How Boutique Hotels Can Win by Obsessing Over Emotional Details — Dina Belon, Staypineapple

Anthony Codispoti (00:01)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotuspoti and today’s guest is Dina Balan, president of Stay Pineapple Hotels. They are a boutique hospitality company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. They’re known for playful, design forward hotels across major US cities.

focusing on memorable guest experiences and sustainability. Dina holds a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University and is a lead accredited professional specializing in interior design and construction. Under her leadership, Pineapple has continued its commitment to the triple bottom line, people, planet, and prosperity. Dina herself has been recognized as one of the top 50 women leaders in hospitality

for both 2024 and 2025. And her insights have been featured in multiple industry interviews. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. So imagine being able to give your hotel employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications.

And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money into your employees’ pockets. And the companies too. So one recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, President of Stay Pineapple Hotels, Dina Balan. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Dina Belon (01:54)
my gosh, thank you for inviting me. This is amazing. I’m really excited and it’s always weird to hear somebody do an intro for you. It’s awkward. It’s like, ⁓ yeah, that’s me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:09)
Yeah, I wouldn’t have been so complimentary of myself, but thank you, because we’re always harder on ourselves than everybody else, right? That’s where the discomfort comes from, doesn’t it, Dina? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Okay, so Dina, you have found yourself at this interesting intersection, design, hospitality, sustainability. And as you think about these different pieces of your career puzzle and how they came together, what was the first cornerstone piece where you focused?

Dina Belon (02:15)
It’s so true. It’s so true. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, so I graduated from school with a design degree, but I realized pretty quickly it wasn’t a passion of mine. I wasn’t passionate enough about it to really argue for what I was working on. ⁓ But what I did find really intriguing was the idea of experience architecture. And it was this, ⁓

you know, bisecting concepts of how to create something really unique and different and an experience for a guest or setting a guest up for an experience. The example I like to give is a grandfather and a grandson walking through a green space on a resort and there’s a bocce ball court. Well, instead of having to go to the front desk and check out all the equipment to go play the game,

leave the equipment at the court so that when they walk by they can have a spontaneous experience that probably will be a memory for that child decades from then, right? About his grandfather and how much he loved him. Those are the kind of things that got me excited, which made me realize that what I was really interested in in architecture was the people.

and not necessarily the facility or the building and that to me the building was always just a stage for the play to happen.

Anthony Codispoti (04:17)
Now, let me back up and ask about something that you said that kind of struck me. You were not passionate enough to argue for what you were working on. What does that mean?

Dina Belon (04:27)
So in design, there’s a lot of opinion when it comes to hotel design. There’s a lot of people involved in a hotel getting built and or renovated. And there’s always a lot of ⁓ views on how that should happen. And as the professional, you often feel like, okay, you hired me to do a job. Is everybody gonna be involved in the job this week or am I gonna do it?

And so I just, you know, I think design professionals, architecture, interiors, they really have to believe in what they’re creating and be willing to go to bat for it. And it always, my example of, I was more interested in the people than I was the design, whether the front entrance Port-au-Cochers was 25 feet wide and had

Anthony Codispoti (05:11)
Okay.

Dina Belon (05:26)
you know, a colonnade or not. I was like, yeah, okay, whatever. But how is that going to make people feel, right? Like, what is the emotion going to evoke when I pull up to the resort? That’s what got me excited and people would get all tied up in what kind of column it was. And I was like, I don’t care what kind of column it is.

Anthony Codispoti (05:46)
Got it. Okay, so how did you begin to explore that other area of interest, the people side of things?

Dina Belon (05:52)
Yeah,

well, I went to work for Marriott. I left design directly and went to work for Marriott and then I worked for Windham. Hyatt, you know, did the big brand. Anybody in the hospitality industry knows we all kind of cut our teeth in the big brands. Some people stick and some people don’t. ⁓ I was one of the ones that didn’t. I learned a ton. I always say I learned how to do it the right way at Marriott so I could know how to break the rules.

And the boutique space was my final landing spot where I was like, oh, this is home. Okay. I get it. I didn’t even know what it was. Really. I thought they were just small hotels, just like a Marriott. Once I learned and understood the difference of the business model, I was like, oh, this is what I have been looking for for a decade in my career is

this kind of ability to make impact on people.

Anthony Codispoti (06:54)
So what does that mean? How are the business models different?

Dina Belon (06:56)
Yeah, neither right or wrong, but the mega brands are basically built on standards and having consistency, right? So when you stay at a courtyard, Marriott Courtyard, you literally know that the front desk is on the left and the breakfast space is on the right and the little lobby area is in front of you. There’s either a fireplace or some sort of element in there, right? And then the elevators to the left and the guest rooms are all upstairs and like,

They all are very consistent and you’re gonna get a very consistent guest experience. You’re gonna have the same bed, the same kind of linens. The boutique space is the opposite. The boutique world is built on a journey and an experience that you’re having that is connected to the place that you’re going. so boutique hoteliers are trying to express a point of view about

the city that they’re in or some sort of point of view that has a creativity that is engaging. And I’m being very broad. Ours in particular at State Pineapple is very much about guest service. We’re a hyper personalization business model. So we want you to feel like you’re checking into a six room bed and breakfast in Vermont and you get to know us and we become friends and you

send us messages after you leave and like you make connections. You feel like there’s a sense of belonging at the hotel. And it’s in a hundred room hotel, not a six room bed and breakfast. So we figured out a unique way to create that kind of hyper personalized experience in a larger format.

