Hospitality Marketing The Podcast Show 254

Hospitality Marketing Podcast Show 254 Transcripts (English U.S.)

Announcer — Welcome to this week in Hospitality Marketing. The podcast show number 254 with your host, Loren Gray.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to hospitality marketing The podcast. I am your host, Loren Gray, and this is episode number 254. So each week we spent around 20 to 30 minutes sharing the most interesting tools, news and techniques being used in marketing for the hospitality industry. And we have to do a quick recap of our weekly live video show this week in Hospitality Marketing, which also airs every Friday at 11:30 a.m. Eastern U. S time.

So with that, let’s get started.

Announcer — And now today’s new resource tool.

Okay, so we start with our tools and we have a plural are tools for review this week, and you’ll see a theme to them quite quickly. And that is, there are three bought platforms we would like to talk about. We have a purpose to that when we get to our technique. The first we’d like to discuss is our perennial favorite at this point, and that is many chat M. A n. Why chat dot com now?

Many chat is really excellent. We’ve been using it quite extensively for a lot of our clients on creating a new dialogue within Facebook Messenger’s platformer Facebook as an engagement, soliciting people to subscribe via SMS versus than subscribing versus email, engaging them. Teoh. Give us answers to questions. And then, from doing that, we reward them with either a unique discount. We stack the discounts saying, OK, if you want us to give you this discount, get 10% off or whatever. Give us your SMS or your email. Great. If you want to get 15% off.

Even better, you know from 10 to 15 let’s get your phone number. They do that and then we can go upwards, even 20% if they want. Answer a couple of questions as to what their travel plans or questions when they want travel or whatever it is that we’d like to know. We can increase those value propositions. And of course, we have them tied to you. Unique Urals links pat contracting for each of the responses so that we can I know exactly what they engaged with what the responses were. Of course, they can always go talk to a live person if they want to, by simply clicking.

What do you want to talk to a person. So we’re not trying to make it his offense for anything which was an element will get to in just a moment. But the idea is that we are allowing people to engage with us in a means that allows us to then have a residual, retarding, campaign value proposition of them as well as a means of them communicating with us should they choose to. And that is the many chat tool for us. The next chat that I would like to talk about is one that I use that is unique to putting him on individual pages.

And that’s Corio Baht Q u I r o bought dot com Now Correo body is very interesting because it allows you to uniquely on your website different from messenger, although you can use it a messenger as well or in the Facebook platform. But in your website, you can actually have a bought come up unique to each page and have a logic string, which is the method of conditional is like What do you want to know? Option 1234 Whatever they slept for option one. There’s a tree to that.

Yes, last more. Whatever. There’s logics. Trees is like trees like it’s like an organizational chart as to what happens next and what they do next continues on what they are offered next. And that’s called logic strings Korea, but allows you to create uniqueness to each page. So we’ve used this very successfully on websites that if there’s event driven content and people want to know more about that, then they can use the query robot to dig into it a lot more without having to go through the additional.

I got to read a whole page of website or I’m gonna read all this content are gonna watch a video. Not that they don’t mind doing that these days, but if they don’t, I prefer that they can simply get a quick logic tree. Answer to some things that they want to engage with us more directly by the time to go through Korea. But we know by giving them a dynamic phone number from platforms we’ve talked about before that by the time they call us with that phone number, we know that there’s unique reason.

Whether asking a good question, they didn’t get an answer to or a detail that we need to discuss with them in person. It allows us to the hyper detail, our conversation, one that have to go through. Ah, whole another. You know what it is that you’re calling us for? Why? How is it we can help you? Which is so frustrating for you ever experienced before you go into these platforms, you give them the information and then they transferred to the new department or extension to someplace. And they ask you for the same impression all over again.

Very frustrating. This helps you call that down toe, know, By the time they get in contact with you, you actually know what it is they’re asking you about. You look at the chatter in Korea, but and say, Oh, here we are. Let me continue that conversation for you. The third tool is one that is also being well received. And that is called mobile monkey dot com. And that I don’t need to spell for you letter for letter. I think you fear that one out mobile monkey has a universal Chad SMS and Facebook integration that is a similar to many chat there, probably your competitors at best, And they use a tremendous minor variations to this and largely to connect it to a whole mass of things from an FBI interface capability.

CRM capability. Ah, Zappier integrations does a lot of cool stuff. It lasted put on multiple platforms, much like the other two tools do as well. It is a strong engagement for solicitation, incubation, drip campaigning, follow ups. It’s a great marketing arm. I would lend more to mumble Monkey being a great marketing arm even more so than many chat because it allows you to break off the retargeting aspects a lot more effectively. Not that many check cannot do that. They both do. An equally excellent job of many chat actually is the preferred engaging with Facebook at this time.

