Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing podcast

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المحتوى المقدم من Travel Media Group & Ryan Embree, Travel Media Group, and Ryan Embree. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة Travel Media Group & Ryan Embree, Travel Media Group, and Ryan Embree أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.

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Richard (Kudo) Couto: The Hidden Horror Behind a Billion-Dollar Brand 42:18

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“I used to be the largest dairy consumer on the planet. I used to eat so much dairy and meat. The more that I looked into the dairy industry, the more that I saw that it was the singular, most inhumane industry on the planet, that we've all been lied to, including myself, for years. I always believed that the picture on the milk carton, the cow standing next to her calf in the green field with the red barn in the back was true. It’s certainly the complete opposite.” – Richard (Kudo) Couto Richard (Kudo) Couto is the founder of Animal Recovery Mission (ARM), an organization solely dedicated to investigating extreme animal cruelty cases. ARM has led high-risk undercover operations that have resulted in the shutdown of illegal slaughterhouses, animal fighting rings, and horse meat trafficking networks. Recently, they released a damning investigation into two industrial dairy farms outside of Phoenix, Arizona supplying milk to Coca-Cola’s Fairlife brand. What they uncovered was systemic animal abuse, environmental violations, and a devastating betrayal of consumer trust. While Fairlife markets its products as being sourced "humanely," ARM’s footage tells a very different story—one of suffering, abuse, and corporate complicity. Despite the evidence, this story has been largely ignored by mainstream media—likely due to Coca-Cola’s massive influence and advertising dollars.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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The best hotel digital marketing podcast in the hospitality industry.

166 حلقات

#Business #Travel Media Group & Ryan Embree #Ryan Embree #Travel Media Group #Marketing

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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منزل السلاسل•Feed

The best hotel digital marketing podcast in the hospitality industry.

166 حلقات

#Business #Travel Media Group & Ryan Embree #Ryan Embree #Travel Media Group #Marketing

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Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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166 – 2 Million Reviews Responded To Celebration 34:00

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The Travel Media Group digital solution has hit the monumental milestone of responding to over 2 million online guest reviews for our hotel partners. To commemorate such a major achievement, Chief Technology Officer, Jason Lee, and Director of Product – Respond & Resolve™, Jackie Avery, join the Suite Spot to discuss this accolade, what it means to the organization, and the future of review response. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, here for a very celebratory episode. Today we’re gonna have two guests with me, our first Jackie Avery, director of Product – Respond and Resolve. Jackie, congratulations, as the title says of TMG hits over 2 million online guest reviews. Thank you so much for being with me on the Suite Spot. Jackie Avery : Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. It feels so good to be here. Just really excited to celebrate this. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I think it was August 2022, where we were actually in our older building, before we moved into our podcast studio. Hopefully you were watching us on YouTube and celebrating 1 million guest reviews responded to, um, which just seemed like unfathomable to even think about that amount. So now here we are at 2 million in 2025 before the summer, which we’re gonna talk about that, that flux of reviews that come in during the busiest time of the year for hoteliers and for travel. But talk to me a little bit about what this accomplish means, to you and, and your team and network of professional writers. Jackie Avery : Yeah. I mean, honestly, this is just one of the many milestones for the team this year. So I guess, like full of transparency, what it means is continued momentum. I think, you know, we’re feeling pumped up. We’re doing what we love, and it feels so good to, you know, help our clients and really just connect, you know, in a really authentic way with travelers all over the world. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And when we talk about a number, again, like 2 million, that is reviews, online reviews from across all different platforms. Recently added Medallia surveys as well for some of the brands. But obviously it’s not just you and a couple people doing this. You’ve got a huge network of US-based writers that do this. Talk to us a little bit about the training that goes into this, Jackie, because I don’t think I’ve heard one GM, or front desk manager, whoever is responding to those reviews saying that I got into hospitality because I wanted to respond to reviews. Right. They’re more focused on the people and guests as they should be on site. What type of training and nuances goes into responding to specifically an online hotel guest review? Jackie Avery : Alright, well, I’ll tell you a little bit, but you’re not gonna get all my secrets. Well, the team, when they join us, they come already with extensive education. I feel like that’s talked about a lot, but in reality, that’s actually just like the baseline. That’s where we start. And then from there, right, they need to know about hospitality, they need to know about different hotel brands. But there’s also extensive training in, specific person to person communication to be able to connect with someone, in a genuine way. Of course. Like with the main focus being in the written form. Because, you know, the team of writers. But yeah, so I’d say, you know, being highly educated and having those degrees and level of experience with different forms of writing is really where it starts. And then we build off that. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And we’ve been hospitality specific Travel Media Group that is for 40-plus years. Again, there’s a lot of nuances that if you’re that US hoteliers kind of take for granted things like, taking it a deposit at the beginning of a stay and maybe that deposit not hitting back or get or getting back to that guest within the next couple days. If you don’t know that, that’s not communicated to not only the staff, but our writers here and they don’t understand that could make for a very different response. So we’re all kind of travelers at heart, but there’s also this nuance of understanding the operational side of hospitality that you have to understand in order to give that service. Because if you don’t know policies, rules, even the finer and smaller details of each individual property, which is communicated to your team through a variety of communications, which we’re gonna speak to in a minute. But I wanna get to the evolution of online review response. Right. Maybe some of our hoteliers listening to this podcast that have been in the industry for 30 years, this was a much smaller piece of their everyday and priority list. Now there’s more sites than ever. There’s more reviews than ever. People can even now leave reviews with zero context. Right. Just a star rating which is obviously a challenge in itself to kind of, uh, figure out the details of that. So talk to us a little bit about that evolution since we started nearly a decade responding to reviews. Jackie Avery : Yeah, absolutely. I think when we speak about the evolution of respond and resolve, and you know what that means, I don’t think we can have this conversation without talking about AI. We just, it, nobody can go a day without that coming up, without that being pitched to them without it being a conversation they stumble across. And it’s the same for writers with that, I’d say kind of how we’ve felt and seen that impact the respondent resolve program here. I’ll kind of start first with our clients, which I’d say I feel like actually that has been a benefit to our clients. Like that conversation coming up and being everywhere because they were already guest centric. They chose to work with us and have these authentic, you know, personalized review responses going out. And so they feel like validated, right? All these fears about AI and how that really is kind of a really scary way to kind of connect with your guests. They’re like, oh, I’m so glad we’ve been doing this the right way and we’ve been doing this and putting so much time into it from the start. So I think I’m happy for them that they can feel secure and they don’t need to be, worrying about it ’cause they know that they’re doing it at the highest possible level. And then I’d say as far as the team, how that has impacted us, and, you know, really kind of what we’re very aware of is now travelers. Every piece of communication is a test. Right. You are looking at that message back to you. You had a hotel stay, and you’re trying to see, did this property truly care about what I had to say, good or bad? Or did they pass off this response to a bot? Ryan Embree: Yeah. And that’s a scary thought for some hoteliers. Especially with some of the really serious reviews that we’ve seen having to do with things like slip and falls. We’ve seen it all. Payment disputes, there’s all sorts of things that happen every single day. The variable of what can happen on property for a guest experience is the spectrum is so wide. So being able to have the peace of mind that this is going to be given to a professional writer that has experience of over 2 million reviews, right? That is something that a lot of our hoteliers, do not take for granted. They really appreciate. But, you know, for those hoteliers, I think the biggest, one of the biggest questions we get, Jackie, and maybe you can do a great job of, kind of communicating this, is how do you know my hotel’s voice? How do you know my, how do you get to know my policies, the intricate details of, you know, these rooms on this side of my property are going to have an issue with noise because it’s closer to the hotel and this is how we want this addressed. How do you communicate with that? No matter whether it’s a big branded property or a small, independent property? Jackie Avery : Yeah, absolutely. So the team, right? We start with this, we talked about training of just a couple minutes ago where we start with this high baseline of what they already know. And they come in with all this level of expertise, but write the details. It’s all in the details. So our process was built around the fact that we knew we’d need this. Yeah. Right. Everything we do was built for hoteliers. We know there’s high turnover. We know that people get promoted and maybe they go to on to manage quite a few hotels versus just working at one. And then that voice need changes. So when everything was being designed, it was designed with that quick change need in mind. So, there’s a quick, give us some feedback, change this response, you know, add that detail in here, update your notes, give a rating. And that is all monitored in the moment and then immediately changed so that the very next review that’s left can show and reflect those changes. Like you said, we’re not building this out for just anybody. Everything was built for these hoteliers. Ryan Embree: It’s continuous education. And that’s what we kind of challenge sometimes with something like AI that’s new to this. How do you explain to AI that, you know, the elevators near your breakfast area are gonna be shut down temporarily for inspection for a couple days. So you might get some reviews here. This is how we want that responded to efficiency wise. It is still, at this point, much easier to connect with one of our writers to explain that and say, this is how we want this addressed. We can even provide you with maybe some samples of what we’ve done in the past to say, this is a great way to approach this. So, that comes with the experience of 2 million reviews and being hospitality specific. You’re gonna have a lot, a wealth of knowledge, which we’re gonna dig into in a second and ask you for some tips. Jackie Avery : Absolutely. I’d say it’s important to note you’re not customer number one. We’ve seen it before. Right? 2 million times. So you’ve got that expert backing. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. Now, you kind of pressed on the importance of communication between you and the hotel, whether that be through our system rating system notes that you’re given, or even just a quick call to our client success representative who could connect you, with the respond and resolve team. 2 million reviews, obviously, I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of that feedback come through, but any particular pieces of feedback or incidents or just situations that have really stuck out to you during this 2 million review journey? Jackie Avery : I love hearing from our hoteliers, uh, the good, the bad. Right? I love that somebody wants to make sure, you know, a response is perfect. That’s everything I, you know, as a writer could dream of. Yeah. But, I guess one that kind of sticks out for me, I specifically think it’s a, it’s a high-end hotel in the Midwest. They had a serious incident happen. So obviously those are really memorable moments. You hope you don’t have ’em, but you have to be prepared for them. And the feedback we got, right? They were in this situation, there’s imagine there’s police on site, there’s upset guests in your face. There’s guests leaving reviews, and then there’s the gracious guests who are still leaving feedback where they’re almost, sharing their sympathy with you for what’s going on. And, you know, that hotelier connecting with my team and me after everything was over, the review were online, the responses were posted. We had connected with their legal team. We had provided them our recommendations. We had helped report the ones that we could and the assistance that we could provide, and their message back to us of just, Hey, in that moment, I was so grateful that I could focus on what I needed to focus on here. And I didn’t even need to worry about this. It wasn’t that I would do it later. It was that I know I’m being supported and this was done well, and I’m okay. And this aspect is being more than handled. You, you guys had recommendations for me and for me just to be able to connect and help someone like that. It sticks with you. Ryan Embree: It’s a scary time for hotelier. I mean, I worked at the front desk for many years. You know, I’ve been there when an entire floor floods because somebody, you know, hangs their dry cleaning up on the fire sprinkler. I mean, those are emergency times where you are needed at every second of the day to make sure that this crisis is averted or at least the damage is mitigated. So to be able to have the peace of mind of saying, I know I have Jackie and her team of professional writers who have been through these situations before, handle everything mitigating the damage online. Again, that is something that is our hotel partners value. And, and we hear about it a lot. But I, I also wanna go to the other side, you know what I mean? because a lot of times I think there’s a tendency to, ’cause I think those negative, you know, really crisis emergencies seem to stick out in our, in our head for obviously good reason. But even on the other side of those people that are just as emphatic with their positive response or even when something goes viral, that’s positive, right. To be able to take advantage of that to the fullest is also something there’s a, sometimes we hear from hoteliers, well, I just respond to the negative stuff. And for someone to be take the time out of their day to leave feedback for your hotel, recognizing your staff, your service, that is such a time to amplify that with a response and to show your appreciation with a response. And it’s felt on the other side as other travelers are reading these reviews and certainly reading these responses. So, so 2 million reviews under, under your belt, you and your teams about, again, congratulations on the milestone, but I am gonna pick your brain a little bit. What would you give top three tips for, for hoteliers? Jackie Avery : So top three, I’d say sweat the small stuff. Take your time and make it about the guest. You can’t brush off the little details and the review thinking, oh, well, that over, they still gave five stars. They are giving you their opinion. They’re being vulnerable in that moment and sharing these details with you. You have to acknowledge them. You have to think about them, connect with your team on site about them. Don’t rush through review response. This guest happy or upset has taken the time to share their thoughts with you, connect with them the same way that you would if they stopped by the front desk to chat with you. You wouldn’t just brush them off and walk by them. So don’t do it virtually and then make it about the guests. This isn’t your opportunity. You have a whole team. You know, making your health hotel look great online. But I also encourage you, the magic happens when you take a moment to make it about the guest who left that review for you. Ryan Embree: Yeah. I mean, all the common theme in all three of those tips, just keeping the guest front of mind. Right. And keeping the guest first. It’s something that we stress to our writers when they’re first brought on is that this level of when they, when a hotel partner comes to us and really entrust us to respond their reviews, it is a big responsibility right? To entrust, Travel Media Group to do that. We take that extremely seriously and always keep the guests first. So, congratulations again on the milestone. What any final thoughts, what’s next for Respond Resolve as we move forward? Jackie Avery : So much. I think we need a second podcast to go through it. But, um, yeah, I feel like a busy summer, 3 million reviews. You know, we’ve got a lot going on. I think, you know, we are gonna continue to just do our very best and be the very best and just connect with travelers in a really real way and keep doing everything we can to help our hotel partners. Ryan Embree: So awesome. And love to hear feedback from our hotel partners about how that authenticity shines through you and your team’s responses. So, again, congratulations Jackie, on this milestone. Jackie Avery : Thank you so much. It was great being here. Ryan Embree: Thank you. And next we’ll be joined by our CTO, Jason Lee, who’s gonna be talking to us a little bit about what this milestone means for him and his team. Here we are with Jason, Chief Technology Officer, Travel Media Group, celebrating again, 2 million reviews responded to. Congratulations. August, 2022, I was telling you was when we, had responded and had you on for 1 million reviews responded to talk to us. You’ve been there since the inception, the birth of this solution. Maybe just give our listeners a little bit of background into the idea behind it. I know we’ve, we heard all the time, hoteliers, you know, along with the reputation solutions we provide. Do you guys respond to review? Right. What that came from idea to solution to where it is today? Yeah, I think when we, when we started it was exactly like you said, we were in the reputation space doing stuff for hotels. Jason Lee: Really the building reputation of a solution that we still have today. And that builder brought on all kinds of other things. Like, I get more reviews now I need to respond to them. And so it was like, oh, yeah, well, maybe we should be able to get that done. Right. And as we got into it, like obviously the logistics of it, initially we were very innocent thinking like, yes, yeah, we probably could do this. And we got into it and got, we had the review data already flowing. So, you know, getting the response piece shouldn’t be that hard. We write a response and we, you know, we get it into the site. And what we found right away is that there’s obviously lots of complication that goes in into that. Not just the review data, but is there a process? What is that? How do you scale something like that? So we started with like 20 reviews maximum. TripAdvisor only, you know, because we had, at that time, we were able to claim a TripAdvisor page, or we were able to get a credential into a TripAdvisor page really easily so that we could respond to the reviews directly. And then we had a direct kind of direct connect. So we made it very easy. But, you know, as you might expect, the second you start that, they’re like, well, what about Expedia? What about booking or what about Google? So then, you know, obviously it continued on from there. Then it was, what about guest verified reviews on my brand site? What about Medallia? Right. And so, you know, all of this stuff has sort of evolved over time. But I think maybe from the very beginning to now, I think the biggest learning or the biggest divide right from there to now would be how much we’ve learned about personalization, localization of messaging, and how important that is to the guest and how important these messages are. I think we assumed probably like a lot of people that this was sort of a get it done and then it’s done. Just as long as there’s like legible text in a text box, we’re good. But what we found was better and better messaging, clearer and clearer messaging from the hotel to the guests. So, us being the sort of scribe in between getting that message to the guest, we started seeing, Hey, there’s, there’s real positive benefits here. There’s actual, there’s actual real benefits to the guest receiving this. There’s benefits to the guest that’s reading this. And so the importance of it and the urgency of that importance has only amplified over time, to where we’re at today, where it is extremely important that the messaging is correct. And we leverage a relationship with our property during onboard, and we leverage that relationship through every single review response that we process to try to get that response more and more prescriptive, more and more clear. So, I mean that’s sharp evolution. But, you know, as I say it seems like, well, well, of course, but scaling something like that, you get into the thousands of properties. Right? Absolutely. And the, so the varying message, the varying localization, the, the varying ways that you wanna display your hospitality, you know, it, it’s daunting. And, but that’s what we’ve learned and that’s really how we built a platform to handle it. Ryan Embree: It’s interesting ’cause I think alongside the evolution of the solution also came an evolution of our hotel partner. Yeah. And, and where we were getting those original review responses of, of those hoteliers that did just want, Hey, listen, my brand is requiring me to respond to these reviews. Just take it and I want this out aside outta mind. Yeah. And now we get hoteliers that are looking at every single review rating. Those reviews, you’ve, you’ve implemented that as a, as a evolution of the Yeah. The product. Where do you think that that kind of, I, I don’t know. Where do you, where do you think that that fork in the road happened and what this hotelier that just check the box to now is, is really seeing the benefits of what authentic review response can do? Jason Lee: You know, I think, um, it’s funny, you know, because you, you mentioned 2022, you know, Yeah. August of 2022. You know, I think from that point to now are we have gotten, uh, you know, a more and more upscale property, so properties that, that have, that are, that are more and more upscale, some iconic properties. But I think in that, we found sort of through them, right, through that partnership, we see the, the level of care. We see how important it is to them to get the wording right, to get the phrasing right. And, and from that we’re like, man, you know, there’s obviously benefit in this, you know, there’s this, yeah. There’s this bigger benefit. So, so that’s where we really started seeing a lot of our, like you talked about the rating system and, and the notes system. We had kind of a, a, you know, a approval process before that. But this is where things got really intense in terms of like trying to sort of, you know, get the different layers of voice. You know, including, you know, ways of discussing policy, ways of, of, of discussing issues that might be caused by renovation or potential future outcome of, of, of this renovation for dissatisfied customer. So that kind of language and, and that kind of, um, you know, flow scaling that really came out of those partnerships. Yeah. You know, because the more complex, the partnership, but that same partnership, that partnership of that super upscale casino that gets a thousand reviews a month that benefits a Hampton Inn Yes. Speaker 2: That gets 25 reviews a month be, and, and because we, we built the complexity in to allow them to engage in that complexity or not. Right. They can take our baseline and our baseline continues to raise, you know, so that, so what our baseline responses are, what they were, you know, when we started almost 10 years ago Yeah. Are very different from today and, and are continuing to evolve as we start to understand sort of the emotions behind, uh, uh, the review as we start to see like the difference between a incidental room defect mm-hmm . And, and the property trying to make that right. Yeah. Um, and, and so really dissecting that information and, and, you know, hopefully get creating positive like bunches of positive outcomes, um, from both positive reviews and negative reviews. Ryan Embree: And I believe in hospitality, we are always looking for an edge. And because it is the difference between a couple occupancy occupancy percentage points, and, and that could make or break your budget, you know, for the, for the year. And, and we are that, that extra couple dollars in rate we are always striving for, we’re always looking for that extra slice of the pie. And I think a lot of these brands, management companies probably looked at portfolios, started to dissect and looked and say, okay, what’s the difference between what this hotel is doing and this hotel is doing? Right. And one of the spaces maybe that they uncovered was seeing that they’re doing a really great job of actually communicating to their guests. Yeah. And I think when you look at that, that common question that we hear all the time, what’s the ROI of responding to reviews? I think innately this, this, that evolution has happened where people are starting to see the light a little bit as far as if I can communicate effectively to my guest through online review response, I’m going to see those impacts and effects. And you’ve, you’ve actually talked about some of those that come in just more, more than one way. Jason Lee: Yeah. You know, and I think that’s, that, that that strategy, you know, where you look at can, you know, can I retain a guest? You know, and, and we typically think of guest retention as being something that is negative. I take a negative and turn it into a positive. Yeah. But I see guest retention all the way through, you know, I think a positive review, a po a a guest who has a great experience with you and expresses that online, it’s such a responsibility at that point to show gratitude and to, to build on that with that guest Yeah. That relationship with that guest, because it’s only gonna amplify, you know, their advocacy to their friends and social media and all the other things that they do. Jason Lee: But in addition to that, it’s about also that, that acquisition side, right? So you have this retention strategy, but that retention strategy, if you do that right, the acquisition strategy falls right into place because you’ve created an authentic message between you and that guest. And, and that’s really what that whole thing is about. You know, and, and one thing that’s really interesting to me is that , through this time, we, you know, we’ve had kind of an interesting, you know, relationship with OTAs where we were sort of in the periphery, you know, polling reviews mm-hmm . To, to now where we have full connected APIs. And I think about that, those relationships and think about the motivation of an OTA, their motivation is to sell hotel rooms. So like, they don’t make money unless they sell a hotel room, but they see the importance of reviews, and they see the more importantly, they see the import, they see directly the importance of responses. And I think that’s why Expedia using guest experience score and, and other things to, to reward properties that are engaging in this practice. Well, yeah. Right. Because they know that they’ll be selling the most hotel rooms and, and, and that at, at the highest rate. Ryan Embree: Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, these OTAs have gone from asking for reviews to be character and, and word limits. Yes. To now you can literally do a, a no comment, uh, review, which, uh, which is an interesting topic as well. Yeah. Um, you know, but talking about responding to reviews over 2 million, what would you say we asked Jackie, you know, as an authority? Would top three biggest tips, uh, maybe just share a tip or two that you would say for, uh, hotels, let’s do, let’s start with hotels that just aren’t responding to reviews right now, and then maybe we’ll, we’ll work our way up a little bit. Jason Lee: Yeah. I think if you’re not responding to your review at all. Yeah. Right. And, and you wanna start somewhere, you know, I, I wouldn’t say just do the negative, I would say , I would say, and that is some, that is some people’s strategy. Yeah. That’s some people’s strategy. I, I would say do all the negative, but do a, do a solid percentage of the positive. If you, if you don’t have the, if you don’t have the resources to do it all. But I would try to do it all. Yes. You know, it, it’s, it really, it really doesn’t take that much time in terms of if you have that focused ability, right? Mm-hmm . I mean, I think the hardest thing for hotels, uh, to do, and the biggest obstacle is the varying nature. And is, and by the way, that’s also been a constant issue of our scaling that, that we, we’ve definitely got our arms around now, but in the early days going from, you know, uh, winter to summer was a shock to the system. Yeah. You know, you go, you, you know, you’re talking about in some cases 40 to 50% increase in review flow in the summer months and then back down. So how do you, how do you staff for that? Right. How do you, how do you do that? But back to your original question, . Yeah. Uh, the, you know, I would try to get, I would try to do as much as you can on that, but, but maybe find it, find a, a champion at your property that, that believes in this, who wants to do this, um, that communicates well with guests and, and can do this properly. Ryan Embree: AI could be a first good step as well. Sure. And, and to actually, again, if you’re not doing it to doing it, yeah. We’ve obviously talked on this podcast Yeah. About how there are still definitely a gap there. But what about those maybe on the other side of the spectrum that are really, you know, they’re, they’re keeping up with their reviews, they want to take their responses to the next level. You know, what, what are you sharing with your, your team or best practices on saying, how do I differentiate myself that, that, that edge that we were talking about, how can you differentiate your responses from maybe, um, the hotel you down the road that might be using something like ai? Jason Lee: Yeah. I think, you know, one thing for sure is figure out how far you’re willing to go mm-hmm . Right? At your property. One, one thing we have with our, with our hotels is that we wanna know, you know, and, and some, sometimes we have partners that say, Hey, I don’t even want you to apologize. Right. Don’t even say you’re sorry, but, but we have other ones that say, Hey, if this happens, have them contact me directly. You know, I want to talk to this guest, I wanna make this right with this guest. Yeah. So I think that that push towards an authentic reply that drives resolution, especially in the negative side. Mm-hmm . So especially where resolution is possible, try to find that and try to express that in that review. And if you can talk to the guest before you write the review or write the response, that would be phenomenal. Right. You know, but, but, but looking for a way to express authentic resolution, um, shows, uh, any future guest, um, that that’s what you’re about, and that, you know, issues happen and, and that, but that if they stay with you, you’ll handle it appropriately. Ryan Embree: and we’ve talked about this before. I think when we look at reviews, sometimes when we look at especially bad reviews, we think about how we think about ourselves and the guest of that. We think about ourselves in the shoes of that guest, right. That’s writing the review. Um, so in, in that same vein, we look at that response as a way that they’re communicating to us. Yes. How far were they willing to go as you you talked about, to try to find a resolution? And am I satisfied with that? And, and that’s, that’s the key to hospitality, right? Yeah. That’s, that’s been true. You know, for, for for the longest time. Uh, so 2 million reviews we talked to, uh, Jackie, uh, she gave us, you know, obviously an answer on what’s next. Uh, what, what do you think is next on the innovation and, you know, as, as the CTO and kind of product leader here in, in our tech, uh, stack at Travel Media Group, what do you think’s next on the innovation side for something like review response? Jason Lee: I mean, I think we, we’ve made a lot of strides, uh, in our AI product on smart response. Um, and I think there is a hybrid, even further hybrid version of that that, that, um, we’d like to explore, but on, on the main side, it’s doubling down on authenticity. Hmm. And it’s doubling down on reviews or responses that don’t sound like the, like you’ve heard this response before. Yeah. Right. And, and I think we all have this very simple kind of, um, format for responses where we have this intro and we have a center and we have this outro. And all of these things sort of together create this sort of ongoing response template that sort, that becomes instantly white noise in a, in a review feed. And, um, some of the things that we’re working on are new ways of expressing, um, ourselves in response publicly, new ways of apologizing, new ways of taking, taking ownership. Jason Lee: Yeah. You know, um, simple things, you know, they’re very interesting. And, and again, this, this comes only could come from a relationship with a hotelier where they trust what we do, where we stop saying we, and we start saying I meaning like, Hey, we’re sorry. It’s, I’m sorry. Love that. And, and, and it, and, and then it turns into, this would not be acceptable if I was traveling with my family mm-hmm . And it’s not acceptable for you. I’d like to make it right. Make sure you give me a call at the property. This, this, this is a, a tone change that you never really see. And, and we’re able to do it with a few properties who trust us to do it. Yeah. But this is something that’s very different. So we’re starting to push further into this, and I do feel like the more AI that is out there, the more AI responses that are happening, the the cry for authenticity is gonna get louder and louder, and it’s gonna, and it it’ll turn into that if you’re doing it through this one way, right. This very predictable, formulaic way that it’s not gonna resonate anymore with a guest. Yeah. That they’re just gonna feel like this was kind of done on the fly, you know, slapped into a GPT prompt and, and spit it out a response. Ryan Embree: I said it conversation with Jackie, like, uh, we will be fluent in AI language and very, very soon. Yes. And it will be that authenticity, those little nuances that you talk about of our language that will, that people will be, it will be very night and day and be able to, uh, you’ll, you’ll be able to tell. So, and, and those 2 million review responses, by the way, not done. Those were, those were professionally written from, from our, uh, our network. So just to make that clear. But, you know, congratulations on, on this accomplishment. Um, again, hopefully we got summer coming, so 3 million might be around the corner here, Jason. Jackie Avery : The real, the real accolade goes to Jackie, who was in here before and her incredible writing team in our, in our, in our writing network. That’s just unbelievable. We’ve Yeah. We’ve been so fortunate to have just incredible, uh, an incredible writing team that really believes in what we’re doing, believes in hospitality and loves extending it. Ryan Embree: Take a tremendous amount of pride in our team here. Yeah. And what they’re, and their abilities and what they’re able to do for our hotel partners. So thank you Jason, for joining me on the, the podcast. Yeah. And, uh, thank you for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on The Suite Spot To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

