obvious reasons, in the seasonal market, you only make your money in 180 days, or we're committed to buying Maybe some of the other hotels that, uh, we can house people in, or at least committed to subsidizing to try to find housing.
In Jackson, oftentimes they're in Idaho over the pass, there's no way around it. If you're living in Hawaii or you're living in Jackson or working in Jackson, Sedona, Park City, you name it, we have to help people with their housing.
Steve Carran: I love that you say that, um, when I was in Jackson, they're building a apartment complex downtown for specifically for folks in hospitality because they can't afford to live there and work in kind of hotels hospitality at the same time. And it was a huge discussion among the people in the city who live there and, you know, how they're having these folks in hospitality actually be able to live with where they're working.
So
Benjamin Rafter: yeah. And I'm, I'm a huge free market supporter, but at some point, so Jackson is so extreme that like, I can't afford Jackson, let alone a housekeeper, right? And so we, interesting you bring it up because our, our partner, at one of the Jackson Hole properties, we had a, nine acre site and there was an RV park on the back and the RV park, has been sold to the city and county.
And they're going to build exactly that. And then in Hawaii, we owned a building called the Waikiki Vista that was 110, 000 square feet. And the city approached us and purchased the building and they're doing it so that, kind of workforce housing can be closer to, closer to Waikiki. And that's not just for housekeepers.
That could be for firefighters, for, for police officers, for nurses. And so I thought, You know, hats off to the city and county of Honolulu for reaching out and saying, hey, let's try to solve some of these problems. This isn't going away anytime soon, right? 
David: So what advice would you give to someone who's looking to get into hospitality, whether it be on property tech? Give us something that you would, you'd want to tell someone who's looking to get into hospitality.
Benjamin Rafter: would say two things. First off, as we all know, being part of it, hospitality is an exceptionally diverse industry in terms of what you can do. Right. We get pigeonholed and it drives me insane. We get pigeonholed as, oh, it's, it's hourly jobs that may be for newcomers to the U.S or to whatever country. and those are fine jobs and those are gateway opportunities, right?
But there are jobs in revenue management. There are jobs in tech. And I would say, one, learn STEM and learn math and technology. I'm biased, but it's not going away. And it's a skillset that will help you anywhere. And then really mentor with someone who understands the whole industry who can say, Hey, I'm going to get you involved in revenue management, because that's what you're interested in.
Or I'm going to get you involved in engineering. like anything else in life. if we spend as much time thinking about, Hey, here's how one can guide, you know, a business. His or her, you know, career as they, as they grow, as we spend watching Sports Center or Reality TV, like everybody be better off. Spend 15 minutes thinking about it and find someone who can help, can help guide you. It's real simple advice.
Steve Carran: Couldn't have said it better myself. So that was great. So we've been asking you questions this entire time. We're gonna turn the tables a little bit and let you ask us a question.
Benjamin Rafter: Okay, interesting, interesting. so let's start with, let's go back to technology and Where do you see technology going? And same question asked me, where are there valuable technologies right now? And then, how insane does it drive you that all these startups out there are creating new technologies and they can't even finish the first technology Before they buy something else and tell us they have the greatest solution to the next thing.
I don't even know if that's a question, but sure you'd comment on it.
David: Yeah,
I, I can, I can jump in cause I could, we could be here for hours, unfortunately, but, uh, yeah, so for me, you know, I, I kind of, I keep saying the same thing that there is such great technology out there, just, just the adoption rates are so low. of hoteliers. So, you know, I've worked with some companies like, oh, we're gonna do some tech audits.
But I said, don't just do a tech audit of what they're using, do an audit of what they're not using. So you have some hotels that, they're perfect, they could be great for text messaging, the guest doesn't want to call the front desk, they just want to do text messaging. You've got circumstances where, you know, mobile key makes sense and hotels aren't using it.