More so than I think Mobile Monkey is that I’m not for certain, but from what I understand from articles and so forth, there’s a race going on as to who’s the favorite child when it comes to Facebook, but both integrate with multiple aspects of platforms and use abilities and functionalities that are just very robust in their tools. So those are the three tools many chat dot com, Corio bought and mobile monkey dot com. So now let’s talk about why we mentioned these tools today.

Announcer — Now for this week’s hospitality technique.

So our technique of the week is, as I like to call it, the changing landscape of direct guests. Communication part two. The reason why I said Part two, and there has been no part. One is last week’s podcast. We talked about using the phone and using phone wagon as a means of dynamic phone numbers. Phone dialogue, phone communication director, use of communication with phones because of people’s insistence, wanted to get the detail directly from the property compared to what content may or may not be available on your websites.

Whether you’re Brander, I’m branded and have the capability of updating things. And this isn’t just that little bit of this is Cove. In 19 things have changed. Let us know. So I figured last week was a great primer to say that we would have to retroactively call that part one of the communication landscape. And this is Part two, and this is direct communication part two. And when I mean by this is there are other channels of people are utilizing that allow us to directly dialogue with them that are being used more extensively now than they have been in times past.

Now, for those that on the uninitiated of the difference between a chat box and a bought is a chatterbox, means that has to be a live person on the other end, we see those extensively. There used to be honest with you people’s frustrations with being put on hold or being hold put on the whole wheel where you know your fifth in line 12 in line or whatever it is. Or do you have to be called back or something where chat is a little bit more expeditious, you can get to it that lets you know if somebody’s alive or if something pops up. Frustrating.

Students with those include the fact that the office hours are closed. Nobody’s there. They’ll email me Camille you when they get back, which is just as bad as not being available. Eso those limitations that a but is about an automation logic sequence that tries to address and identify the information that it has available based on your interest and helpfully get you to a conclusion without having to go to a live person. Now that’s intriguing to do, because with that, you can’t act like a humanism affected at a wonderful little white paper.

I think little wonderful white paper on the Three rules for bots, and it’s got kind of went off the eyes of jasmine off aspect of this first, don’t act as a human. Don’t try to act like use a life person on the other end because quickly, bots hit dead ends and people quickly realized. And then there’s a double frustration that you tried to trick them or fool them into thinking that you’re that 24 hours, seven days a week response and you’re not. Don’t sell anything via your bought Solve it on.

And I said that in relationship to all the things were using the bots. Four. We’re initiating conversation, and through that initiation we’re rewarding incentivizing coordinating, communicating. But we’re not just saying buy and sell, buy and sound, especially with our current environment. We’re long past the dialogue of selling well. You need to be listening into our guests and understand what it is that I need to know about, for we know to make decisions for purchase and we’ll get to that little bit more in just a second and don’t get between them and a real human.

Don’t say that you’re the only solution as a bought and if you want to talk to a real person, you have to call them. Which is a waste of the time I’ve been with you is a but instead always make it available that if the body is not going in the direction that the consumer wants to, the guest wants by engaging it, There’s always the option. Do you want to talk to someone? Do you want to talk to somebody who I talked to somebody. This means that you’re never trying to create offense between you and your guests.

So this direct communication. So someone goes to your website, they see all the information you have, and nowadays our information has very transparent, very detailed, very granular as to what it is we’re doing. The changes that have happened, the things that we’re doing about those changes, how we’re trying to make us and the guest potential safe what the protocols are different. Whether and We’ve had this discussion on the podcast, whether it’s by video, whether it’s by content, whether it’s by postings on social open dialogue about them.

Q and A. Whatever it is, you have to be transparent about this content, and people digest this in different formats. Those will go right straight to the phone, and this could be a generated that this cannot be a generated. But it is always the fact that each person, each type of person, does this differently. And so because of that, you have to give them the options, whether it’s social and social, messenger or bought, whether it is on a pot that is on your website, whether it is ah phone number that you constantly make prevail into them, whether it’s an email that they can address, whether it’s through brand and branding Brexit to you with the central reservation system, whether even it’s going through 1/3 party and still contact you because your contact informations on your third party is correct or your Google, my business is correct or your C event information is correct.

Your GED s information is correct. All these two different channels that people can use to reach to you directly, and bots are part of that. Communication butts, for some are there is just as easy as a chat window, and they’re just Azizi as getting this short answers to long questions. They don’t have to be social. They have to go through the fluff and puff dialogue that I have to worry about. You trying hard sell something or whether they’re going to try to put something on you. It’s really just like, Hey, is that Blue is agrees that red is a right and you, the the boxing answer those things.