1
165 – Green Key Global 24:09

منذ 16 يومًا24:09

24:09

On this special episode of the Suite Spot, Managing Director at Green Key Global, Anick Levesque, shares insight on several new programs and initiatives that hoteliers can leverage to bolster their sustainability efforts across their portfolios to make a significant impact on the environment. This episode emphasizes eco-friendly implementation to clarify how seamless the integration of these processes at the property level can be. Tune in now. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. Thank you for joining us today, recording here on Earth Day. Obviously not the day of release, but a very fitting day to be recording for this episode. In particular, I am very excited to welcome on our guest, Managing Director at Green Key Global, Anick Levesque. Anick, thank you so much for being with me, celebrating this 2025 Earth Day. Anick Levesque: Thank you very much for having me, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Very excited to talk about Green Key Global. We’ve gotten an exciting announcement that I’ve, that I’ve seen all over the hospitality circuit. You and your team have been doing a great job of putting that out. But before we get into that exciting announcement, this is your first time on the Suite Spot. Love to hear from our guests kind of about their hospitality journeys and what kind of led you to your role there as managing director at Green Key Global. Anick Levesque: Absolutely. Well, it’s been an interesting journey as I embarked upon the next phase of my career, just about over a year ago now. I really wanted to leverage the experience that I had in helping businesses grow, which is essentially what I had done for the previous 30 years of my career. And apply that to purpose driven work. And so when the opportunity came to lead Green Key Global, an organization with an ambitious and socially driven mission, a strong legacy and deep roots in the hospitality sector, I just knew that it was the right fit for me. Green Key is a social enterprise that’s focused on sustainability. It contributes to the ongoing well-being of our planet and our communities. While at the same time, companies who commit to sustainability and to certification, they benefit through tangible results. They benefit from increased bookings, lower operating costs, and higher property valuation. So that duality of being able to help businesses grow while also contributing to the wellbeing of our society, that’s something that was very appealing to me. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I’m sure. And we’re gonna get into detail about this, but it really is just a win-win for all parties with sustainability and really the way the future. It’s very cool to, I’m sure be in a position. We talk about it all the time where, obviously there’s equity and compensation out there. But you know, more and more people are now looking for that sort of fulfillment in their career. So to be able to be a part of a industry and program and organization that does such great work that obviously has such an impact on our world, I’m sure that means a lot. And it’s very cool to and an honor to have you on and talk to us a little bit about Green Key Global. What I love about Green Key Global is there’s so many just win-win scenarios in everything from the guest wins, with the sustainable practices, they feel a part of something. The hotel wins both with that intrinsic value, but also sometimes financially too, right? And savings and even just the expectations that it’s setting now. Green Key Global’s been around for decades, definitely heard of it being in hospitality, but didn’t really know to the degree at some of the amazing statistics you and your team shared with me For our hotelier Suite Spot audience, share with us a little bit about the history of Green Key Global and its mission. Anick Levesque: Absolutely. So Green Key Global has been around for 30 years now. In fact, it was created on the heels of the Earth Day summit in Rio de Janeiro. And since then, it’s evolved into one of North America’s most recognized sustainability certification bodies that is dedicated specifically to the hotel industry. Our mission at Green Key Global is to advance sustainability efforts within the industry. And we achieve that primarily through certification, but also through training, education and collaboration within the industry. Our core offering, the eco rating program, assesses and certifies hotel properties operational processes and practices. And through that validation, properties can communicate their efforts with confidence to the market, and they get recognized for their on the ground efforts. That’s critically important because getting that stamp of approval helps reassure consumers that the actions that are being claimed are in fact, actually happening in the world where greenwashing concerns are increasingly being tabled. That becomes very important. Now, what makes us unique at Green Key is that we are jointly owned and operated by the American Hotel and Lodging Association and the Hotel Association of Canada. So really we were created by hoteliers for hoteliers. And so our assessment and all of the tools and support and templates that we provide were specifically designed for the industry. Our goal ultimately is to make sustainability and to make certification accessible and affordable to all hoteliers. That is our goal, and we’ve stayed true to that. Today we have over 1700 properties across both the US and Canada that are Green Key certified, and we have partnered with virtually all of the leading brands in the market who have committed to sustainability certification for their networks. Ryan Embree: Yeah. You know, to speak to your point on the corporate side, and I heard this a couple years ago, well, is it’s not too far for these companies and businesses to have obviously a budget, monetary budget, but also a carbon budget and looking for ways for their employees to do travel, but in sustainable ways so the momentum is absolutely there. You think about some of these larger brands and businesses actually creating an entire position for sustainability and chief sustainability officers. It’s not a fad. It’s been moving in the right direction. Obviously organizations like Green Key Global doing so much for hoteliers and assisting them because I think what you said on the ground level, what you were talking about, Anick, is a lot of these business owners want to say that they’re implementing this sustainable practices because it reaps a lot of rewards. Both, you know, obviously the compensation side of intrinsic compensation of feeling like you’re doing good, but also guests appreciate that. And we’re going get a little bit into it, but you’ve created something here that’s kind of an exciting launch that we were talking about at the top of the episode. Talk to us about this program that really could be a great entryway to certification. Anick Levesque: Yes, that’s correct. So we’ve recently launched a new addition to our product portfolio, which we’ve called Green Key Ready. And Green Key Ready is a solution that’s available through our site that is really designed for properties who are just starting out or in the early stages of their sustainability journey or who aren’t quite ready for full certification, but they wanna take that first meaningful step. Green Key Ready is essentially a 12 month entry level solution, or a stepping stone, if you will, to the full certification program members complete an assessment that’s made up of 16 questions that are really fundamental to sustainability and that are included in the broader eco rating certification program. And at that point, they receive a digital logo that allows them to convey their commitment to becoming certified. Once a member signs up for Green Key Ready, they also receive access to tools, templates, and checklists that can help them further their sustainability action plan and get ready for full certification. They also have access to our team who can help guide them along the way. And so Green Key Ready is a solution to help hotels get started on their path to full certification. It is an affordable path to certification and at the point at which a member makes their decision to transition into full certification, the great news is the fee that’s associated with Green Key Ready gets applied to the fee for the full certification program. So it is really risk free. Our goal is to really make sustainability and certification affordable and accessible to everyone in the market. Ryan Embree: Yeah, it’s so fantastic. I’m sure there are a ton of hoteliers out there that are, are wanting to do this, wanting to take that first step, but might be intimidated to not know where to start. So this Green Key Ready program is exactly what you said Anick, it’s a great entry point to feel that, to get those benefits that we were just talking about both intrinsically and being able to market that to your guests about talking about how you have prioritized sustainability in your business, which there are a lot of businesses and hoteliers that might be doing some of these things without even knowing it the way they’re building any of the sustainable practices from food sourcing. Some of these things might be going on at the property and might not even know it ’cause it has, I love your quote that you said in the press release, “sustainability is no longer an option, it’s an expectation.” And I really wanna talk about how large scale adoption of sustainable practices in hospitality has really impacted the guest experience. Anick Levesque: Absolutely. Customers are increasingly prioritizing sustainability when they’re making decisions about where to stay. So in many cases, sustainability is becoming table stakes for businesses in all industries. In fact, the reality is in the hospitality industry, leisure and business travelers alike expect the businesses that they interact with to be socially responsible and to be aligned with their values. So a couple of statistics here just to drive the point hold. According to booking.com’s 2024 sustainable travel report, 80% of global travelers say they wanna stay at sustainable properties. And it’s the same for the business or group travel segment. According to the state of climate action in business report, 63% select suppliers based on their sustainability criteria, while three out of four are adding sustainability causes to their supplier contracts. So it is no question that consumers, whether they’re leisure travelers or business travelers are increasingly demanding that from the businesses or the brands that they interact with. Now, bringing this back to the guest experience, it’s really important to note that sustainability is not about eroding the guest experience. In fact, it’s about enriching that guest experience by making them part of something that is bigger by making sure that the experience that you are offering them is enriching. And there are many ways in which hoteliers do that today. Consider, for example, exposing them to the surrounding ecosystem or enhancing the dining experience by using locally sourced ingredients. It’s really about allowing them to participate in the sustainability actions and making them feel good about their decisions. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. We had a guest on here, it was so unique, they were actually not only providing the guest with a invoice of their stay as far as the monetary invoice, but also a carbon invoice and it kind of was something that guests really loved. I mean, there’s a reason why those water fountains, when you fill up your water bottle there and it shows a tick in water bottles saved, you get that intrinsic good feeling about that, right? Get your guests involved. But it also has to do with a lot of communication. And we talk about this all the time, whether it’s on your social media, whether it’s on your front desk, explaining whether it’s actual signage on at the property of some of these, all these in incredible things that might, you already might be implementing and sharing why that’s making an impact and why that’s a sustainable practice. I think we’re all familiar with the towel and keeping the towel up versus keeping the towel down on the floor. I mean, that goes a long way. And having your guests feel like they’re part of something bigger, exactly what you were saying, Anick, can really get some positive momentum and really enhance the guest experience, but it has to be properly communicated and the expectations have to be kind of be set from the beginning. This is a great start for those hoteliers, like I said, that might be eager those business owners that might be eager to get involved. What advice would you give to those who still are on the sidelines, they’re unsure of where to start when it comes to implementing these, these sustainability practices into their hospitality operations? Anick Levesque: It’s a very relevant question. We recognize certainly that sustainability can feel very overwhelming and intimidating for people who may not necessarily be ingrained in it on a day-to-day basis. And our recommendation is just to start somewhere. There are so many options for hoteliers to start engaging and contributing in some way, shape or form. At Green Key Global, we have a departmental checklist that are available to our members and those checklists, provide a whole range of action items that can be taken from very simple, easy, low cost, low touch actions to much larger investments that can have a much more significant impact. So there’s a wide range of options available to them and certainly I would encourage anybody who’s looking to get started in sustainability to go onto our website and reference those checklists. If a hotelier is not quite ready to start down the path of sustainability certification or is not quite sure where to ask, we would also recommend start with your staff. Staff generally are they’re consumers and they are socially conscious consumers in many cases, and so they often have a wealth of ideas and would get excited at the notion of being able to contribute ideas as to how you can start along the pathway to sustainability. And it’s amazing to see the response that hoteliers get when they engage with their staff because as a result of that, the staff are, have a vested interest in making sure that those actions are well implemented and consistent over time. So involve your staff, involve your guests. We’ve seen a lot of hotels also poll the guests, what else would you like us to do? Are we doing enough to meet your sustainability goals, for instance? And we see that overwhelmingly guests are responding to that. They welcome the fact that they’re being asked for their input and they like to be a part of that. And ultimately that comes back to benefit the hotel. It drives emotional engagement and long-term loyalty. And so those would be my tips. Ryan Embree: Those are some fantastic tips. And I think a common misnomer with the sustainability practices, it’s gonna cost you tens of thousands of dollars and it’s going to be this large capital investment to do some of these, implement some of these practices into your everyday business. But that’s not the case. It could be very, very small steps, baby steps, and that could snowball into something big. See how your guests are responding, right? We talk about reviews and social media on this podcast all the time. Start sharing with your staff some of these sustainability practices like, Anick was talking about. See how it’s getting the reaction online. You’re literally getting feedback from your guests at every touch point, including online reviews. This could be a great place if they’re reacting well, if you’re seeing that this is having an a positive impact on their stay, which most likely it is, then maybe that is something where you start planning capital planning for for further down the line. So some great resources on the website, very user friendly, very intuitive, and those checklists are a great place to start. Green Key Global also has a global vendor program where obviously vendors can get involved as well. Talk to us a little about that program and the mutual benefits for both the vendors and the hotel buyers. Anick Levesque: Absolutely. So the Green Key Vendor Program really brings together vetted solution providers across energy, water, waste, food, and many more. And the program is really designed to develop and gather vendors in each segment of our assessment. The equal rating certification assessment and these five sections of revolve around corporate housekeeping, food and beverage engineering and conference. And the main objective of this program is to create value for our members by providing them with options to collaborate with sustainable solutions providers so that they can enhance and accelerate their progress along their sustainability journey. Of course, for solution providers joining the Green Key Global Vendor program is a valuable opportunity to increase their visibility with a very engaged audience of decision makers who are invested and have conveyed a commitment to sustainability. Ryan Embree: Well, we know, Anick that managing a hotel, so many intricacies, managers, owners wearing so many different hats now, the process of running a hotel is getting more complicated, but it’s programs like this, these matchmaking programs that really match you with an expert that could help you on your sustainability path and implementing that, right, outsourcing that, and then vendors giving valuable knowledge to hoteliers who are genuinely interested in implementing some of these practice. So again, you know, so many win-win situations kind of throughout this entire process. Earth Day, as we mentioned at the top of the episode today, obviously, celebrating that, really exciting. I get to record this with you on this day. I’m sure in your role, Anick, you get to hear kind of a lot of cool new sustainability innovations, right? Because this is the future, this is where a lot of people are focusing time, effort, and capital and trying to make our operations more sustainable. Can you share any examples that you’ve seen where you’re like, wow, that is a game changer for sustainability and, and really cool innovation? Anick Levesque: So many phenomenal examples. And I’ll say that Earth Day is just a perfect reminder of how far we’ve come and how much potential there still is for the industry. We at Green Gey actually recently deployed a contest in honor of Earth Day and we receive dozens of incredible video submissions from our members that really underscore their passion and their commitment to sustainability. In fact, our team has chosen two winners and those winners will be published or announced later this week. So make sure to check our social media sites for more details on that. I will speak very briefly to the two winners because I think that response directly to your question, so in line with this year’s Earth Day theme of our planet, our power quality and in suites in Vernon, BC has recently installed solar panels on the roof and they’ve already offset, this was done, a very short while ago and they’ve already offset three tons of carbon emissions. So that was certainly a phenomenal success story. The Fairmont Chateau Montebello has done a number of initiatives. They’re very active in sustainability, they’re focused now very much on promoting biodiversity and promoting the local wildlife. As an example, they’ve partnered with an organization to help protect the beehives and the Monarch Butterfly population in the area. And it’s just tremendous what they’ve done. And of course they serve the honey as part of their dining experience and everything is interconnected. It’s just a wonderful initiative. And so we’ve recognized both of those properties as part of our Earth Day campaign. In addition to that, we’re also seeing a lot of interest in AI powered energy tracking. We’re seeing smart room technologies being implemented where, you know, if there’s no movements, the light get turned off, the lights get turned off, or the curtains get shut down, for example, we’re seeing a lot of onsite food waste dehydrator that help reduce the cost of transporting organic waste. So there’s a lot of innovation happening within the space right now. It’s a really, really exciting time. And as I’ve said earlier, there are so many opportunities for hotels to engage with vendors, to engage with other stakeholders in the industry to see how they can improve their action plan and benefit accordingly. Ryan Embree: It’s so cool to see, Anick, and I think those two examples that you gave is a really a testament to the wide spectrum of every hotel can have an impact, right? I think you brought up a Quality Inn and a Fairmont, obviously two very different hotel segments there, but still having major impacts on their business. So this really, these programs, if you’re a hotel owner out there, it doesn’t matter what brand you are, it doesn’t matter what size you are, there are things that you can do in your business to implement these sustainability practices. So thank you so much for sharing those examples. What are some of the best resources our Suite Spot audience can check out when it comes to Green Key Global and learning more about what it takes to get their hotel or group of hotels certified? Anick Levesque: Absolutely, and I’d just like to go back to your previous comment ’cause I think it’s a very pertinent one. Ryan, you are absolutely right. Sustainability is not just for some hotels, it’s really for any hotel, regardless of how big you are, regardless of what brand you’re associated with, regardless of how old your building is, how big your building is, where it’s located, there is really something that is relevant for everybody. And I underscore that because as we are traveling around North America, we are hearing that consistently from some hotels. I’m not sure that I’m ready to engage in sustainability certification ’cause I’m not sure that, uh, we’re doing enough or I’m not sure where to start. And the point is start somewhere and you will continue to build from that. And starting with a program like the Green Key Ready Program or even Equal Rating Certification program, what that does is it gives you a measure of where you are at and where the opportunities lie for you. When members go through our Equal Rating certification program, they receive a performance scorecard. And that performance scorecard basically says, here’s what you’re doing really well from a sustainability standpoint, and here are the opportunities for you to further yourself on the sustainability journey. And so that can really be used as a helpful tool in the action, in the action planning for properties. Ryan Embree: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean it just like anything, you have to take the first step in a journey, right? So, you know, I encourage all hotel owners, you know, even, even staff of hotels, right? To even talk to the general manager to see if this gives something, do some research on your own and, and see if there are things that already implemented at your property that could get you kind of started down this process. So rewarding, so many benefits as we’ve covered on this. Anick, I really appreciate, you joining me today. Any final thoughts, as we wrap up? Anick Levesque: Yes, absolutely. You were asking me about resources and I would say the best place to start it is by visiting our website at Greenkeyglobal.com. On our website, you will find details on all of our certification programs, including the Equal Rating Program, the Green Key Ready Solution, our Green Key Meetings program, our vendor program. You’ll also have access to a wealth of case studies that will give you some ideas on the impact that sustainability measures have had on our members businesses. We have FAQs, we have downloadable checklists, we have, you know, a wealth of resources at the disposal of hotels to help them pull together an action plan and really progress along that journey that I’ve been referring to. As I said, at Greenkey Global, we very much consider ourselves to be a social enterprise with the mission of helping hoteliers. That’s why we are own body industry because we wanna make sustainability and certification accessible to all. We have a team that’s available at any time. Should anyone have any questions, when you go onto our website, there’s an opportunity to schedule a one-on-one with one of our member services representative. I would encourage everybody who has any questions to do that and we’re happy to help explain the value a little bit more in the process of certification. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I’m sure those case studies are great. We’re always looking at hoteliers for ROI and sure you have some incredible stories. You shared a couple with us today on the episode. Anick, thank you so much. Happy Earth Day. Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast and thank you for all the work you and your team do and hope to see more hotels participate and take advantage of this Green Key Ready program. Thank you so much, Anick. Anick Levesque: Thank you very much. Ryan Embree: Thank you and for listening, and we will talk to you next time on the Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

1
164 – Suite Spot: Spotlight – Signia by Hilton Atlanta World Congress Center 23:24

منذ 23 يومًا23:24

23:24

In the latest Suite Spot: Spotlight series episode, we travel to Atlanta, Georgia, to showcase the one-of-a-kind, AAA Four Diamond Hilton hotel – The Signia by Hilton Atlanta! Director of Sales at the property, Julia Austin, sits down with the Suite Spot to give travelers a keen look at why this newly built hotel not only broke new ground, but is also breaking records and setting the bar for guest experiences, being hospitality forward, and incorporating excellence in every square foot of the property. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, and we are here on our Suite Spot Spotlight series at the beautiful Signia by Hilton Atlanta. I’m so excited to be here. We just got a tour of this incredible property. I’m here with the Director of Sales, Julia Austin. Thank you so much for having us here and hosting us at the Signia by Hilton Atlanta. Julia Austin : Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. Ryan Embree: So before we get into this amazing property, and there’s so much to cover, by the way, it is a history lesson just walking in, I love the term that was used during the tour of this is a love letter to the city. We’re gonna talk all about this amazing property, but in hospitality, we know it’s a big small world, right? We typically work for sometimes different brands. Sometimes we work for the same brand. I love hearing hospitality leaders and their journeys through their experience, and what led them to a new property like this. Julia Austin : Yeah, absolutely. So it is, it is such a small world and hospitality and, you know, I kind of came into the world by a dear friend of mine from college. I graduated and was trying to figure out what exactly to do next, and she introduced me to the world of hotels and I fell in love. And 15 years later, here I am miles away from home. I’m born and raised in Arizona, living in Atlanta, Georgia, and getting to be a part of this amazing signature hotel within the Hilton brand. It’s been a wild journey, but I can now, looking back, can’t imagine the last 15 years doing anything else other than working in such an amazing industry that the hospitality industry really is. Ryan Embree: Yeah. So many pieces of your stories echoed with industry leaders. I talked to first, sometimes a lot of hospitality industry people don’t know what they’re gonna do right outta college, fall into it, but fall in love to it and also heard that wild journey, to get you here at this incredible Signia by Hilton Atlanta. Let’s talk about this for those, audience members that might not be familiar with Signia, because this is the first new build Signia, and for this brand. Talk to us a little bit about the characteristics, that make up what a Signia by Hilton is. Julia Austin : Yeah. You know, so when Hilton was really looking on how to expand the company and what we were going to do next, we really kind of reached out to the people, you know, what are you looking for when you travel? What are you looking for when you’re planning meetings and events, when you’re hosting galas or social events? And the resounding, you know, feedback that we as a company received was, we want something that is elevated, yet still approachable. So, you know, we wanna have these beautiful views, floor to ceiling, glass windows, you know, state-of-the-art meeting space and high level guest rooms. But we still wanna be able to feel like when we come to this hotel, even with just under a thousand rooms that we’re family and that, you know, we belong here and, and we are really embracing ourselves not only in the brand and the hotel, but the community and the city that we’re in at the time as well. So, and that’s really kind of how Signia became to be. Ryan Embree: I mean, it again, it was a love letter to the city is how it is described, is so intentional here from the names of the, the rooms, to sometimes even down to the details of your food and beverage experiences, which we’re gonna talk about in a second. But I wanna rewind, a year ago, you had a star-studded event here, right? Chris Nata, Danny Hughes, all here for the ribbon cutting and opening ceremony. This is still a flagship property for Hilton. It’s exciting property being that first new build for Signia brand. I even heard rumors there was John Legend here for the opening. That is accurate. Talk to us about that experience of opening a new brand like this and all that excitement. Julia Austin : Yeah, so I was not fortunate enough to get to see John Legend. However, I joined the team a little bit after the pre-opening, but it is still something that people talk about to this day. I have met so many customers who tell me how they were here for that event. Got to be a part of the pre-opening of this amazing property. When speaking to other, hospitality leaders or people within Hilton, they talk about that event and really, you know, going into the, it’s a love letter to the city. I think the opening of this hotel was a little bit of a love letter to Hilton as well and to the hospitality industry. You know, this city alone has not had a new build hotel in over 40 years. And Hilton had really not opened a new brand to this extreme extravagance in, I wanna say, over 10 years. And, you know, it really, I think just it allowed us to put our mark here in the city and showcase what we’re really capable of doing and what we can do. And there was, I think high levels of emotion of just after all the hard work that went into getting this place open excitement for what’s to come. And again, it really just kind of allowed us to put our mark on what we are bringing to Atlanta and what we are bringing to the Signia brand. So, while I did not get to participate, I’ve heard enough amazing stories about it and seen enough photos to know it was an amazing event and we have just continued to exceed and grow from that event and beyond. Ryan Embree: Well, a project like this certainly doesn’t get done overnight. It’s years and years of planning. You’ve kind of talked about the background of looking at what travelers and guests, where that hole was and what they were looking for, and being able to speak to it. And you really hit all the marks there. But even with a new build like this, I’m sure there was that level of anxiousness and being like, what type of feedback are we gonna get from guests? Maybe where are they, you know, are they gonna like the food and beverage experiences? Do they like the art? Are they gonna interact with the art? And we’re gonna talk about the art, which is such a huge piece of this property and how it’s interactive throughout and how technology’s implemented through that. But, what is some of the feedback that you’ve gotten from guests? Were there any surprises that you’ve heard or seen? Julia Austin : I don’t think any big surprises, I think maybe more surprises on their end as to not fully knowing what to expect, until they’ve gotten here. And, you know, I think this hotel is so unique because we are 976 rooms. We’re connected to our convention center. So in your traditional sense, we are a convention hotel. But then we still have the largest ballroom in the state of Georgia, 40,000 square feet and, you know, fine dining restaurant, multiple outlets for restaurants while you’re here. So we have that resort feel as well. So I think that was really the biggest surprise that a lot of people experienced was, wow, you’re kind of getting the best of both worlds. I can have my big convention of, you know, 11,000 to15,000 people here in the city of Atlanta that this hotel can help support. But then I can also come for like a smaller gathering for our board meeting of 20 to 30 people and sit in one of our state-of-the-art boardrooms overlooking Mercedes-Benz Stadium and still have that nice more intimate experience as well. Ryan Embree: Those are the types of surprises we like in hospitality are the good surprises. And yeah, I’m sure those meeting planners, we’re gonna talk about that event space and how flexible that is. Again, this was built with extreme intentionality of being able to be adaptable and flexible in that space. I had the pleasure of living in Atlanta for a couple years. I know the area pretty well. If I could pick a hotel and a location to put a resort like Signia by Hilton at, it would be right here. For those who aren’t familiar with this area, paint a picture of all there is to do just within a throw of where we’re sitting right now. Julia Austin : So not being from Atlanta myself and having been here for about nine months, that actually the location of this and how I really determined where to live you know, played a big part into how much the city has to offer. So obviously right here at the hotel, as I mentioned before, we have Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United play. We also have State Farm Stadium where we have concerts and the Atlanta Hawks playing as well as I mentioned, our convention center, which is connected to us, and then right outside our doors, beyond all of the event venues, we have restaurants, we have the Marta within walking distance. There’s new development being, developed right now coming up in the next couple years with new restaurants and more hotels to really add to the inventory downtown. But then really once you get out of the downtown market, you go 5 to 15 minutes outside of here and there’s all these amazing little pockets of neighborhoods in Atlanta. And that’s what I fell in love with because I live not too far from here where I feel like I can step away from work when I’m not here, but still really get to enjoy like the heart of Atlanta. And there’s Midtown and old fourthward and lots of re-gentrified and re-reimagined neighborhoods. The Belt Line, oh my gosh, everybody talked to me about the Belt Line. But now living here and on beautiful Saturdays when the weather’s nice, getting out there on my bike or just walking my dog, you can pop into coffee shops and restaurants and there’s musicians playing music on the, on the side of the Belt Line. And it’s just, it really, you can immerse yourself into the city. And in the short time I’ve been here, I feel like I’ve seen so much and there’s still so much to see. Ryan Embree: So along with some of these amenities, Julia, you have a plate full of F&B experiences, no pun intended there. What are some of your favorites and what are guests really reacting to on social media? Julia Austin : I think there’s a really a few different things that really set us apart from a food and beverage standpoint. Capolinea is our fine dining restaurant. It is open in the evenings for dinner only. It has fresh homemade pasta, pizza. We have a martini cart trolley that comes to your table and hand makes your martini right there for you. You get to kind of be a part of the craft cocktail experience with them. One of my favorite dishes at that restaurant is our duck ravioli. It’s really just so unique to anything else that I’ve seen at any other Italian restaurants. It’s a small plate, but it’s perfect because you don’t wanna skip on any of the other side dishes that you can get as well. And if you’re looking for something heavier, I always tell people, try the bolognese, the homemade pasta, how long that bolognese is prepped by our chef is just amazing. But beyond that, if you’re looking for something a little more simple, The Nest is our lunch and dinner restaurant. It kind of has a play on Mercedes-Benz Stadium with the TVs around the entire restaurant that shows whatever sports is happening at the time. Great Wings, kind of elevated bar food, again, cocktails and a great place to just kind of enjoy. We have a beautiful outdoor space patio, so on a nice day you can sit outside and enjoy your lunch, which again is great to experience when you’re in a larger convention hotel. You have so many outdoor spaces that you can get that fresh air and enjoy that Atlanta weather that we have here. But you know, an elevated experience that we have here as well when it comes to culinary is our Club Signia. Which club Signia is actually just kind of a play on the traditional executive lounge that most travelers are aware of. And, you know, this is something that is an additional add-on to your stay. But the benefit of it is it actually includes all of your meals while you are here with us. It is available for, you know, 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM for you, and you can pop in and grab a coffee, grab a water. We have a chef in there curating breakfast and dinner. We have lunch available for you and you can really have your own kind of custom experience right there in the lounge without even making it up to the fourth floor to the rest of our restaurants. Ryan Embree: It’s such an intimate feeling in that Club Signia, and it’s such a really cool way to have an add-on to your, your guest experience here. If you’re looking for just a little bit more, like I said, private or intimate setting but so many F&B experiences here, like you said, from Grab-N-Go all the way up to the fine dining. Very cool to experience that, that Nest, was awesome to see because it’s literally a path straight to Mercedes-Benz and straight to the arena. So it’s the ultimate tailgate spot to get you started for some really cool events. We forgot even to mention Taylor Swift here. Julia Austin : Oh, I know. Ryan Embree: We got the World Cup coming here in 2026. Which is really exciting. I’m sure that’ll be a hot commodity to be here. Julia Austin : We have a lot of exciting concerts just this year alone. We have Post Malone coming up here soon and Beyonce as well, which I know is very exciting ’cause she’s not seeing a lot of cities, but she’s making her way to Atlanta. Ryan Embree: So awesome to hear. So I’m sure Julia, one of, if not the first phone calls that you received were from this project when it was first announced was from event planners, wedding planners, companies trying to get to Atlanta and utilize your space. And again, we talked about the intentionality of the design of this property really makes it where you can be a small company all the way up to a large company hosting an entire conference here. What have you seen the dynamic space and how groups have used this and kinda walk us through maybe what that process looks like. Julia Austin : Yeah, it’s funny because we opened just this last year, but what people don’t realize is that we had a sales team here booking events into this hotel starting three, four years ago. Oh, wow. So it’s been a long process and a long journey and we had a lot of planners and a lot of associations and organizations that were trusting us while they were just watching a building come up and trusting what we were saying was gonna be in here, was gonna be in here. But, some of the things that I’ve really loved about this hotel coming in and seeing it now that it’s, you know, in its actuality is just the seamless transition that our groups can have. So if you have an event here in the hotel exclusively, again, we have the largest ballroom in the state of Georgia at 40,000 square feet, it divides into 12 individual rooms. So you can open it up into one large room and have really extravagant general session set ups. But then you can also break it into smaller rooms if you wanna have breakouts and meals and kind of utilize the space and the functionality. Our third floor space has multiple breakouts, most of which actually have floor to ceiling windows giving you that natural light and view of our outside. And then as I mentioned before, we have state-of-the-art board rooms, and then we also have our dream ballroom, which you got to see earlier, which is right here on the first floor and opens up to our outdoor space of Magnolia Green. So you can have a couple different groups in here that are on different levels of space and really feel like they’ve taken over the hotel themselves exclusively, not even realizing there’s another group on another floor, which is fantastic. But beyond that, being that we are a part of the citywide business that comes here to the Atlanta and being connected to the convention center, some of the feedback that I’ve received is just how seamless the transition is going from our hotel and our meeting space into the Georgia World Congress center’s meeting space. So you are up in our ballroom, you’re walking from one ballroom, you’re cutting across the hall to the next, and you don’t even realize it until you look down and you see that the carpet changed a little bit, that you’re actually now in a completely different building. And it was a two minute walk. I have been lucky enough to be here for a meeting and got to kind of experience that transition myself. And I’ve also received that feedback that, you know, there’s just the transitions and the way you can flow throughout this hotel, are really quite seamless and gives people that experience of buying out a hotel for a thousand people or being that smaller group that just takes over a small boardroom. Ryan Embree: Well, seamless and connected are two terms that I’m sure event planners love to hear, especially about their events if they’re getting that feedback. And I’m sure that feedback was crucial as you’re talking with those event planners and groups when you’re building this and hearing what are we looking for? And I think, again, this design and the adaptability of your meeting space and convention space really opens up opportunities that maybe, you know, they’re not pigeonholed into. You have to have this type of meaning there are certainly a lot of areas that you can capitalize on here at the Signia. Julia Austin : Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ve really, especially with the local market, there’s a lot of amazing organizations right here in our backyard. And they have come to us whether for their large annual, maybe sales kickoff meeting to a smaller social event that they’re looking to have or a celebratory event to celebrate their team members that they wanna host here at the hotel with us. And going back to our culinary and our food and beverage, we’ve really taken the time to make sure that we’ve curated amazing banquet food for those group attendees as well that maybe don’t have the chance to experience our restaurants, but still get to experience the amazing culinary that we have here. Ryan Embree: Yeah. It’s so great. Because I think where we are right now in 2025, you might have a lot more teams that are working from home that are looking for that quarterly or annual space to meet up. So something like this can be reimagined. They can use this space as a really checkpoint for their team and incorporate all the programming that you have here and offer in your expertise also to help them kind of guide them, hold their hand through this process, which sometimes can be daunting, with a larger group. But you’ve got the experience that I wanna transition to, the art. A huge part of this property, was very impressed how you curated all this art. You even have a whole space dedicated it to it on your website. If you haven’t, make sure you check that out but one of the cool pieces that I love is, when you have art inside of a hotel, most hotels or properties do, if you’re not told the story behind that art, you really miss a crucial part. You could have some great local artists that you’ve featured, but if your guests aren’t really resonating with that or know or have the knowledge about that, it might not hit the mark. Whereas this property, every single piece of art I notice has a QR code by it. Teaches you about the art, the artist, a lot of those being local artists. It’s a huge part of this experience. Kind of give us the background of why that was chosen like that and maybe some of your personal favorite pieces. Julia Austin : Yeah, I mean, I think you kind of nailed it right there is that, we put beautiful artwork into hotels or buildings, when you’re visiting restaurants and you don’t always know where that came from or what’s the story behind it. And that’s really where the mindset came from with having these QR codes. You can walk anywhere throughout our hotel and if you’re admiring a piece of art, you’re like, oh, that’s so unique. You know, where on earth did this come from? You can right then and there scan it and get the history and get the background of the piece of art, which, I think really just kind of again, plays into the experiences that you can have while you’re here with us. So, you can eat at a great restaurant and go to the spa and then get an art lesson as well while you’re here with us. So who doesn’t love that? Ryan Embree: It’s a whole history lesson here. Julia Austin : Exactly. Ryan Embree: It was very cool to see on the tour actually, one of the guests utilizing that QR code. So it’s so cool to see more and more guests adapting that technology because again, that can make a guest experience. You know, you don’t put the onus on your employees to say, Hey, really explain this piece of art. It’s really that story’s told throughout the guest experience and journey here, which is really, really cool. So Julia, just over a year, the property’s been open, but already the recognition and industry’s award starting to pour in, saw that you were recently given that prestigious AAA four diamond designation, which is awesome, recognized by Wine designator and Eater, which is unusual for a hotel and resort because again, these are restaurants that even locals can come and experience here, which is great. We’ve talked about the food and beverage experiences, but what do these recognitions as director of sales mean for you? I’m sure it makes your job easier, right? Julia Austin : Yeah, you know, I think some of the culinary awards that we’ve received, is really a testament to how a hotel restaurant can still stand out, and be a go-to restaurant that the local community wants to come to. So to me that’s a huge testament, for the AAA award. I mean, to have received that within our first year, I have been a part of hotels where it’s taken years to be able to get to that award. So that is a huge testament because that is really, you know, you have your AAA travelers that are specifically looking for hotels that are within the AAA recognition. Our meeting planners are looking for that when they’re selecting hotels and cities and it really does just go to show the the passion that has gone behind this project and the building and the opening of this hotel, and what our team members are putting into this every single day with the service that they’re providing and the experience that they’re wanting every guest to walk away from. So, it is something that we are very proud of to have received so quickly and it is something that we will continue to strive to elevate and just exceed all expectations for every guest that comes through the door. Ryan Embree: Well, congratulations to you and your team on that award. You’ve got the service, we got the art, we talked about the culinary experience, just the design here and all the event planning. Certainly seems like it has it all here by the Signia, by Hilton Atlanta. Thank you so much for taking the time. Any final thoughts before we wrap up? Julia Austin : You know, the only thing I would say is, being new to Atlanta myself, I’ve met a lot of planners and a lot of people that have come here and looked at the city and I’ve heard a lot, oh, I haven’t been to Atlanta in 15 years, 20 years. I would urge you whether you are just traveling through or coming to look for a meeting or coming to a sporting event, come check out the city, come check out Signia by Hilton Atlanta. I really do think it’ll exceed all of your expectations and really just give you a new taste of what the city has to offer. Ryan Embree: Well, thoroughly impressed. To all of our Suite Spot audience. Make sure you come to the Signia by Hilton Atlanta. Visit them on social media. Follow them on social media. Visit the website. You have an incredible property here. Julia, thank you for sitting down and hosting the Suite Spot here. Julia Austin : Thank you. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. Thank you so much. And we’ll talk to you next time on the Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