Anthony Codispoti (08:51)
I got to hear about that, right? Because it’s one thing if it is that sort of six room bed and breakfast, you can, you know, more easily remember who your guests are. And you know, the little bits of conversation that you’ve had with them, but 100 rooms, how do you do that?

Dina Belon (08:52)
You

Right.

Yeah, historically we’ve done it kind of the old fashioned way. We listen to our guests. We have a lot of return guests and so we know them by name and recognize them. But by and large, it was just listening to what people say. And then we have a program called Surprise and Delight, which is really a team member empowerment program. It’s about

the team members being able to do anything to surprise and delight a guest at any time in any way they want. They don’t have to call the manager, they don’t have to ask for permission, they can just do it. And that requires them to be attentive and aware of what’s going on with the guests, whether it’s sitting at the bar and having a conversation with them or a check-in or they’re hanging out with their spouse in the lobby and you happen to hear them talk about

their anniversary or whatever that might be. Now, in more recent years, have, ⁓ two years ago, we completely changed out our tech stack and are using technology and AI now to help us do that and enable the team members better. We provide the team members a lot of information, all zero party data. We can get into that in a little bit, I’m sure, but all…

willingly given by the guest. So it’s an exchange of information for service, right? Improved service. We’re very clear about, ⁓ we don’t gather people, we don’t go out on the internet and, ⁓ yeah, Facebook page, yeah. There are hoteliers that do it and do it successfully. We have chosen not to do that.

Anthony Codispoti (10:46)
It’s not like I make a reservation and then you’re going and looking at my Facebook posts and yeah.

Dina Belon (10:58)
because it feels like it’s over the line. We want to have a very, relationship with our guests that is very honest and truthful. And we want to make sure that guests feel like you’ve given us information and we’re going to use that to make your state better.

Anthony Codispoti (11:15)
So let’s go back into the olden days where you didn’t have this new tech stack in place. And give me a specific example of how one of your team members would delight a guest.

Dina Belon (11:27)
Sure, I have so many. ⁓ So one that I’m thinking of ⁓ in San Francisco, we had a guest check in and ⁓ she was Filipino and she was staying in San Francisco at our hotel specifically because there was a restaurant nearby that she absolutely loved and it reminded her of her mom’s cooking back in home.

And so she was telling the, she was so excited. She was telling our, we call them everything people, not front desk people, because they can do everything for you, right? And she was telling her all about it. Like our team member was also Filipino. And so, you know, she totally got it. They were engaged and having a really cool conversation about it.

Anthony Codispoti (12:06)
True.

Dina Belon (12:19)
She left for the evening to go have dinner ⁓ and came back absolutely despondent because the restaurant was closed for that night and she was only going to be there for one night. She was flying through San Francisco and decided to stay the night to go to the restaurant. So the team member was so, like just felt so bad for her. She went home and made the meal, the dinner for her. And when she came to check out the next day, she

made the food and laid it out and had a whole lunch set up for her in our restaurant area that wasn’t open at the time. tablecloth, like made a big thing of it. And she got to sit there and dine and experience the meal. It is really an incredible story. It’s very touching, but it’s also very in…

Anthony Codispoti (13:09)
That’s incredible. Yeah.

Dina Belon (13:17)
Endemic of, I think, what hoteliers don’t allow anymore. The hotel business in general, there are a handful of things that most hoteliers would cringe about at that story. Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (13:32)
Oh, really?

What, because like outside food was brought in? I don’t know how it was handled. Were they wearing plastic gloves or sneeze on it or hair nets?

Dina Belon (13:36)
outside food, yeah, food, yeah, like, you know,

you, you know, having that level of connection to a guest is, there’s, team members are almost trained now to, they put on a Navy jacket and a nameplate and they aren’t themselves. They are a representation of the brand. The big brands talk about.

Anthony Codispoti (13:51)
Interesting.

Dina Belon (14:05)
right? You are representing Marriott standing at the front desk and you’re

Anthony Codispoti (14:09)
And

so you’re supposed to like anesthetize your personality. Is that the sense?

Dina Belon (14:12)
Right, you’re not supposed to be you,

you’re supposed to be the representation of the brand. And we have the opposite model, which is we don’t put our team members in uniform, we don’t ask them to act a certain way, we don’t ask them to answer the phone a certain way, we ask them to be themselves. And in some ways that’s harder, because you can’t put a mask on in the morning when you walk out to do your job. You have to be vulnerable and

be who you are and let that come through. And we have people that don’t like it. We have people that started our company and think they understand what that means and then struggle because it’s scary. It’s hard to be yourself sometimes. And particularly if you’re having a bad day, you know, how do I come to work today, be myself and not be plastic?

and overly sunshiney when I just had bad news, but still give good service, right? We talk about that all the time. You don’t have to be bubbly every day. Like you can have different characteristics from day to day. Every day the vibe of the hotel is co-created between the team and the guests. And it’s different from day to day. Depends on who’s there. Again, right? The building doesn’t create the vibe.

Anthony Codispoti (15:09)
Hmm.

Dina Belon (15:37)
The people create the vibe.

Anthony Codispoti (15:39)
Yeah. And I can see how it would be helpful for a lot of folks to not take your approach, right? Like you said, sort of put the mask on. Okay, I’m going to work. This is the rigid, sunshiny, bubbly person, you know, ⁓ persona that I need to project today. And then, you know, as I’m getting in my car and leaving my shift, I can take the mask back off and just sort of settle back into who I naturally feel like.