My day to day job. You know, and people always say, what's your biggest challenge? And I said, it's not my product. It's not my team. It's not my messaging. It's the adoption of hoteliers saying, Hey, I've got all this data that I can't consume efficiently. How do I leverage the technology to help me do that?
and that's my biggest, my biggest challenge is I just wish that, you know, kind of the management companies and ownership groups could come together and say, look, we need to start changing the way we view technology. And there's also this, you know, sorry for the long winded answer, but there's also this fear of that somehow technology is going to destroy hospitality.
And it's like, no, it's going to make it better for the guest if you do it the right way. But we still don't adopt technology, believe, fast enough.
Benjamin Rafter: Yeah, and you made a great point about data. There's so much of it. The real hard part is not getting the data, it's getting your arms around doing something with it. But, interesting, interesting. So here's, here's one. AI, is it hype or reality?
Steve Carran: That was going to be my, tech answer to be honest with you. I have been on the AI train since like last year. I think AI is going to be phenomenal. I've already, I've talked to a few startups who are using it and one of them specifically is using it to, I guess, take the mistakes out of, you know, people.
that housekeepers are making and making sure everything is placed in the same area and all the rooms look the same. So what I loved about that specific AI is it's taking out the mistakes humans make, right? We're not, we're not perfect, but it's not replacing the human. We still have humans doing the job, but it's just making that job better, more efficient, and It's going to be safe housekeepers on time too.
I also think we're going to see hotels focus more on direct booking and focusing more on their websites and how they can drive that OTA traffic more to their booking through websites and developing their, their loyalty programs and how to really, like you said, it's, less expensive to retain guests than to get new ones.
So how do we retain more guests? Through, through, and I think we can use AI in that as well, but,
Benjamin Rafter: Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, coming from an a, a a different industry, I've always wondered how the hotel industry seeded its entire distribution channel to a third party, but, um, or to multiple third parties. But, but we'll, we'll save that for another, another day. Um,
David: Yeah, it might be a week.
Steve Carran: yeah, 
right, right.
Benjamin Rafter: Exactly.
Steve Carran: Those are really great, great questions. Thank you for those. Some of the best we've had, I'd say. Now, this is the last question you're gonna have. Our producer, Jon, he's been listening to the whole episode. He's
got one question before we let you go here. 
Jon Bumhoffer: Kind of sticking on the technology train here. You mentioned earlier in the conversation that, uh, There's a lot of bad technologies and we've kind of talked, spent some time talking about that. What are ways that you advise hotels to think about like adopting technology, maybe sniffing out those bad technologies and to not, invest in something that they might not use or it's going to be bad.
Like how, how would you separate good from bad or recognize that? 
Benjamin Rafter: We start with just the common sense factor and just say, does this, does this make sense? Why are we implementing it? And then we've built out a suite of technologies that we feel, or products, I should say, that we feel make a hotel function better. It doesn't mean that all 10 of them or whatever are perfect for every single hotel, but, then you have to beta it.
And the reality is. my frustration right now is we've beta'd so many technologies and solutions that don't provide the benefit that they advertise. 
And so we're, we're aggressive about beta-ing hotels. A lot of our, capital partners use us to beta products. And then the third piece, long winded answer, speaking of long winded answers, the third piece is you have to get them integrated correctly. And that to me is the hardest part. It's not about the selection of a product. You have to integrate it and we have so many hotels out there that we walk into and I think management companies all should get together And I don't know. It's 101. The technology is useless until it's fully integrated.
David: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Benjamin, this is where you get to let people know how they can find out more about Springboard, how they can get in touch with you. So plug away.
Benjamin Rafter: SpringboardHospitality. com and since we focused on my cell phone number, if you don't care I'll just throw it out there. Give it away. Give me a text. 808 349 0670 Representing the 808 still. So, um, yeah, it's been been wonderful. Thank you all.
David: Alright, well that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged hospitality podcast. Thank you, and whether you're listening or watching, we hope to see you again soon