1
163 – NYU IHIF 2025 Preview with Alexi Khajavi 42:01

منذ 30 يومًا42:01

42:01

In this episode, Alexi Khajavi, President of Hospitality, Travel & Wellness at Questex, joins the Suite Spot to give listeners a preview of the upcoming NYU IHIF 2025 event taking place in New York City on June 1-June 3, 2025. This industry event is one of the most elite hospitality investment forums in the world, so tune in to find out why you should attend and get your finger on the pulse of hospitality. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining me. We’ve got an incredible, amazing episode with a very familiar face. If you’re watching us and subscribed to our Travel Media Group YouTube channel or hearing us on any of the streaming platforms. That’s Alexi Kajavi, Questex President, hospitality Travel and Wellness. Alexi, thank you so much for being back on the Suite Spot. Alexi Khajavi : Ryan, good to be here. Nice to see you. Ryan Embree: We almost have to credit you now as a co-host. You’ve been with us so many times. We’ve got even though it’s a familiar face, a new topic, which we’re gonna go get into. You’ve been on the Suite Spot before. We’ve had a couple conversations talking about your hospitality journey, some of the mentors along the way. I figured we’d start out today talking about your role. I see you, follow you on LinkedIn, your jet setting, all over the place, thought leadership everywhere. It’s gotta be pretty cool in that position. Give us a day in the life of your position and what you do. Alexi Khajavi : So Questex is a medium sized information services company. We’re B2B media at our core. We inform and we connect buyers and sellers, professionals across six industries. So the three that you mentioned, hospitality, travel, and wellness, are the markets that I have the privilege of running. And then I’ve got a counterpart that runs our life sciences, healthcare and technology. And we do that by publishing, daily editorial, writing about the industries, the trends, the topics we research. We have over 6 million first party data records. So these are individuals, names, titles, emails, contact information, but also really more importantly, their demographics and their behavioral, information. So what content they read, what are they engaging with, what are the premium pieces of content or research that they’re downloading. And we use all of that to inform us as to what are the trends and topics that are impacting that industry, or different segments or categories of businesses within a vertical. And then we use that in turn to develop our programs at our events, to develop our content strategy, whether that be in digital or print. And we then work with the brands, the sellers in those industries to connect with those buyers. So, you know, prime example in hospitality would be investors are, you know, looking for, you know, enhanced guest experiences. So what are the technologies and the solutions in, in hotels that can do that? We’ll position those brands specifically to buyers with buyers intent in the marketplace, looking for things like that. So that’s what we do, and it’s a really incredible industry to be in, and very exciting. And at our core, it’s a noble pursuit of informing and connecting professionals in these industries. Ryan Embree: Well, I’m sure, Alexi, you have a very unique perspective, getting to see really a 360 view of travel, hospitality, and wellness between all the data, the conversations that you’re having with you know, some of these buyers and sellers. And that’s really, is a great segue into what we’re gonna talk about today. ’cause we’re gonna turn our attention to the NYU IHIF event. Questex got involved with this event recently. You just preached the importance of using feedback and data. I’m curious, and we’ve talked about on the hospitality show, how crucial that was and creating programming. What are some of the feedback that you’re hearing about this particular event in NYU IHIF and how have you incorporated that into this year’s event? Alexi Khajavi : Yeah, so we acquired the NYU event two years ago. It was started and owned by New York University, and specifically the School of Professional Studies and of Hospitality, the John Tisch School. We were privileged to be able to acquire it. We still partner with NYU and we still every year support scholarships for students to attend the school, which then become, the future leaders of hospitality. So, we’re very privileged and very proud to be able to one, to acquire the asset, 40-year-old asset, iconic brand within hospitality investment, you know, one of the oldest, and most well known both here in the US domestically as well as internationally, but also really delighted that we can still support the students. So everybody that it, that supports NYU in turn, you know, is really supporting those future leaders of the industry, which is critical to the vertical and to the sector overall. What’s interesting about that, to answer your question specifically, Ryan, is, we have an advisory board in each of our events, and these are made up of the key supporters and key deal makers and you know, needle movers in the respective industries. So those are made up of top brands from Acord to Marriott, Hilton, Proskauer, CBRE, Colliers and the like, but also investors from the likes of Blackstone, Brookfield, KKR, KSL, so forth and so on. So these are individuals that give their own time to really help us shape the program and understand what are those trends and topics. This year specifically, it’s really interesting. I mean, the market’s in an interesting spot. I mean, the last three years of operating performance have been incredible. I mean, absolutely lofty RevPars, ADRs, and occupancies. And in the last sort of 12 to 18 months, it’s actually been firing on all cylinders, both on the leisure side, which was the first market to come back since Covid or even during Covid. Business, corporate and MICE has really been popular part in more, in some markets more than others. But, you know, this idea that corporate, you know, 50% of corporate travel will never come back according to Bill Gates. Well, he got that one wrong. It’s come back and it’s, it’s come back in, in just massively, robust in more in markets that were obviously popular pre covid that are outperforming, pre covid levels for the last, two years and so forth. So the market has been performing well on an operating level, but with the increase of interest rates, and because of that operating performance, sellers have been less inclined to sell. And if they are inclined to sell, the valuations on those properties have been higher than what buyers are willing to acquire those assets at the real challenge, in addition to the valuation have been the interest rates. So, debt is still it’s more expensive. It’s two to three times more expensive than it was pre covid. Now you could argue 0% interest rates are not a sustainable nor long-term model. So a bit of that was bound to change. But the interest rates have really put a dent on the marketplace of transactions. And it’s also increased the LTVs. So, you used to be able to get 60/40 you know, now you’re having to put in equity of, 70% depending on the quality of the sponsor. So it’s just become more difficult to get deals done. And that buy sell gap is certainly still wide. So the transaction market’s been quite muted, albeit there’s, according to data and research, around $300 billion of dry powder sitting on the sidelines, specifically geared towards real estate. And much of that is attracted to hospitality. Hospitality used to be less than 10% of an overall investment mandate, but now, because you can reprice a room on a nightly basis, it’s a hedge against inflation. And it’s also seen as being a long-term sort of securitized asset for sovereign wealth and family offices and so forth. So it’s a very attractive asset class. So two things that we’ve seen in that sort of contextual environment. One is that new exciting concepts like glamping and not necessarily service departs, but like this version of hostels and luxury apartments, branded Rezy, new concepts around popups or that are, you know, for concerts or these Coachellas and things like that. So there’s a lot of new hotel concepts that are out there that are, that are very interesting. You’re seeing alternative accommodations actually even be picked up by some of the major brands, which is exciting. So there’s a focus not just on a building with beds and maybe a restaurant, but it’s more of your outdoor, more of your experiential more of your combining the experience with a bed or a sleepy experience. So a lot of different ideas around that, frankly, sleep in and of itself is having a resurgence. So it’s not just the old mattress competition of 20 years ago, but it’s about, how do you best provide an environment for good sleep and REM. So there’s a lot of interesting M&A concepts around alternative combinations. And then the other bit is debt. I mean, just as a refinance. So rather than necessarily focusing on just purely transactions, there’s a lot of conversation about refinance and debt and how you use both private capital and, sorry, private, debt and retail debt, your retail banks and so forth to recapitalize with over a trillion dollars of CMBS loans coming to maturity in the near term. So we’re focusing a lot on debt. We’re focusing a lot on alternative co accommodations, and we’re focusing a lot on, on what’s called asset management, which is how do you run your hotels more profitably, which is becoming increasingly more complex. Now, there’s always major deals that are announced, and this is a relationship based industry. A hotel is not traded on an Amazon like platform. So at the end of the day, building those relationships, nurturing those relationships and making sure you get face to face at NYU will always be a cornerstone to the experience and to the value that it delivers. Ryan Embree: Well, that was gonna be one of my points, Alexi, is, it’s an event like this, you were talking about the buyer seller gap, right now. It’s events like this that really shrink that, and this is how deals get across the finish line is face-to-face. Of course when it’s buyer and seller’s market, you do not necessarily need these types of events, but the relationship building that you’re talking about is the cornerstone when things get really tight between both sides. And albeit with operational costs going up, construction costs going up in some, in some markets in some ways. So, a lot of fascinating things. Love the ingenious ways, like you said, that brands and developers are really capitalizing on some of these, these trends. And personalization is nothing. I mean, we’ve been hearing that in our industry now for like five to seven years, right? How can we get more experiential personalization? These are all the hot keywords. So to be able to go down this route, I think this, sometimes this ingenuity is born from times like this and where these people are really trying to get creative. I’ve looked at the NYU IHIF agenda/schedule. It is a powerhouse. Congrats to you and your team for building this. And I’ve always loved the intentionality of your programming. You kind of gave us a behind the scenes look of what it all takes, all the data, all the feedback and advisory board comments and feedback that you’re hearing. Give our audience a little bit of sneak peek of how you build out a conference agenda like this and, and maybe some of the things that you’re most excited about seeing. Alexi Khajavi : Well, again, the advisory board’s really critical to it. But we publish every day and we monitor what people read from our newsletters and on our websites, and then we also compare that to the wider web that’s anonymized, but we know first party data that investors are reading these types of stories. Lenders are reading those types of stories and brokers. And so we really, we have a huge amount of data in our data lake. And then our data teams provide the markets, in this case, the hospitality market, which is an incredible amount of insights, well, let me say, they provide us with an incredible amount of data, which then be based on our market knowledge in market. We’re able to turn into insights. So we really use that to put some things out. We will into the editorial. So we’ll try for example, we will try a story on Asian capital coming into the us There was a story on will sovereign wealth return in large form to the US into the European markets. Some of that was based off of what we had seen perform well. We put out editorial on that and measured its performance indexed against average page views and engagement and time on site. And it significantly outperformed. So that became a session, right? So it’s part art by the individuals. We have about 70 some odd people dedicated purely to hospitality at Questex. And they range from sales, marketing, content, conference producers, creative, and leadership. These are individuals that work in the industry, breathe the industry, and have deep relationships in the industry. So they’ve got this market knowledge. But when we combine that with the data that we get from our central service team, our audience team, our content teams, and our our insights team, it then becomes that special alchemy. And we get things, I’d say more right than wrong, hopefully. And, and thankfully not to say that we don’t get things wrong. And I think that that’s actually part of the kind of Questex DNA as well, is we’re very entrepreneurial and we love what we do, and we love the markets we serve. And we also respect the fact that five people speaking on stage in a panel moderated by another person is not how everybody learns. And it’s frankly not how everybody wants to learn these days. So we try and be really creative with the types of formats that we deliver and that we put up there on stage. Some of them are small boardrooms, just a small round table, you know, where we create kind of a more of a participatory back and forth type relationship or conversation. You know, we get it right. We sometimes get it wrong. To your question about what am I most excited about this year, we’re bringing a session that we’ve had in there’s two sessions I’m really excited about. So for everybody that’s at NYU in June, don’t miss this. So one is, we’ve had this session called Capital Talks in Europe at our IHIF, AMEA show, which is in Berlin 26 years. It is the event in Europe. It’s happening on March 31st, 1st of April and 2nd of April. And it is, it is purely of investors. So we will bring up all of the most active investors in, in hospitality. We’ll also combine that with the LPs, meaning the funds of funds, why are they attracted to investors or to hotel investment and funds that are geared towards hospitality. That’s moderated this year by Colliers, by Mark Owens. And it’s gonna be a great session because it is truly just a group of capital on stage that you don’t often hear, sort of, you see the CEOs all together, but this is all of the biggest players in capital and capital allocation and hospitality. So that if you wanna kind of just in a 30, 40 minute window, literally put your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the capital markets of hospitality, that’s the one. Capital Talks – NYU, do not miss it. And for those of you guys that are coming to Berlin, it’s also in Berlin, you’ll get a European perspective on it. So that’s a really love that session. We’ve got some incredible speakers on it. Second one that I would argue at NYU is the CEO panel. Alexi Khajavi : It’s really the only CEO panel that we still do. We’ve broken up the CEO panel in our other events in Asia and in Europe, and most of them are kinda one-on-ones. But NYC it’s moderated by Sarah Eisen, who is the broadcast journalist for CNBC. And she’s the one that’s reporting on the public markets and the equities and stocks and so forth. And they all have a very special relationship with Sarah because they often, during NYU will go down to Wall Street and have an interview about the share price. And so you have all of the top CEOs on stage at the same time. And it’s kind of like getting all of the all stars from the different teams on one stage and kind of talk about the game of hotels. They’re all on their own respective teams, and yet there’s this sort of collegial, but yet competitive spirit amongst themselves. And you see some trading of jokes and barbs a little bit. You see who’s agreeing with whom you see the European perspective in Sebastian Bason of Accor. You see the pure franchise perspective of Geoff Balloti of Wyndham. You see the very thoughtful, sort of almost analytical process of Chris. And you see obviously the scale of Tony at Marriott, that’s almost a fascinating thing. And if you’re, I guess if you’re a hospitality geek like I am, it’s just kind of, it’s kind of cool to see the goats all up there talking about the industry. So I like that one very much. Ryan Embree: It’s so cool. And, you know, to your first point, it was fascinating to hear the science behind that intentional programming. Again, trying things out. I wish hospitality, you know, in general, we’re constantly getting feedback. We’re constantly getting data from our customers, from our guests and your fresh perspective. I try to preach this as much as I can about embracing that feedback, no matter if it’s positive or negative, because it can lead you to a place that you didn’t, trying things out new, right? Trying even as simple as trying an exchanging a breakfast item for this or that, and then kind of putting your ear to the ground and saying, alright, what did that change make? Or something maybe a little bit more like a capital renovation or something like that’s really gonna have an impact on your property or portfolio. So again, very refreshing perspective to hear you embrace that feedback. And I really hope some of our hotel audience, even though it’s hard to hear sometimes, especially when it’s our personal business or we’re hosting someone, you know, kind of hears that feedback and implements it into the guest experience, hotel experience, those sessions sound absolutely amazing. That panel, that CEO panel, it is interesting because the biggest, when I attend the shows, you really can tell those overarching trends by what everyone on stage is typically agreeing or even talking about or rolling out from their brands. So to get one session where you could have a common, it’s been AI and technology in our industry for the last couple years, recovery a couple years before that, and see kind of the different paths or maybe strategies that these brands are taking without giving any secrets away. It’s always kind of like a little chess game. And we’ll be super interesting to see. ’cause typically you get them a little bit more separated in those other events. You don’t have a full panel of CEOs. So really looking forward to that. NYU IHIF event will be held June 1st to June 3rd at the Marriott, Marques, New York City, New York. I mean, in the heart of everything, what makes this the perfect location for this event? Alexi Khajavi : Yeah, there’s no question it is the perfect location for the event, and it is the proper location to have a hotel investment forum. If you were to think, frankly, globally, where would you put a hotel investment forum? I think there’s no other place. I mean, it would have to be top three and it would be my number one. New York City is the financial capital of the world. It’s the gateway to the American market, which is the largest hotel market in the world, and it’s one of the most iconic travel, recreation, and tourist destinations in the world as well. So from those three components, box is checked. I mean, there’s no better place to have an event. You’ve got Wall Street just downtown 20 minutes a ride. And if you’re willing to take the subway more like 15 or 10, although the congestion law that’s come into effect has really improved the above ground movement in the city here. But that being said, New York has performed extremely well. And when you think about five years ago, today, March of 2020, the city was absolutely shut down. It was just, I mean, it was hard to even think about. I mean, Times Square was empty, not a car, not a not a person in sight. And five years later, I mean, you’ve got occupancies and, and ADRs and RevPars that are just world leading, their eye watering. And so, for us to be able to have NYU IHIF in that market and for individuals like, David Solomon or Jamie Diamond, or John Gray from Blackstone, Robert De Niro from Nobu, and of course, all the Martin Scorsese greatest movement, to just be able to come down the street and literally just kind of show up, George Stephanopoulos, I mean, I could go on and on and on, but it’s also, everybody wants to come in to the city at that point, both from Europe as well as the us Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, because it is the capital of the financial markets largest gateway city to the largest hotel market in the world. And it’s a great town to spend time in. So we we’re very blessed to have it in the city. Marriott Marquee right in Times Square, centrally located, gives us the space and the opportunity to host 2,500 of the best and the brightest in the industry. And look, I mean, it’s really in this industry, deals get done by those that are in the room. And if you’re not in the room, then you’re not at the table and you’re not the one that are making deals. And I know that sounds maybe crass or somewhat brutish, but the reality is, is that most of the people come every year. We’re fortunate by that, but we get about 40% that come new every year. And since we’ve owned it, we’ve got a lot more European, Asian and Middle Eastern participation than it did in years past, because we have that database. So it’s a very diverse audience. There’s a lot of capital that are chasing deals and New York has been active, right? There have been some deals of significant size, and of course, small to medium size, depending on what you call that. But deals are happening in the city, but also it’s a market and a platform for the rest of the country as well. So it’ll be a diverse area gathering this year and New York City, we’ve got some fun planned, we’ve got an offsite reception, we’ve got some incredible speakers. And it’s also just very fun because you don’t have to walk very far to bump into someone that is either buying a hotel, selling a hotel, or pitching a platform concept, or looking to partner on a platform concept, all tranches of architecture, design, technology, brokerage, professional services, debt and equity that are there in full force. So if you’re in hospitality and you’re not in the Marriott Marquee on the 1st and 2nd of June, I’d really ask, \are you in hospitality? Ryan Embree: Yeah, I mean, you gotta be in the room, like you said, and Alexi’s point about that powder keg. The appetite is there, and you just have to be in the room like you said. So, you know, and I want to kind of speak to that because obviously we’ve talked about it before. There is a component there of deals getting done or across the finish line with face-to-face. I think we wouldn’t argue with that. How do you balance that in an event like this and making sure that there’s networking time so deals can get done, but also providing value, educational value, and some of these amazing round tables that you set up, like the CEO panel and capital panel that you were talking about. Alexi Khajavi : Well, the reality is that we know that the senior decision makers that are there in full force, I mean, they’re not, they’re seeing one session, maybe two or three at the max. Some are not seeing any, they may participate as a speaker or a panelist on one. But then they’re in meetings, right? They’re getting deals done, and they’re in the meeting rooms, they’re in the suites upstairs and they’re in all the sort of various networking sessions that we do. So we incorporate a lot of networking, and we provide a lot of F&B in a lot of areas to network. This year we are taking on the entire Broadway lounge, which is the lounge that sits over Time Square, a lot of seating. We’re turning that into another, an enhanced meeting area. So giving people a lot of space to sit down, do deals, talk, build relationships, nurture existing ones and so forth. So we absolutely don’t expect, and nor frankly see, the seniority of that audience attending all the sessions, but we know that there’s one or two or three that are critical to their business. And what we try to do is we try to really challenge the orthodoxies in the industry. To your point, you said that there is a lot of agreement. Well, we try and actually find different points of view. We try and find some perspective contrarian perspectives on each of the panel, and we always include equity on nearly every panel. There’s a few that we don’t and specifically built that way, but we really want to get to the core of who owns the asset and what’s their perspective on said topic. We then do a young professional at an under 30 in the industry, and we give them a highly discounted rate because those are actually the individuals that get most of the value out of the education. So we’re big believers in fostering, nurturing, and supporting the next generation of hospitality professionals. We certainly do that, every dollar you spend at NYU IHIF goes to supporting the scholarship fund. So that’s kind of one thing. But then there’s all the businesses, sponsors and others in the industry that maybe wanna send a couple of their junior colleagues to the event, one to take notes and provide sort of a post-event brief or synopsis to their teams. That’s a great thing. We’ve seen a lot of that happen, or for certainly their own education. So we give them a highly discounted rate to be able to bring their junior colleagues, give them the opportunity to hobnob and, and be cheek to jow with some of the best and the brightest, but also go to those sessions that are gonna help them educate themselves. Ryan Embree: Yeah, it’s so great. And I was going to say, to your first point, I was gonna say, it’s always a good sign when someone running a conference says, we’re expanding for more networking and deal making. That typically means something is going right and going well and that appetite is there. But it’s so important what you said about younger professionals, we’ve had a staffing shortage over the last few years. So to be able to get more exposure so that people because we’ve talked about it on this podcast, about the mentors, the people that guided us in our hospitality journey. If we can create more of those to be mentors for young professionals coming out of the College of Hospitality for NYU, for example, you know, at the Suite Spot, we did a Hospitality Campus Crawl series last year, going to some of those universities. So the more we can nurture that, the more we can create paths, share stories, just the more positive effect it’s gonna have on our industry as a whole. One of the most fascinating things that, that I’ve learned since doing this is, again, everything, and you’ve shared the intentionality of some of this stuff, but everything has a reason, even to the smallest detail, including a theme. And this year’s NYU theme is engagement drives returnw. Talk about how the team settled on this theme, what it means, and how it’s incorporated through the programming. Alexi Khajavi : So we are big believers in a sort of mantra, if you will, of people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So we try to always establish a purpose of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and then let the what follow and the what could be, what time does it start, where is it located, how much does it cost? How long do you suggest I stay there? Could you suggest I meet? Those are all very, very practical and very important value propositions or questions. But what matters most is, and we take this very seriously, is the price of attending NYU vis-a-vis the price of attending one of our spa events or one of our wellness events, is probably 10x. I mean, the cost of attending NYU as a delegate, it’s about $2,300 for a two day conference, two and a half day conference. When you think about the goodwill of it and that somebody that goes to scholarship, okay, great. I mean, that’s very, I think that’s a good footnote. When you think about the size of a deal that you could miss out on, or the size of a new job opportunity or the size of a new client, $2,300 is negligible. I mean, frankly, the cost of opportunity is 100x that. So, okay, footnote, that’s all practical information that we can continue to communicate. But what really matters and what really moves people, is if I’m there, why does it matter to me? And why does it matter to somebody else? And that’s because at the core of this industry, nothing gets done unless you’ve had human to human contact in everything. Guest to front desk manager, down to investor to investor, nothing gets done in hospitality. And believe me, I love technology as much as anybody, and I’m a big believer in AI and AI’s impact on us and the future. But I actually think AI is good for our industry, not because of all the stuff it will do and optimization and la blah, blah, blah, but because I think it’s gonna make human contact the premium. So if AI can start to do everything, it can be my executive assistant, there are gonna be options to say, do you want the AI option, or do you want the human customer service? And if you want the human customer service, you better be the centurion, diamond level, whatever, or you’re gonna pay for it. Well, in some sense, you’re centurion because you have paid for it, you’ve flown more, you stayed more and so forth. So what we’re our purpose this year and how we came up with that theme is that it truly is about the engagement. It’s not about, yes, we’ve got incredible speakers. Yes, there are huge amounts of deal makers and opportunities flowing up and down the Marriott Marquee over those two days. Yes, we’re gonna have a lot of fun. I mean, hospitality’s fun, the people are fun. New York’s fun, all that’s great. Yes, it’s $2,300 bucks. And yes, it starts on Sunday night with a reception. Okay, check, check, check, check. But it’s more about are you gonna be there and are you gonna lean into the industry that you’ve chosen as your career? And if you are, then that engagement will drive returns. It’ll drive returns for you, it’ll drive returns for your employer or your business, and it’ll drive returns for the industry. And we are big, big believers that 80% of the battle is just showing up. And if you don’t show up, then you’re not there and you’re not at the table, and you may not get the returns. So it’s a little bit of that sort of purpose of like, we all have to show up, we all have to be there, and if you are there, good things happen. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. And I love that perspective on AI too. Because I think, we talk a lot in our business about authenticity and how it rises. And you’re right, when there are connections that might have taken effort to make a connection with someone else, like an email, and now that’s being automated, when it is human to human, face-to-face, person to person, that’s when things can move in leaps and bounds and not maybe just baby steps, which we’re gonna probably end up seeing here is just a way to kind of get you, you know, hooked here with maybe a AI text message or an email here, or an AI response here, but it’s about those authentic feelings and sentiment that are gonna all of a sudden rise to the top be so much more valuable, especially in an industry like hospitality. Alexi Khajavi : Absolutely. And look at this conversation that we’re having. You and I have met three times, I think three or four times now. And so this conversation just feels very natural, right? ’cause we already know each other. But also the scheduling of this call and of this podcast was a lot easier because our teams know your teams and they can just get it done. So it was very practical and so forth, but it would’ve been harder if we had never met before. And so it’s a supplement, but it’s a virtuous circle. And so when you get the opportunity to engage and to meet the best and the brightest, take it, don’t miss out on that opportunity. So I think it’s, I don’t think it’s a replacement, but I think it’s certainly a compliment or a substitute. It’s not a substitute, but it’s a compliment. Ryan Embree: Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about capital equity on this call, but what you’re talking about is trust equity, sometimes that trust equity can be the difference in a time right now where there is a gap that closes that gap, that trust equity. So in speaking of engagement, right? Questex and it’s many entities I think I saw on social media, you’ve got a huge following. A post the other day, said almost 21,000 in total on LinkedIn. I personally learned about this event a couple years ago when I saw my LinkedIn pretty much become an NYU IHIF event banner, right? Like, I just was scrolling and it was all the top industry leaders minds in hospitality, and they were all at one place. And I said, I need to get here. Talk to us about how social media plays a role in growing an event like NYU IHIF especially, maybe early on when Questex took it over. Alexi Khajavi : I mean, events are essentially the live example of social media. It’s social media in the live format, that’s all. That’s what it’s, and social media is as I think the movie’s called, or the book is a viral network, In a good sense. Not being stuck on an airplane with a bunch of people with pneumonia. So that’s pretty bad too. It is all about who else is there. And that’s the premise of what we do, and that is the promise of what we deliver on year after year after year. And there’s a real beauty in, in an event like NYU IHIF, when they reach this iconic status that the best and the brightest and the most active investors and the most scaled operators are saying to us, Hey, where’s my speaking opportunity? Let’s work together to find the best. We are working more to accommodate the demand of presence and demand for speaking opportunities and thought leadership and meeting rooms and suites than we are trying to fill it. And it’s more just about accommodating it all in, in a way. And the Marriott, Marque’s a big asset. So, we’re in a privileged position for that. And New York’s great, everybody wants to be there. June’s not too hot, it’s not cold. So it’s kind of a perfect time of year as well. So, we’re really lucky in that we don’t have to fight for it. Although we work very hard at making sure that the audience is the right audience. And so there’s two things that we do. One is we turn our advocates and our customers into the heroes. I mean we’re just the platform. That’s, that’s all we are. We inform and we connect, and that’s the platform. The heroes are our sponsors and our attendees and our speakers. And they are really excited to affiliate their personal brands with the brand of NYU IHIF, which is an iconic brand in and of itself. So really, they kind of do a lot of the marketing for us. We support that. We amplify it. We certainly have a lot of followers on LinkedIn and other social media channels. And then of course, our newsletters. We send a daily newsletter to 38,000 subscribers. And these subscribers are the most qualified investors and operators and brokers in the industry. Not like, they’re not, Joe that’s looking for a hotel deal on Priceline, nothing against Joe looking for a deal. But, so that sort of power of the community is really special because people get really excited to speak, to attend, but it are also then shows other people that haven’t registered or maybe are on the fence or didn’t know about. It’s your story that go, wait a second. The entire best and the brightest of this industry that I’m in is attending NYU in three weeks or 11 weeks to be exact. I’ve gotta be there. And so that’s a really powerful thing. That’s just like social media. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, again, it’s exactly what you said, Alexi, your marketing goes further when you’re just the facilitator and they’re kind of telling that story. The echoes very similarly to what we preach with social media for individual hotels. I mean, would much rather have a hundred posts from a hundred guests. Obviously those being positive telling your story than have a hundred posts that you would put out there, right? Because everyone, everyone doesn’t want to feel like they’re being sold. But when you can have your guest, your attendee, your speakers telling your story in an authentic way, back to authenticity, right? Circling back to that word that’s gonna really cut through and make an impact there. Alexi Khajavi : And it’s not just you and I that are in the information industry, but it’s hotels themselves. I mean, I ask my kids, where do you want to go? Or we’ll say, what hotel do you want to stay in such and such place? They don’t go to Google, they don’t go to Priceline or Expedia or Booking. They go to TikTok. I wish they weren’t on TikTok at all to be honest, but we limit it. We try to be good parents, but they’re going to TikTok and they are finding hotels. And it’s shocking how many hotels don’t have a TikTok or even an Instagram strategy because this generation, and look, my daughters are still teenagers, but they’re gonna be booking hotels pretty soon on their own, and they’ve traveled the world staying at some really nice hotels. So I know when they have their own income, their own jobs, they wanna spend a high proportion of it on travel and hotels. If they’re not seeing it on TikTok or Instagram, I can guarantee you they’re sure as hell not gonna go to Priceline. Ryan Embree: Well, that’s it. There’s your ROI of social media 101 from Alexi, right there. You’re, you’re absolutely right. You hit the nail on the head. And it’s something we, again, preach as a digital marketing podcast all the time. So, well, as we wrap up here, I’m super excited to announce that for the first time the Suite Spot will be attending NYU IHIF for the first time. We cannot be more excited, Alexi, we’re gonna be there in the room, like you talked about. We hope a lot of our Suite Spot followers and audience are there to join us for first time attendees like myself or maybe even some of our audience that could be considering attending the event. Paint a picture of what it’s like, what we can expect. Alexi Khajavi : First of all, we’re really excited to have you guys, I mean, I think you know, you guys have covered so many poignant topics and you’ve covered it from different perspectives and you always have really good guests except for this episode, of course. So, we’re really excited to have you there. And I know that you’ll be broadcasting and producing content right there from NYU, which is gonna be awesome. So, really delighted to have you. Look, the opening reception starts on Sunday night. And the reality is that we do that because we kick off early Monday morning. So I would come in Sunday and I would come to the reception at the Marriott Marquees, it’s a great opportunity to network meet first timers. We get about 800 to a thousand people there, so it’s really nice dinner. We do it on the 9th floor terrace, so you get views of Times Square, the really iconic Marriott Marquee with the elevator banks in the middle. The View has just reopened after five years of being closed, which is the rotating restaurant up on the 48th floor, if I’m not mistaken. So you can go up there, have a drink either before or after, and it’s just a great opportunity to kick off NYU on Sunday night. Monday morning, I would recommend get in that room in the general sessions. And really, that sets the stage. We got an economist that’s speaking. We’ve got data that’s being presented, and we’ve got some of our top sessions in the morning, which will be about two, two and a half hours in the morning session. I would then go out, mingle, we’ve got coffee bars on each of the floors. For those of you who haven’t attended, it is a very vertical building. It’s New York. So you end up sort of getting different experiences on each of those floors between fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth. And I would really sort of start that morning off with the data and the information. What we find is that those morning sessions become almost kind of like an anchor to open up conversations with people that you meet for the next couple of days because it gives you kind of a good synopsis as to what’s happening right now in the industry with the big macroeconomic issues. And there’s a lot of ’em, geopolitics, but also specifically data in the industry. So that’s a really good session. We’ve got an offsite Monday night, which is really exciting. We’re about to announce that. We’ve got an incredible iconic speaker that is one of the most active, and I would say iconoclastic investors in the industry. I won’t say who, I would go in for that, so I can’t, I’m just teasing that out. But honestly, you could sit on any one of those floors and you could throw a quarter out and it will hit whomever it hits is active, senior and deeply embedded in doing something in this industry. And so you really can’t go wrong in getting value outta being there and being in the room. So that would be my suggestion, be there. Ryan Embree: Well, yeah, we’re excited to be part of it. Thank you, Alexi. I love that first day. You can feel that energy in the room, right when that’s about to kick off. I’m sure you’ve experienced that many of times. So, you know, we’re 11 weeks out, I think you said at this point, but, it’ll be here before we know it. We’re excited. Definitely have to catch up with you at NYU and to all of our Suite Spot audience members. Check it out, learn more about it and we hope you will join us at the Marriott Marquees June 1st through June 3rd. Alexi, thank you so much for spending some time with us today and, and talking through this. Alexi Khajavi : Thanks, buddy. Good to see you, Ryan. Ryan Embree: All right, thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time on the Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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162 – AI & Guest Review Response: Latest Developments with Jason Lee 25:24