Dina Belon (15:46)
Yeah?

I said.

Yep. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (16:09)
So, okay, let’s go back to the tech stack that you put in. Let’s actually first talk through that and then I wanna hear an example of how you guys are leveraging that. So this tech stack allows you to take information that the guest has voluntarily provided to you, correct? Such as, can you give me some examples?

Dina Belon (16:30)
Sure, yeah. So for example, we send a single question in our pre-arrival communication with a guest that’s just asked in a kitschy, cheeky way, because we like to be that way, but basically, you know, why are you coming to visit us? And guests provide us all kinds of information. One recently in Chicago was two girlfriends that were meeting at the hotel and they were coming to go

to a specific concert, right? And they were super excited about that. And so there was like paragraphs about their friendship and all kinds, yeah, all kinds of information. So the team takes that and they decorated their room for the musical band that they were really into. They went and like printed stuff up and did, you know, all kinds of really cool things. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (17:10)
Wow.

Dina Belon (17:28)
And it’s just surprising, right? It’s fun. We’re in the hotel business. We’re not brain surgeons. Good Lord, it should be fun, right?

Anthony Codispoti (17:28)
fine.

⁓ Funny little sidebar, I was talking to a brain surgeon one time about his work and a family member who had had a brain scan and kind of talking through it. He’s like, you know what? He’s like, this stuff really isn’t that complicated. It’s not like it’s rocket science. I’m like, no, it’s the other one. It’s the other one that people always talk about is brain surgery. Yes, it is complete. Anyways, sorry. Yeah.

Dina Belon (18:01)
It is complicated. It’s either brain surgery

or rocket science and that is not what we do. We make people happy.

Anthony Codispoti (18:07)
Yeah, right. get

you guys are having fun. So speaking of fun, what’s behind the name?

Dina Belon (18:12)
⁓ Stay Pineapple, yeah, our founder, Michelle Barnett, she used to wear her hair bundled up on top of her head and kind of spiky, and her dad called her his little pineapple. So that’s where the name came from. The pineapple is also the symbol of hospitality. So it was a natural fit. So yeah, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (18:33)
Okay. I wasn’t aware of that today I learned something new.

Okay, so we’ve talked about the design aspect, sort of like these different cornerstones for you, the people aspect that you’re much more interested in. And then where does the sustainability piece come from?

Dina Belon (18:50)
Yeah, it’s really ⁓ my personal journey on sustainability started, think, as a child. I don’t think I knew that. But in my career, when I was at Marriott, I realized that we were building huge, you know, I was in the resort side of the business. And so we built big giant resorts and we were working on this particular one and we were going to kind of lop the top of a hill off and

the resort on the top of the hill and I remember sitting there thinking, couldn’t we tear the property? Like, is lopping the top of the hill off? Yeah, should we change the structure of the area that much to put our resort up there? That seemed environmentally

Anthony Codispoti (19:27)
kind of like building it into the hillside sort of a thing.

Dina Belon (19:44)
poor choice, right? Everybody can put their mind at ease. didn’t build, we didn’t actually build the property. So it didn’t get the building, the Hill did not get locked off. No, it did not end up getting built. But that was the first moment that I realized that the job that I had picked and my personal ethos, just be, I’m very outdoorsy person. I love nature. I grew up in the country on a farm and

Anthony Codispoti (19:53)
didn’t get built at all. Okay.

Dina Belon (20:13)
love animals, that it was disconnected. And I was like, okay, I have to figure out a way to do this in a way that aligns with who I am. And so I just started doing my own research and learned about sustainable development and really understanding how to create amazing spaces for people that aren’t a detriment to our environment or our natural resources. So it was totally self-taught.

⁓ and it’s, well, yes. Yeah, that, that is, I did. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (20:45)
Well, not totally. You got a LEED certification at some point, right? Maybe the early days of laying sort

of the foundation that was all self-taught, self-exploration. Got it. Okay. So explain what the LEED certification is, what this means, how you got it.

Dina Belon (20:54)
Yeah, I didn’t go to college for it. How about that?

Yeah,

so LEED accreditation is for a person. So you get accredited to having knowledge around environmental ⁓ sustainability features of the built environment. LEED certification is for an actual building. So buildings get certified to the LEED standard, which is the US Green Building Council. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (21:30)
Got it, thank

you for fixing my language there. I appreciate it. You are not a building, so you are not LEED certified. You are a person who is accredited in LEED. Okay, got it. so maybe let’s, I think these specific examples, you had two great ones, you know, talking about how you guys really wow your guests. Can we talk about a specific example here of how you approach this?

Dina Belon (21:32)
That’s okay. Everybody, everybody makes that the accreditation and right.

Anthony Codispoti (21:58)
Triple bottom line approach, people, planet, prosperity.

Dina Belon (22:02)
Yeah, and I really like the triple bottom line methodology because I think it correlates the most important pieces. Many people think sustainability is only about the environment and it’s not. It’s about ensuring the community isn’t impacted negatively, supporting, you know, we have hotels in six different markets.

supporting the communities that those hotels are in. All of that is part of sustainability. Health and wellness, transportation, all kinds of things are connected. And then you can’t forget that the actual business has to be prosperous or it can’t continue to employ people. We employ, you know, almost 400 people and that’s a big part of what we do for the community is

is be an employer and provide people a living wage. all of that is a more holistic way of looking at sustainability. So it’s really hard to provide you a specific example. do, you know, there’s, because it covers so many things. But I think it’s really important to focus on

the areas where your business can make an impact. And so one of the areas that we focus on is how we can be a model to guests, how you can take something that we do at the hotel home with you, whether it’s noticing our composting program, identifying the fact that we provide reusable aluminum water bottles for you to take home instead of plastic bottles, whether you see us talking about

our 80 % renewable energy in our hotels, whether, you know, all of the factors, whether it’s our health and wellness program, whether it’s our pet wellness program, whether, you know, like all of these different elements, hopefully when you leave, you start to see an ethos that connects, an ethos of care, I guess, that’s what sustainability is about, is about caring.

