Top Floor

Updated: 23 Sep 2025 • 208 episodes
topfloorpodcast.com

Top Floor is a weekly podcast with tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. Host and elevator operator Susan Barry explores the idea that everything is marketing in the hotel business. Our interviews with creators, thought leaders and hospitality groundbreakers are designed to provide practical tactics that hoteliers, restaurateurs and travel mavens can use to promote their businesses. Along the way, we answer burning marketing questions submitted on the Emergency Call Button and share the funniest, craziest, just-plain-weirdest stories down at the Loading Dock. Need to press the Emergency Call Button? Or have a story to share at the Loading Dock? Reach us at 850.404.9630 to be featured in a future episode.

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23 Sep 2025 • EN

Six Months at the Waldorf

Josh Kremer is the co-founder of Paradero Hotels, a Baja-born luxury brand blending boutique resorts with destination management to create immersive, off-grid experiences. A classically trained chef who pivoted into real estate private equity, Josh brings both palate and P&L to building small-scale, high-touch hospital

30 min
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16 Sep 2025 • EN

4th Anniversary!

Happy anniversary, Top Floor!  Calvin Tilokee is the founder and creative director of RevPAR Media, blending 20+ years of revenue management and marketing with a sharp creative streak. Known for illuminating hospitality brands and roasting industry quirks with his beloved hotel-meme persona, @revparblems, Calvin bridge

42 min
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09 Sep 2025 • EN

$900 Uber Escape

Laura Hawkins is the founder of Gamemasters Escape Solutions, a creator and operator of high-performing escape rooms for hotels and resorts. After a successful career making viral television advertising, she discovered escape rooms on a European trip. She turned a passion project into a 14-room operation and a turnkey

27 min
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02 Sep 2025 • EN

Mindset Drives Everything

Agnelo Fernandes is the CEO of Cote Hospitality, a company blending resorts and heritage summer camps into unforgettable indoor-outdoor experiences. His career spans the Caribbean, Canyon Ranch, CoralTree, and beyond, where he’s built brands, launched properties, and reshaped cultures. Susan and Agnelo talk about cultu

35 min
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26 Aug 2025 • EN

Cater Waiter Diss

Steven Moore is the CEO of Actabl, a hospitality operations platform uniting four hotel operations tools into one streamlined solution. From his early days as a catering busboy to leading Transcendent through the pandemic, Steven’s career has exposed him to more than one challenging situation. Susan and Steven talk abo

35 min
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19 Aug 2025 • EN

New Year, New Pillow

Wil Slickers is a hospitality pro turned podcasting powerhouse. He launched Slick Talk in 2018 to scratch an industry itch, then turned it into a multi-show media empire with Hospitality FM, recently acquired by Skift. Susan and Wil talk about podcast pivots, media mergers, and the messy magic of microphone mastery. Wh

35 min
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