منذ 5 weeks25:24

25:24

Tune in to the latest Suite Spot episode featuring TMG’s very own Chief Technology Officer, Jason Lee, as he gives listeners the latest update on our newest innovation, SMART Response powered by TMG AI. Hear about the development, successes, and challenges of building a guest review response solution with the ingenuity of artificial intelligence. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. As you can see, if you’re watching us on our YouTube channel, we are here in our Suite Spot podcast studio in Maitland, Florida, here with CTO, Jason Lee at Travel Media Group. Jason, thank you so much for being back on the Suite Spot. Jason Lee: Yeah, thanks for having me. In the seated position. Ryan Embree: Yes. I feel like we should be celebrating maybe like a 10th or 15th milestone of you coming on the Suite Spot or something like that. It’s been a lot, but we’re here to talk about a really important topic, something that’s been bubbling up in conferences, conversations that we’re having something that you’re not a stranger to. You’ve been doing some research on this and, and have some updates for us. But AI, I mean, it seems to be the, obviously the, the hot topic, like I said, at these conferences or just in the industry, outside of the industry in general, and then pairing it with guest review response, something that Travel Media group obviously known for. We’re coming up on the 2 million guest review mark. Which Is a fantastic milestone, really exciting milestone, but I figured we could start the episode by just kind of talking about how Travel Media Group got into guest review response. A lot of the stuff and solutions that we’ve talked about on this podcast have been through hotel your feedback. Talk to us a little bit about this journey in review response, and then we’ll get to maybe where the state of the industry is now, and AI and guest review response. Jason Lee: Well, you know, working with hotels the way we have for a lot of years, almost 10 years ago, we were getting a lot of requests to do review response. And so, we’re like, yeah, I think we can do it. And then as we got into it, we realized like, wow, this is complicated because every hotel’s different. The vibe of the hotel is different, but also the amenities and policies, the quantities, the types of sites that are, have more text or less text ratings and like, I think even getting deeper into, you know, how a hotel wants to use language. And so like, it’s even beyond voice, you know? So it’s like it’s literally grammar and also types of words. And so I think, so we started in this very simple place, very innocent, like, we can do this. This is gonna be awesome. And I think the first offering we had was 20 reviews. It was an SLA of 20 reviews a month. It was TripAdvisor only and . So we, like, we, we jumped to that and quickly, almost like instantly it was like, well, we need, we definitely need Google, and well, we definitely need Expedia. We definitely need booking. You know, so we had to adapt. And it went, the adoption was not just in the sites that we’ve brought on, it was also in the complexity of the response. It was also in then systematically creating a flow. So the review comes in, we have a writer that writes a response. That response goes to the property. So like, that stuff wasn’t initially there. It goes to the property, the property can edit it, and then, and then it goes live back on the site. So that whole process was also sort of formulated during those first, that first year, and then has become very perfected over time where, where we’ve taken that and we have all sorts of mechanisms to make sure we capture hotel voice, make sure we’re doing the right things, critical review pieces that we’re doing. So all of these things to really sort of make it as authentic as possible. So the guest, when the guest gets that response, it’s like, this is from this hotel. Ryan Embree: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people will ask with the review response, how can you talk so much about a subject? I think we’ve done over 10 webinars just talking about the nuances that go into a review response, because it is a feeling, right? Which is something we’re gonna talk about today. Because when people talk about AI, they talk typically about efficiencies and talking about streamlining processes. But really when it comes to guest review response, the end outcome, and you’ve talked about this before, is you want that guest to feel heard, and you want them to feel resolved If they have an issue, you want to show and show gratitude if they’re giving you a positive review. Any hotelier that’s listening to this that has responded to a review, knows the effort that it takes to respond to a review. You talked about in a video on your LinkedIn about the response sandwich and how, talk to us a little bit about that. I don’t wanna give that away too much. Jason Lee: The, so the, the, the response sandwiches that was this sort of traditional way that we have of creating a response, and it has to do with the intro of a response, the kind of middle of the sandwich being all of the issues of the review, and then the, the bottom layer of bread being the sort of outro, you know, how do we, how do we sign off of this? And, you know, I think kind of going to what you’re saying, you know, inside of that, we get into a much more complex version of that when we start to see guest emotion. So we start to like really understand where the guest is coming from. And I think if you look at like, why I do guest, why I would respond to reviews at all, why I would even engage in the activity, I engage in the activity, I feel like, number one, as a guest retention strategy, whether that’s positive or negative review, I feel like it’s a very strong guest retention strategy to, to give a great response back to, to the guest because the guest doesn’t experience it publicly. The guest is experiencing it through an email that they get back from the site that they wrote the review from. So they, they’re experiencing that like directly from you. So I think you start there, it resonates with, with, with potential guests as well. So if you think of the review responses, like these two major pillars of being guest retention, guest acquisition, right? In that order, you’re gonna have a successful review response strategy. Ryan Embree: So talk to us a little bit about when you first started kind of thinking about AI and where that might fit in with review response. Maybe, maybe just that story I think is a, is a really good use case for, ’cause I’m sure there’s a lot of hotels listening to this right now, being like exploring chat GPT and going, well, maybe this can help me respond to reviews or do some of these daily tasks that, that I, I’m told to do. So talk to us a little bit about your journey. Well, Jason Lee: What’s interesting is that we started, we started, we had a project in, in the works for a long time. This was early days this, so this, we, this is maybe going back four years. And so we had something called predictive response that was inside of, inside of our development strategy. And the deeper we got into predictive response, and this was using, machine learning and also using like traditional AI to create responses, but also sort of to like help our writers, create like initial responses. And what we found immediately, right, so like as we started that is that we would have to create a model, a individual AI model for each hotel because of the complexity of a locations, amenities, policies, you know, voice. So that stuff immediately was like, we, hey, we’re gonna have to do this. Then we, we then kind of pushed to the next level, which, which as generative AI started really coming out, we’re like, whoa, you know, this is, this is pretty crazy. You know, this is really interesting output for minimal input. And then as we started kind of pushing in like the early days of, of ChatGPT, and I think the first version that we did might’ve been, might’ve been two Oh, turbo or something. Anyway, it was like a very early version of it. And, and we were getting, you know, 60% like accuracy , you know, at the, from that one, but it still wasn’t even close, and it still didn’t satisfy these other pieces and the main pieces to that being that sort of differentiation between locations and voice. Ryan Embree: Yeah. So talk to us a little bit. I, I think those, those learning lessons from the beginning are important because I think it’s, it’s really stuff that hoteliers should be looking out for. And we’re gonna kind of do a questions you should ask and, you know, maybe reading some of these responses. But, you know, what were some of those early lessons that you saw maybe where AI wasn’t hitting the mark? Jason Lee: I think in generative ai, the, the thing to really think about is that pretty much all output is based on input. So, so that, that is this really important flow. So input being this sort of like formulated, review. And a lot of people write reviews that way. So if you look at reviews, let’s say, you know, a big chunk of them are going to have a very similar kind of cadence to them. And so that’s why we have things like the review sandwich when we started off is that you could see a lot of similarity between how, how people wrote they had the good and bad of their stay or the all bad of their stay or the all good of their stay. But the input is really important in this case because especially in sites like Google, actually, I shouldn’t say that. All sites have a wide open input. So a guest can literally write anything about anything. You know, they could, they could write a whole, like, we’ve gotten TripAdvisor reviews about a per, like, it’s like a life story almost, you know, leading up to their stay. And so, generative AI, even today, even the most complex version of it today has real trouble with that. It has trouble knowing what to say to it. And so it, it starts to empathize with the guest and talk about their life back to them, right? , so, so you can’t have that then. And then you have other things that are like short sentences, or sarcasm where it also sort of has a little bit of trouble. And so, so if you think about it in terms of messaging, it becomes really important. I if you take this casual approach to, to review response, which we don’t, by the way, , but if you take this casual approach to it, you’re just like, yeah, you know, as long as it’s done, it’s done right. It’s that binary thing of it’s done, it not done. We don’t look at it like that. We look at it like, Hey, this is communication with this guest. This is, we think of it as we’re standing in front of them talking to them. So that has to be authentic. And the second that it’s not authentic, I think the, the reason to do it at all gets really fit. Ryan Embree: And what you’re, what we, what we talked about it’s easier. It’s gonna be easier to spot. And, you know, we were talking about off camera, how those first AI, social media images that you would see on your feed, there was a different sentiment there of like, oh wow, this is cool. How did they do this kind of thinking about, and now you can spot it from a mile away, at least I can, as far as the AI images go, that have been generated from a specific platform. When does that shift of sentiment start to turn about saying like, that this, this is cool and innovative to being like, well, they just threw this into a, a chat GBT, or they threw it into another AI image generator and then threw it on their feed. Maybe the, the care and effort weren’t, weren’t there. And in a industry where care and service are a priority, that is never the, that is never essentially the sentiment that you wanna show to your customer. You know, and, and talking about kind of in that same vein with, with AI and efficiency, what would be some questions you ask, because we’re gonna talk about it in a second. TMG has actually created a smart response and, and that input output is so important because there’s gonna be a lot of people right now that see this as a gap that responses aren’t being done. And come to your hotel or come to your portfolio hotels and say, well, hey, we can, we can do this for you. It’s a low price, it’ll be done, don’t worry about it. What would you, if you’re a hotel, you’re on the other side, what are some questions you’re asking to make sure that this is the right fit for you? Jason Lee: Well, you know, I think number one, okay, first of all, I think there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of like shapes and sizes makes and models of AI response, right? I think there’s a version of AI response where it’s a do it yourself, you know, where you go in, you see the response, you can edit it, and then you have to publish it, right? And then there’s another version that I think is the full pass through. So it’s the response all the way through to the published. So, I think in both cases, obviously you wanna make sure that all of your hotel details, and I’m talking all, all of your amenities, all of your policies, and anything that’s happening currently, renovations, things that are closed, that that, that those things can be added into the mo the response model. Ryan Embree: Quick point on this is, or example rather. So have a property, they have a parrot in their lobby, right Name Simba, right? Okay. If that detail is not in there, that this is a parrot in the lobby, a AI response could royally mess up, what, this is it, it could start addressing it as a person, it could start addressing it. It could see the, the name Simba and think of something else. Jason Lee: It’s the Lion King. Right? Ryan Embree: Exactly. So these are the details that Jason’s talking about. And I think those are the little nuances that we know that would, would be silly of being like, well, why would I, why would I say that this is a parrot, which, you know, people know that this is a parrot, it’s, it doesn’t translate. Jason Lee: And, and so I think that those things are critical. And then the next part of that would be, is there a human being looking at at least your critical reviews, right? I would say at the bare minimum, your, your negative reviews, your one and two star, maybe a, maybe 1, 2, 3, but for sure that there’s somebody seeing it before they publish live. And, and the only reason why I say that is because there is just way too much variance in terms of the input. So the, you’re just, it’s, and especially in negative reviews, and probably even more the, the, the one that is the most variant is TripAdvisor. Ryan Embree: And so many things can happen at a property that we’ve seen. I mean that we’ve, we’re talking about slip and false, we’re talking about discrimination claims from employees. I mean, these are things that would have a massive input. And, and I don’t want to scare any hoteliers and, and think about just the negative, let’s think about the positive, right? Someone had a really meaningful, whether it’s an anniversary, whether that they were visiting a loved one in a hospital and had a really great experience because an employee went out of their way to make their day, and then they’re greeted with a AI response that doesn’t understand the nuance of that sentiment and feeling there. I mean, that is a missed opportunity that can do just as much damage as a negative re review could do. So again, when you have non hospitality people or you know, even, you know, entrepreneurs or vendors that understand the AI space, but they don’t understand the hospitality, that’s where you can get into some, some really tricky waters here. All that to say, I mean, again, at Travel Media Group, you, we’ve embraced, we, we’ve got the guest experience snapshot that we’ve had an episode about here, but also TMG Smart Response. Talk to us a little bit about that and kind of that story behind that development. Jason Lee: Yeah, so, so we developed TMG Smart response, you know, really thinking about maybe the more budget conscious hotel you’re looking at, looking at this other kind of tier of response. So our premium review response solution really hitting all of the marks. And with a live person writing it and a live person curating it and editing it, making sure before it goes live, that all of those pieces are right. So you have this sort of two human touch review response process, which is like one of the best in the industry. And, and so then when we got to generative, AI or the AI pieces, we started looking at ways of incorporating all maybe that same kind of flow, but, but using generative AI as the writer, which we had not done previously, despite what people think, because a lot of meetings we have, they’re just like, well, this is done through AI, right? And we’re like, no, it’s a human. So when we started that when we started this process, we were really, what we were looking at is all the things that I just talked about is like, like how much can we put in from an instruction standpoint? Like what is the inst, how does the instruction set, mimic the hotel voice, mimic the hotel policy, mimic the hotel, hotel amenities and their surroundings, and then also have that other like little variant, which would be when I’m renovating or when things are happening, that that, that the ge that a guest 100% is going to address. If it’s something major, like if your elevators are shut down for two weeks, right? And everybody has to take the stairs, or even for a weekend, you’re gonna hear about it. So, so not being able to respond, not not being able to respond accurately to that is a, is a crazy miss. And so what’s what’s interesting about this is that we think of it like the same, it’s the same kind of thing. So these same notes that we, that we have in our system for live writers, it’s that same concept is going in an instruction set to the generative ai. And the reason why that’s so important is because it, it creates accurate, you know, thoughtful responses, but there’s also a bunch of other things that we’ve done, to our version of, of AI response that also makes it very special. Because one of the things that anybody who’s listening to this, who’s ever used chatt, PT knows is that ChatGPT or copilot or any of the generative AI is that it’s verbose. It’s verbose. And, and, and depending on the input, it’s very accurate to the input. So if, if I, let’s say I, let’s say I mention four things that were dirty in my room, right? , it will, you know, in a, in a, in an untrained generative AI response, it will mention all four of those things. It’ll, it’ll mimic those back and have a, you know… Ryan Embree: Which is not great for, by the way, for search. Jason Lee: No, it’s not. And it’s weird. It’s weird to the guest because it’s like, why are you listing all these things out? Why wouldn’t you just say we we’re sorry, we’re sorry that things were not clean in your room. We’re sorry that you had these cleanliness issues. We’re working hard to, you know, blah, blah, blah. So I think that’s, that’s another big piece to what we, what we looked at is, ’cause we, like you said, on the outset, we have, we’ve had 2 million reviews, right? We, we have, we have tons and tons of data and, and the responses that we have have created are from professional writers. So it’s not like the input that we’ve created inside of this mo in inside of this model is from the internet, right? Where you’re, where you’re, where you’re subject to everything, you’re subject to a short response, you’re subject to a template response. So, so that’s where I think, you know, what we have developed is as close as you can get. And then at the end of that process, there’s still a live person. So, so the hotel can still edit that response, they can still interact with it, but there’s still a live person before that goes live to make sure that it goes through, that there’s no anomaly in it. Ryan Embree: And that’s a piece of mind that is, again, you know, we talked about some of those worst case scenarios, those PR disasters that might happen. Some, some even having to do with, again, slip and fall. You do not want that in the hands of, without a real human touch on that. So it’s kind of more of a hybrid solution than anything. Alright. So for those hoteliers that might be kind of considering this and going the AI route, kind of what would you caution them as far as using either a hybrid model like TMG Smart response or even another AI review response vendor? Jason Lee: Yeah, I have a, I probably have a unique view into this because of the number of reviews that we’ve responded to, ’cause we’re so close to, and we have so many different types of hotels that need response. And so what I, what I think is fascinating to me, still to this day, you know, all the way we’re in 2025, and this is definitely a year for AI stuff, but I still feel like, what is your motivation? What is your goal? What is your why? So going back to review response, why do I do it? Am I doing it because it’s a brand mandate? Am I doing it because, you know, there’s QA scores or there’s guest experience scores on Expedia. What is my motivation to do this thing, this, this activity? And if your motivation to do this activity is for those things that I talked about earlier, guest retention as a guest retention strategy, as a guest acquisition strategy, meaning that at the end of that funnel, when they’re looking, they’re gonna read my responses and see what my brand and my version of hospitality is. I think it’s critical at that, at those point. I think that’s critical information inside there. That’s my opinion. So that’s where a, that’s where, where the premium version of it, the live, live version is, is where it’s at. Now if you’re in a, in in that situation, you’re like, man, I have a ton of reviews, you know, I can’t really afford to do all of this, you know, this way, but I need to get these done and I need to get them done in the best possible way. I think that then smart response or an AI response becomes, becomes viable. It’s a great actual alternative. But again, like we were talking about, not all of these are, they’re not all the same. This is the, there’s, there’s a big difference between what we’re doing and what somebody who’s like, Hey, there’s a need here. I pasted a review into this, into this chat box and, and it spit back a passable response. Let’s just go . Ryan Embree: I think, you know, my, my suggestion would be a huge red flag is if you’re talking to a AI review response vendor and there is no, the only thing they’re giving you is a price. There’s no questions about your property, what you’re trying to accomplish, anything like that. Quantity of reviews is another great question. If there is no questions asked, that should be a huge red flag for you. I think, again, with the respondent resolve, we could be in a space, Jason, where we’re talking in a year, maybe a couple years, where almost every review is going to have a response because of this new technology, which is great. And this right now where we’re seeing a lot of hotels that have 50% or in the low thirties or something or something like that. Some, some hotels management companies are doing a great job. They’re in the nineties, but they’re all templates, right? Ryan Embree: So what type of portfolio or or or review response strategy are you looking for? Because again, I think a great way to say is those hotel management companies that have 90, 95% response rate, but they’re all templates, is that better than one out of every two reviews having a true, authentic response to it? Right? And that’s, that’s I guess the question because what’s gonna happen is that the tide is gonna rise, and if everyone’s doing it, then what’s gonna be, what’s gonna be the differentiator for you? And if it is, if it’s live people, hospitality professionals responding to your reviews and getting that authenticity and trust through review response, that is a channel and a portal to do that and to get through to guests. So really exciting stuff. Thank you for, for joining us on the suite and spot and talking about this. Again, this is a, a very hot topic right now and, and it’s changing almost every single day. I think that’s the other thing is to try to stay up to date as much as you can, because these models, like you were talking about, they change so frequently, but you know, as, as I was reminded by someone is we’re gonna get to a space again where service is gonna be, AI is gonna put service, real service to a premium again. And I’m excited to be in that space and, and kind of see what that, that looks like. So any final thoughts before we wrap up, Jason? No, Jason Lee: Just, I think, again, I, I really wanna stress that part. I know I’ve been like hammering that pretty hard, but I think you gotta really assess your motivation for doing this and find the right motivation, because I think it really, it, I shouldn’t say, I think we’ve seen that it actually matters to the guest. It matters in a retention strategy. And I, and I do feel like the better the response, you know, the better the output, but it also has, there’s a lot of complexity inside of, you know, something feeling authentic there. And, and I it’s crazy because we’re seeing these companies come out of the woodwork with just straight an AI response, just, you know, no touch and there’s Ryan Embree: A, there’s an inherent risk to that. Yeah, just like as if you were to put a, if you were to put a microphone attach to chat GPT and, and had every single guest come through the lobby and talked, talked to them without any input from, from you or your staff, you know, and we’ve both been behind the front desk before and know what an angry can spot an angry guest about 20 yards away from us, the way that they’re walking. If you’re willing to take that risk of, of getting that feedback without any input from you or, or we’re hospitality professionals that have years of experience of dealing with this versus what we were talking about, some of the pitfalls of, of right now where generative AI is. Jason Lee: Yeah. And it’s amazing. I mean, the technology’s amazing and it’s evolving, like you were saying. I I do, I feel like it’s going in really incredible places. Like I said, that the, that first time we were looking at these models four years ago to today, it’s an incredible advancement. And I think AI automation all of these things and I, I think we’re gonna see a lot of it in reservations. I think we’re gonna see a lot of it in on the, on the supply side. Ryan Embree: And that’s a great point if you’re gonna become more efficient, because I think that’s where the FOMO is for hotels is, is we’re not efficient and, and AI can create us being more efficient. Do you want to do it in a space that has such a direct connection to service and customer service for, for your guests? Jason Lee: Absolutely. Ryan Embree: Well thank you so much Jason for joining me on the Suite Spot. We’ll definitely keep a close eye and ear, maybe have an update for, you know, when some of these technologies because of how fast changing it is. Thank you for listening to The Suite Spot and we’ll talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

1
161 – 2025 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference: Key Takeaways 16:26