Anthony Codispoti (24:21)
So I’m gonna pull out just one of those examples that you threw out, the reusable aluminum water bottles. That really strikes me. So a lot of hotels they go to, especially if it’s in an area maybe where the drinking waters could be a little bit questionable, but even not, you know, they provide a bottle or two of water in the room, you know, just kind of a nice little value add. Didn’t cost the hotel a whole lot, but cost them something. You guys don’t.

Do that, you provide, hey, here’s an aluminum water bottle that you can refill, reuse, take home with you. That’s a bigger expense for you guys.

Dina Belon (24:54)
It

is, it’s about twice as we used to do plastic water bottles and it doubled our cost. But it was so important to our strategy that plastic is a very visceral and obvious place to have a negative feeling, right?

People see us talking about sustainability and then they check into our hotel and we were buying 750,000 bottles of plastic, water bottles a year. That’s a lot, that’s impactful, right? That’s a place that we can put our money where our mouth is and make a commitment. So we partnered with PATH and we do a custom, what we did do,

Anthony Codispoti (25:34)
Okay.

Dina Belon (25:51)
talking about prosperity is we tried to turn it into something that was also valuable to us from a marketing perspective. So we partnered with Path to create a custom Stay Pineapple bottle that’s really cool and really pretty and people want to take it home with them. And hopefully they’ll walk around the airport with a Stay Pineapple water bottle and somebody will go, who’s that? Where’d that come from? That’s a cool bottle. Where’d you get that? And they might…

somebody might talk about us. So we equated it to some marketing expense, right? That’s how we kind of worked it out from a prosperity perspective.

Anthony Codispoti (26:30)
I like that. That’s a great example. Let’s talk a little bit more about some of the fun stuff that you guys do there. I want to hear specifically about what you call the naked experience.

Dina Belon (26:43)
Yes, so I mentioned earlier we like to be a little cheeky and kitschy and irreverent on occasion. So the naked experience is really our beds are so comfy, cozy and amazing you’ll want to sleep naked. We buy incredibly wonderful sheets. We have a double duvet system that ⁓ if you’ve traveled in Germany or Scandinavia you may have experienced.

Each person gets their own twin size duvet so that you don’t have to fight over the covers. Yeah, it’s really lovely. Yeah, it’s really brilliant. And then we have oversized towels and big fluffy robes. So everything that touches you is really luxurious. And so you want to be naked, but please be naked in your room.

Anthony Codispoti (27:19)
Brilliant. Brilliant.

Fair enough. I got to tell you when I first saw the name of the hotel pineapple brought up a different ⁓ Connection for me. I it’s ⁓ people with an open relationship Okay, and is there a connection to that in the hotel name here there isn’t okay

Dina Belon (27:49)
Yeah, yeah!

There, yeah, there isn’t. We do giggle

and lean into it sometimes though. get, every so often we’ll get a funny post to somebody will post, I think I accidentally checked into a swinger’s hotel and we’ll do video about our pineapples. You see my pineapple on my jacket here. I always make sure it’s right side up. And cause our coffee.

Anthony Codispoti (27:59)
Fair enough.

Hahaha

What upside

down means that you’re inviting? Okay. ⁓

Dina Belon (28:19)
Yeah, so it’s the upside down pineapple is the symbol of the alternative lifestyle

you reference yes Yeah, whatever you want to do in your hotel room is all about you, but

Anthony Codispoti (28:28)
something else I’ve learned today. Okay.

You know, and I want to go back to this double duvet setup. My wife and I just recently started doing this in our home and it’s made such a big difference for the quality of sleep that we have. But I think this is the first hotel that I’ve heard of that does the same thing. I love it.

Dina Belon (28:40)
Huge.

Yeah, people absolutely

go crazy over our bed. And the bed is also an amazing bed. So I know it sounds like a simple thing, but how many hotels have you been in that you slept horrible because the bed was terrible? So many, right? So many. Yeah. A great shower and a great bed.

Anthony Codispoti (29:02)
Yeah.

No, it’s it.

It is not a simple thing. It is a huge thing, right? You’re traveling, you’re you know, you’re out of sorts, long days, etc. And it just gets compounded if you get a bad night’s sleep. So if you can wake up when you’re traveling, feeling refreshed, man, that’s

Dina Belon (29:10)
It’s huge.

That’s

one of the pillars of our health and wellness program. So again, I think everything goes back to care. We care about our guests’ health and wellness while they’re staying with us. So sleep is number one, and the Naked Experience is core to that. Hydration is number two, so our reusable water bottles, and we have refillable water stations in the lobbies of all of our hotels.

that have cold, sparkling, and hot water. And then the last is movement. So we provide free bikes and walking tours and bike or dog walking tours for people to get out in the city and experience the city, but also get some exercise and movement. We know…

how difficult it is on the body to travel. And so it’s really important to us that we provide the elements that will help you feel good when you get home. And remember, stay pineapple as somebody who cared about how you feel physically.