But the bottle also gives a door opening to them that they feel like they didn’t get the complete answer and they still want a dialogue with you. The baht gives them that value proposition, saying No worries. Here’s what you do. Click here and here’s a phone number, and that number could be very helpful when it comes to knowing that by that time somebody picks up that phone number, they’re aware that this is an advanced conversation. They don’t start back from zero going. Hi. We don’t know what you’re calling us for, so please tell us and go from the very beginning.

That’s very frustrating. You can create this that if that turns into a hot phone okay, the bat phone is so to speak, that when they get picked up, it’s because they’ve gone toe a point in the logic string of the body that this is their answer request that they have. And so now the person could be much more directing the dialogue, saying, You’ve reached the point. So this is where we want to pick up the conversation from. So that is our changing landscape of direct guess. Communication Part two.

As you can imagine, we’ll have a part three next week. But up now comes

Announcer — Now this week’s hospitality news that you should know

Our news and show review. Yes, we had a great show this week. We had a special guest host, Jordan Hollander. His brother Adam didn’t get to join us. They’re twins, and it’s always fun to have them both on the show. When we get the chance, actually have never had a show before. We all of us know them from what they do, which is Hotel tech report, which will get to just what the value is for that.

But that we had Jordan on Ah, he saw that calls himself the brain of the operations Adams of the good looks, which seeing how they look identical, it’s kind of fun to laugh at, but, um, we went into great detail. With me was my co host, Ben Handley on the Dell, Guzman and valiantly from three and six agency Adele Grossman with Library Collection New York Well, actually, not just New York, but library collection Trust in Hayward, Also from three and six. I didn’t see value Parini from, nor one Tim Peter from Computer Associates.

Edwards say knowledge from Flip to and Lily Markman from T CRM services and thinks up Enterprises. Um, so we all had choose to have fun talking without Jordan. We all knew Jordan from before, as well as Adam, and we all knew about Hotel Tech. Report. Anybody that’s in the industry that works a tech stacks, works with tech stacks, has to deal with text acts, has to do with technology in the industry Jordan and are pretty much the lead dialogue as to value, not evaluating but honestly, objectively reviewing and determining how the software is looked at and used by its consumers.

They themselves don’t try to interject her change or modify or adapt or be biased in their perspective of these things, they try to keep an open platform off review and value that people can look at and ascertain of. The people that are using it are similar to themselves. If they rank it as a good average or high on their use abilities of it. What conditions air issues they’ve had with it, where things, that thinker positive, negative, so forth. It’s a great, unbiased clearing house of what all software is and having a place and then being ranked and reviewed.

Of course, they give awards for the success of so for Softwares that have been successful in their medium. You look categorically of what you’re thwarting the software is to do, and from that you get to determine what variations and choices you have. Of course, is they self a mentally they’re not really exposing you to all software’s because in order to be on their platform, people have to reach out to them and say, I’m using this, and this is what I used it for. This is R rated and of course, the ratings as they go, the more ratings you get them or that visibility you get because of the exposure usage of it and on and on and on.

So Jordan went through all that process of that, their source of why they came up with this, what it was. Inspiration, the hard hustle they had to get that into market. The fact that they created an introduced a completely new genre of product of hospitality which all of us know in the hospitality industry, is a challenge just to think about doing, let alone accomplishing successfully as they have done so. It was fun to hear the whole story line as to their wares. And how’s that they did to achieve that there, literally beating the street’s going in and out of places to determine why they we’re liked or disliked by people.

What they used it didn’t get used by people, the value proposition that should be offering to the market versus what they thought they were offering to the market. Very interesting. Listen to Jordan hung with us for about an hour and went through that whole process again, and we had to ask him a lot of questions to. It was a lot of fun to hear the stories behind all of that. And we look forward to Jordan and Adam joining us back on the show sometime in the near future.

When it comes to that, um, we also a few other highlights other than that we were talking about whether the $4000 proposed tax credit for travel will be the next stimulus package, whether that’s a reality of assumption or just a willful thinking, that that’s an appeasement to all of us, hoping that somebody would taking use and would be putting the conditions on it, that would really be used for that, whether they would really spend it for that, because that’s the real value that was most of the discussion was about.

It’s only good if it gets spent for that. Not that it gets saved. Saving it doesn’t help the economy. I think that they we all talked about the value proposition that trickle down economics does not work has never worked is it was a live probably catered by those that were on the top. Looking down that trickle up works because use abilities functionalities consumption is based on the size and population, which is an inverted pyramid, are screaming for a regular pyramid. So them or they use the more than spend.

The more value proposition goes upward, not downward. We also about Airbnb, is poised for a comeback after a brutal spring. Again, Airbnb is looking at what we should be looking at right now, which is focused, guest centric. Focus on what the guest wants, what the guest needs to know about what the guest needs to understand, to make the purchase decisions that they are based on. All of us having individual threshold is toe what we’re willing to, except is the conditions for our travel. And Airbnb is doing a very good job of personalizing that in their messaging.