منذ 7 weeks16:26

16:26

Suite Spot host, Ryan Embree, breaks down the key takeaways from the 2025 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, which took place in Atlanta, Georgia, from March 17-19. This prestigious annual industry event provided valuable insights, numerous panels, and notable speakers from all across the hotel industry. Learn what critical factors are shaping hospitality in 2025 and beyond by tuning in now. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, fresh off our trip of covering the 36 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference. So excited to be, first of all, covering the event. It was an incredible couple days up in Atlanta, Georgia. Some exciting announcements, which we’re gonna talk about that on this podcast. Some industry trends, insights, interviews. We brought it all to you. We came jam packed back with content, and really excited to share some of the key takeaways and issues that were raised. You know, we’ve talked about this before on the podcast. Love attending these events where we get all types of brands, owners, developers, hotel owners, individual GMs at these events, because all the ideas, topics, really important topics in our industry really float to the top. And, you know, you get a really fresh perspective about how everything, how everyone’s feeling about our industry and this year maybe a little bit darker clouds than we hear in your years past, but also just how amazing our industry is. And, and, you know, I’m gonna start with my first takeaway. The theme, we talked about it on the episode with Sarah Moss, was Elevate your game. Love some of the programming that was involved. Molly Bloom, the poker princess who ran high stake poker games. The theme was incredible. Jesse Cole of the Savannah Bananas, everybody was wearing jerseys. He’d certainly brought the energy. If you’ve, if you’ve ever seen one of those games, there’s a wait list now for a, a long amount of time to try to get tickets to those. But I think the, you know, there were, there were some receptions all around that, you know, gaming style and theme. But really, you know, my takeaway was that we’re at a place where hotels really have to elevate their game too, and we’re seeing it which is the really, really cool part. Hotels are getting creative with their f and b experiences, right? Utilizing different things sourcing because the cost has risen, the operational costs, the margins are becoming very thin for hoteliers right now. Whether it’s the price of, of goods, whether it’s the prices of wages right now hoteliers are elevating their game to get creative. They’re getting creative to get deals done right? And it’s events like Hunter and these investment conferences where you’re in the room, so to speak, shaking hands, that really can be the difference between a deal getting over the finish line and not certainly a lot of talk about AI technology. You know, looking back on last year’s takeaways and reading and, and listening to kind of some of my thoughts, I felt like we’re in a much more comfortable place than we were a year ago. I still think our industry is still trying to figure out the best way to use ai, but I think what’s happened is now our grand illusions of the transformation that AI can bring to our business, the expectations of those have maybe been just reeled in a little bit. And we’re starting to take those baby steps in AI technology, and we’re looking for things like operational efficiency to empower our employees, and even AI used by guests and travelers are becoming more frequent and prevalent. And really what that speaks to is the importance of a IO, right? And the what type of content about your hotel is out there. That’s why UGC user generated content is so critical. It’s so important because travelers are using this information on other sources. Maybe that was crazy to think 10 years ago that travelers wouldn’t be necessarily using Google first. Now, it might be social media now, it might be chat, GBT or other AI technologies to essentially create an entire itinerary for you without taking one look at any of your digital marketing. It’s a scary place to be in if you don’t know what’s out there and what is being said. And I think hotels are hotel owners, brands are starting to embrace that. They’re starting to look for ways that they can leverage that, right? We’re always looking for a leg up on competition, but it’s that operational efficiency that we’re, we’re seeing with ai, little use cases here and there that I think those baby steps, everyone feels a lot more comfortable. There was a little bit of, and I’ve talked about this before on this podcast of that fomo of saying, I’m not utilizing AI to the fullest potential right now in my business. And where that might be the case. I think a lot more people are comfortable with the little places that they’ve implemented ai, they’re getting used to using AI in their business. It, it’s just becoming a little bit more natural to them. So, one of the things that I was very excited about not hearing as much as that I’ve looked back on my notes was staffing, right? So we’ve talked about this in this podcast at nausea, really, we’ve had a whole series dedicated it in our hospitality campus crawl series, but staffing really wasn’t as prevalent as a topic as it was in years past. Now, whether that’s because the priority list is a little bit different this year, I’ve got issues with trying to sell assets or capital, and I’m not so much worried about my filling my front desk agent role. Who knows, right? there might be bigger problems than staffing right now, but it was refreshing to kind of go to one of these conferences and not talk about the workforce as much, which hopefully means that we’re getting in a place a plateau of stability when it comes to hospitality, staffing. Something that, again, we’ve been talking so much about on this podcast. But, you know, second takeaway, again, looking back on my notes, the cautious optimism that was last year to say, well just wait until 2025 this year. A little bit more cautious, a little bit less optimism. And I think that the, the phrase now becomes just wait until 25 to wait and see through 2025. I feel like we’ve been talking about this the past couple years waiting for that recession that has never come. I call it a recession again, dot, dot again, but, you know, there’s other markets. It, it was very reminded to us that, that even tough times right now in order to make a deal, there are still markets that have great opportunity. We talked with Jeff Crabiel from Castle Rock Asset Management, who’s got a lot of assets, including the Bobby and Nashville. You know, there’s some exciting things happening in that market. He, he’s bullish on, on the Nashville market right now. You’ve got the World Cup that Titans are building a brand new stadium. There were a lot of things in that market that he liked that maybe a year ago, Nashville, the Nashville market had a little bit of softening because it was running so hot during Covid. So it really just depends. There’s ebb and flows, and I think we need to be mindful of that, is that every market is different in hospitality, there’s different polls. There’s different levers and polls and so many aspects that impact occupancy a DR including variables like natural disasters and how those play a role. You know, we talked to a couple brand leaders that were at extended day ho extended stay hotels, and they were, they were talking about, you know, obviously never want a natural disaster to happen, but that has impact, has a major impact on occupancy. Are some of those California fires, hurricanes, and where we are in the state of Florida, those extended stay hotels are getting occupancy from, from these types of events. So there’s a lot of variables wi within these markets as well. There was a lot of talk about how international travel will be affected by these geopolitical forces and outside factors that are happening right now. Does that have an, an impact? We’ve seen such a return revenge travel of the international travel, excited to come and spend their money in the us. Does that change in 2025? What happens if if corporate travel and leisure pull back in fear of a recession, right? Those are all different aspects. So again, I wouldn’t say stormy clouds ahead, I would just say a little less optimism and a little more cautious, when we talk about that co cautious optimism. But, you know, hunter also did a great job of talking and, and breaking it out by segments right now, just like different markets, different segments are performing very differently. The luxury, you know, the rise of the $1,000 rate. How many times have we, you know, kind of seen that news article and talking about how there are, there is a market where people are paying $1,000 a night or more to stay at a hotel, probably something that was unfathomable maybe 25 years ago. But there’s a bigger segment of travelers that are doing now. Now, what that means is, obviously with the rise in these rates or the rise of guest expectations, you know, the margins might be become a little different on the p and l, but the margins for the guest experience become very, very small. When you’re paying that much for a rate, the expectations, the guest expectations, which have already soared to an all time high, when you’re, when you’re staying at a place like that, even the smallest, the smallest little road bump in your stay can make a huge, huge deal. Those luxury, ultra luxury hotels certainly need to be mindful of that and do everything that they can to meet those expectations and set those expectations properly. We’ve talked about that on this podcast, right? There’s also some three stay things that we can do on our social media review. Response is a big place to kind of set the expectation, educate our guests before they arrive on, on site, so they’re not having any of those unwanted surprises, as we like to say in our industry. We always like the nice surprises, right? The surprise and delight out there. However, on the, the other end of the spectrum is economy and, and the economy segment, which has been hurt. It’s hurting right now. It’s, there are a lot of travelers where inflation has certainly take its toll and is impacting those economy, that economy segment a little bit more than it has with the luxury and ultra luxury. So what does that look like in 25? Will your economy traveler, you know, see any relief, and again, be encouraged to continue to travel right now because that segment is hurting. So it’s not just about markets, it’s also about segments. It’s also about, you know, supply and demand right now with, we talked about the rising construction costs that there are, it might not be the best time to build, right? I, I, I kinda labeled this takeaway as to build or not to build, you know, that’s really the question. We, we obviously have a, a, a supply problem in our industry. We’re underdeveloped, but right now, does it make sense to build new, that that’s where a lot of panelists and to topics, or a lot of panelists and sessions were talking about where that rise in construction cost, what it takes to develop now. But brands are hearing this and they’ve really been prepping for this for a long time. We spoke to a couple global brand leader heads, one at IHG. We actually had the opportunity at the sweet spot, so make sure you subscribe and follow us on YouTube and on social media. So you can see all these interviews that I’m talking to you about in this episode to head down to the IHG Design Center in Atlanta to see what they were working on. And we spoke to a representative from Hotel Indigo and walk us through some of the things that they’re doing to combat that. They have a preferred designer program, which really helps the speed to opening to make sure that that opening date is on time, which obviously with construction, you have a lot of variables there. And, and every day that that hotel is not open is costing you, they’re doing things to certainly help these owners become more efficient. And not only the building process, but also the prototypes. You know, we talked to the global brand leader at Homewood Suites who introduced a new prototype that they’ve been working on, which was able to get them a few more suites. And what that means, a couple more nights per day over the course of a year or years. That means all the difference for an owner. So trying to look for efficiencies, we’ve seen that by brands, but seeing that was really cool. And, and for those that are building, they’re, you’re seeing a lot more personalization in the building. They want the owner’s insights. They want the owner’s touch to it. Passion projects. Will you, it’s really, really cool to see, you know, with Hotel Indigo, they call it a story. And each property starts with a story where they break down what the neighborhood looks like, and they incorporate these little, you know, Easter eggs into the design of the property, which I absolutely love to see. Being that I lived in Atlanta for a couple years, they kind of had they had a room that was split down the middle with two different neighborhoods in Atlanta, and you could see the flavor and taste and the designs of each one. It was really, really cool to see. I am sold on Hotel Indigo. I definitely want to visit one now and saying that, and, you know, my final takeaway at the 36 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference was just the energy of this event. Specifically. It was just bursting at the seams. So much so that really excited to announce one of the most exciting, really evolutions of this show, getting kind of a history of it in a long time, which was the fact that they are gonna be moving venues to the Signia by Hilton Atlanta in 2026. Very excited. It was a major announcement. Funny enough, the Sweet Spot was actually on site at the Signia by Hilton Atlanta as the announcement was going on. It was really cool to see. We’ve got a spotlight on our, our Sweet Spot Spotlight series. We’ll be releasing that episode in a couple weeks. Beautiful property, incredible, space. So versatile. Talk about a story. I mean, from everything from the rooms to the, to the conference rooms, the restaurants, everything has a story in that building. It’s a new build. It’s the, the first ever new Build Signia brand. It was so cool to see. Want to give a shout out to the team over there for welcoming us and hosting us, and, and we did know that announcement was coming, but so happy to hear that. And, you know, got a little bit of a sneak peek of what 2026 Hunter is going to look like. And it is exciting. It’s, it is a network, first style. The old trade show floor is, is, you know, is evolving. And, and this is just the perfect property to do that. I’m so excited to bring that to you. And, just honored to be at the, the Hunter Show. The Hunter team did a fan, fantastic job, a fabulous job of putting on this event. Saw so many individuals that we work with here at Travel Media Group, hotel partners that we work with as, as well as people that I’ve met personally along the line doing these interviews. So thank you, hunter and, and your team, the, the Hunter team for, for inviting us and hosting us. We cannot wait for 2026 at the Beautiful Signia by Hilton Atlanta. Thank you all for listening, and we’ll talk to you next time on The Sweet Spot to join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell, with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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160 – Suite Spot Road Trip: SpringHill Suites Jacksonville Beach Oceanfront 29:17

منذ 9 weeks29:17

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Tune in to the inaugural installment of the Suite Spot: Road Trip series! In this episode the Suite Spot takes a drive to SpringHill Suites Jacksonville Beach Oceanfront to meet with Area General Manager, Alex Reitter, and Area Director of Marketing & Sales, Samantha Pritchard. Alex and Samantha give viewers an inside look at the property’s signature restaurant, The Sand Bar, and why this hotel needs to be the next destination on all traveler lists. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. If you’re listening to us or watching us on our YouTube channel, you’ll see that we are not in our content creation studio in Maitland. We have hit the road for a new series, the Suite Spot Road Trip, and we are here at the Spring Hill Suites, Jacksonville Beach, Ocean Front. And I’m here with two wonderful guests joining me today, general Area General Manager Alex Reitter, and Area Director of Sales and Marketing, Samantha Pritchard. Alex. Samantha. Thank you so much for hosting us on the Suite Spot at your beautiful ocean front property. Alex Reitter: We’re happy to have you. Thanks for coming out. Ryan Embree: Very excited to be here. As it is, Suite Spot tradition. One of the coolest thing about hospitality, we were talking about off camera is just our, the history, the DNA that gets built over the years. Maybe different brands, different management companies that you’ve been a part of. Everyone has a unique story, but it all leads us back to people serving people, right. That that’s why we love hospitality. So love to hear maybe your backgrounds in hospitality and what let you here to a brand new property, which we’re gonna talk about here shortly. Alex, we’ll go ahead and start with you. Alex Reitter: Okay. Well, thanks Ryan. Thanks for coming out. Of course. Again. So, yeah, I think I have an interesting start in Hospitality fell into actually start out on small cruise ships. Intercoastal, I’m not even sure if you knew that Samantha. Samantha Pritchard: No. New Skills. Alex Reitter: So it was definitely a interesting start. You know, uh, intercoastal cruising, seven night trips up and down the, uh, east coast after college. You know, we did trips in Maine, Chesapeake Bay, all the way down to Florida. It was, you know, amazing experience. But when you’re working six to eight weeks on a boat, nonstop, you kind of look for other options. And hotel kind of was a natural fit for me. From there, I’ve had a chance to actually work a courtyard down the street from this Spring Hill. And then actually a little time in the Florida Keys, uh, most recently in a Marriott in Durham, North Carolina. The weather got a little cold. It snowed a couple times on us, and we said, let’s get back to Florida. So excited to be here. And excited to work with Samantha. I’ve only been here a couple months and ready to get the ball rolling. Ryan Embree: Well, I think you’re our first guest that has got their hospitality start. I’ve, I’ve heard behind the front desk I’ve heard bellman. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard on a cruise, so that’s very, very cool. But it’s a story that resonates probably with a lot of our hotel audience, and listeners sometimes just kind of jumping from place to place. But again, people serving people, hospitality. Samantha, you’ve had kind of a different journey here. Talk to us a little bit about that. Samantha Pritchard: Yeah, so I started my hospitality journey in the Convention Visitor Bureau with Visit Jacksonville. It was, it was some of the best years just learning the business, being around people that have been doing it a long time. So then I left the CVB and went out as a director of sales. So my first job on property was a director of sales, just from some of the hotel connections made during that time there. So jumped in at a Courtyard brand, had the privilege of opening a beautiful new residence in downtown Jacksonville, which is a cool market. And then come out here to the beach also at the courtyard that Alex mentioned down the street. Started out here in that, in that hotel, and then now here at the Spring Hill as well in Fairfield. So it’s a good, good reach. Ryan Embree: It’s such a unique perspective. I’m sure you got being on the other side too, and probably serves you right now in your role, uh, as director of sales and marketing. And we’re gonna talk about this, this new property just over a year old, but it feels brand new in here. You know, one of the, one of the things I first noticed when you come up from the elevator, um, if you’ve ever been to like one of those all inclusive resorts and you get walk into a lobby, you see the ocean behind you, whoever the architects were for, for this project did a fantastic job of doing that. But talk to us a little bit about being kind of a newer property, how you establish yourselves in this market, but also kind of look towards the future and what you can do. Because you’re trying to obviously get, get a, a story and a name out there. Samantha, we’ll start with you. Samantha Pritchard: Yeah. So I think with this property, as you mentioned, it really sells itself. I’m really privileged in that way. You come off that lobby and you go, whoa. Yeah, this is a Spring Hill. I say that all the time. Yeah. I think kind of the strategies to grow the business when you’re new is visibility builds, you know, credibility and then executing it well with the team, which Alex and the team do a beautiful job of when I book it, when they come on site, they get what they expect. So that’s what the consumer’s looking for, what the guests are looking for. Getting in front of key decision makers in town. You know, a lot of our clients aren’t necessarily out at the beach. They’re more inland or in a drive market to us. So that’s kind of a unique way, um, to have to target them. I can’t just kind of roam about looking for clients that way. I need to go on the internet prospect that way and invite them out to experience the hotel. Absolutely. Once they experience it’s usually pretty easy. Ryan Embree: And I’m sure we’re gonna talk about in a little bit, I’m sure social media certainly helps you too, because like I said, it’s very picturesque coming into that lobby. Alex, talking about being GM, you’ve been, you know, a couple different places. What is it like kind of managing a, a newer property like this and making sure it hits those expectations that Samantha was talking about? Alex Reitter: So, I mean, I gotta say upkeep is always a challenge on, especially on this beach front, but I think it’s really just dealing with the staff and setting expectations and goals. Customer service is obviously high on our list, again, they’re walking in, they already have the, you know, it’s a, it’s a hundred, you know, this is great. Like they’re already coming back. We just have to supply what they want, get what they need, be available to assist them. I think that’s kind of, you know, makes it easy. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and for those that are watching us on YouTube right now, if you can see, we are just a baseball throwaway right now from the pier and the beach. Paint a picture for maybe those travelers that haven’t been to this area of what they can expect, you know, outside of just having the beach right here, here, because on this side or on the other side rather, uh, there’s tons of stuff to do, right, Samantha? Samantha Pritchard: So there’s plenty of things to do. What I like to tell people is you can either walk, bike, or hop in the car. You have choices. Within our area, we’ve got 10 to 12 dining options along with the beautiful sandbar that we’re sitting in right now. Our ocean front restaurant that is one of the top rated restaurants in the area. You can just hop out the front door and have everything at your fingertips similar to the all-inclusive resort that you mentioned. So it’s a nice kinda unexpected thing. We’ve got a Starbucks on site too, so you don’t have to go far for your morning, you know, wake up that people are used to. So you can really create a weekend or a stay that you can remember by starting your day with a beach walk, going out to grab a bite to eat at a local restaurant, and then also have a stay here. So, where else can you do that in a big metropolitan city? Ryan Embree: Absolutely. And Alex, you said originally from this area, you’ve returned back here. When they kind of introduced this project to you, you saw where the location was, what stood out to you? Alex Reitter: Obviously the location is perfect. I mean, why not? You know, ocean front hotel, beautiful oceanfront hotel. So it was a win right away. I have some family in the area, so that also was important for us. So we’re like, let’s, let’s get back to Jacksonville. It was sad when we left. I never wanted to leave, really, but I think I had to for newer opportunities and to challenge myself. And so I wanted to come back for another new challenge and see what we can do with this property. I think pushing the level, pushing the service culture is gonna be exciting for this property. Super family friendly location. Spring Hill’s a unique brand includes free breakfast, so ocean front property, you got the free breakfast in the morning, you can go to the beach for the day, go do something to eat for lunch or, you know, and then come back and have dinner here, get the kids to bed. It’s really a great, you can’t beat it for a family. I think of younger kids. If you have a small dog, bring it with you. ’cause we have, you know, a lot of pets as well. So, um, it’s all in one package, I think. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I mean, bustling, everything bustling at breakfast this morning when we came down here and you hosting us, you know, we’re gonna talk about the spacious rooms and everything that Spring Hill Suites brand has to offer. And again, why that makes kind of perfect blend of, you know, that that hot term in hospitality – bleisure right now that I think people love and hate at the same time. But in 2025, especially a newer property like this, it really comes down to embracing and getting the community involved in something like this. And I’m sure being that this is one of the newer projects, hotel projects in, in a while in this area, it was really easy to get, you know, the community really hyped about this. And you’ve gotten that local support, like you were saying, Samantha, with this restaurant here. Talk to us about how you have kind of approached from a sales and marketing position of making those community ties in a really short period of time. Samantha Pritchard: Um, and one thing we, I wanted to mention about the prior thing is this hotel is very approachable, as Alex mentioned, it’s family friendly. You can also come here for a corporate meeting and it’s very approachable. No one feels stuffy. You don’t have to wear a jacket in our restaurant. You don’t have to, you know, put on, you know, closed toed shoes clearly to come to come into the restaurant. You know, it’s very approachable and I think that’s where the traveler is trending. Right now is wanting to be able to, like you said, bleisure, do both, and feel really comfortable doing so. To answer your question about how we get the community involved is we want to have events and activations on property. Where they look to us is, what is the Spring Hill have going on for Valentine’s Day? We just wrapped up two seatings for a beautiful dinner here on the ocean. We activate kid activities, you know, we’re looking, doing maybe pool events in the summertime. Just really creating different activities where the locals can engage. Jacksonville Beach really thrives on local involvement in local pools. So when the hotel was built, some of the locals went, wait a minute. That’s different than, than the norm. But I think we’ve proven ourselves to be a viable and thriving business that, that serves our locals as well as our guests out of the area. Ryan Embree: And I think that’s important. Right. I mean, we saw a big shift, Alex, when, you know, obviously the pandemic happened a couple years ago, and I think people started to look a little bit closer to home and saying, what have I not explored in my area? So having a new property like this, what are you seeing right now? Are you kind of hearing feedback from a lot of out of towners? Are you seeing a lot of locals at the property? Alex Reitter: So, a little still new, but I mean, we are in a perfect location because Jackson International Airport’s a great size, but the drive market is, you know, Atlanta, not far, Georgia, you know, it’s all to the beach. It’s a great location. Good highways to get here. I 1095. Uh, so the drive market’s easy. The beach is great. And again, all the offerings of Jacksonville from the Jaguars, which disappointing year, but after I go into that come back. But yeah, I mean, you know, great golf area, great golf community. There’s, you know, other, you know, top golfs in town, you know, some other cool events in the area that you can go to different arenas. Samantha Pritchard: Yeah, festivals are a big thing in Jacksonville Beach where we really do well. Going into peak season on Saturday, just this weekend we have the Seawalk Music Festival. Locals all flood out. I think our Starbucks might get hit that first thing maybe the next morning as well. People come into town for those things. Supergirl Surf Pro is an awesome national surf competition we have in November. What a gift. Like, it’s November a quieter time here at the beach, and we have this massive national surf competition out back at the pier. So it really can vary. It looks different every single day. What we have come across my desk come across, you know, the hotel. But it’s neat to see kind of how the locals embrace that as well as our guests. Ryan Embree: Well let’s talk about some of those events that might be held at the property because one of the benefits you were talking to me again about is the versatility of this, right? I think it goes back to that theme of this isn’t your average SpringHill Suites been open, you know, newer property, but I’m sure you’ve hosted, you know, a ton of events and meetings and groups. Can you share any examples of really that versatility and how maybe groups have come in here and used the space differently? Alex Reitter: We just emptied out this space this past weekend. So every table and chair was pulled out and we had to bring in more because we had too big of a group kind of book. And we thought it was gonna be a little bit smaller. And then it just kept growing and growing and team came together. Ryan Embree: Good problem to have sometimes, right? Alex Reitter: You know, it was a great opportunity for the team, but hope we won’t do too many of those. But we’re, you know, I remember if it works for the property, it works for the group and they wanna do it, we’ll pull everything out and give them the space. And they had a great event. Team had fun putting it on, you know, pulling out all these tables and chairs isn’t fun, but they had a positive attitude and we took, got the job done and it was, I think it was fun. Samantha Pritchard: Seeing the team, I think since I’ve joined, joined the hotel now six months ago, fully, it’s really neat to see the team be able to push the boundary of what a Spring Hill does. And like I mentioned to you when we first talked about coming on the podcast is, Hey, we’ve got a great pool patio. Could we fit 30? Well, what if we do this? Or what if we, and just collaborating with them and getting their buy-in on it. It’s been really beautiful to see, like Alex said, we’re taking every single table and chair out on a Saturday morning at 10:00 AM Is that what they wanna be doing after two events the night prior? Maybe not. But it’s so encouraging to me as a sales leader to be able to say, we can do this because I have the teams backing. One creative thing that we’ve gotten into lately is we take our corner suite meeting spaces up at the front corners of the building facing inland, we pull the furniture out again, you see a theme, we pull the furniture out of the rooms and we can set it up in a U-shape for up to 15 to 18 people. And it’s amazing how many corporate folks, you know, you think they want a stuffy boardroom with a big boardroom table, and I’ve sold properties like that in the past, but when they walk in and they see that beach view, or they see kinda the unique setup, but they can come in here for lunch, all of a sudden it’s not a hurdle. And people think like, well, I’ll never buy that. It’s a guest room. There’s a bed in there. How do we, how do we sell that? And mostly clients are just happy to be at this property and, and they pay rental and our team can service it with coffee breaks and lunch breaks as you would at a regular conference room. Um, so that’s been neat to kind of push the envelope and, and it’s been a profitable change for us. Ryan Embree: I mean that’s, uh, another shift, you know, kind of talking about again, traveler preferences and, and experience business travel. You know, maybe they’re not seeing each other as much in the office, but a trip out to, you know, Jacksonville Beach for a corporate meeting doesn’t sound too bad, It’s true. And, and being able to do, you know, a, a multitude of things. Meet in the, uh, meet in, uh, a, you know, makeshift meeting room and then come over here to the sand bar and, and have a drink afterwards. So really, I think being in that flexible space, that versatility of having a property like this really sets you up for success. Because any event planner can come in here and really get creative with your team and say, this is the type of vibe we want. Listen, we love your location. Right? We’ve already talked about that. How can we make this work? And, you know, I think it’s those hotels that are, have a listening ear and are open to those ideas. And, and typically that happens with newer properties, right? You know, sometimes there’s just restrictions with an older property it was like, we literally can’t do this. We can’t, you know, host this many people in this space. Um, but having a property like this really, really helps you do that. Uh, we talked a lot about what there is to do outside of the property, obviously, again, with the beach right here. But certainly when you’re talking about the 2025 traveler experience, you talk about what’s on property, right? Because it’s more than just what happens outside. It’s no longer four rooms in a bed. You know? Talk to us a little bit about this restaurant that we’re, we’re in here and maybe some of the other amenities, Alex, that you have on property. Alex Reitter: Yeah. So, I mean, awesome restaurant. You obviously can’t beat the view, love the surfer club. You just gotta get that out. Ryan Embree: Sure. And you can watch it. I was having dinner here yesterday and you, you can just watch people surf. I mean, it’s like almost people turn on their TVs to watch it. You got that. Live action right there for you. Alex Reitter: Yeah. And even all the live action at the beach is always fun in Jacksonville, no matter what. So it’s not even just a surfer. It gonna be an interesting time out here. So, but yeah, I mean, great. Many of great full service restaurant, full service bar, everything’s, you know, can’t say enough how good the staff does on the service in the guests and the presentation we present on the food. Ryan Embree: I can personally attest to that having, uh, been at the restaurant last night and having a mahi sandwich and, uh, enjoying a nice cocktail as well. So, and you can’t beat that ambiance that you, that you’ve set up here. So on the way through Breakfast, Fitness Center, Samantha, some of the other amenities. Samantha Pritchard: Sure. So, we’ll start with the fitness center ’cause I’ve got an exciting update for you on the fitness center. So the fitness center, as you can see is large. We’ve got six or eight treadmills in there. There’s plenty of space to move around with that plenty of space. We also noted maybe we have an opportunity here to build a meeting space. Always looking for, always looking for an area for main space. Sure. Um, so with a being as large as you might have seen, or you can see on our website, we are looking at maybe sectioning off about half of that space. We’ve got an approval for Myriad to do so to create a meeting space for up to 20 to 25. So we’re finding that that’s a need in the market. We have the data to prove it, really like to look at the data in the market and say, this would be something that would be really beneficial for us. So we’re hoping this will start maybe later in this year, early next year. We’re, um, in kind of design plan right now to make that happen. So that’s exciting. The, the fitness center will still be a great resource, but just wanted to note that. Um, we’ve got our onsite Starbucks open each day, you know, all the way through. It serves our locals as well as our guest. Sandbar is mentioned. Um, having a restaurant at the beach that’s open at lunch is a unique thing for Jacksonville Beach. Most people have to leave their hotels where we even get guests from other hotels that come and enjoy lunch here and go, whoa, this is, and I, I joke, I call it chicken, all chicken. There’s no chicken all chicken here at the Sandbar. They make everything from scratch. They do a really beautiful job with the sauces each day and coming up with nice Caribbean, you know, style menu or beach style menus. So really something unique here. Ryan Embree: Well, we’ve, yeah, we’ve talked about it, Samantha, about how F&B is really impacting the traveler’s experience and how that is, you know, a good or a bad experience can make a break or stay, but it really sounds like you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner and then work it off at the fitness center. Samantha Pritchard: Or out back at the beach. Your choice. Ryan Embree: So, um, you know, really, really a lot to do here across the country. Maybe hotel’s falling out a little bit, uh, you know, from that winter season gearing up for spring break, maybe looking at those 60, 90 occupancy reports and, and getting really excited about or scared. Alex Reitter: A little bit of both. Ryan Embree: Exactly, with those travelers coming in. You mentioned it before about how travelers are starting to look at the Spring Hill saying, know, what are they doing, you know, this season or holiday as you gear up for spring break. Um, Samantha, we’ll start with you kind of how, how, how are you and the team getting ready? Any events going on, uh, that you’re particularly excited about? Samantha Pritchard: So our high season kicks off a little bit before spring break. We have the privilege of being just a couple miles from the players’ championship golf tournament out in Edra. So we are projecting, you know, sold out numbers over that time. We have some corporate folks that have bought out the restaurant for two days and for the morning. I mean, we’ve really kind of kick off into a, a high gear right out the gate in March. Um, and then spring break will open up, as we mentioned, some of we’re more of a family destination. You’re gonna see probably, you know, families with two or three kids enjoying the pool, enjoying the restaurant, maybe rather than the typical spring breaker you might imagine. Right. We really try to protect that environment for our guests there too. Um, going into April, you know, wedding season weddings with between Sandbar as a space between the hotel as a destination, and then also three or four beautiful wedding venues within walking distance to us. Um, weddings really start to kick off into April and May. And then summertime we’re, we’re in it. 4th of July is a citywide event out here. I mean, there’s bikes miles across, you know, the first street that where we sit on the bar is slamming and, and then we blink and we’re in the fall. So, that’s our plan. Ryan Embree: That’s how it usually works. Alex, as, as gm, um, area gm, you also have a Fairfield, as well in this area. Talk to me about how you approach the busy season with your team. What are you guys doing to get ramped up? Alex Reitter: Get ramped up? Yeah, so I mean, obviously just kind of starting to build that team, make sure everything’s in place, you know, housekeeping’s obviously always a challenge, but we’re ready. Actually right now, we’re actually in a really good spot. I think our team, everyone feels comfortable. Our front desk team is ready to go as well. Just, you know, moving those pieces together, just make sure everyone’s excited. Taking the time to, you know, let’s detail out right now. We’re getting ready. You know, late checkouts are always an issue with the oceanfront property, so we’re already diving into that to be practicing how we’re gonna manage it. Make sure, you know, if people are late, you know, who’s gonna cover it, getting the room clean, how are we gonna manage those people, the guests waiting. And so kind of figure out those little details right now while we have the chance where it’s not go, go, go yet, because it’s gonna be there in a second. Oh yeah. And it be like, why didn’t we do this two months ago? Ryan Embree: We talk about it as a little bit, you know of a nice little stress test for, for a hotel before that really busy season happens. And I think it does Samantha, for your job. It really shows what people love about the property. So, you know, that stuff starts to really amplify up. So you can start saying, oh, people are loving the fact that we’re within walking distance of this wedding destination. Let’s really start to market this. Or on the GM side, you know, maybe those minor issues that you’re seeing at 75, 80% occupancy, that that could dialed up to like a problem when there’s, when it’s a full house. Right? So trying to kind of suss out and figure out issues and things that people love about the property. So when you have all that, that traffic come through, you’re making the most out of that season. I wanna talk about, you know, this the, at this course, the Suite Spot when we started it digital marketing podcast. And, you know, especially with being a newer property, that’s probably you, you know, Samantha, one of the most powerful ways that you can really get going. And, and then again, I mentioned it before that picturesque view when you walk in through the lobby, I’m sure that does some great things for your job to try to get the, the amplify Hey, we’re here, we’re the SpringHill Suites. Uh, we’re new and we’re here to welcome you locals and, and travelers. But talk to us about the importance of building a social foundation. I follow you guys on social media, have a great, you know, uh, strategy there. Talk to us about that social strategy and the, the crucialness of building a social community. Samantha Pritchard: Sure. Um, we’re really blessed with a great e-commerce team that supports us on properties. You can imagine doing this and selling the property. We really need good folks behind the scenes to help with that. We have both a food and beverage team that e-commerce team that handles that and a property team. So we’re lucky with kind of those layers there. But the big importance is consistency, as I’m sure you hear all the time, and then being able to stay relevant. So we’ll be sharing, we make sure that multiple days don’t go by without posting. We’re collaborating with the right people when we have events out back at the pier, are we cross sharing each other’s posts? That’s an easy low hanging that any hotel can do, whether you’re off the interstate or on the ocean or in Alaska. Great tech. You can cross share great tech, you know, posts and other content that others are using. It doesn’t have to be such a heavy lift of like what does social look like for us? Like, we can lean on other key partners. Visit Jacksonville, is a great partner too. They have a media kit that they can give to us as hoteliers to help with some of that content creation while we’re not reinventing it. Ryan Embree: Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, I think, uh, that’s a great tip of, of sharing. Uh, I always say maybe not every hotel has a beach, but every hotel has a sunset. Right. You know, and, and typically has a, has a a, a place where you can watch it, take a picture of it, share it, but having, um, involvement from, you know, not just one person on your team, but your entire, entire staff, that’ll help. And then hopefully you get some user generated content with travelers sharing all that good stuff. You gotta be social listening. We talk about that all the time on our, on our podcast as well. If you’ve got some great, you never know who’s on your property, right? You could have an influencer or micro influencer, um, sharing a picturesque view of, of the, the beach there. You wanna make sure you got your ear to the ground in interacting with that. Alex, on, on your end, you know, the other piece of digital marketing, obviously reviews, right? Super important. I’m sure you’re, you’re in there and listening to that feedback. Talk to us about kind of your strategy with, with getting reviews, especially with a newer property, right? Like it’s great right off the bat ’cause you get a lot, Hey, this is a brand new property, but still trying to generate reviews. Here we are a couple, you know, a year and a half into this property trying to generate reviews to keep things fresh, relevant, consistent like Samantha was talking about. Alex Reitter: Yeah. So, um, one thing I’ve always done is so many times we hear a guest tell the front desk or tell myself even like, oh, this was a great stay. I love my stay. And that’s the end of it. Like, it’s gonna end there, right? The guest, the guest told me he doesn’t need to go online and post it. And I’m like, oh, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Can you please go online and, you know, take that if you don’t mind, take the moment. We’d love to hear you share it online. If you get the Marriott review, we’d love to have you fill that out. So I think that’s where it starts with, you know, informing the guest. Because a lot of guests, oh, I told the general manager, I don’t need to tell anybody else. But now if he had a problem, he will tell everybody and tell me and Samantha probably you. So, yeah. So that’s one side of it. And then I think the other side of it is we have to be responsive as a team. And, uh, what I, my approach has been I can’t do it all myself. I need, I need help. So I like to get my whole team involved, the whole front desk team. So Janez is responding, Hunter’s responding at different sites. So each one has their own site that they kind of manage. And then I think for the guest, it’s kind of cool, oh, hunter, I read your response to whatever guest, you know, and now that there’s almost a relationship checking in, like, you know, hunter. Yeah. You know Janez and you’re not even at the hotel yet. So I think that’s kind of another cool verse if I respond to them all, or even I think some GMs possibly have admins respond to them all, but it’s their name, which I don’t think’s real we don’t wanna see. Everyone doesn’t wanna see my name or that’s my opinion. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I think it keeps that content also in the eyes of your team members too, where as you might be saying something of, Hey listen, you know, we’ve had a couple people talk about, you know, the check-in process and they’re not very happy. Versus now you’ve got multiple team members involved. Seeing that and maybe making a change there to kind of help with that. But also, you know, we tend to think or reviews, like you were saying on the negative side, but also that, that good feedback right. Of praising the team, that also is a big confidence builder in your team members where they get excited to work and you know, service the next guest in line. Ryan Embree: Yeah, take ownership. Yeah. I love it. Such team building is a really, really great with that. So I’d like to end the episode, uh, you know, talking about your positions and kind of what’s best case scenario when, when the traveler leaves checks out of the Spring Hill Suites Jacksonville Beach, right? So, Samantha, as we’re marketing people, right? We love kind of talking about that. What what do you want to get out there about the SpringHill Suites to maybe travelers that have maybe considering coming to Jacksonville Beach? Samantha Pritchard: Sure. Give Jackson a little chance. I say that a lot. It’s, people hear things or I’m not sure about her. I drive through it a lot. Headed to the big Orlando stop in Jacksonville or Jacksonville Beach specifically and, and see what the area has to offer. There’s really something for everyone as we touched on. There’s the water, there’s water sports, like kayaking and getting involved in that ecosystem. Great dining choices. And then of course you have a beautiful hotel you can, can choose to stay at. So I would say give Jacksonville a chance and, and I think you’ll be really pleasantly surprised. Ryan Embree: Tons of events, both locally and on site as well. Again, opportunity for our hotel audience and Suite Spot listeners to follow, on social media so they can keep track of all those events going on in the local area. Alex, GM again, you, we just talked about it. Guest feedback. So important. What is your best case scenario when somebody checks out here at the SpringHill Suites? Alex Reitter: I think we want them to come back. I mean, I hope that’s what they’re feeling is I don’t know why they want it. And if they, you know, if they’re not happy with their stay, we wanna know why and, you know, we wanna fix it. That’s kind of my, my thought process. We’re honest people and I think we take care of our guests and we want them to think we’re the number, we’re the number one hotel in this area. Like, there’s no doubt about it. Like, so the location’s awesome. Samantha Pritchard: The staff is friendly. Alex Reitter: We’re excited to be here. Ryan Embree: It’s been, it’s been a great stay and experience that we’ve personally had from the Suite Spot. So thank you for hosting us. As we wrap up, any final thoughts on today’s episode? Thank you. So thank you so much again for hosting. Samantha Pritchard: Yeah, it’s a pleasure to have you guys out here. I love, you know, just being able to reach out to you and say, Hey Ryan, we really have something special here in Jacksonville Beach. I know it’s a Spring Hill. I know it’s in Jacksonville. How do we get you out here, you know, to experience that? And I think it’s a culture chain, you know, going on with Alex joining the team here, you know, a couple months ago, we have an opportunity to really shift to a yes culture. You see the views, you see the restaurant, the food’s amazing, we talked about all those things, but it matters about how our staff and make you feel when you leave. What do we wanna have happen? We want you to tell someone how amazing the Spring Hill in Jacksonville Beach was and tell someone about it. A review is great, but when you tell someone that the culture was different, I think we have a really something special here. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. Word of mouth. Still the most powerful thing today. And again, you know, we can’t say it enough. Thank you for hosting us here. We had an incredible experience here at the Spring Hill Suites, Jacksonville Beach, Ocean Front, and encourage everyone to come see for yourself. Again, have that picturesque shared on social media and tag the property. Because I’m sure, Samantha and Alex would love some more of those social media pictures. Alex Reitter: We would, we’d appreciate it Ryan Embree: Thank you so much, for joining me today and thank you for listening to The Suite Spot. We’ll talk to you next time To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your st…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

