Boardrooms, Breakouts, and Bad Decisions...

I went quiet last week on Linky. Not because I was tired, not because I had nothing to say (honey, please). Because I was in the rooms.

Two rooms. Same industry. Completely different planets.

Room One: ESTO

Picture a ballroom of CEOs and CMOs (Executive Edge). Crisp suits, polite claps, a whiff of Succession cosplay. Everyone knows their people are restless, but no one wants to make eye contact with the truth.

Here’s what I heard:

• It’s not retention, it’s relevance. If your best people don’t see a future with you, they’ll build one somewhere else.

• Boards won’t let leaders fire when they should. Which means “average” becomes the new normal.

• ESTO did prove this: when you put the right leaders in a room, the willingness to wrestle with hard truths is there. They showed up. They listened. And for an industry that loves its safe slogans, that’s no small thing.

These leaders aren’t clueless. They’re carrying impossible loads — boards breathing down their necks, communities that want everything, staff who are tired, budgets that are political footballs. They know the cracks are there. They just need space and courage to stop patching and start success(ion) planning.

This room smelled like cologne, coffee, and denial… but also like possibility. With just a little more power, they could steer this ship into relevance again.

Room Two: VRWS

Now flip the script. A ballroom of women in vacation rentals. Underdogs, underestimated — and on fire.

The air? You could breathe. It was oxygen. It didn’t feel like rebellion. It felt like belonging.

Here’s what that room showed me:

• Collaboration wasn’t just lip service. Women were swapping playbooks like recipes.

• Scrappiness wasn’t shame — it was strategy. Limited resources turned into speed, creativity, and grit.

• Nobody begged for a seat at the table. They were too busy renting the table out nightly.

That room smelled like hairspray, ambition, and revolution. And for once, ambition didn’t feel heavy...it felt shared.

Two Rooms. One Industry.

So while the feed was quiet, I wasn’t. And if you noticed the silence? Good. That’s what happens when the villain leaves the room: the Wi-Fi cuts out, the boardroom gets nervous, and suddenly the industry remembers it has homework due.

And here’s what’s coming next from The Daily Destruptor:

• More hot tea, fewer safe conversations. (You thought last month was spicy? We’re just preheating.)

• More underdog spotlights. Because the future isn’t being built by the loudest, it’s being built by the women who don’t wait for permission.

• More accountability. Boards, agencies, execs — you’ve run out of buzzwords. Don’t worry, I’ve got a full pantry.

Tourism doesn’t need another glossy campaign. It needs leaders willing to sit in both rooms, tell the truth, and laugh while doing it.

And if you think a week of silence means I softened? Darling, I was just sharpening.

xo, Jenn