Hello, everyone, and welcome to This Week in Hospitality Marketing. Live show number two hundred and Fifty-five, I am convalescent co-host Loren Gray, who will be departing quite shortly. Had a little surgery done. So I’m not going to be much of an entertainer today, but I convalescentant to make sure that I get to say hi and start the show to keep my streak of 255 shows alive no matter where in the world I am and what’s happening.

[00:00:36.530] – Loren

I get to be at least here for a second. With me is my wonderful co-host who will be taking over the show, Mr. Edward Said on Flip to Mr. Stuart Butler with fluid. You’ll try. I will Miss Douglas with the collection. Miss Linda Michael with TCR Services and Things Up Enterprises and someone I just got to say hi to Ricardo Ricardo Hoddy. Mistrust and hatred. I know Ricardo, your guest of Lillie’s. I let that all happen as it goes on me.

[00:01:01.670] – Loren

And I know Griffin is joining us as well. Thank you all very much for being here. I am going to depart the show, but thank you very much for everyone and enjoy the show. And I will see you all next week, show by Guys

[00:01:13.100] – Loren

Loren thank you for your dedication today. La, la, la. Lying down on the job, I say, well, I like laying down in the job.

[00:01:21.950] – Loren

I’ve gota good strategy with me. I ain’t going anywhere, but I’m getting in the bed. That’s all I got. Yeah, well, I got it.

[00:01:26.780] – Loren & Stuart

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, guys. Hey, for the record, Loren, you never entertaining anyway, so.

[00:01:35.850] – Lily

Yeah, well, yeah. Show it now. You know exactly what to expect on the show, right?

[00:01:45.850] – Lily & Ed

Yeah. You want me to introduce him Ed? Yeah. I think you should. Perfect. So kind of last minute I reached out to O.J. Insight because they’re launching this great new tool market insight that I think is really a game changer for the hospitality industry. And they also have a lot of really cool data around to market insights and kind of what’s going on around the world because of their reach. So thank you very much, Ricardo, for being willing to join us today and talk a little bit about what’s going on for you guys.

[00:02:16.010] – Lily

So I’ll let you take it away. Hi.

[00:02:19.480] – Ricardo

Hi, everyone. Thanks, Lily. It’s a pleasure to be here. Yes. Last minute invite, but I’m glad we can be joined. Is this. I mean, it’s two hundred fifty five straight and great discussion. Ben also. So, yeah. Like Lily Carmen. I work as a medium between the GM side. We’re the ones who don’t know which inside is one of the best companies mascotry companies in the world for naledi. And indeed, we’ve just launched a new product.

[00:02:56.930] – Ricardo

And maybe more importantly, that the product itself is the discussion behind the concept of the product. So that is simply a I’ve of bringing to the table today to discuss because I mean that, in fact, like the future that we had, those will manage their data and manage their forecasts for the future, which on a really uncertain moment that we all live in. So I’m just not sure how to issue a Schimmer screen here.

[00:03:29.450] – Ed

You can. So you have an option. Just a bar of where was it? Out to the top left of your screen, you’ll see a camera that a plus sign if you hit the plus sign, you’ll soon share a screen. Great. Thank you. And it’ll leave Stewart’s picture up.

[00:03:52.120] – Tristan

Now, I know it’s just you forget how upset you are. Oh, I see me. I saw me there, too. That’s weird that I see Stewart different. You can toggle by hitting the right. What about your favorite person on what host?

[00:04:05.060] – Ricardo

You want to work at a TV screen now? Yes. OK. So we’ve just launched two days ago a project. New product when we never used tool of marketing side. Again, the idea behind this product. I mean, the timing is definitely coincidence because we’re working on this product for more than a year now. So we could predict what was going to happen in 2020. But I think the product comes in in really the right moment. I’m not here to say a switchable the product, but more important is the concept behind it.

[00:04:41.990] – Ricardo

Industry, the discussion. I will love to hear from you guys and bringing to the date, which is if you date the way they’ll use to win and use data, was really based in what we call outdated data. So they’re really looking at. Really static data. So what? What was my other book levels for last year on the same time period? What’s my pick up? What are Mark better doing in terms of pricing points? What are other internal data that I have?

[00:05:17.320] – Ricardo

Like the number of groups I have in-house for specific day already on the books. The number of trends in business and all that stuff. So we don’t leverage that really well. So the forecast is we’re bringing in in most ways really accurate and does who we’re really confident with working up those old patterns on the books and pickups in order to generate their forecast.

