Flashback to Just Before Everything Changed: A Live Conversation from Early COVID

This week, as I look back on podcasts that mattered to me over the last 10 years of No Vacancy and Rouse Media, I'm sharing some episodes that reflect where the industry — and all of us — actually were at the time.

This one is difficult, but important.

It's one of the first live shows we ever did, recorded just before COVID shut everything down. At that point, we were still learning what this virus was, how it spread, and what it might mean for travel and hotels.

I went live on LinkedIn with Anthony Melchiorri and Dr. Primas, a New York–based physician with deep experience in travel health. Anthony had known Dr. Primas since 1991, going back to his days at The Plaza, and we brought him on because we needed expert insight — not speculation.

Within 48 hours of this episode airing, I lost almost my entire business. That wasn't unique to me — far from it. We all experienced loss. That's part of why this episode stands out. It captures the exact moment before everything changed.

I'm rerunning this not to relive it, but to document it. It's a snapshot of what the hotel industry was thinking, fearing, and trying to understand in real time.

In this episode:

🦠: What we knew — and didn't know — about COVID at the time
🏨: Early concerns about travel, hotels, and guest safety
🧠: Medical context instead of rumor or panic
📉: The uncertainty facing the hospitality industry in that moment
📍: A live conversation recorded just before shutdowns began

There's no sponsor on this episode. It stands on its own as a record of a moment none of us will forget.