Anthony Codispoti (30:39)
And so this is are all of your hotels dog friendly?

Dina Belon (30:42)
All of our hotels are not only pet friendly, but dog obsessed.

Anthony Codispoti (30:48)
And so what does it mean for a hotel to not just be pet friendly, but dog obsessed?

Dina Belon (30:53)
So we have no rules. Every hotel chain that does allow pets generally, it’s 25 pounds or less, not any more than one, sometimes two dogs. You cannot leave them in your room. That’s kind of standard SOP for the hotel business. We don’t have any of those rules. You can bring your Great Dane. You can bring three Great Danes if you want. You can leave them in your room and go out and enjoy.

your stay. We do ask that guests leave their cell phone number with us so that we can let them know if their pets are upset. I also mentioned that we have a pet wellness program. So we have Sounds, S-O-U-N-D-Z, which is a pet musical tool that is good for pets that are have anxiety or are stressed. So you get

Anthony Codispoti (31:50)
just

like some kind of a track that soothes them.

Dina Belon (31:52)
Yeah,

you get a 14-day free trial when you stay with Stay Pineapple so that you can leave the dogs with some sounds on that’ll help soothe them. We also have a 24-hour emergency vet care program partnership with Veg ER, V-E-G-E-R, at all of our hotels in case something goes wrong and you need veterinary care.

Like it’s a really, really well thought out program. It’s not just you can bring your pet. It’s we want to care for your pet as much as we care for you. They get a dog bed and treats and a water bowl that you get to take. You get some things to take home with your pet, you know, all kinds of good stuff.

Anthony Codispoti (32:24)
It’s over the top.

Dog obsessed.

And you guys presently have 10 locations, is that correct? And future plans?

Dina Belon (32:44)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yep,

we’re growing. So hopefully you’ll see us in a southern state near you one of these days. So we’re in Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, and New York.

Anthony Codispoti (32:56)
Okay.

Any plans to come a little bit further my way to Ohio?

Dina Belon (33:06)
Yeah, we would love to be kind of in the center of the country too and in the south. You see we’re very northern climate oriented. And so yeah, we want to have some new dots on the map for guests to experience. We have a lot of very, we call them pineapple evangelists, ⁓ people that just absolutely love our brand. And so we want to have more opportunities for them to stay in other locations.

Yeah, I know.

Anthony Codispoti (33:37)
love this. ⁓

Okay, so tell us about the signature welcome drink, another one of these fun things that you guys do.

Dina Belon (33:41)
Yeah,

that we actually did that. That happened during the COVID year. I think 2020 we did that. And it really was around making people feel like the world wasn’t coming to an end and that coming to a hotel could be welcoming. At the time we were doing it for people to take up to their room. We’ve now, you know, changed it so that you can go to the bar and get a cocktail or

⁓ in, we also have, ⁓ sodas and things at the front desk in a grab and go environment. And you can get a bottle, another stay pineapple water bottle if you’d like. ⁓ you know, a lot of options, but it’s really, it really starts with the idea of friend style service. So again, we want you to walk away from your experience with us feeling like you have a friend in Seattle now that you can go visit and, and that.

What is the first thing that you do when somebody comes to your house?

Anthony Codispoti (34:47)
Aside from welcome them inside, I offer them something to drink or eat.

Dina Belon (34:51)
Yep. Exactly. So that’s what we do. We offer you a welcome beverage. Welcome. Welcome to our home. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (34:59)
Love it. ⁓

I mean, we’re talking about all kinds of fun stuff, ways that you guys wow your guests. There’s another side though. Sometimes the ball gets dropped. Sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes you’ve got a guest who is upset, whether rightfully so or not. Can you think of a particularly challenging experience on that front? How you navigated it? How you sort of brought things back around?

Dina Belon (35:10)
yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we make mistakes fairly regularly. It’s an interesting commentary that I have, because we don’t have a lot of standard operating procedures in our business, because we want our team members to do the things that they want to do and how they want to do them. That’s natural for them. And people say to me all the time, well, that must create a lot of things go wrong.

When was the last time an SOP kept things from going wrong? Please tell me. It’s a misnomer to believe that if you create standards that you’re gonna keep things from happening not the way you want them to occur. So I just wanna lay that groundwork.

Anthony Codispoti (36:17)
There’s so many things that are outside of our control is what you’re saying.

Dina Belon (36:19)
Control, right? Yeah.

So our team members come at any situation with the very first thought of do the next right thing. We say it all the time. It’s one of our favorite sayings. You don’t have to write a standard if that’s what you’re always thinking. If somebody asks for something and I know to say yes, I know how to figure out how to get to yes, then

it makes it a lot easier to not have things go wrong. But it still happens, right? It still happens.

Anthony Codispoti (36:57)
Okay, so let me just play devil’s advocate for a second and tell me why I’m wrong in the context of the state pineapple environment. ⁓ I’ve owned multiple businesses in my career, been big about standard operating procedures, if X then Y, and at some point that SOP, that standard operating procedure breaks or we find a crack in it because there’s an exception to it. So then we go back and revisit that SOP and it’s like, okay, if X and not

Z then Y and if you know, just sort of create more of those if then variables. And I like that, you as a business owner, I like that there is sort of that predictable path there. Tell me why the approach for stay pineapple is better.