[00:05:41.660] – Ricardo

We had this pandemic which just changed everything. So we hear a lot of the new normal in a lot of different ways in our lives. In that week, there will be a new normal in the deli also. We’re not Inari. What’s this new normal is in terms of strategies and revenue management is really the way hotels are going to look at data in the future. So, again, we’re facing a really uncertain moment. Which hotels are not being able to rely in any kind of data?

[00:06:19.060] – Ricardo

Because we can compare the second half of the year with the second half of the year doubling 19. That doesn’t make sense. They’re not having Beko patterns. So they can really, really rely on that also. So. The results are a bit lost. OK. How can I forecast if my Bazinet is knocking down, is going to my starting point is not reliable anymore. So I think that’s going to happen. That’s going to be we’re going to have a big impact on that in the way he does.

[00:06:47.870] – Ricardo

Look at data. Here’s because we’re going to start seeing a movement. Look, trying to find different kinds of data, you can think of interesting, like e-commerce giants, like airlines, even like Yogi Ace. They look at conversion. That’s an important metric. But a second world important matter. You’re look at six search patterns. You’re looking what we call pre-booking data. They’re not looking at. OK, how many items they sold or how many rooms they’ve sold, if they’re okay in a specific hotel or market.

[00:07:20.600] – Ricardo

They’re also looking at searches because searches is the first indicator of the man in any kind of industry. You know, if people start searching for something, that’s because you’re going gonna have to bet. And if you think of the deli business. Don’t we’re looking into it. I don’t know. Or New York. They’re still not looking into that kind of data. They’re still looking at conversion. And on the books, which is the final step with the men.

[00:07:45.820] – Ricardo

The men started early. What are. Then when someone looks in the room, it starts when you start searching maybe for life or death. This nation orders are searching hotels like the customer journey starts. Really? I had a huge moments. So that’s that’s the principle. An idea we’re thinking for a long time now. And Oceanside is how can we help adults leverage that kind of leader? Because I think we’re a little bit behind other industries in mindset.

[00:08:19.380] – Ricardo

So that’s me now that again you can rely on. Well, on the book, banners and even pickup banners. Maybe those kinds of data are fundamental for you to be able to really understand what’s going on, on your market. How is it maybe a second or third way of being 90 isn’t backing your business again? Even on marketing markets that we’ve seen to start a recovery. So that’s something we love discussed with those other players, which is OK.

[00:08:58.060] – Ricardo

What are you thoughts about this new kind of data? So, again, if you think of the way hotels used to use data to predict the man for the future, you were always looking. We followed postwoman. So they were looking at their best data. You’re looking at benchmark data for the future. So how many transient Room nights I have and how many much better have a water market? And there were usually other post data, post booking data.

[00:09:30.580] – Ricardo

But there is a third universe of data available. Hotels or maybe they weren’t variable. So now but they can’t be available to their adults that really can help them open their minds in terms of predicting demand. So if you think of when people start exploring in this nation, so maybe I want to travel to London, I’m going to start maybe checking Google and third of London, want to start checking what’s happening in that city. Is there any specific better time in the year to go to London and all those stuff?

[00:10:04.240] – Ricardo

So I’m going to start a destination then maybe I’m going to start checking flights if I’ve decided when I want to go to London. I’m going to start checking my prices online to see what’s Flybe rates race for the days or for that period of the year that I want to go. And maybe if I book my flight, I’m going to start checking itself. So maybe I want to start checking metasearch channels or maybe granduncle websites or finished. You see, what’s the better location for me to stay in?

[00:10:30.910] – Ricardo

What’s the better hurdle that I want to select based on what I like? And. Nowadays, people are also searching through a very good motivation for maybe searching European media and any other player you see, okay, I’m Emma. Stay in a hotel or maybe a vertical elevation. So all of those things get converted into data points. That can be really awkward for what else to rely on when. What a predicament. And that didn’t happen. That is really happening in other industries, even in a chase night, because they have the kind of technology.

[00:11:06.580] – Ricardo

But the hospitality industry as a whole was really behind on that. So I think that’s the next step in installing one of the most important next steps that Rocky Dulé industry will take. Or if you analyze data so. Again, more working than the product itself with the concept behind it, which is to be able to for any future dates in our case for the next five days, really be able to predict demand and have a clear picture what’s happening in the market based on all those data points.

[00:11:43.590] – Ricardo

So no genocide being market inside. We’ll look at fly searches. Well, I hope they’ll surface in the very back of Gentles EDF alternative accommodation, events and holidays. And we look at the pricing strategies of the market to put that all together in the High-Level Machine, learning a certain order victime. Because, again, if we if we Jack, what happened in the past 20 years with different types of events that if backor demand, it’s really, really hard to lead on.

