How Wil Slickers Went from Front Desk to Skift Executive
episode
The Accommodation Show - Hospitality Success Series!
33 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 24 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Who is Wil Slickers and how did he start his hospitality career?
Okay, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The Accommodation Show. Will Slickers is on The Accommodation Show. Hello, and welcome. Good to see you, Bart.
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Long time no see.
Good to see you. It has been a little while. Did I even see you at VRMA this year? No,
I've missed a couple VRMAs this year. Or not this year, but last couple years.
No, but I saw you at the one in Phoenix, and that was two years ago.
Oh, okay. Well then all my years are blurring. So, uh, yeah. So when we saw each other in Phoenix would be the last one.
Yeah. You're a busy man. Um, you are a man of a lot of value. Uh, and that's why I wanted to get you on the show today because you have the most broad or one of the most broad perspectives of the industry because of all the people that you talk to within the short term rental space. And now beyond that, within hotels and travel and leisure and that sort of thing. And I thought it'd be valuable for people to hear a bit about your journey, what you've been up to over the past few years, but also how significant it is to join a larger organization being Skift. And what I would like to also understand from you today, and I think what people should really understand is where Skift fits into the ecosystem and whether they should be
followings gift reading their stuff going to their conferences and how that's going to impact their short-term rental businesses but also hotel businesses as a whole because well when um when we're just talking before you started off as the hotel guy and then you became the str guy and now you're the travel and media guy but i feel like you'll be the travel media guy for a little bit so it's a little bit disingenuous but you've got you've kind of done I can't say you've done it all. You're way too young for that. But do you feel that way a bit?
A little bit, yeah. I've lived many lives is what I like to say.
How did Wil transition from front‑desk agent to media executive?
I had to grow up pretty early, but kind of with my career in the industry of hospitality, I'll say, it really just started with the front desk position where I had a couple of nice suits in my closet. I wanted to put them to good use after I started a show for an event company that didn't end up panning out really well at all. So that was kind of the start. And then at this hotel, it was a four-diamond, triple-A diamond suite. hotel resort convention hotel 700 plus rooms so i was checking in at some points like 600 700 people a day with a team of two or three other agents and um fell in love with it to be honest like you had your repeat business so mrs malone mr wall you know the chardine couple like it was always great to see my people and i realized like okay i love this like whatever this is and the business of it and the world of it
eventually to management and a different property out in the Oregon coast. But that was the time I started the podcast where I used the podcasts that I started called Slick Talk to really interview people on things I was interested in to better my career. So it wasn't like a go full-time podcast. Yeah, it was like, I'm gonna be a hotel executive and I'm gonna learn from the best. And there's people out there that I'm not great at school so I can learn from them. which is then turned into the media guy and also short-term rentals. I got exposed to that. I think... trying to remember what company it was, but I think it was Noise Aware or one of the other short-term rental vendors put a blog out like the top 10 short-term rental podcast.
And I mentioned Stay Alfred on one episode. They're no longer in business, but like that got me on the top 10 list. And I looked at the short-term rental world and I was like, oh, this is interesting. And then started a short-term rental company and the list goes on. So lots of things, but yeah, lived many, many lives in the last eight years.
I was talking to someone the other day and they talked about focus. And when you know you're focusing is when you get another project or another idea that you'd be really super excited about and you really want to do it, right?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Wil Slickers and how did he start his hospitality career?
0:11–2:09
2
How did Wil transition from front‑desk agent to media executive?
2:09–5:42
3
Why did Wil launch the Slick Talk podcast and how did it boost his career?
5:42–8:37
4
What motivated Wil to join Skift and what does Skift do in the travel media ecosystem?
8:37–12:55
5
Why does Wil say networking at conferences still matters for ROI?
12:55–16:17
6
What is the ‘Focus Trap’ and how can entrepreneurs avoid it?
16:17–22:15
7
How can businesses cut through the ‘AI slop’ and use in‑person connections as a moat?
22:15–27:02
8
What content‑creation strategies does Wil recommend for staying relevant today?
27:02–33:23
Speakers
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