1
159 – Check-In with AHLA 21:30

منذ 10 weeks21:30

21:30

Tune in to this quarterly episode to hear from Chirag Shah of the American Hotel & Lodging Association to get the state of the hospitality industry. As EVP, Federal and Political Affairs & Counsel, Chirag, gives immense insight into challenges, patterns, and trends impacting the hotel industry and how the AHLA is helping hoteliers overcome the economic environment. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. As you can see, we are here with another industry check-in with AHLA. And we have a first time guest with us Chirag Shah, Executive Vice President, Federal and Political Affairs & Council at the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Chirag, thank you so much for joining me on the Suite Spot today. Chirag Shah: Absolutely. Thanks Ryan. Appreciate you having me. Ryan Embree: Well, welcome to the Suite Spot. This is your first time. Before we get rolling, talk about some of the topics that AHLA and issues that AHLA is obviously advocating so ferociously for hotels all around the country. Maybe give us a little bit of background, your journey to AHLA and give our Suite Spot audience, just a brief glimpse of the role that you do there. Chirag Shah: I appreciate it. So I’ve been in the lodging industry, lobbying on behalf of hotels and hoteliers for about a decade and some change, 12-13 years. And previously my background is actually as a campaign and elections attorney. It’s what my training is, and not perhaps a skill that folks are, a ton of folks are always looking for especially when you get relatives that want help getting outta a speeding ticket or something. But I spent time on Capitol Hill, worked on a number of political campaigns, and 2012, 2013 after finishing up my last campaign, got a call from a group. They were looking to open a DC office. And when I was on Capitol Hill, I used to meet with them quite frequently, and it was a group called AAHOA And, uh, they were looking to, to open their DC office. And it was great because I, uh, literally spoke the language that many hoteliers speak and, and figuratively spoke the language, of Washington DC. And so, uh, it, it was a, it was a great fit. And I came in and opened their DC shop and worked there for, for eight years. And, uh, then came over to AHLA and has been fantastic to represent a lot of the same people physically, actually the same people, but also the industry. It’s such a wonderful industry where hotels, everybody loves going to hotels. Most public officials don’t fully understand what the hotel industry is all about, but they love talking about their travel experiences. And so now at AHLA, I get to oversee the federal affairs shop, the political shop where we meet with members of Congress, have got one of the greatest jobs where we tell the story of the lodging industry to members of Congress, their staff, the presidential administration, every single day. And so getting time to understand what the challenges are that hotel leaders are facing, where the industry is going, what the economic footprint is, that’s what we do. And so it’s been a lot of fun. Ryan Embree: You know it’s funny, Chirag, we have so many industry leaders on this podcast, and we talk to them about their kind of beginnings and they talk about maybe jumping from brand to brand and still having that tight-knit family. Because it all comes back to hospitality. It seems like a very similar path with you and the associations, right, starting with the AAHOA and then transitioning to AHLA. But at the very end of the day, it’s all about hospitality and the hotels that you’re advocating for from those small, independent hotels all the way up to the major brands. And here we are at the Q1, beginning of, 2025. Great time to reflect on, years past and recognize some of those key and many accomplishments that AHLA really prioritizes. You put out a kind of a 2024 year in review. What are some of those big wins that kind of stand out to you Chirag from this past year? Chirag Shah: You mentioned it, it really is a small world. Like I grew up, uh, in the industry, uh, learned a lot from Mitch Patel in, in Chattanooga with Vision Hospitality. And now he’s the chair of AHLA and so really coming full circle. But I learned a lot about the impact of these particular issues with him and with other hoteliers. But over the last couple of years, last year in particular was an interesting year, challenging year, uh, federally because, uh, not only did you have a very thin margin with the majorities in Congress, but you also had a divided government with the Presidential administration, Democrats running the Senate, Republicans and majority of the House, and of course, the Biden administration, but it was also an election year. And so the, the vitriol of the acrimony sort of came to a fever pitch. And so trying to get things done was particularly difficult. But, uh, really proud of what we’ve been able to do on behalf of hoteliers. Even in an environment like that, looking where perhaps the most significant impact came in the labor and workforce space, uh, where because of some of the challenges, and you and your, your listeners may recall perhaps not so fondly, but recall the, the phrase joint employer or joint employer liability. This is a, a legal doctrine where the pendulum continues to swing back and forth from administration to administration. But ultimately, it is a illegal principle that tries to identify who is actually the employer for liability purposes, as well as for collective bargaining purposes and dating back to the Obama administration. And then the first Trump administration, Biden, this, the standard kept swinging back and forth, and ultimately they came up with this idea that would try to make it more difficult to identify who was the true employer for hotels and other franchise businesses among other type of businesses. And over the years, we’ve had a number of members in the lodging industry testify before Congress on this issue. And when they broadened the definition to create more of an uncertainty in who was actually the employer, we sued the National Labor Relations Board to overturn that rule. And last year we were ultimately successful, worked with a number of other business organizations in DC, suing the National Labor Relations Board. And not only did they reverse the rule, they went back to the traditional standards. So now we know that a joint employer or any employer is someone who has direct and immediate control over the employment conditions, which really helps hoteliers to identify their lane and know what the legal standard is. Similarly, we worked with business coalition partners also in the labor workforce space. There was an attempt to create a new overtime threshold for the white collar exemption for the administrative exemption. The intent was to increase that exemption from 35,500 to almost a 60-65% increase, in a very short amount of time, which would’ve taken place and gone into effect on January 1st of this year. AHLA has long been supportive and the industry long supports appropriate compensation, particularly for those that are working overtime. But this was just too much, too fast. And that was one of the, the biggest challenges that we had. It also didn’t take into consideration some of the, uh, regional implications for our industry. There is a dramatic difference in the labor market between Manhattan, Kansas, for instance, and Manhattan, New York. And that was something that we shared with the Department of Labor, as well as these automatic escalators that the rule would have put into place every three years, irrespective of market forces. And so again with a group of coalition here in DC, a team member of ours, Kat Fonda, ran that coalition. We successfully sued the Department of Labor, and they reverted back to the previous rules. So those were, were two areas because of the tight majorities in Congress, we ended up having to work through the legal system to, to make sure that our interests were heard, but other things as well. The federal per diem rate, working with the Biden administration to increase the federal per diem rate, not only on lodging, but also on on meals and incidentals. It’s about a hundred million dollars benefit to the industry in the workforce space. We continue to see a huge challenge. Hoteliers are telling us every single day, there’s just a gap they need to have. We have over 200,000 fewer employees than we did in 2019, a hundred thousand open jobs right now. And to be able to supplement those jobs with seasonal workers, we were able to increase the cap on H-2B Visas as double that number. Uh, and then finally, there’s a large discussion on, so-called junk fees or resort fees. And hotels were kind of caught up in this larger discussion, but we’ve been long prioritizing, leveling the playing field and all in pricing fee display. And we were able to get the Federal Trade Commission to understand our position and ultimately pass a rule that was consistent with that for the entire lodging ecosystem to have the same policy of all in pricing upfront. So a lot of key wins, even at the top. Ryan Embree: Massive wins there Chirag. And to be honest with you, you and your team have been doing a great effort because each one of those topics and subjects that you talked about were certainly talked about and risen key people talking about them in the public’s limelight. We just saw that report, 65 percent of hotels still reporting staffing shortages right now. So anything that we can do to alleviate that, getting creative, the industry has done so much over the past couple years to try to get creative on the individual owner side. But anything that AHLA is advocating for to help with that certainly will help our industry as a whole as we turn to 2025. You know, I’d love to get some background insight because here you are, you know, our industry is so great, but there’s no shortage in sometimes issues that we come across with it. How do you and your team kind of go about which issues you should tackle, prioritizing your time to make sure that some of those, uh, those bigger issues are, are brought to the forefront? Chirag Shah: So we have a wonderful industry and folks do not have a shyness to share with us their opinions on what is affecting them, affecting their bottom line. So, a lot of great ways that we’re able to reach and meet withour members. And AHLA represents the entire swath of the industry, every segment from hotel owners and franchisees to management companies to brands to partner state associations, vendors and partners, and everybody in between big, medium and small portfolios. And so wanting to make sure that we represent everybody within that larger picture is a key priority for us. And we meet, certainly starting with our executive committee and our board of directors that represents each one of those segments. And then we have what is functionally our government affairs committee, which we refer to as our advocacy cabinet. We meet once a month, and for about the latter six months of the year, five months of the year, we look down the road to see, well, if this were to happen, and in last year’s case, it was, if the election were to go this way, or if the election were to go that way, what do we anticipate will be the key issues the industry should focus on? And so we, we do a lot of focus grouping and vetting of our primary issues, but also looking at what is gonna be the economic impact that those issues will have on the bottom line for hotels across the country. What does that mean for our workforce? What does it mean for our guests and our associates? So with that, we, we looked at this year and said, well, uh, what are the political realities as well? And once president Trump was reelected, once the Republicans gained a trifecta in the house of the Senate, we knew which way our priorities were gonna go. Some of it was baked just by the calendar as well. At the end of, or in 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and in order to make the budget numbers work, many of those provisions were set to expire at the end of 2025. And so if those provisions do not, if they’re not extended or if Congress doesn’t renew them, then hoteliers could see anywhere between a 30 to 45, 50% tax hike just by doing nothing. And that is a huge concern that we have. And so working with congressional leaders, on a process, which I won’t bore you with, dealing with budget reconciliation, but making sure that our voices are heard to extend those key provisions, whether it’s areas in the real estate space, like hind exchange, making sure that no one’s trying to take that away or try to use that to pay for something else. Making sure that we allow for bonus depreciation or a hundred percent bonus depreciation to encourage capital investments at our hotel properties, as well as the small business deduction, section 199 A of the tax code, which, provides for a 20% deduction for small businesses. These are all economic drivers. They’re job creators, they’re engines of the economy. And so we’re constantly meeting with members of Congress to ensure that they understand what this means for hoteliers. So working with our various groups, that’s how that’s informed. There are a few other issues as well, but tax four and a half trillion dollars worth of tax priorities coming out at the gates, key priority for us. Ryan Embree: And I think it’s so important to hear that background, to know kind of what if scenarios and all the data that is making and causing these informed decisions that you and your team are advocating for. And also to show the fallout sometimes of whether something is material or something fails. So, how can Suite Spot listeners, or maybe this is a hotel listener, you mentioned it before, and I think it’s so important also to see that it’s just not hotel owners. It’s every aspect of hospitality that AHLA kind of listens to as well as a advocates for, how can any Suite Spot listener get involved to support advocacy and the work that AHLA is doing? Chirag Shah: Absolutely. There’s, there’s a couple of different ways. One is going to hotelsact.org and signing up to receive our information, going to ahla.com and, checking out all the, the news that we’re putting out as well as receiving our newsletter, hotel lobby. We put this out once a week and we’re informing our members of those key priorities that affect our industry. And so staying up to date in those ways is important. But also then taking action from time to time we will ask folks to take action to send a letter to your public official. A lot of times those letters have the, the basis already drafted, so you can take a look and say, I understand this, and you can make changes. But ultimately those letters go directly to your public officials that represent you. And hoteliers have such an outsized voice. Not only are you voters, but you’re also those folks that employ others. And so your, your voice has a great deal of influence. And so that is one way. One of the other things that we do, and by all means would, would love to get in touch with anyone interested in this, is why we do these, what we call Heart of the House tours. And the best way for a public official to understand our business, because most of them don’t fully appreciate the hotel industry, because while they may know the local restaurateur because because they frequent those restaurants, they’re not generally staying at hotels in their own communities. They’re traveling elsewhere, and they’re going to those hotels. And so to build a relationship with those folks that represent you, whether it’s at the State House in the city council or in Congress, that’s something that we can help to facilitate as well. And so walking them through your hotel, walking ’em through your business model to say, this is what our business is all about. It’s actually the owner that owns the real estate. It’s the operating company or the management company that employees the employees. And this is the footprint, it’s the brand company that sets the standards. And that’s why you have the consistent experience from one place to the other. And once folks actually walk through a hotel property and understand it personally, now that informs their decision making when they have issues in front of them whether it’s in Congress or at City Hall. Ryan Embree: No, that’s a great point. And I think you’re right, it gives a different perspective. ’cause at the end of the day, Chirag, we’re all travelers at heart. We’ve all been to a hotel, but to understand the uniqueness of the hospitality industry, if you haven’t been a part of it before, it’s very different. It’s very different from from other industries. So getting, I think that’s a brilliant idea that you and your team help and facilitate hoteliers to do, to get a better understanding everything that goes in play. And we saw that firsthand at the hospitality show. Both you and I had the pleasure of attending in San Antonio back at the end of 2024. Big trending topic relationship between ownership and management and where that stands today. Lemme get kind of your thoughts as we wrap up here, just with like current state of the industry, what you think it with that ownership management relationship. Chirag Shah: Yeah, you know, the, the area that I think, and I refer a lot of folks, if folks are interested in delving deep into some of the numbers as well, is AHLA puts out our state of the industry report every year. And we just did that in January. And it identifies key trends. And I think the best one that I like to look at is that there’s been a shift towards normalization, as well as a new climate of stability. I think that’s gonna be helpful. We look at some of the data and we’re still not fully recovered, to mention some of the workforce information. We’re still not fully recovered, from the pandemic, but we are also reaching and meeting new challenges as well. And so the trajectory will consistently be a challenge between owners and the challenges they face as well as management companies and the challenges they face, just to reach back to where we were. And so optimistic with some of the key data points, looking here at guest spending, we’re gonna hit another record high, which is always positive. We’re looking at about $777 billion in 2025. Occupancy will hold at just north of 63%, which is just shy of the record at 66% in 2019. And ADR will take up slightly to 162, which is just above the record set last year at 159. And so those trends, keeping a degree of stability, I think bodes really well for the ownership and management relationship. A degree of stability is particularly helpful there. And that will hopefully, continue on throughout this year as we will hopefully see some stimulus in the economy as well based on the tax policy that we discussed. So, stability and normalization, I think are, are two key words there. Ryan Embree: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think you hear those numbers, our hotel audience gets really excited, but it’s also about managing and operating efficiently and effectively to make sure bottom line works, for you as well. So a lot of factors there. Chirag, certainly impacting hoteliers and hotel owners today. As we wrap up, what I love about AHLA, you mentioned it before, it’s got a really close ear to the ground as far as hotelier sentiment out there. You have the hospitality show, regional events that you’re out there, you’re shaking hands, you’re talking to hoteliers every day. What do you think the general outlook you would say for our industry is over the next, let’s say six months? Chirag Shah: No, I think that’s, that’s great. I think folks are generally positive about where things are because of some of these patterns that we discussed, the normalization and a degree of stability looking forward to this year. There wasn’t initially, at the beginning of the year, thoughts that there’d be significant shocks to the industry and perhaps some optimism as well with the idea that there may be a shot in the arm with certain tax policies coming out of DC. I will say that, at the same time, there is this idea of stability and while revenue continues to increase, costs are increasing at twice the pace of revenues. And so those are definitely challenges. We’re watching very closely what some of the activity is out of Washington, DC, what the executive orders are from this administration, and where they may have impact on our industry. A lot of it, while there’s all these sensational headlines that are coming out, we’re watching to make sure that the reality actually meets the headline as well. So if there are no significant shocks, I think there the optimism will continue, but it sort of is a wait and see approach, especially as a new administration settles in and certain global forces are taking to account as well. Ryan Embree: Cautious optimism indeed ,Chirag, we appreciate all of the work that you and your team over there are at AHLA are doing for all of our hotel and hotel owners across the country. Chirag Shah: No, appreciate that. And I’ll throw one last thing out at you. Is that our CEO Rosanna Mayada is doing a fantastic job. She’ll be testifying for the house Educational Workforce Committee on Wednesday. And so we’ll continue to drive this discussion about the importance of our industry with the highest levels of government. So, hopefully your members will be able to tune in on that as well. But very grateful for the time today and looking forward to hearing from you again down the road. Ryan Embree: Well, we appreciate the time. Thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot. And thank you to our audience. We’ll talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