Dina Belon (37:46)
Mine is also predictable. It’s just broader. I guess we have a SOP. It’s do the next right thing. Like if you own a tire store, very, one thing is the hospitality industry is all about human interaction. So rarely is it repeatable. Like we don’t have a very repeatable process or service because every person’s individual and unique and different.

And if we’re providing personalized service, then we’re not treating you like we did Mrs. Johnson. We’re treating you differently and unique to you. And it’s really hard to write an SOP for that. But let’s use a business that is much more standardized. A tire store, right? You come in, you order tires. I put the order in, the guys go put tires on your car. You get your keys back, you pay me and you leave. It’s a…

very standard process. I can understand why you’d want to write an SOP about that. But if the person that the customer is interacting with always comes from a place of care,

What is the SOP adding? Other than training, like I know how to use the system, clickety, clickety, clickety, right? What is being added if somebody’s coming from a truly care-focused model, always thinking about your customer?

Anthony Codispoti (39:25)
So I get what you’re saying and I buy into it to a certain degree. I think in order for your model to really work well, you’ve got to get the hiring right. Like your team has to be the right folks. How do you figure that out? How do you filter in sort of that hiring process?

Dina Belon (39:34)
Hehehehe… Yup.

Yeah, hiring

and retention is critical to our business model. So we do, we look for two critical things in hiring. Emotional intelligence, so your ability to read other people and adjust how you’re interacting with them based on the information that you’re gathering, body language, verbal cues, all of that. And critical thinking, your ability to problem solve.

come up with creative solutions, whether it’s, you know, solutions to something that’s gone wrong or a surprise and delight, something that you’ve heard that you want to be creative and do something that’s well beyond what the guest would expect to happen. You wouldn’t expect to show up at hotel and have your room decorated for Christmas with a Christmas tree in it. But you told us that Christmas is really important to you and you’re sad.

because you’re gonna be on the road the week before Christmas, we would do that, right? Like those kind of things don’t happen because somebody wrote an SOP. They happen because we give ultimate free rein to very smart, emotionally intelligent people to create a care model at our hotels that is way beyond what a guest would expect.

Anthony Codispoti (41:10)
So, Dina, I’m sure, know, an organization of your size, you are not at the front line doing the employee interviews, but do you know how they’re filtering for that? Like, are there some, like, magic questions that help to get to that EQ part of it, as well as the critical thinking aspect?

Dina Belon (41:32)
Yeah, we do a lot of questions around in a situation like this, what would you do? Tell me how you would handle it. And then tell me about a time something like this has happened to you in the past. what did you, know, whether again, it doesn’t have to be negative. Some of the questions are if you’ve had a challenging guest that was angry with you, certainly those are great questions. But the better questions are,

What do you do when a check-in is normal?

And it’s fine.

Anthony Codispoti (42:10)
I don’t even know how to begin to answer that. Like, I don’t know, go on to the next task. Like, it went well. So did I just fail the interview?

Dina Belon (42:12)
Right? Yeah, yeah. Right, but the people, yes you did.

The people that say, ⁓ well if it’s just fine, then I want to find a way to make that cast feel really special. That’s when you go, okay, I have something interesting here. And then I start to, then you start to dig. You’re like, okay, well tell me about that.

How would you potentially, surprise and delight isn’t an only state pineapple term. People in the hotel business have heard it many times. How would you surprise and delight a guest? Tell me about a time you’ve done it. That’s when you start to get into what is their personal value system around being of care.

Anthony Codispoti (43:04)
So do you think when people come to an interview, they’re already familiar with the brand? They understand that this is like an over-the-top customer experience, kind of an expectation?

Dina Belon (43:16)
Not all of them, ⁓ many are, many people come to us and we get two people, two potential hires coming in. One that’s, they’re really into pets. And so they’re like, I wanna play with dogs all day. And we’re like, great, that is a perfect place to start with us. Let’s dig into that some more, right? Or.

The other is I know about your brand and I have always wanted to work here. And I just think what you do is so special and unique and I wanna learn more about it. Those kind of people, they’re gonna peak a interviewer’s interest and they’re gonna be like, okay, let’s dig, let’s dig, let’s dig in that, right? It’s just like surprise and delight and listening.

We listen to what people say and ascertain if they’ve got that stay pineapple thing that’s gonna make them fit in our culture. And then we hang on to them when we get them. Well, primary, we give them what they want, right? People go into the hotel business because they want to take care of other people. They don’t wanna be put in a Navy jacket with a name tag on.

Anthony Codispoti (44:24)
So how do you hang on to them?

Dina Belon (44:40)
and told how to answer the phone. That’s not why they start in the hotel business. They start because they love taking care of people and we let them do it their own way. We let them be themselves and we create really great bonded teams at our hotels through, know, team member experiences and events and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

And then the other thing is, is we model, we don’t teach. The GM, we have a centralized business model. So all of the kind of back office, all of the drudgery work is done at our home office so that the general manager and the front desk manager are on the floor working with the team every day, modeling what it looks like to be great at guest service.

So if you want to be a great, if that’s your desire, right? If that’s your career path, you want to be in the hotel business and you want to become a general manager and a regional and you want to really understand the ethos of great guest service, Stay Pineapple is an amazing place to work. Our average length of stay, yes, we use length of stay instead of retention, because we’re in the hotel business and we think it’s cute.

is three years, which is incredible on it in our industry.