They may not be spending the money they were spending before, but they’re certainly cultivating the interest of what they have to offer compared to the conditions. What people are interested didn’t understanding their travel concerns to be so. There’s a lesson to be learned from that, and to that end, it comes to an article that we didn’t get a chance to discuss, which I believe is equally important to which I call my news feature of the week, which is the how the hospitality industry can recover by focusing on people now.

This comes directly from the aspect similar to Airbnb, that if we air still or you as a hotel, your or restauranteur or hospitality professional in particular is still thinking that you’re looking for the normal or what we would be normal or getting back to some semblance of commonality. Today is the only normal of today. Tomorrow will be the normal of tomorrow. There is no getting back to the new normal. There is no new. Normal now is normal. Tomorrow will have its own normal and on and on and on.

But the key element to this is if you’re selling rate in date or selling and trying to sell rather than listen and determine how you can communicate the content that guests need to understand, you are not going to come back to the business levels if even stay in business. Or if you do, it will take you much longer to get back to the business levels that you’re trying to aspire to being human centered. As this article points out, being guests entered is the key element of moving forward learning toe.

Listen, making this Tulu to the heart of the servant of hospitality that says, Let me, What can I do to be of service to you? How can I make your stay safe? How can you make your stay safe? You stay comfortable. What can I make your stay better with? Are the questions that need to be asked? It’s It’s probably one aspect of silver lining out of this realignment in our industry that we have is that it’s not about owning a big box with rooms and making it just purely revenue source.

It’s allowing hoteliers to be hospitality driven people. Team and culture is what’s going to move forward, not margins and our allies. Not that we’re to ignore them. Business runs by those, but to run by the business of doing business for the sake of what it’s for. Being good at your guests is your business. Being hospitable and having hospitality is your product, and you’ll do good business by doing it. Look at what you’re spending your money on is this article points out the cost structures about spending it on things that don’t that aren’t benefiting the guest experience are benefiting, the Gast will be squandered.

This isn’t about the facade on your buildings because you like the bleed. The building looks and I’m being tried about that. It’s about spending things on your team training culture product that the guest interacts with. These are the things making your guest experience not say goodbye PMS systems pos systems off whatever if it improves the benefit of the guest experience, all four. But don’t look at business expenses purely from the revenue drill generation of its potential, but rather the positive impact on what it can provide your guests.

And then I know that you have to re invest in yourself to compete. I’ve been on many webinars to the process of this rediscovery of what we’re supposed to be doing on every day basis, you know. And now the questions are arising. Should we spend money on the PPE and the the cove It products, the things we need, the plexi glass is the the things that you know do we have to overly stand on the UV lights and the others and the the systems that run key, less entry in touchless payment and all these other things.

And the question to this is, Well, how long do you wanna wait for to figure that out? Do you wanna wait the few months, weeks, months a year, Plus whatever. It’s going to be unknown as it is by everybody that you talk to to say, I’m just gonna wait so I don’t have to worry about buying this stuff. What business do you lose by doing that? At this point, what things do you turn down? Can you and never has been successful? Could he answer the question? Can you ever cost yourself into profitability?

Absolutely not. You have to generate the top line revenue yielded as best you can. But if right now are normal of today, is that these are the things that are required to for us to do business. And, you know, six months for eight months from now there’s a plexiglass pile in the back of everybody’s hotel. I hope fingers crossed there would be that case, but it’s better to have done that and done the business of what you could until then that it is to say, Well, that saved me $800 but I lost 800,000 because I didn’t have any sales that month.

So these are the questions you ask about that of how toe the hospital in the industry can recover by focusing on people. So with that, remember, you can find us on Google Play Apple iTunes I Heart radio Soundcloud stitcher Spotify, Pandora tuned in pocket. The list goes on and on, actually 36 platform 38 platforms in counting, where even on Amazon’s Alexa, Google assistant and Siri just asked to play the hospitality marketing podcast, no matter which one you may use. If you like to show, please write us and leave a comment that helps others find our content.

Also, we would appreciate the ratings to know how what we’re doing with the content. And also, this is your first time hearing us, you say, can subscribe to our show in any of those 30 platforms. And, of course, for archive of all previous podcasts, including this one, you can go to hospitality digital marketing dot com, forward slash podcasts with an S. And don’t forget our live video talk show that you can join and participate in every Friday at 11 30 Eastern U. S. Time called this week in Hospitality Marketing, The Live show.

And for that you simply can’t go to hospitality. Digital marketing dot com forward slash live There you could register and all see previous episodes 254 of them, to be exact. And, of course, always thank you for the privilege of your time, and we look forward to talking to you next week. You have been listening to this week in Hospitality Marketing, the Podcast show 254 Brought to you by hospitality, digital marketing and support of the HSMAI, the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association. International rights reserved copyright 2020.