1
158 – Richard Alberigo 35:37

منذ 11 weeks35:37

35:37

A familiar face returns to the Suite Spot in this special episode. Richard Alberigo, CEO & President of Alberigo Hotel Management, joins the podcast to discuss what his hotel management group has been up to over the last couple of years, how the hospitality industry is rapidly evolving with AI technology, new guest preferences, and how to acquire top talent for your hotel staff. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. So happy to be sharing an incredible episode with you today. Whether you’re listening to us or watching us on our official Travel Media Group YouTube page you will see and hear a familiar voice. It’s been a couple years, but really excited to welcome in our guest for today, Richard Alberigo, President and CEO of Alberigo Hotel Management. Richard, thank you so much for joining me back on the Suite Spot. Richard Alberigo : Yeah, thanks for having me on, Ryan. It’s gonna be fun. Ryan Embree: It’s been a couple years. We’re gonna cover a lot. You know, last time we heard a little bit about your hospitality journey, so fascinating to hear in our industry. We’ve hosted tons of industry leaders here on this podcast. Everybody got kind of have different pieces of DNA, whether it’s, you know, they’ve worked for different brands, hotel management companies. You ended up founding your own Alberigo Hotel management company. But I want to kick off this episode, Richard, about talking about, you know, one of the common threads that I always hear when talking about hospitality journeys, which is the mentors or influences that really rose to the top for you and your career and really has lasted the test of time in your career. Richard Alberigo : Absolutely, Ryan. So I have a couple of mentors. My first one, the first manager job I, I received it was at a college station, full service Hilton Hotel, 303 rooms. And I was just a front desk agent. And I’ll be honest with you, at the time, being a CEO of a company was not even in the realm of possibilities. And I really didn’t even seek it. I was doing it for quote unquote beer money. That’s what I worked freshly outta college. And so I had my mentor, her name was Kim Chapin, and she was the rooms division manager there. And she would, you know, recognize my accomplishments. She kept saying, I think you could do something with this job if you really put it together and you really focus. And, you know, she was very supportive. And I remember my promotion, we went to a team meeting, a front desk meeting, and she lined everybody but me on one side of the, of the field. We were playing volleyball. And then the other side of the field was just me. And she goes, you were looking at your new front office manager. So that’s how I got the promotion. Believe it or not, there was no indication at all. There was like, this might, this announcement might happen. I was in total shock. But, you know, it was really cool that she saw something in me. And so obviously at that point I couldn’t disappoint her. And then, you know, the rest is history. My next mentor later on in my career, I was a general manager of a Homewood Suites in Houston, and this gentleman’s name was Mark Boulevard. He was the district manager for Reson Hospitality. This guy was rough. I mean every time he drove up, I just felt like I was gonna quit or I was gonna be be fired. I mean, he didn’t take no, he was no nonsense and nothing positive. I would go to our team meetings and the other managers would be there and they’d be like, I’m so sicking of hearing about how great you are. And I’m like, what are you talking about? This guy beats me up every time, they’d go, no, he needs to say, you need to be more like Richard. Do you need to be more like Richard? And I mean, if I was 1 cent over in housekeeping costs, this guy would beat me up. But then, you know, I won a manager of the year award for the company and I’m thinking I’m gonna be fired. So it just taught me that he saw something in me and he, he had confidence in my ability, but he knew that he had to push me to new levels and new horizons in order for me to get there. So I kind of use my style, the combination of the two, because if I, if I was Mark right now with the Gen Zs, I probably would, I have to clean my own rooms, right? You know, so I had to put the combination, but it did taught, teach me that accountability was really crucial in building a great business and a great hotel. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And here you are years later, remembering these stories and how impactful they are. You know, we’ve heard, you know, many mentors, sometimes it happens through internships that we’ve seen. And that one individual, as you mentioned, Richard, kind of sees something in you and creates a path and you know, as big as hospitality is, there is, it is still a small world too, and you never know when those employees come full circle, right? Even maybe seeing one of your best employees leave to take another opportunity and then years down the line, they kind of boomerang back and come back to you and end up all of that experience and, and all of that investment time investment that you’ve put into that employees end up paying off. So really cool to hear, really special to hear. And you know in a time where, again, there’s still some struggles out there with staffing, we were kind of talking about that off air. The more stories that we can hear about that. And even I encourage our Suite Spot audience. If you’re a young hotelier, look for that type of mentor that might be able to guide you in a career path in hospitality and vice versa. If you’ve been in hospitality and you’ve got a younger staff, maybe fresh, new green staff that’s coming in, be a mentor to them. Show them what a career path in hospitality is like, and, and who knows, could be like Richard here founding your own hotel management company, you know, years later. But, and we got a lot to accomplish. We got a lot to celebrate for your Abrigo hotel management, especially in 2024, hitting the 10 year mark. Congratulations on that 10 year anniversary, celebrating that last year, third consecutive year in a row of, lodging, magazines, hotel management companies to know. And in a personal world for you, the being named top CEO in the Houston Business Journal award, congratulations. You know, reflecting back on kind of these accomplishments and when you started the portfolio in 2014, how do you feel the company has evolved and what are some of those proud achievements mean to you personally? Richard Alberigo : Well, the recognition is great, Ryan, obviously, I’m not gonna lie, it feels really good. It feels like you’ve, you’ve made it, you’ve accomplished, what you were seeking out to do 10 years ago. But, but you know, this sounds like a cliche, but this is a team award, right? Because you’ve gotta put the right people around you. In my career, I remember when I was a general manager, a manager of a hotel one time, I had a assistant general manager that really didn’t do a very good job. And I really struggle the same guy that’s the CEO of the company now. And then I, I hired his replacement with someone else that did an excellent job, and suddenly Richard was all that. So I think hiring the right people sure is the key. I had to try to go through the trials and tribulations from the beginning because, Alberigo Hotel Management was Richard Alberigo, and that was it. I mean, I did sales, I did revenue management, I did the visits, I did the guest service meeting. I did all of it, right? So think building a company, it does, the reason that so many fail is because you have to get through those two or three years that you’re not making really any money. And you have a vision and you have to go through those situations where you just wake up in the morning and go, how am I gonna go another day? So that’s, it’s really difficult, but it’s really rewarding to make it 10 years. When I was in year two or three, I really didn’t know how much longer I could go, but I just kept going and putting one foot in front of the other and just waited until, I hired my first employee and then my second and my third, and then suddenly things got a lot easier, different stress levels. But, you know, I think it was one of those things at the beginning, you just kept going and didn’t even really know how tired you were sometimes, until you actually took a break and then you’re going, wow, I was exhausted. Right? So, it was, it’s great accomplishing 10 years and, you know, 11 in April now. But we still have a lot to accomplish and, you know, we have to evolve as a company. We can’t just worry about what happened in 24. Now we have to go into the 25 and into the future. Ryan Embree: Oh, well, absolutely. And it’s those management companies that are kind of focused on what the future of hospitality looks like, which I’m gonna ask you here in a minute, but yeah, something to be said, you know, about longevity in hospitality, and you also didn’t pick the 10 easiest years to go through. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, especially in 2020 and everything that we battled. But, you know, we talked about in 2020. Richard Alberigo : Ryan, I’ll be honest with you, there were days that I didn’t know if my company would exist tomorrow. I mean, it was, it was a rough time because our hotels were selling three or four rooms a night for about four months, and hopefully we’ll never see that again. Ryan Embree: Right. And I’m sure there’s a lot of hotels that felt like that, but, you know, we talked about it in our last episode that we got together on Richard, about some of the lessons. And I’m sure those lessons that you learned at the beginning, those first couple years that you were talking about was starting Alberigo Hotel Management really has served you. And here you are in 2025, 11 years later. And, and I’m sure that’s served as a, a great foundation for what you guys are building over there. And it’s very, very cool to see, you know, we talked about in 2014, the portfolio has certainly evolved, but so has the industry. It we’re not in the same places we were in 2020. We talked about obviously, some of the changes that happened over the course of the pandemic. Where do you see that hospitality has evolved and changed in just the, the, the past 10 years? And maybe give us a glimpse about where you think it’s headed. What do you when talking to hoteliers, even seeing patterns and trends? Richard Alberigo : Well, It’s obviously how it’s changed with the technology, you know? Sure. I mean, we’re talking right now on a podcast, you know, when, I’m not even sure that it existed when I first started the company. But it was in its infancy, right? I guess when you got started around that time and yeah, you know, the internet, I, I remember doing one of my, when I was worked for IHG one of my first visits, I was telling a hotelier that one day the internet will be 5% of your booking. So I’m looking back on. And the guy looked at me like wide eyed, like, wow, really? And then, yeah, that’s, it’s a lot more than that. The phone calls, I was officing out of a hotel not too long ago, and I was just looking at the front desk and the phone never rang. And it was so weird because I remember when I was a desk agent, I’d be juggling phone calls and somebody complaining, somebody asking for towels and just trying to go, and they’re just sitting up there with nothing to do until the next guest arrives. Right? So, sure.You know, the, the photos, the content, you know, it’s all different. So, and I really believe five years from now, I don’t know if we’ll recognize the hotel system that we have today. I really can see a lot more digital stuff, you know, we’ll talk about later. AI, I think a lot of it’s going to change. I can see kiosks coming. I know we’ve talked about, it seems like for a hundred years, but remember when it happened at the airport? We just walked in one day and there they were, right? Yeah, with no warning. And we didn’t even know how to operate them to book our flight. Right? You know, I mean, robots cleaning the rooms. If robot can vacuum your carpet at home, I mean, why can’t they clean the room? So unfortunately, I see a lot of, a lot of changes coming with cost. Your breakfast costs, your towel costs, your electricity costs. The costs are getting so high. And as we know, you know, everybody tells, I can make the cost go down, but once they go up, you know, your payroll, are we really gonna cut pay? We’re probably not. And that’s your biggest expense. So, what are we gonna do about the cost? The same revenue that we had just four years ago, you know, was a 40% profit margin. Now it’s down to about 36, 35. And we can’t continue to have those smaller margins in order to operate successful hotels. So I think one of the brands is gonna have some courage and step out there and say, okay, what do we do with housekeeping? Is it now a charge situation, or is it always gonna be free? Is the breakfast gonna be charged in Midscale Hotels? Which you, it was always free. I remember when Continental Breakfast was the top of the line thing, and now, you know, it’s like, it’s, they’ve just made it like Denny’s, right? And yeah. And how can we sustain these costs in order to, and the brand’s the same way if we, if the, if the owners aren’t there to, to purchase the hotels, the brands are gonna suffer. Well, that’s why they’re bringing in so many new brands right now because they’re hurting and they need more, franchise fees. So, I think everything is going to change. What exactly it’ll be or who will step out there and do it, I’m not sure, but I don’t think the industry will be near the same five years from now as as it is today. Ryan Embree: Yeah, it definitely feels like adoption is ramping up. And you know, some of that was outta necessity back in 2020 when I think adoption of keyless entry was spiked, because at the end of the day, people didn’t necessarily wanna come to the front desk to interact. So they kind of had to learn how to use that app, which maybe they hadn’t explored before. But it does feel like everything is kind of accelerating and escalating. We’ve talked about it before about when we talk to hotels at Travel Media Group, one of their biggest fears is feeling like they’re being left behind right now in this kind of technology, this age of, of where every single couple days you see kind of new innovations pop up. But it is about.. Richard Alberigo : And I’m not sure it’s a good thing. I mean, because the hotel equals, you know, a hospitality and that equals people. And that is a concern of mine. That we, the people will become expendable and that, that is going to be a shame when that happens, because it’s not a, I mean, it’s not if it’s when now, right? Richard Alberigo : Yeah. Well, it’s a great point. And you know, at the end of the day, there is a reason when, you know, we started talking about kiosk at that check-in, how that didn’t become something that that took off immediately. And how you’re still, there’s full service that’s already there, and like the Vegas hotels and that kind of stuff. But I’m talking about, you know, your regular LaQuinta on the street. Right. I mean, I could see it happening at a Comfort Suites. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it will be interesting to see kind of what, what this looks like in the future, but being open to technology. But you’re right, you know, the hoteliers are always looking for efficiencies to try to, to cut costs, but we also need to walk a fine line. Hospitality for better or worse, has always kind of been behind the eight ball when it comes to technology. You know, we still have, you know, in some hotels we still get your dry cleaning done. You still gotta put that on the outside of the door, right? Or even hang a, hang a tag out if you want room service or not. So there will be some, some benefits, but I do, you know, share your sentiment, Richard, which is expressing caution on not moving too fast. Because at the end of the day, this is hospitality. We’re here for the experience that is our product is not just four walls in a room. It is, you know, that people can go to Airbnb or other, you know, platforms for that we are here in the service industry. Now, let’s talk about your portfolio a little bit. Obviously you have a massive footprint in Texas, mainly the Houston and Austin area. What do you like about these markets? Do you see future opportunity there in the future? Richard Alberigo : So, Austin, three years ago, we had a lot of the revenge travel and, you know, sure. It was the best thing, right? Every rates were over $200 a night at limited service. It, it was absolutely insane. And then after Covid or the revenge travel of Covid, the cost of living in Austin became so high. The salaries got very high. And then Austin had the, had its own set of problems. Their convention center was shut down for renovation. So they’re not bringing in the big conferences, and suddenly it’s almost getting to be like a Los Angeles. And we saw what happened in the California hotel market. It really struggled. So Austin has struggled for the last couple years. We, we envision it being a little bit better this year, which is a good thing. But nothing like we thought it was gonna be four to five years ago. I mean, I was driving to Austin the other day and saw they were advertising at Dairy Queen for $21 an hour. And, you know, how, how can we compete at a hotel, when we’re going against the Dairy Queen, right? That’s, that’s giving that kind of money. So then your profit margins go down. So we’re hoping for the best in Austin. We think it’s better this year, and we’ll see about, you know, going forward. Houston, because of oil and gas is always an up and down. And when it’s great, it’s great. When it’s not, it’s not. So, three years on, you know, two years off is kind of the tradition of the Houston market, just because the oil prices are always up and they’re down and they’re up and they’re down. It’s really never stable. And, you know, in Houston, we get kind of the white collar, oil and gas. We don’t really get the drillers, but we do have some hotels out in the oil fields. And it’s kind of the same thing. Couple years on, couple years off. So, last year in the Houston area, we had a lot of storms. We had a derecho, a HA tornado, and then we had a hurricane that came in barrel. And from all indications, that increased our room nights 15%. So, we don’t really know what would’ve been without the storm. And, you know, we’re off to a slow start in the first quarter, so we’ll have to kinda see how that goes for this year. But, you know, the storm business is always great when you’re having it, but boy, it’s really tough to recover from the next year as we know. Ryan Embree: Oh, absolutely. And, and going back to your point about Austin, yeah, we heard about that with several markets, you know, that ran really hot during the pandemic. Miami, Nashville, Austin obviously falls in that. And, you know, you can only be at a, at a peak for so long. And that, and that’s what a lot of the, the hotel owners, developers, and managers were saying, were, we were enjoying this, you know, time where the rest of the industry was kind of in a lull. But you can’t be at a peak forever, so year over year. And, you know, Taylor Swift isn’t coming having a concert every weekend. Richard Alberigo : And that’s another thing we had a couple years ago, and unfortunately we were like the, in Austin, in Houston, we were like our third big show, so we weren’t prepared because we didn’t really know until about five days out, like something special here, right. Where the other city’s at a little bit more of advantage because they knew what was going on. And you know, I tell owners all the time when they come to us about managing their hotels and they’re interested in buying one, and you know, they’re gonna have a 15, 20 year license, you’ve gotta put that rainy day account out there, because when you’re talking 15, 20 years, you’re gonna have five years of down in there and, you know, don’t, you don’t know how you’re gonna start, but you know, it’s gonna be somewhere in there that it’s, you’re gonna have a down trend. You know, a lot of owners will, will think about, okay, here’s what it’s been the last five years, but you gotta look at what it’s gonna do 10 years, 15 years from now, because, you know, every dog has its day, and maybe you’re the first one into the market, and suddenly there’s six or seven brand new guys in there to challenge you. And you gotta be ready for that. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. Yeah. Especially in those crowded markets, that’s why things like digital marketing, which we’re gonna talk about here, technology, which we touched on, but we’ll talk about again, since we’ve seen, you know, the last time we we spoke, we’ve seen things like ChatGPT, other AI technologies, industry, get really excited about it. We kind of talked about it before, become more prevalent. Where do you see technology in that application for the industry as a whole? And are you at Alberigo Hotel Management starting to gear up and implement some of this new technology? Richard Alberigo : Well, we obviously use it because it makes your job easier, right? Right. I mean, AI, if you’re, you’re typing up a memo and you know, you think, okay, I’m a little bit too harsh on that memo. You could just type in, you know, you know, be a little bit nicer, or you could say, be a little bit more authoritative, or be a little bit more to the point. And it just changes. It. It’s, it’s really, I’ve only been really using it for the last maybe year or so, but it’s incredible what it can do, because now you get, you know, the, the, the workforce out there is so sensitive, you gotta make sure your words are right. You say the one wrong, wrong word, and suddenly. So chat really helps also for your social reviews, when you can just put in ChatGPT or AI, and suddenly you know that you’ve answered that social review in a lot faster time than it would take in the old fashioned days when you had to like, sit down and say, okay, how do I, how do I show empathy and, you know, how do I not be defensive? And now you can just put it into chat and suddenly it does it for you. So that’s the good part of it. But it does scare me because, you know, we can’t have, you know, just be so technological that, you know, the human element goes, because what if it starts to replace some of these people that are doing that? That’s my concern. Ryan Embree: And that’s, and that’s what we talk about. We never want to be an industry that loses touch with our, with our guests, you know what I mean? And being out of touch, you know, with who your ideal prospect is, Ideal customer, ideal guest and target audience, that can really, really change the scope of occupancy numbers, revenue, numbers. If you’re now all of a sudden thinking, Hey, this is my ideal target audience, and everything has kind of shifted over the course of a few years. We’ve had a couple examples that we’ve talked about in some of your markets where that’s changed. And sometimes you gotta change tactics. And if you’re too far out of touch with that and you’re, you don’t have your ear close enough to the ground, could mean massive, massive implications there. And especially in a time that you said the margins are slim, you have to be as efficient as possible. You have to be able to pivot. Well, let’s talk about, let’s talk about where we are today, right? We’re recording this February, gearing up for March. Travelers are travelers and hotels, like they’re starting to thaw out, right? Maybe some of, maybe some of those markets spring break is around the corner, maybe looking at those occupancy numbers starting to pick up how is your portfolio really gearing up for a busy spring and summer season? Do you guys do, what do you guys do to, to, Richard Alberigo : Yeah, that’s when you asked because it happened. So suddenly when you get to March 1st, the, the clienteles changes so drastically and so quickly. So I was just gearing up to send an email out about getting ready for the spring season here in the next couple of weeks, because it’s a complete different clientele, as you know. You know, they’re paying out of their own pocket when they’re on leisure, you know, there’s kids running around the hotel, their pools are being used, you know, our pools, you know, it actually snowed in Houston, if you don’t know, you know, in January, which is very unusual. So the pool was the last thing we’re, we’re thinking about. But right now, you know, it’s time to, even though it’s still a little chilly and they’re not using it yet, we gotta be ready. And, you know, that pool furniture might need to be replaced and, you know, it needs to be pristine out there. Might need to do some painting and, and get ready. And then your breakfast cost is going to go higher because you’re gonna have more people in the rooms and, you know, a lot of waste, because some of the kids will pile the plate up and eat one bite, throw in the garbage. So you gotta be ready for that. And the breakfast attendant pacing has gotta be on queue because the corporate customer, they’re so easy to manage, you know, all they want is an AC and a a, a nice bed and a comfortable room. Ryan Embree: And some good wifi. Richard Alberigo : That’s it. Definitely a good wifi. But you know, where the leisure customer is completely different. So our, the scores notoriously will go down a little bit in March just because it happens so suddenly. And it’s an industry thing because we’re not prepared for it once we get into June and July, you know, we’ve kind of realized how it is, you know, weekday is this and weekend is that. But you know, it’s definitely a challenge. And, you know, we have to be ready and, and safety too, because there’s been a lot of pool incidents in the hotel industry where, you know, there’s been even deaths because the gates have been left open. And again, that’s the kind of thing we’re not even thinking about in February. So, there’s a lot of moving parts and we definitely have to be ready for it when it comes. Ryan Embree: Yeah. I’ve talked about on this podcast, it’s a, it’s a natural kind of stress test for hotels as far as, you know, maybe some of those minor issues and problems that you are having over the winter. Now all of a sudden they compound a little bit when all of a sudden it goes from 50% occupancy to 70%. And then if you’re running hot in the summer, which typically hotels are now all of a sudden that minor issue is becoming a backed up line for breakfast. And people are getting frustrated. And you’re hearing that guest sentiment. That’s why it’s so critical and crucial for you to, you know, I’ve said it before, have a listening ear on the ground, taking a look at your reviews, taking a look at what people are saying on social media to make sure that those minor issues are addressed now, so that when that occupancy wave comes in the spring and summer, it’s handled appropriately and it’s not doing lasting damage to your online reputation and presence. Richard Alberigo : And we like to keep the kids happy, you know, I mean, oh, yeah. During the spring and all the way through the summer, I mean, we’ll hand out popsicles to the, to the kids that check in and you, you know, you make the kids happy and the parents are happy, right? So very important to cater yourself to the kids, because yeah, sometimes it could get crazy running up and down the hallways and that kind of thing, but if you can control it and, you know, make them happy and you got, you can’t keep them bored because if they’re bored, they’re gonna get into problems, right? So you gotta make them happy. And if the kid says, I love this hotel, the parents will give you a good survey. Ryan Embree: There you go. I like that. Well, last time we spoke, Richard, this, this really stuck with me. You know, we kind of talked and we were in the throes of the pandemic when we had that episode talking about how “C is the new A” in hospitality and meaning post 2020, travelers had really become accustomed to kind of your average service in hospitality. And it was really going to be those hotel management companies that went above and beyond, like, Aberigo Hotel Management and prioritize the guest experience that were gonna reap those rewards. How were you and your team kind of prioritizing the guest experience and ensuring that A+ service? Richard Alberigo : So, I’ll be honest with you, I think the entire industry after Covid was just trying to, throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what would stick. Sure. I mean, you know, yes, we had strategies and so did everybody else, and there was no basis on the strategy. You were just trying something, right? I mean, we tried housekeeping bonuses for longevity, and we had hiring bonuses for, you know, referring a friend. And what it came down to, looking back on it, none of that really worked. The good, the good employees were still the good employees. And, you know, the retention did not go up a bit, right? Because the ones that didn’t really wanna work in the hotel business didn’t work, and the ones that didn’t work out didn’t work out. So looking back on that, that was kind of a waste of time. But we, you know, at that, we were in desperation mode. We were, we were trying anything. So now we’re trying to holding people a little bit more accountable than we were then. I mean, instead of worrying about if somebody gonna get upset and they’re gonna leave if we hold ’em accountable, you know, we’re honest and upfront with, and we’re focusing more on the interview process now than just the retention process because you gotta bring in the right people. As I mentioned earlier, I was great when I had the great people and I was bad when I didn’t have the great people. You gotta in the interview structure, you know, we’re trying to change it up a little bit instead of asking, asking behavioral questions. I think those are becoming paste now because they have those rehearsed, you know, tell me about a time and they’ve got that time and they just keep repeating it over and over. Did it even happen? We don’t know. It might just have been made up, right? So we have to change our interview process and ask the questions that caters to the Gen Z. Like, you know, can you smile for eight hours a day? That’s a question that no one ever asked me when I was applying for a front desk agent position, because it was assumed I was applying for a front desk agent position, right? You know, and can you stand up for eight hours or, you know, can you greet guests? Can you answer the phone? I mean, we’re having so much trouble with phone etiquette now because they’ve, the first time they’ve answered a phone maybe in a year might be at your hotel. So that’s the kind of stuff in the interview process that we have to identify someone that can actually do the job and be specific and ask them if they can make, if they can accomplish those goals and do those functions. And perfect example we had a front desk agent three months in, she wasn’t doing a very good job with smiling. So I said, oh, told the gm you need to go over there and, you know, tell her she needs to smile. And he goes, I did. And I go, what’d she say? And he says, well, she said, that didn’t come up in the interview. She didn’t know that was required. So that’s really opened my eyes that, you know, we’ve gotta do it early on and we can’t just assume these employees and associates, these new associates can actually do the job. So once you bring in someone that’s got energy and is a cheerleader and takes accountability, then I think it’s a lot easier to manage than trying to make chicken salad out of chicken soup. Ryan Embree: Certainly. And you know, we’ve talked about on this podcast before, the way that this younger generation is even preparing for taking a job like this. And what they’ll start to do, they’ll look at reviews and of saying, Hey, these are the, these are the type of issues, or, you know, this is the type of feedback that guests are gonna be giving me at the front desk. If they’re seeing a bunch of five star reviews talking about how Jennifer at the front desk really made their day and made it special for them, versus I complained to the front desk five times and they didn’t do anything about it. Hearing those two things paints a completely different picture for an employee. So another just really, really strong argument to, to have the online presence kind of buckled in and buckled up because this new generation, they’re gonna be doing all of their research online before they even pick up the call or even and press that apply button. So, and let’s talk, talk about that, Richard, you know, at the Suite Spot’s core, we are digital marketing podcast. First, can you kind of share with our Suite Spot audience the importance of maintaining a high performing digital presence, consistent digital marketing strategy in 2025? Richard Alberigo : Well, I think especially for some of the individual owners out there, the smaller hotels, they don’t have time. They’re trying to have carry around too many hats. They don’t have time for the, like the travel media group, what you guys do, you know, the way you can answer surveys for them and, you know, sales and marketing and, and doing all that stuff and taking the load, answering reviews, social media, I mean, taking that load off them, it, it’s such an important, I wish I would’ve known that existed, you know, back before when I had just had two or three hotels because we didn’t have someone to do that, right? Because our company was small. And I would’ve loved to have somebody that you could just pay on the side much cheaper than paying an individual full-time salary and let ’em do that stuff for you. And it, and like you said, it means a lot if you are not answering your social reviews and you don’t have anyone to do it, or you got someone doing it, you know, half the time it’s hurting you. Right? So I think that’s a big time key, especially for a first time owner or somebody with’s a smaller company to get out there and hire somebody to do that job for them so they don’t have to worry about it, because I don’t think they understand the impact of having negative reviews and nobody answering ’em. They don’t understand that, you know, why that’s important to show empathy online and that kind of thing. Ryan Embree: Well, the list of the list of duties for a GM owner, manager, you know, has grown. It has not shrank the responsibilities. You talked about it with the hats that they wear, right? It is something now that our added responsibilities posting on your social media consistently, it feels like a new platform is popping up every single day with, with social media and having to be awareness on there. And especially with a generation that’s coming up doing most of their research, as you said it are more likely to pick up their phone to, to scroll on social media than they are to pick up the phone and, and call property. It’s absolutely critical and crucial, and that’s what we preach on the podcast. And, you know, so, so happy to hear that there are hoteliers out there that are doing this, that, that see the impacts, feel the impacts of what it’s like when something’s not responded to, as you said, or going to your social media when it’s snowing in Houston and seeing the last post about, Hey, come see our pool, our beautiful pool here. Right? Right. And, and it just feels outta touch. It, it feels like, how am I supposed to take care of you, host you as a, as a hotel if we’re not managing something as simple as your social media? Richard Alberigo : It’s kind of outta sight, outta mind is the reason I think a lot of hoteliers don’t do it because they’re worrying about, you know, the plumbing problem they’ve got in room 211 and, you know, the electricity went out, the elevator went out, and they’re not thinking about that kind of hidden gem out there. And, but it is crucial because I know when I go traveling now or go to a new restaurant, I mean, I go on there and look at the reviews and, you know, look at the ratings and it, it’s a key decision maker. And, you know, if you’ve got poor reviews out there or you’re not answering ’em, and you know, I’m not going, you know, so I’ll be honest, I don’t go to the restaurant. Why would I go to a hotel? Right? Ryan Embree: I get it. And, you know, you know, I was at the front desk too, and I think we all, if we ever, if anyone that’s worked the front desk listening to this or watching this knows when an upset guest is walking towards you, you can feel that from across the lobby. Right? Richard Alberigo : Remember those days, Ryan, when I was in hotels that weren’t very nice. When they come around that elevator and they’d come to me and I’d just cringe and then they’d walk by and I’m like, phew. Ryan Embree: Exactly. But that’s, but that’s kind of the analogy and the parallel that we talked to our hotel partners about, about saying, now imagine that same guest, but they’ve just left this feedback online, you know, and, and not getting a response. Richard Alberigo : And that’s why our, our breakfast, it used to be called the lobby lizard or the Breakfast lizard, you know, we, we require our leaders to be out there at least one hour a day to giving that last impression. Because the first thing they’re going to remember when they get that survey is that last impression. I’m a big on first impression, don’t get me wrong, but some of that, if it’s a three day steak could have been forgotten. But, but you go into that breakfast and, you know, greet ’em and talk to them and find out if there’s any issues and, you know, hand ’em a water to go and suddenly that survey pops in their phone and, you know, maybe that eight turns into a nine. So you know, it’s crucial to, to deal with ’em on the way out the door instead of, you know, sticking sitting into your office. Richard Alberigo : Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That age old trick of, and you get great feedback too. That’s the other thing, you know, as, as you can hear, and sales leads as well, right? Ryan Embree: Yeah, 100%. So, as we wrap up, we covered a lot today. A lot of topics, a lot of questions, you know, as we wrap up today, would love to hear again, you hit that milestone last year. What’s your vision for the future of Alberigo Hotel Management? Richard Alberigo : Well, we passed out a book, actually, I purchased a book for all our, all our leaders. It’s called Be Amazing and Go Home. It’s one of the best customer service books. You know, I’ve read the, the Seven Habits and you know, all the main ones that you’ve heard of, but this was, was so, so impactful for me. Talks about holding, you know, people accountable, holds, you know, being ready for the day. You know, it’s, this title tells it Be amazing or go home. And, you know, I was watching the video from the book an it was so simple where the gentleman says, you just need to be a little bit better than average. And he pauses and you’re thinking, you know, why is this so impactful? Right? He didn’t really gimme anything. But then he says every single day, and I think you, I think simplifying customer service is what, where we need to go, right? You a little bit better than average. You don’t have to be a superstar every day, but you gotta be a little bit better in average, but you do it every day. So I think consistency will determine if a hotel is successful or not in 2025 or beyond. I think it’s always been that way. But, you know, sometimes we get too much into the rocket science of, you know, let me give ’em a gift bag and the way in and the way out, and we forget it still comes down to the basics. It’s just being nice. You know, if you’ve got a lot of employees that are nice, you can train those people, right? But unfortunately, you know, some of the employees that’s, you know, will move into our hotels and we’re like, that person’s not nice. Why are they here? Right? ’cause they probably knew how to answer the interview questions, right? So I think that’s the key. Just getting back to the basics this year, you know, so we are going to hold people accountable. I mean, we’re big on culture, but I think maybe we went a little too far on culture because we thought, you know, we were scared like anyone else’s, what if they all leave us? Right? So I think now Covid is in the rear view mirror and we’ve got to hire the right people and make them as great as they can be. But, you know, don’t settle for second best. Ryan Embree: Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, maybe it’s that smile that you were talking about that it’s just a little bit better, right? And, and taking it up a notch with, with your level of service. So firing message to end on. Richard, we appreciate the time taking outta your, your busy schedule. We wish you a bunch of success for the next 10 years with Alberigo Hotel Management. So thank you so much for joining me today. Richard Alberigo : I’m looking forward to the next time. It was fun. Ryan Embree: Alright, thank you. And thank you for listening to The Suite Spot, and we’ll talk to you next time To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

1
157 – 2025 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference with Sarah Moss 22:49

