14th Annual The Women in Travel & Hospitality Conference

Registration Opens and Breakfast — The Reflection Room

Seated breakfast, an open and unstructured start, just women in the room with each other before the day begins.

Opening — Welcome: The One Underneath

Ariela opens the day herself, drawing the room into the story that inspired the theme: Alice's fall through the looking glass, and everything that tale has always understood about women, identity, and the strange clarity that comes from stepping into an unfamiliar version of the world. She traces the threads between Carroll's Wonderland and the reality every woman in the room is living now, from the curiosity it takes to keep growing, to the confidence to trust a world that doesn't play by familiar rules, to the moment of finally seeing yourself past the roles you've been handed. Ariela brings her own story into it too, the personal turns and instincts that led here, and sends the room into the day warmed up, connected, and ready to see themselves a little differently.

Keynote / Fireside — What the Room Sees

A hotel, like a career, is judged first by its surface: the lobby, the light, the first ninety seconds a guest spends deciding how they feel. This opening keynote sits with a senior leader in travel and hospitality to talk about that surface honestly, the brand she built, the properties that made her name, the version of her story the industry knows best. Then the conversation turns underneath it, to the actual mechanics of building something that reads as effortless, the years of iteration, the instincts she trusted before the market caught up, the real architecture behind a reputation.

Panel — The Public Face of Ownership

Executive women leading hotel groups, investment platforms, and travel brands talk through the real mechanics of ownership: how deals get structured, how boards get built, how a single property grows into a recognized portfolio. Expect real numbers and a candid look at what it takes to run both the capital and the vision.

Panel — The Private Reckoning

The other side of the story. Executive women from across travel and hospitality talk about the decisions that actually shaped their careers: the risky bets, the year a deal nearly fell apart, the instinct they trusted over the room's consensus. Honest, specific, and rarely said on a stage like this.

Lunch — Symmetry

Seated lunch, curated tablemates by industry and stage rather than by company, structured to encourage cross-sector conversation.

Conversation — Elsewhere: Women Leading the Business of Travel

A hotel is a destination, but travel is the whole journey there and back, the airline seat, the tour itinerary, the expedition ship, the advisor who knows exactly which road to send you down. This conversation moves the day past hospitality and into the wider business of travel itself, with women who run airlines, cruise and expedition companies, and luxury travel advisories. They talk about building products for people chasing the same restlessness that likely brought every woman in this room into the industry in the first place, the pull toward somewhere unfamiliar, the itch that a map alone never quite satisfies. Part interview, part dialogue, it's a conversation about curiosity as a business model, and what it takes to keep building for travelers who are, in their own way, still falling down the rabbit hole.

Workshop — Capital / Legacy / Reinvention

A working session, built for the table rather than the stage. Attendees choose the track that matches where they actually are: Capital, for the woman structuring her next raise or negotiating her next stake; Legacy, for the one thinking hard about succession, brand, and what a property or a career carries forward after she's gone; Reinvention, for the one standing at the edge of a pivot, an exit, or a second act. Facilitator-led small tables of eight to ten work through a real worksheet built for the track, and every woman leaves with an actual draft in hand: a term sheet outline, a succession conversation started, a reinvention plan sketched.

Break — The Glass

Coffee, quiet.

Closing Keynote — Come to See the Room. Leave Having Seen Yourself.

The closing keynote asks a senior figure in travel and hospitality to set the polished version of her story aside and speak the way she would to one woman she respected, alone, at the end of a long day. What she'd say about the years that were harder than they looked from outside. What she knows now that she wishes someone had told her at the start. It's the talk built specifically for the last hour of the day, when a room this accomplished is finally ready to hear the honest version.

Closing Ritual — The Looking Glass

A short, intentional close built directly from the theme, a moment for each woman to write down what she actually saw in herself today, distinct from what she came in performing. Every attendee leaves with a small mirrored keepsake and a written reflection to carry back into her own work, her own property, her own next decision.

Reception — After Hours

A standing reception, open and unscheduled, where the real relationship-building happens.