[00:12:22.990] – Ricardo

OK, for August. This is my underworked better for the last three years. What happened three years ago, two years ago or maybe last year is completely different. What’s going to happen this year? So that’s part of the discussion I want to bring to the table today, which is a ready to face that. Is that. How can that, in fact, really the demand evaluation and analysis of the future? Because I really made the president wait without new forecasts and the analyses segmentations and then predict future is already past.

[00:13:01.500] – Ricardo

The future is totally different. And I think that was a process in pause, probably as low process. But the pandemic will be 19 as we speak, the need of summer reading. So, again, as Winston, we’re launching marketing in that environment. But because this concept has been in our minds for maybe more than two years now.

[00:13:24.510] – Ricardo

So, again, the idea here to discuss it is. What’s more, more of the forecasting, intimidation and demand evaluation. Fidelity in Delta needs to give you staff to cover those billions of data points that have reached a level or upper level and pocketing the leverage that in their strategies. And I would love to hear your comments on that. Well, thank you, Ricardo. I really appreciate you taking the time to go through that. I think it’s really nice to actually see companies starting to think this way because that data has been available for a long, long period of time.

[00:14:17.430] – Tristan

And it’s been the likes of digital marketers like, you know, many people on the show at the moment. Certainly, I know myself. And then we’ve we’ve been using that type of data just on a daily basis. It’s actually vital for us to make decisions that I don’t mean to cut Trece off.

[00:14:36.660] – Tim

But I’ve been sitting there the whole time, Ricardo, saying, I hate you right now because you’re automating a thing. We’ve been selling the clients for the time.

[00:14:44.100] – Tim

God bless you for doing a to get job. Now. No, it’s fine.

[00:14:49.540] – Tristan

And see if it is now is I mean, it’s still great. The Web. Doing all of that was still going to be required to do that from it. And from a digital marketing standpoint, because you still have us to optimize the priest, stay, you know, and marketing. Well, we’ve now got a tool that hotels can touch the news that people better understand what’s going on. And more broadly, from my personal point of. But we better understand what we’re actually doing because this works.

[00:15:16.320] – Tristan

A lot of the hoteliers that we’ve had worked with in the past, they know what they do. Not every high level. But I don’t totally understand all of the data points that could be available that could be still so beneficial for them. With that, with revenue management strategies, with marketing strategy squeeze, you know, dealing with occupancy problems and and how you can combat those those those gaps.

[00:15:42.220] – Tim

Well, well, and what’s really important about this is, you know, you’re talking about the difference between leading indicators and trailing indicators. Right. Conversions and bookings and things like that are trailing indicators. They tell you what happened, but not how you got there. And if you look at things like hotels tend to go wrong with something like Picts search, you know, most hotels are using an attribution model with a frequency. And I’m using that computer model in air quotes.

[00:16:09.240] – Tim

Right. That says we need to get a five to one or a six to one return on paid search, which they often can’t do on things like unbranded terms. Those numbers are tough to hit, but some of those unbranded terms often lead to later reservations. You know, there was a study a couple years ago from I think it’s from Chalaby, but it showed the guess who started on the property Web site convert book direct only about 60 percent of the time.

[00:16:37.320] – Tim

And guess who started a book on the OTA?

[00:16:40.770] – Tim

About 94 percent in 95%. So I don’t have an exact number, but, you know, low 90s. But if you put them another way, guests who don’t start on your site never book don’t act right. The difference between starting in a.D.A is at best, you might get the booking seven percent of the time Jubran versus 60 percent if they actually start on your Web site. And if you’re not tracking those leading indicators of what’s actually bringing people in that turn into reservations or you don’t see it on those specific search terms, your action missing out on direct revenue would growing your business.

[00:17:16.470] – Tim

So this is really a cool way to look at it. Again, we’re giving away one of the secrets right here, but that’s OK.

[00:17:24.600] – Adele

Those 90 percent that are working on the LPA. What percentage of them do you have any sense are actually looking at your park property? Oh. Oh.

[00:17:35.910] – Tim

When I said to at best seven percent, it’s well below that. Right. The. One of the reasons the Okies were evil.

[00:17:42.780] – Tim

One of the reasons people write is not because they’re doing anything wrong, but it’s because it’s the place where all your competition lives to.