منذ 13 weeks22:49

22:49

Sarah Moss, Chief of Staff at Hunter Hotel Advisors, joins the Suite Spot to discuss the upcoming 36th annual Hunter Hotel Investment Conference and give hoteliers a look at what they can look forward to from the event. Tune in to this episode to learn more about the live sessions, panels, notable speakers, and on-site entertainment at the 2025 HHIC. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining us. Wherever you are, listening to us, or maybe watching us on our official TMG YouTube channel. Got a fantastic episode for you, kind of becoming a little bit of an annual tradition. Uh, really excited, uh, to talk about this topic, subject, and, uh, one of the most prestigious events in hospitality. Um, hopefully we’re not, uh, well, hopefully we are introducing this to our hotel audience, but you should already know about this event because it, it blows up. LinkedIn really shuts down that social media ’cause you hear everyone is there in Atlanta. I will introduce our guest, Sarah Moss, chief of staff at the Hunter Hotel Advisors. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me back here on the Suite Spot once again. Sarah Moss: Ryan, I’m so excited to be back and talking about one of my favorite subjects, the Hunter Conference today. Ryan Embree: Yes, we’re excited. It’s that time of year we’re ramping up, right? It’s everybody. There’s hotels thawing out right now, right now in the, in the winter as we get ready for that busy spring travel season. Uh, really a perfect time for, for the conference, uh, in March. But before we get into the conference, you know, last year we kind of heard a little bit about your background. Um, and your shared kind of the journey that led you to Hunter Hotel Advisors and the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference ultimately. But I wanna kick off this episode. You know, last year we did a hospitality campus cross series and we talked a lot about mentors, right? We know hospitality, still struggling with staffing a little bit, but we talked about mentors and influences in our hospitality careers and journey. Wondering if you have any, you know, major mentors that have, that have, you know, really influenced you in your career or just people in general that have, have made an impact. Well, Sarah Moss: Thank you for having me on again, Ryan. Sure. I love telling my story about hospitality, especially here at Hunter. And I think everyone’s journey is so unique in hospitality and the seasons that they go through in their life. I think there are many mentors that they find throughout their seasons, whether they’re in new jobs, you know, life changes, new cities, whatever it may be. And so, um, throughout my journey, I think I’ve had many mentors along the way and I’m so grateful for them. I think about my time at Sea Island with Melinda Lasky and teaching me, you know, what excellence was and how hospitality at the highest standards should be held to at a Forbes five star resort. And I think about my time back at Georgia State with, uh, Dr. Debbie Cannon and Esther E. And just their wisdom that they imparted on me and their, you know, they just believed in me when, you know, I was a student and just gave me so much courage to go out and try to pursue my dreams. Um, and the opportunities to do that. They introduced me to Hunter. And so I’m so grateful for them to provide me this job here and now. I think, you know, in, in my job now here at Hunter, I have these other influential people like Rachel Humphrey and Lisa Lombardo in my life, who, you know, whenever I have the question or the, you know, the thing I’m stuck on, I, you know, go to my circle and I can ask them what’s, um, in their infinite wisdom, what, what they would do or what advice they would have. So I’m just really grateful for the people in my life and just the time that they have given me. ’cause I think time is something that’s so, um, precious. Ryan Embree: It is, especially in a hospitality world, right? That is 365, 24/7. I mean, time is one of probably the most precious gift that we have in hospitality, and I love to hear that. We have hospitality leaders here all the time on the podcast, talk about the different influences, whether it be brands that they’ve learned from or grew up in, and then they and they took some of that and then went to an maybe a competitor brand and then took some ideas and philosophies from that. And it really makes for this kind of mixing pot of ideas. But it all kind of comes back to service. It all comes back to hospitality, which is what we love about our industry and why the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference is so great because you get that opportunity to get so many ideas, philosophies, brands, asset management companies, everybody all in one spot for those couple days. Um, and I wanna turn our attention to this year’s, uh, hunter Hotel Investment Conference. You know, I think we talked about it last year, how the beginning phases and the planning phases for this really happens like right after the last one in, sorry. It does, it does. So I, I really want to give our audience kind of a behind the scenes look at what goes into the planning and more importantly, the programming, because it’s very, very intentional from what I’ve seen, this being my second year. Talk to us a little bit about how that agenda is built. Yeah, Sarah Moss: So like you mentioned, Ryan, we start the day after the conference in planning for the next year. Um, one of the things that we value here at Hunter is the feedback that we get. We, we relish it, we welcome it. Um, so the attendee survey feedback from the prior conference goes out literally the day, uh, the conference closes. And we, you know, uh, go through all of that with a fine tooth comb, understanding the things we did well, things we didn’t. Um, one of the things we actually did this year is we sent out a survey, um, probably like August, September, October time period to our hotel owners saying, Hey, we, you are our target audience here at the Hunter Conference. We wanna know what’s top of mind for you and tell us, you know, how we can suit our programming for that this year. And so one of the things that we found was lending is a huge topic and hot button for people this year. So you’ll find, talk about it a little bit later, but you’ll find some more sessions in our programming this year tailored to that just to make sure that we’re really helping our audience understand the market and things that they can do and advice that they can get from our industry experts that are coming to the conference this year. Ryan Embree: Yeah. So, so important right now, obviously with interest rates where they’re at a lot of uncertainty maybe in the air, you know, that super, super important and critical, especially for hotel owners that are, are looking to, uh, invest dollars. So very, very important there. But, you know, going back to the feedback, I mean, this is, I know we talk about this from a conference standpoint, but really can be drilled down to what we’re hearing from guests and hotel owners using that feedback. We talked about it last year, kind of improve as a blueprint on the guest experience. So, so critical to kind of hear and, and the timing of when that feedback is given and received is critical, right? Because those little, uh, intimate details about maybe a conversation or a feeling or sentiment that you had about a certain session over time, you know, just with our attention spans and everything that’s, and distractions being thrown at us and done, you know, that sentiment and feeling might kind of dull or you might forget some of those, uh, the pieces of your hotel experience if you’re talking about a hotel on the hotel side. Ryan Embree: So getting that feedback immediately, the quicker you can get that, the quicker you can respond and react to it. Very, very proactive. Sarah Moss: I will say there is for our team. Sometimes he backs hard to hear. Yeah. And, and that it’s not always something that you wanna hear too. Right? Our team works all year long on this one extremely large event, and, you know, you put your heart and soul into it at the end of the day. Like, if you hear something that’s negative, like it’s not always the funnest to hear, right? Ryan Embree: Sure. Yeah. And that, that happens in hospitality too, right? Sarah Moss: Absolutely. But, you know, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s just always great to have it. I always say, Hey, it’s better for us to know this feedback than it is for someone just to sit on it. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. And, and if we can, if we can really shift our mindset with feedback hotels the same way, uh, because we do take a, I mean, we’re, we’re all human. We do take that personal sometimes, especially when we do something, um, as important as host someone in our house, right? Host someone in our hotel, uh, and to hear that feedback. But if we can just shift the mindset a little bit to say this, okay, this are actually helping me to improve. And obviously, again, from a hotel all the way up to the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, that feedback very, very invaluable. And, you know, I got the opportunity to give feedback for the first time since last year was my first time attending the event. Absolutely loved the educational conference and component to this, but was really surprised with the networking opportunities. And I know that’s very intentional from your team to build that in lot of meetings being done. A lot of conversations talk to our audience about that balance between providing value with education, which everyone’s always, you know, a sponge trying to, looking to learn, but also networking with these hospitality professionals that could lead to ultimate deals down the line. Sarah Moss: Uh, you hit the nail on the head with us. Intentionality is the word there for us. We take a really hard look at our programming every year, making sure that we’re balancing, you know, breakout sessions with networking breaks and interactive, uh, sessions as well. Ryan, I don’t know if you made it to the table last year, um, one of our sessions that we had, the round tables that we hosted, really intimate setting to foster conversations. Um, this year we actually are bringing in a new session called Coffee with the Bosses at another kind of form of the table where there will be industry experts at different tables and different topics that you can go, can go and sit with and just learn from them, ask them questions, pick their brain. So we try to, like you said, be super intentional about the timing there at the conference. One of the unique things that Hunter also does is we record all of our sessions and we also stream them throughout the conference. So say that you’re in a meeting and you miss a session, you can go back later and watch it, which is something that’s very unique to Hunter. So we, we, we know that sometimes it’s not always the most opportune thing to sit in a session for, you know, five or six hours a day when it, you’re there to meet people and there to do business. And so we provide that opportunity to our attendees either, you know, during the conference, you can watch it post-conference whenever it is five months later. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Yeah. It was so smart. ’cause you know, you could be caught up in a conversation right. With somebody that you’re having. You’re, you’re, we’ve all been in those situations where time gets away from you and then all of a sudden you, oh my goodness, looking at the agenda, I’ve already missed a session. Then it’s right there on demand for you. So, super smart. This is the 36 annual, uh, hunter Hotel Investment Conference after 36 years. It’s tough sometimes to kind of find ways to be innovative and new and not, and not stale, but been so impressed by your team. ’cause you just mentioned something new for 2025, you know, how do you, how do you and your team really brainstorm about keeping things fresh to make sure it upholds to the standard at which the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference is known for in the industry? Sarah Moss: Yeah, I think you talked about this a little bit last year. You know, introducing some fun into the programming is always sure something for Hunter. It’s great to hear from industry experts who sometimes you just need a little bit of a mental break. And so I think that’s really where we are able to, you know, add those fun and fresh ideas into the programming every year with maybe even outside the industry people, you know, I men I mentioned the Coffee with the Bosses earlier, which is inside the industry and something uni unique, but this year we have, um, two new keynotes for us, which is Molly Bloom and Jesse Cole coming in. I am so excited for both of them. I think they’re going to be amazing. They’re very different stories, very different business models, but you know, they have a really unique entrepreneurial spirit to both of them. And I think there’s something to be learned from our audience there. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited, very excited for those, uh, those keynotes. Saw Molly’s game, uh, recently. Yeah. Uh, very, very excited about that. But I do think there’s a lot of application to what hotel owners and entrepreneurs can, can kind of bring to the spirit of hospitality, right? I mean, this is the oldest industry, um, that we al that’s what we always claim, right? Uh, so there’s, there’s always something that can apply to, to what we’re doing, how we’re hosting our guests. One of the things I, I really loved most on my first time attending this, Sarah, was that this event really is for everybody, right? I ran into, uh, multiple brands that were having some really cool brand announcements. Uh, third party management companies, asset owners, developers, and then even indivi when went even as far down as just individual hoteliers looking to be there and, and connect with people. What you think makes Hunter kind of that perfect. Uh, we talked about a melting pot for all of these different industry professionals to, to gather in March. Sarah Moss: Melting pot’s a great analogy for us. Um, we here at Hunter know who we are and who we cater to, and that’s hotel owners and whomever is in the hotel owner ecosystem is more than welcome to join us at Hunter every year. And like you just mentioned, it’s the brands, it’s asset managers, it’s lawyers, it’s architects, it’s whomever is in their ecosystem to develop, own and manage their properties on a daily basis. And so we are grateful for all of our partners that we have and grateful for all of our hotel owners who attend and are very loyal to us every year because we wanna make sure that we retain them. ’cause that’s really who, like their ecosystems, who comes to the conference as well. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Well it’s, you know, it is a large industry, but it’s also kind of a small network o of people. Sometimes it’s niche if it, it’s big, but feels very tight and and small and you don’t really get that feeling until you go to multiple of these events and you start recognizing people mm-hmm . From conversations that you had. So Hunter Hotel Investment Conference is a great place for that. Also known for its recognition. Right. Uh, another big piece, specifically the Hunter Conference award for excellence and inspiration, this year’s, uh, recipient is John McKibbon iii. Talk to us a little bit about his impact on hospitality and why he was chosen this year. Sarah Moss: So the Hunter Award, uh, is we value a hotelier every year who kind of hits the three main criteria for us, which is leadership, uh, citizenship and innovation. And in those three, I think John embodies them perfectly, and I’m gonna walk you through each of them if you like, but for leadership, he has McKibbon, uh, hospitality, McKibbon places. He’s a third generational entrepreneur, um, starting his businesses from a citizenship, uh, standpoint. He has a very large family trust, McKibbon Family Trust that gives back to the community and is a very large, uh, sponsor of FIU University and does a lot of what their hospitality program there. And, uh, on the innovation standpoint, which I think is so interesting, especially where we are right now in the hospitality industry. He founded M three, which is the first hotel only accounting platform, um, which has now, you know, grown so large and was acquired by Blackstone, uh, most recently. So we are just so excited to honor him this year. I think he’s done so much for the industry and we are, uh, grateful to have him with us. Ryan Embree: It’s so cool to hear the background and stories of, in some of these hoteliers, again, in its legacies. Um, you know, like John McKibben, uh, and the philanthropy and, and support of the hospitality industry. We were down at FIU last year for our hospitality campus crawl, and I got the opportunity to meet with Dr. Chang, the dean, and he was talking specifically about John McKibbon, uh, and the generous contributions that he did and the support that he had for, uh, the Chaplain School of Hospitality down there. So, uh, well deserved, really excited to see that recognition for him. Sarah, last year we talked about, and, and really I was frankly impressed with the importance of the conference theme and how much just is behind that and how you get your team kind of motivated and bought in and really theme everything around this, this conference slogan right last year was No, no Limits this year. Elevate your game. Give us some background on this theme and, uh, why you think it was chosen for 2025 and what do you want it to embody? Sarah Moss: Uh, so for us, elevate your game. We, I think as an industry, we can always challenge ourselves no matter where you are, what, what level you’re at. I think there’s always some innovation that needs to be happening. And so we always wanna send out a challenge or a call to action to our attendees every year. And so that’s where this elevate your game came from. Like you mentioned for us, this, uh, this theme really goes into every aspect of the conference, whether it’s like sponsor activations to, like our keynote speakers, like both of them have to do with some type of like gaming or sports this year. And so it gets intertwined into everything for us, and I think it actually brings some cohesion to the event in a lot of ways, which helps us, you know, unify our messaging and unify really what we’re trying to achieve and accomplish. Ryan Embree: Well, I I, I absolutely love that and see how it’s all tied in as hospitality people, we love our themes, right? Uh, whether it’s designing a, a new hotel, you know, or throwing a conference or event, you know, it’s very, very cool to see, again, the intentionality, uh, behind a theme like this. And you can get really everybody on board and, you know, even, you know, we’re talking about a con a a hotel investment conference here, but even from a, an individual hotel standpoint, doing something like this to get your team to rally behind, get competitive over whether it’s reviews, whether it’s room revenue, occupancy, or just any sort of goals for the new year. Absolutely love this idea. So elevate your game for 2025. Challenge accepted there. Uh, Sarah, now on the marketing side, you have Teague Talks and Teague Walks, you actually spoke about that. Uh, that was really kind of born from, from some, from Covid, right from the pandemic. And that kind of came, came out, ended up being a silver lining there for you. And it’s been really, really successful. I watch each and every episode, uh, dialed in there. How have these kind of help grow the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference and grow the brand of un of Hunter Hotel advisors, Sarah Moss: Like you mentioned. Um, our inception story was born out of Covid and was born out of, um, unfortunately having to cancel the conference in 2020. Um, and so we like to think of tiktoks and Teak Box. It’s like the perfect brand, or excuse me, bridge between the advisors and the conference, uh, brand for us. You know, we have, we have our two companies here at Hunter, um, and tiktoks really bridges those. It provides the networking and provides the insight and advice to people on a was weekly basis, now monthly basis here in 2025. So we have just really enjoyed them. I think that they have been more fruitful than we ever imagined, which is something, you know, really unique for us to see. Um, blossom over time. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I mean, it shows the power of awareness and, and really, I mean, this Hunter Hotel investment conference happens one time a year, but there is something always connecting back to that, right? And I think there’s a lesson there with digital marketing about being consistent in what you’re doing just because it’s a slower season and you don’t get a lot of your occupancy maybe to the spring or summer. This is the time to kind of build audience, build brand awareness and keep pointing back to the value proposition of ultimately your hotel or, or portfolio of hotels, of your management company there. But all about consistency, whether it’s things like social media, whether it’s your service that you’re providing, you know, super, super important. And I think the series that you have with Teague Talks and Teague walks through fantastic job of, of kind of a, as a great reminder for that. We’re wrapping up here a a as we wrap up, you know, I really want to w with this being my second time, uh, how many, how many years Sarah, uh, have you been involved with this conference? I think you had mentioned it last year. Sarah Moss: This’ll be my eighth year. Ryan Embree: Eighth year, okay. So we got a second timer and an eighth timer here. You know, I think for those people, and .. Sarah Moss: I feel young, there are people that have been in the conference for 30, 60 plus years, I know 20 plus years. It always, uh, it’s, it’s an honor to have them with us, but it always just makes me feel so young in my conference age, Ryan Embree: Sure. So I, I want to talk to maybe those, our, our hotel audience that haven’t ever been to the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference. Paint us a picture of, you know, what that feeling’s like walking through those lobby doors of the Marriott Marquee in March and what they can ultimately expect to get out of this event. Sarah Moss: Yeah. Like you mentioned, we’re here in Atlanta at the Marriott Marquee. Um, it’s been our home for the past 17 plus years. Uh, and I, and I call it a home because I think that’s truly what it has been for us. Um, it is southern hospitality too. Its epitome. And I hope that people feel that when they walk in the door. I hope they feel the energy of people buzzing around and networking and getting deals done. You know, here in, in our office, uh, we have like a funny saying, it’s like 23, it’s like gathering our 23, uh, hundred of our closest friends in a party in our backyard. ’cause we’re based here in Atlanta. And I hope, I hope people feel that. I hope they feel that the family aspect of the Hunter family there, I hope they feel the intimacy of being able to have like those connections and conversations with people and not feeling so large that they’re like wandering around like, , where am I? What should I be doing next? Um, like bumping people in, bumping PE into people in the hallways. I think it’s just something that is unique to Hunter and we, uh, we like to lean into that. Ryan Embree: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, uh, again, it’s last year being my first time. I, I think you really nailed it with, I felt an energy kind of walking in through those doors, right? Like a buzz. But it was my first time. And I will say that, uh, after a couple hours of being there, hearing that opening, I’d felt like I’d, I’d already been there for, for a couple years, right? And, and it was so great to see what jumped out to me with my first year is I think I had the, had the CEO of a major hotel brand checking in before me and a management CEO of a management company right behind. So that was, that was the audience there that was checking into the marquee when we were checking in for, for three days of awesome educational content, you know, networking, a lot of fun as you mentioned, you know, us hospitality people also love our after hour events and, and being able to network that way. But it was just so great and really encourage anybody listening to this that’s considering to, to check it out because again, it was my first time last year and it, it just took a couple hours to feel like I, I I’d been here for a while. So Sarah, thank you, um, for, for you and your team putting on, we know the hard work that’s behind this. We, we’ve heard that today. Any final thoughts before we wrap up today? Sarah Moss: My team would be remiss if I didn’t say you should follow us on social media, check out the website and register for the conference coming up. Uh, we’d love to have, you’d love to host you. So, um, we look forward to seeing you in March. Ryan Embree: Yes, we love a good, uh, social media plug on, on the sweet spot for our digital marketers out there. So thank you Sarah. We know you are super, super busy gearing up for this incredible event. So thank you for taking the time outta your schedule to talk with me today. And, um, if it’s not already clear, the sweet spot will be at the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference in March. We are so excited to announce that our second time. So if you are headed out there, give us a shout, give us a follow, give us a message. We’ll meet you out there, we’ll do some interviews out there. We’ll, we’ll bring it all to you live from the sweet spot, so make sure you subscribe and follow us. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me. Sarah Moss: Well thank you Ryan for having me. We’ll see you in March. Ryan Embree: Alright, and we’ll talk to you next time on the Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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156 – TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Micajah Sturdivant 34:55

منذ 16 weeks34:55

34:55

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we welcome Micajah Sturdivant, CEO of MMI Hospitality, as the newest addition to the TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. With a background in hospitality and hotel management spanning generations in his family, Micajah gives audiences a unique take on how hospitality has evolved over the decades and how MMI Hospitality has cemented itself as a pioneer in the industry. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. Happy 2025. This is your host, Ryan Embree. We are here back in the new year with a great new episode at continuing. I think we've been doing this for about two years now. This TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series, as a reminder of this is your first time, this is all about the hospitality trailblazers that have been blazing a path in hospitality. Our guests has been doing it for over five decades, we're gonna talk about in a second, but it's about those people and management companies and brands that are pushing our industry forward. As we get into a new year, I think this is the best way to kick it off. So without further ado, I'm gonna bring in our guest today, CEO of MMI Hospitality, Micajah Sturdivant. Micajah, thank you so much for being with me on the Suite Spot today. Micajah Sturdivant: No, it's a great honor. Thank you for having me. Ryan Embree: Yeah, we're excited. We're gonna, we're gonna talk a lot because we got a lot of history to cover with your hospitality group, MMI. But before we do that, this is your first time on the Suite Spot. First time guest, hopefully first of many visits, but as, as I always like to do as is tradition. Talk about a little bit about your background and hospitality and the journey that led you to MMI Hospitality. Micajah Sturdivant: No, I appreciate the invitation and opportunity to share about our organization that originally was founded in 1956 when Kemmons Wilson was conceptualizing Holiday Inn. My grandfather and his roommate from grad school were early adopters to the idea of what the Holiday Inn and Internet Interstate system expansion could really provide, not only for the travelers, but from their perspective and specifically my grandfather. The opportunity for a Mississippi workforce that was going through a major transformation in the late 1940s and 50s where primarily agriculture focused economy was modernizing. In many ways, technology was being brought in and it was negatively impacting opportunities for workforce to have a quality meaning of quality lifestyle. And so saw that the opportunity within hospitality could be a great employer and so was one of the first Holiday Inn franchisees. That company has since grown to work with all the major franchisors as owner and operator, as well as adding a contract food service management company and a restaurant brand as well. So it's a mixed bag across the spectrum hospitality. But in many ways, they're businesses that were born out of one another or very much build off of the knowledge and information that our corporate shared services team is able to provide across the entire enterprise. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, hospitality, I mean, even 50 years ago, it was definitely a profession. I mean, we talk about hotels being the oldest profession out there. So a lot of rich history, storied history there. I'm sure you've seen a lot of evolution. I mean, there's been tons of changes just within the last couple years with this being part of your family. Talk to us a little bit about how you were first introduced into hospitality and how you ended up where yo...…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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155 – Top 5 Sentiment Tags of 2024 18:06

منذ 18 weeks18:06

18:06

Suite Spot host, Ryan Embree, and Travel Media Group Director of Product - Respond and Resolve™, Jackie Avery, break down the top 5 guest sentiment tags of 2024 and give explain what insights these tags hold for hoteliers. Tune in to the first episode of 2025 and learn how to leverage this data for your hotel portfolio to kick off the new year. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you for listening or watching wherever you're joining us from, hopefully watching in our brand new Suite Spot podcast here in Maitland, Florida. Very excited to bring you another great episode, a very popular episode with a lot of hoteliers, wanting to know some of the top five sentiments of this last year. So it's one of my personal favorite episodes and a personal favorite guest, Jackie Avery, our Director of Product Respond and Resolve™, which is our review response solution, award-winning review response solution here at Travel Media Group. Jackie, thank you so much for joining me back on the Suite Spot. Jackie Avery: Yeah, thanks, Ryan. It's so great to be here. I look forward to this every year. I'm so passionate about this and just spending the time reflecting on the past 12 months and what really resonated with travelers. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. What do you think of the new studio? Jackie Avery: I love it. It looks so good. So comfortable here. You know, I am so happy to be back. Ryan Embree: Awesome. Well, we're happy to have you back. Let's get into it. Let's start talking some numbers. If you've heard this before, this isn't kind of an annual tradition that we do at the end of the year, but we look at all of the guest sentiment that travelers left. For those that might, again, this might be their first time listening to this style of episode, give us a quick definition of guest sentiment and reviews and maybe some numbers that go along with that. Jackie Avery: Yeah, absolutely. So, if it's your first time here, you just wanna refresh. Thanks for listening. You know, we love that you're taking this time to really, dig in and learn some, some of this stuff and kind of, you know, again, reflect on what travelers care about. So guest sentiment, these are things being mentioned in reviews, right? So, as Ryan mentioned, I'm overseeing the review response team here at Travel Media Group, and my team to kind of put it into perspective number wise, during our slower months, we're processing and looking at 25,000 reviews ish, during peak travel season. That number jumps up to mid to high thirties. So, as we're going through this and kind of sharing reflections and really, you know, deep diving, the information that we're going over today is coming from right around 41 million sentiment tags. Ryan Embree: WoW, that's absolutely incredible. You think about that 25,000 per month to about 30, you know, high thirties, but 41 million in sentiment tags. So not only are guests leaving the reviews at a record pace, but they're also talking about so much about the guest experience. And I think that's really important when we talk about this type of episode because there's so many elements to a guest day, things that can go right, things that can obviously go wrong that we hear about in these reviews and see in these reviews. And today we're gonna review the top five sentiments. Let's go ahead and start at number five. Jackie Avery: Yeah, absolutely. Before we jump in real quick, I wanna say, because you said there might be some people listening this year who weren't here last year.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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154 – 2024 Year in Review with Travel Media Group President, Dana Singer 13:47

منذ 20 weeks13:47

13:47

Catch the 2024 TMG Year in Review episode with Travel Media Group President, Dana Singer as she joins the Suite Spot to discuss all the milestones and monumental achievements this past year and what hoteliers can expect from TMG in 2025. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embee. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining us. Wherever you're listening or watching us from. If you are watching us on our official TMG YouTube channel, you will see that we are in a brand new space. We're in a brand new area. I'm so proud to launch and announce our very own Suite Spot podcast studio. This is a long time coming, my guest here in a second, we're gonna talk about it. We're really excited. You know, we put a lot of time and effort into this podcast studio to bring you the listener, our hotel audience, the best quality and video, and hopefully we can have more and more guests come in studio and do these podcasts with you today. But for now, we've got a very familiar guest, an annual tradition, one of my favorites, President at Travel Media Group, Dana Singer. Thank you so much, Dana, for being on the Suite Spot once again. Dana Singer: Absolutely. Good morning, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah, we're excited. We're here to, as the titles talks about, talk about 2024 TMG year in review. Again, one of my favorite annual traditions that we do here. We cover a lot of ground in 2024 as a company, as an organization, but more importantly for our hotel partners who've had a lot of success. Talk to us. We're gonna talk about 2025 and, and maybe some of the foundation that's been built for moving forward, but this is a great time of year to also reflect back on all those successes. Talk to us a little bit about 2024 and the journey for our hotel partners. Dana Singer: Absolutely. I mean, 2024 has truly been a special year for travel media group in so in so many ways. Most importantly, for the hospitality partners that we work with every day. You just mentioned the success that we were able to experience with all of them. And one of our most important milestones though, was really moving into our new headquarters. And it's not just about a bigger building, it's about creating a collaborative space that supports the growth of our teams. So we can continue to innovate and serve our partners at the highest levels of support and expertise. Internally, we've developed a number of exciting new solutions. We've enhanced our services and support, and we continue to find ways to better understand and meet our partner's needs. And to do that, we've intentionally dug deeper, into the challenges and opportunities our partners face, and we've created resources around them. We're so committed to giving hotels the tools they need to achieve their goals and succeed, especially as guest expectations evolve. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and that's key. We've talked a lot about on this podcast, you know, almost feels like technology in our industry is moving faster than ever. Something that maybe took a couple years to implement is now changing within the quarter that's due to technology, AI all sorts of different factors. Guest expectations certainly have changed over the past couple years. We've talked about it on this particular episode, over the years. Let's talk about those ever changing guest expectations and what Travel Media Group continues to do to innovate and kind of keep pace with those changes. Dana Singer: I mean, guest expectations are constantly shifting, so it's crucial for us to not only keep up, but stay ahead.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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153 – TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Jason Pirock 26:32

منذ 22 weeks26:32

26:32

In this episode of the Suite Spot, the head of marketing at Springboard Hospitality, Jason Pirock sits down with podcast host, Ryan Embree, to discuss the incredible Springboard Hospitality brand, exciting hotel developments, social media strategies, and much more. Tune in now to learn more about what makes the Springboard Hospitality brand one-of-a-kind. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check-in, and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embee. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree continuing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. We've done quite a few of this, but if this is your first time hearing it to set up the series, this is all about those individuals, brands, management companies, all paving a way forward for our hospitality industry. Trailblazing a path, and we have a great guest with me. It's certainly an embodiment of a TMG hospitality Trailblazer, Jason Pirock, head of marketing at Springboard Hospitality. Jason, thank you so much for taking the time. Jason Pirock: Yeah, thank you for having me. Ryan Embree: Now, I asked this on every single Trailblazer episode. Always get a different answer. But since this is your first time being on the Suite Spot, we love to hear stories about how you made it into hospitality. Sometimes we just fall into it as a career. Sometimes we went to school for it. What was the hospitality journey that led you to Springboard Hospitality? Jason Pirock: Yeah, absolutely. So I probably have more of a non-traditional background when it comes to hospitality here. A lot of folks have sort of been in the industry for their entire career for a very long time. I actually started my career in retail coming out of college. I was recruited to work for Target Corporate in Minneapolis. And so I started off in merchandising there actually merchandise presentation, which was at the time their entry level marketing. They didn't really have an easy way to get into the actual marketing department, but that was the closest point. And then spent some time with Target and moved into marketing and then found my way through a, a few other companies throughout the years, Sears Corporate. I worked for a company called Brookfield Retail, formerly, uh, General Growth Properties. And then I had sort of a reflection point in my career where as much as I was having fun with retail and liked it that's all I knew. And that's all I had done. And I knew that I was super passionate about travel, I loved hotels, all aspects about it. The experience, the design just always gave me such a great feeling. And so I thought, I wanna try out hospitality, I wanna move into that space. And I was very fortunate to find an opportunity with Hyatt Hotels, their corporate office out of Chicago. And so spent some time there, then moved over to a company called a Perim Hotel Group and helped them build their marketing department and marketing team. And that actually is part of what led me to Springboard. Springboard was looking to sort of revolutionize their, their marketing department, really rebuild it, take it to the next level. And they found me as someone who had, had done that with Perim. And so here I am today. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And let's talk about that role that you have of head of marketing, this being a digital marketing podcast, I'm sure there's a lot of hotel marketers that are just getting started in their career. Talk to us a little bit about your role as head of marketing and really the story as marketers. We love telling stories, right? Of Springboard Hospitality. Jason Pirock: Yeah. Well, I'll start with with Springboard Hospitality.…

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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152 – Booking.com’s Guest Review Score Update 14:59

منذ 23 weeks14:59

14:59

Tune in to the the latest Suite Spot episode to hear from Senior Product Manager at Booking.com, Laura Xhaferaj as she breaks down the guest review score update being rolled out by Booking.com and how this new innovation will impact travelers, hotels, and hotel management groups alike. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Very pleased to bring you another incredible episode here, a unique episode, exciting episode. As you can tell from the title. We've got an update with one of the major players in hospitality, Booking.com and with me today to kind of break down this all important update is Laura Xhaferaj, Senior Product Manager at Booking.com. Laura, thank you so much for being on the Suite Spot with me. Laura Xhaferaj: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Ryan Embree: We're excited to share this news. I mean, this is a huge update that Booking.com is about to roll out that has a huge impact on hoteliers and travelers alike. But before we get into sharing this news, I'd love to start, since this is your first time on the Suite Spot, share a little bit about your hospitality background and your role at Booking.com as Senior Product Manager with our Suite Spot audience. Laura Xhaferaj: I am the Senior Product Manager for user-generated content at Booking.com. And you may hear me refer to my team as UGC, I have been leading initiatives that improve how we showcase guest review across the platform. My journey in hospitality started years ago, even before I joined Booking.com, and I've always been passionate about enhancing travel experience, whether it's helping hotels connect with guests or finding new ways to elevate guest satisfaction through reviews. Working with UGC, I got to build features that bring authentic travel voice into the booking experience globally. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I think this is one of those, I'm sure, an amazing role that you're in to be able to kind of look and see what travelers are saying about their experiences with the hotel partners that you're working with. Making sure that information is as accurate as possible so that guests and hotels alike can make the best booking decisions, make sure hotels are making the best operational decisions to improve the guest experience. So I'm sure it's a really cool role to be in. You get a lot of feedback probably from both hoteliers as well as guests. At Travel Media Group we do a lot of innovation and, and updates and rollouts, sort of like what you're going through and what we find is there's always typically a why behind making these changes. Right. So I think maybe the best way to understand and update like this is to maybe talk about the guest review score update and the why behind it. Laura Xhaferaj: Of course, we initiated this change based directly on partner feedback partners highlighted that on our previous system, which calculated overall score using a simple average of users from the past three years had some key limitations for those who had made significant improvements such as renovations, upgrades in services or new guest facilities. The all the reviews still had too much weight slowing down the reflection of their progress. In response to this feedback, we are introducing a weighted review score where recent reviews have bigger influence. This adjustment means that hotels actively enhancing guest experience will see those efforts reflected more quickly in their scores, rewarding their commitment improvement. And it's an update designed to encourage continuous progress and ensur...…

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