Keri Brown is the Vice President of Commercial Strategy at Lights On, a company that helps independent hotels maximize revenue through expert pricing, distribution, and digital marketing strategies. Throughout her career, Keri has held senior roles at major hospitality brands, including Marriott, Hilton, and Highgate, as well as her most recent position as Area Director of Commercial Strategy at Outrigger. She is recognized as one of Hawaii's most decorated commercial strategy leaders, known for bridging the gap between operations, sales, and revenue management to drive holistic hotel performance.

Keri Brown, VP of Commercial Strategy at Lights On, breaks down how independent hotels can compete with branded properties by integrating revenue management, distribution, and digital marketing under one commercial strategy. She explains why a tech stack audit is always the first step with a new client and how OTA partnerships, done right, become a pipeline for direct bookings.

Keri spent over a decade in Hawaii hospitality before joining Lights On. At Outrigger, she led commercial strategy across the Waikiki Collection and played a central role in the $30-40M repositioning of the Waikiki Beachcomber from an IHG property to an independent brand. That project meant rebuilding rate strategy, channel mix, and brand positioning from scratch while the hotel stayed operational. She compares the commercial strategy leader's role to Tim Cook running Apple's supply chain: you may not be the public face, but nothing works without you.

The conversation gets specific about where independent hotels lose revenue. Keri talks about properties running disconnected systems where the PMS doesn't talk to the channel manager, rate updates take hours instead of minutes, and no one is tracking true cost of acquisition by channel. She argues that fixing those connections often matters more than any single pricing decision.

On OTAs, Keri is direct: they were built for independent hotels that don't have a global brand driving demand. The play is to use them for visibility, then convert those guests to direct bookings on the next stay. She also makes a case for front-desk upsell programs, pointing out that a property with 15 different room categories has real margin sitting in upgrades and add-ons that most hotels never capture because operations staff aren't trained or incentivized to sell.

Jacob Messina is the CEO of Stayntouch, a leading hospitality technology firm that provides cloud-based property management systems (PMS) for hotels. Under his leadership since 2022, Stayntouch has achieved record growth and become one of the fastest-adopted PMS platforms in the industry, enabling hotel clients to implement new systems in as little as 48 to 72 hours. Jacob's diverse hospitality background began at age 15 in frontline restaurant and hotel roles, later building Loews Hotels' digital marketing practice from scratch and overseeing technology for 150+ properties at MCR Hotels.

Jacob Messina, CEO of Stayntouch, breaks down how a cloud PMS built by former hoteliers cuts implementation from months to days and staff training from weeks to about an hour. He explains why distribution is the most overlooked revenue function for independent hotels and what to do about it.

Before leading Stayntouch, Jacob spent six months at Loews Hotels manually merging guest profiles in Opera V5. Forty hours a week of clicking through multiple screens for a task that should have been automated. That experience shaped his view of what hotel technology should do: give time back to the people using it, not create more work.

At MCR Hotels, he oversaw technology across 150-plus properties. When a soft brand inspection failed a week before opening, his team had to stand up an entire independent tech stack in eight days. Stayntouch made it work. That scramble became the catalyst for productizing fast implementations. Today, Stayntouch can get a hotel live in 48 to 72 hours.

Three principles drive the company under Jacob's leadership. First, customer support where you talk to a real person within seconds. No phone tree, no callback queue. Second, 1,200-plus integrations offered at no cost, with a fully open API for anything not yet connected. Third, intuitive design that gets a new front desk agent checking guests in within an hour, even if they've never worked in a hotel.

One counterintuitive decision stands out: Stayntouch deliberately slowed its release cycle from every two weeks to every four to six weeks. Not because development couldn't keep pace, but because hoteliers are already tracking updates from six to eight other systems. Shipping faster than operators can absorb creates waste, not value.

On distribution, Jacob's advice is straightforward. Stack your channels from lowest to highest cost of acquisition. If you know what you're paying Booking.com, put a portion of that spend toward driving direct bookings instead. In OTA-heavy markets like Hawaii, that channel shift is where the margin lives.

The conversation also covers ancillary revenue. Stayntouch's upsell module is included free in the PMS subscription and runs inside the mobile check-in flow. Guests can upgrade based on room attributes and local experiences. Jacob points to Castle and MacNaughton in Hawaii as groups that have made this work by investing in clear room-type definitions and content that tells the story of what makes each property worth the upgrade.

Hillary Folkvord is the Founder of Lady H, a lifestyle and consulting brand focused on hospitality, entrepreneurship, and mentorship. She is the owner and operator of boutique hotels, including RSVP Motel, Farmers Daughters Cafe, and The Cottages at Bigfork, located in Montana. With over 17 years of experience in hospitality, she has expertise in property development, branding, revenue strategy, and independent hotel operations. Hillary also advises emerging hoteliers on marketing, financial management, and building guest-centered hotel brands.

Beautiful rooms don't pay the bills. Occupancy does. Hillary Folkvord built three Montana hospitality businesses — RSVP Motel, Farmers Daughters Cafe, and Cottages at Bigfork — by connecting story-driven design to revenue strategy. She grew occupancy from 40% to roughly 80% across her properties.

Hillary Folkvord, Founder of Lady H Consulting and a 6th-generation Montanan with 17 years in hospitality, joins Kin Sio on The Lights On Podcast to break down what actually works for independent hotels. Her approach: every property needs a clear narrative. RSVP Motel leans into roadside nostalgia. Cottages at Bigfork plays up the lakeside retreat. That identity shapes design choices, local partnerships, and which guests you attract. When the brand is specific, the right travelers book direct and come back.

They dig into the mechanics — using OTAs as a visibility tool without giving up long-term profitability, building partnerships with local businesses to drive occupancy in shoulder periods, and knowing when to stop doing everything yourself. Hillary founded Lady H Consulting to mentor emerging hoteliers through exactly these decisions: when to hire a revenue manager, how to think about ADR and channel mix, and where first-time operators waste the most money.

Kin Sio is the CEO of Lights On, a company specializing in digital marketing and revenue management for independent hotels and resorts. He grew up in Macau and transitioned from a successful tech career to entrepreneurship after acquiring Lights On in early 2025. Drawing on his background in technology and hospitality, Kin helps small hotel businesses optimize pricing, distribution, and their online presence. He leads his team with a focus on data-driven strategies that increase visibility and drive revenue growth for clients.

Independent hotels have access to most of the same tools as major chains — but most don't use them. In this episode, Kin Sio, CEO of Lights On Digital, breaks down why smaller operators leave significant revenue on the table, and what changes when pricing, distribution, and marketing are run as one coordinated system instead of three separate vendors.

Kin draws on his experience in tech — including product management at Microsoft and building Coinbase's international exchange — and his first year running a hospitality commercial strategy firm. The conversation covers why auto-pricing tools still can't replace human judgment, how to align marketing spend with rate strategy instead of running ads blindly, and why the first step isn't marketing at all — it's understanding how your property actually makes money.

If you run an independent or boutique hotel and your revenue manager, marketing agency, and website vendor don't talk to each other, this episode explains why that's costing you more than you think.