My Place Hotels CEO: The Extended-Stay Playbook
57:49
Season 3
·
Episode 13
In This Conversation
Bryan sits down with Ryan Rivett, President & CEO of My Place Hotels of America, whose path into hospitality was set the day he was born — his grandfather built the first-ever Super 8 in 1974 and brought Ryan up in the family business. After roughly a decade developing and building hotels for the major franchise brands, Ryan and his family set out to fix what they saw broken in the franchisor-franchisee relationship, launching My Place as a smaller-footprint extended-stay brand built on integrity and shared upside for owners.
The conversation gets into the deliberate product decisions behind My Place: 64-to-86-room prototypes that fit on lots under an acre and a half, no pools (backed by real RevPAR data showing a pool actually hurts performance), and no free breakfast — replaced instead by an optional "breakfast in bed" package. Ryan explains how the brand engineers its demand mix, targeting roughly 30% of business from week-plus stays against a steady base of one-to-four-night transient guests, for a chainwide average length of stay around four nights.
They close on where the brand is headed — programmatic, multi-property development deals that are accelerating growth with experienced franchisees, and Ryan's frustration that hospitality's back-of-house technology still lags far behind industries like quick-serve restaurants, even as AI starts to close that gap.
Key Topics
Extended-Stay Brand Strategy
Franchisor-Franchisee Relationship
Smaller-Footprint Development Economics
In This Episode:
How growing up in a hospitality family (his grandfather built the very first Super 8 in 1974) and a decade in development and construction shaped My Place's franchisee-first model
Why My Place deliberately builds smaller, 64-to-86-room prototypes on sub-1.5-acre lots — and how that keeps land costs and lender risk down
The real data behind skipping the pool: two nearly identical My Place properties eight miles apart, where the one without a pool outperforms by 25% on RevPAR
Why My Place has never offered free breakfast, and how its optional "breakfast in bed" package captures a small slice of that demand instead
Managing a deliberate revenue mix — roughly 30% of business from week-plus stays against a steady base of one-to-four-night demand — for an average four-night length of stay
How programmatic, multi-property development agreements are reshaping the pace and predictability of the brand's franchise growth
Ryan's frustration with hospitality's lag on back-of-house technology compared to industries like quick-serve restaurants, and his cautious optimism about AI's role ahead
Ryan Rivett
President & CEO
My Place Hotels of America
About Our Guest
Ryan Rivett is President & CEO of My Place Hotels of America, the extended-stay brand he co-founded in 2012 alongside his grandfather, Ron Rivett, who put the family into hospitality in 1974 by building the very first Super 8. Rivett grew up in the business, spent roughly a decade in hotel development and construction management across major franchise brands, and used that perspective to shape My Place around a smaller footprint, a single evolving prototype, and a franchisee-first philosophy — he remains the brand's largest franchisee himself. Under his leadership, My Place has grown to well over 100 franchise agreements and more than 80 open hotels across 35 states. He holds a B.S. in management from Northern State University.