Anthony Codispoti (46:12)
It is. I’ve not heard of anything like that before. It’s really stellar. ⁓ You’re very passionate about what you do. We had a lot of fun talking about a lot of great things. ⁓ But let’s talk about something hard. Because that’s where a lot of growth comes from personally. What’s something really challenging, Dina, that you’ve experienced in your life, whether it’s personal or professional? How did you get through that, and what did you learn?

Dina Belon (46:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you know, I think the most challenging thing that ever happened to me, the one that I wasn’t prepared for was I was let go in a big layoff at a big corporate, one of my ⁓ corporate roles that I had. And I was a leader in the organization. I was a vice president in the company and a whole department got

eliminated. And it was something that I had created. The department hadn’t existed previous to me and I created it and it was my baby. I put the passion that you hear in me now into that as well. And I think that’s when I first learned that probably the big box brand corporate world wasn’t the right one for me.

because it felt like my family had been ripped away. And I know that sounds melodramatic, but I get really invested in what I do, what I do and who I am. I don’t have good work-life balance. I tell people all the time not to model my experience. I don’t have kids. I’ve put a lot of my energy into

what I do because I really believe in taking care of people and the idea of it and the impact that it can make on an individual that might be going through something really rough or celebrating something, creating a memory that they can take home and have for decades to come is so much more valuable than a thing that you can buy. So I…

After this happened, I went to my mom’s, this is probably my most embarrassing thing in life. I was in my 30s, so was not a young person. I flew to North Carolina to my mom’s house and stayed there for a week and just cried. Literally, my husband called me and was like, are you ever coming home? What is happening? I was like, I just had to mourn the loss of

something that was really important to me. And I think the people around me were like, Dina, everybody gets laid off in their career at some time or another. It’s not that dramatic. But I think different people react differently to different circumstances.

But it was a turning point that changed the trajectory of my career. I was climbing the ladder in corporate America. I was the youngest vice president in the organization I was in. That was what I was going to do. That’s what was going to make my family proud of me and all of that. I stopped in my tracks and turned in the opposite direction. And I became an entrepreneur.

which I also realized I was not my thing. Took me about five years to get through that and go, okay, that’s not right for me either. I took a number of missteps over the next decade, not missteps, but paths that hit a dead end, right? I learned I did a lot in sustainability around that, but I learned that I didn’t like consulting because it was too separated from the actual activity and accomplishment.

You wrote a lot of papers, but you didn’t get to do things. ⁓ so I learned a lot when I didn’t like over the next 10 years. And that got me to stay pineapple after three roles and many missteps. So it, I, I have young women particularly asked me often, well, you know, how did you become the president of a company? And I’m like a very secuous route. It was.

Anthony Codispoti (50:49)
Thank

Dina Belon (50:51)
I kind of went all over the map. I like to brag that I have varied experience. Well, that really means I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. And so I went in a lot of bad directions. But so don’t be afraid of that. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss the wrong steps because they teach you things that you can’t get in another way.

Anthony Codispoti (50:54)
I like to brag and have varied experience. Well, that really means I took the wrong one. I went a lot of bad directions. So don’t be afraid of that. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss the brand.

So I want to go back to the earliest part of that story and honor something that you said about mourning for a week and having it feel like your family had just been ripped away from you. And I don’t think that’s melodramatic at all. ⁓ I have the similar conversation a lot with entrepreneurs, people who have started something, built something, and it feels

like a part of you, feels like an offspring, a child. Like there is a real emotional connection to it. And if and when either that business does not work out, has to be wound down, or you exit that business in a successful way and you’re no longer a part of it, there is a very real mourning process that takes place. And you as not the owner, the entrepreneur, but

in a sense, the owner, right? Because this is a whole department, a whole thing that you had birthed within this company. You had taken so much pride, so much pleasure, you put so much passion into it that you had that same emotional connection to it and the team around you that you had built. And so I don’t think this was melodramatic at all. Like, I very much understand that mourning process that you went through.

Dina Belon (52:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yep, that was 100%. That’s exactly what it felt like.

Anthony Codispoti (52:41)
Yeah. And ⁓ it closed that door. It had you thinking about life in a different way, looking for new doors, looking for new windows. It took you into some different experiences that weren’t ultimately a direct path to where you are now. But I would guess that the things that you learned at each of those stops have set you up for the success that you’re now having. Stay pineapple. True or false?

Dina Belon (53:10)
100

% true, 100 % true. I would not, I wouldn’t have the breadth of experience and the ability to address things I don’t know anything about. So that’s the biggest thing about leadership that I think people miss is you are gonna get asked to make decisions on stuff that you are not a technical expert at and you don’t know.

You don’t necessarily know. You have to use your intuition and your experience and take things from adjacent experiences and figure out how to use them. And the more that you have a variety of experiences, the more breadth of information that you’ll be able to pull from. And so I think

I always used to say when I was young, I had a chip on my shoulder and I was very young in my leadership, you know, somebody that has 30 years of the same experience doesn’t have as much experience as somebody that has five different years of experience. And people would just, right? It probably wasn’t the appropriate thing for a 25 year old to be saying, but right, the sentiment is accurate. If you have five years of

Anthony Codispoti (54:22)
interesting.

Dina Belon (54:34)
a lot of very different experiences, you’re going to have a lot more to pull from than if you’ve done the same exact thing every year for 30 years.

Anthony Codispoti (54:44)
I would tend to agree with that. I mean, I think there’s a depth of expertise that comes from being sort of in that same vertical for a while. But as somebody who’s had some, you know, varied experiences, different kinds of businesses, I would agree. Like, there’s a lot of different disciplines to be able to pull from when curveballs get thrown at you. So how would you characterize your superpower?

Dina Belon (55:03)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

My superpower, and actually the one that everybody tells me is my superpower as well, is identifying what people are great at. So I’ll give you a couple of ⁓ recent examples. I’m really good at seeing what people may not see in themselves and helping them find a path to utilizing

their best skills or their natural tendencies instead of what potentially they’ve been told or told themselves about themselves. So our chief growth officer who’s in charge of all of revenue, so sales, revenue, ⁓ our growth strategy actually comes out of human resources. He had a 20 year career as a human resource professional and he

Anthony Codispoti (55:49)
Hmm.

Dina Belon (56:10)
was hired here as the VP of Human Resources. And about two and a half years into his career here, we were doing a lot of expansion and going to conferences and speaking and trying to get other people to understand what we do. And Mike went with us on something and I realized instantly how incredible

incredibly good he was at articulating who we were and getting people to believe in what we did. I think it came from his years of doing that with people in HR. So he started getting really involved in our growth strategy and got really, really good at it. And at one point, I also learned that telling people about these things can be hard. ⁓

trying to get somebody to redirect, telling them directly can be challenging. So what I did was I kind of dropped some breadcrumbs and I was like, hey, Mike, I think that we have an opportunity for you to take on some new initiatives in the company. And so I kind of dropped a few hints and then I was like, ⁓ I got to catch my plane. I’ll see, I’ll call you when I land.

So I gave him like five hours to think about it, knowing him really well, knowing that he would get from my little breadcrumbs to the end result. And when I landed and I called him, he was like, dang it, Deena, I know exactly what you want me to do. You want me to take over growth and revenue. I was like, yes, I do. And he has been incredible at it. He’s amazing. He’s so inspirational to a group of

Anthony Codispoti (57:47)
I landed it and I called it people like, Dina, Dina, I know exactly

Dina Belon (58:06)
creative people and science-based people, data people, creative people. He brings them together. We used to have a department that was very segregated and had all these sub-departments. They all work collectively now under his leadership. They’re working hand in hand. They’re collaborating and it’s just, it is absolutely phenomenal to see the difference.

in our revenue team compared to two years ago when Mike took

Anthony Codispoti (58:42)
I really like that story because I think as humans, ⁓ whether we’re doing it to our team members or we’re doing it to ourselves, we tend to paint ourselves into a box, right? Like, you know, I’m an HR person. So that, you know, that means my path is, you know, strictly within HR, I’ll do some payroll stuff, some benefit stuff, eventually, you know, I’ll become a director. But you had like this bigger vision, like, ⁓ like, he’s got these personality traits that yes, he’s been a great

asset in the HR department. ⁓ I think, you know, he can really build on that and be fantastic in this completely different area of the business.

Dina Belon (59:19)
Yeah,

now he’s on the executive team of the company and is the chief growth officer.

Anthony Codispoti (59:26)
I love that. ⁓ I want to call out ⁓ one of your accolades ⁓ being named one of the top 50 women leaders in hospitality now two years running. What do you think has contributed to you being designated?

Dina Belon (59:44)
I am so honored by it. And I think it’s because we do things differently. And I talk about it a lot. And I’m clearly very passionate about it. I believe in people and I believe in the amazing impact people can make on each other. And so I think…

In this day and age of AI and automation and reduction in force and all of the things that are being talked about in the news, I think it’s refreshing to hear a business that is using technology. We’re not shying away from technology at all. We have an in-house AI programmer at our corporate office. We are leaning into technology, but only as an enabler to our teams.

only as a tool to eliminate the transaction and the friction out of a guest journey so that our team members have more time to build relationships. And I think that’s just really refreshing story. I’m not trying to ⁓ put myself down or say that I’m not worth the top 50 women in hospitality, but I think I have

a leg up because I’ve got a really interesting story to talk

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:12)
I think what I’m hearing you say, at least on that AI ⁓ side of things, is you don’t want fewer, what’s your term for them? Guests, the team members, how do you reference them?

Dina Belon (1:01:23)
our front dust team, everything people.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:26)
Yes,

the everything people. You don’t want fewer everything people. You want your everything people spending more time with the guests. That’s how you look at and think about AI. Yeah. You know, I’ve just got one more question for you today, Dina. But before I ask it, I want to do three quick things. Anybody who wants to get in touch with Dina, two options. You can find her on LinkedIn and her last name is spelled B-E-L-O-N.

So kind of like melon, but with a B at the front of it instead of an And then also she’s given us our her email address to share. So it’s D B E L O N at StayPineapple.com D B E L O N at StayPineapple.com. And we’ll have links to her email and LinkedIn profile and show notes for folks. Also as a reminder, if you want to get more hotel employees access to doctors, therapists and prescription meds that can you believe it actually puts more money into the company’s pocket.

reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com. Finally, if you’re enjoying the show, a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards helping others discover the show. It means a lot more than you might think, so thank you. So last question for you, Dina. A year from now, you and I reconnect and you were celebrating something big, something very specific. What is that one specific thing that you hope to be celebrating one year from today?

Dina Belon (1:02:50)
We are celebrating ⁓ some new Stay Pineapple hotels in our portfolio. Yeah, that would be great. I’d new babies out there.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:56)
All

I love that. Well, we’ll have to check back in in a year and see how many more of those babies have been birthed. But Dina Belon from Stay Pineapple Hotels, I wouldn’t be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you.

Dina Belon (1:03:18)
It was really fun. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:24)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.