[00:17:51.840] – Tim

So, you know, if you’re one of the 10 blue links or you’re one of the 10 people on the first page of Expedia or something like that, maybe you get a shot at that person one time out of 10 out of the seven percent that might actually come to you. So the numbers are really not in your favor, not because they’re bad guys, but because there’s a variety of of items on the shelf for people to choose from. And you’re only going to be that one segment of a segment of a segment.

[00:18:19.950] – Tim

I’ sorry Tim. Did you just say that Google is not evil? I mean, I’m worried about that as well.

[00:18:26.040] – Tim

What I what I said specifically was that’s not the reason Google is not true.

[00:18:34.040] – Dean

This also speaks to the fact that, you know, as as it hit and everything got shut down. One of the really good argument that could be made in that time was not to shut down your digital marketing, your paper quick, because what you’re talking about, what’s going on sites is at a market level and getting all that data in there, but thinking even as property level, you just shut down your paper, click, you set it down your your metasearch, let’s say whatever the case may be.

[00:18:56.640] – Dean

Now you have no data. We can Google the particular. You’ve got your eligible. Data. Well, how do you know when the market’s recovering? It’s very easy watch. There’s always an ideological impressions go up right now. That’s a key indicator, folks. But if you’ve stopped all your campaigns, you’ve got nothing.

[00:19:12.930] – Tim

Even even worse, you’ve got nothing. And you did it at a time when a lot of the. Okay, stop bidding on those terms of the cost for that stuff actually went down dramatically.

[00:19:21.930] – Tim

So you’re actually not bidding at a time when it’s more portable to actually do it.

[00:19:26.840] – Tristan

I guess it’s still an option at the end of the day. And nobody else is thinking you’re going to get a bottom dollar.

[00:19:32.430] – Ed

Right. But I remember. But that makes sense from an investment perspective.

[00:19:36.870] – Ed

You should always pile on to the most popular and investment and completely run away when everyone else runs away.

[00:19:46.230] – Ed

That’s how, like all the most wealthy didn’t fall into World War II.

[00:19:51.360] – Tim

My favorite Warren Buffet quotes of all time. And it’s it’s a mindset that we use and digital all the time. I think it’s brilliant. What Ricardos saying here is, you know, he said in my house, we like hamburgers. And when the price of hamburger goes down, we rejoice. And when the price of hamburger goes up, we weep. Right.

[00:20:11.730] – Tim

And yet that’s exactly the opposite of how most people actually invest in marketing dollars. Wow. Paid search is really popular right now. We should do that. No. That’s when the cost is super high. When you want to look for something else. Right.

[00:20:25.450] – Adele

It’s the smart thing to do. But when you’re on your own because you have no money. And of course, of course, you own the property first. Maybe if you please first and make tough choices. So especially when you don’t even know when you know for sure.

[00:20:46.200] – Tim

And it’s one of those things where obviously you have to find a balance. I would you know, I said a minute ago that the Okies are evil. Right? You know, these aren’t evil. What’s evil is that we depend on them for too much a share of our business. You know, but they. I have hotels and places. And I’m sure anybody on this call knows where at times of the year they’re the best thing in the world, because when demand is super low, they’re going to aggregate demand in a way that you’re not going to find a lot of other places.

[00:21:14.430] – Tim

Right. And that’s true of a lot of this. But I think what Ricardo is talking about is where do you get the data that tells you? OK, where do we want to put our emphasis right now so that we’re actually harvesting the demand that exists in the most economical way possible?

[00:21:27.420] – Tim

So, Ricardo, if I can ask a question, you know, if you could turn that into or talk about, you know, one of the sorts of things without even when secret source, but one of the sorts of things, you know, you’re paying attention to where you’re thinking about some perspective. Yeah, thanks. Or question them before I answer it. I think it’s really neat to working with, like, this one. You’re really supporting and validating that strategy and vision work, working for some time you’re seeing out there.

[00:21:53.460] – Ricardo

Look, I think we want to do this or that or maybe we’re seeing this pattern of shopping and maybe it does OK. But I trust this, OK? I’m not really secure in the strategies and marketing side. We are checking between other stuff. I’m going to answer in a while, but we’re checking flight circuits. But we’re also checking what’s the Lempert space trip pattern of those flights? When are people coming in and out of the market on that specific day of the week?

[00:22:21.840] – Ricardo

Or definitely big day. So that validates a lot of strategies on digital marketing. And again, we show different demand levels. So high demand, you’re in love the minute you’re back home. What Tim was saying, which is OK, we’re forecasting on, let’s say, the next three weeks or three weeks of August, really low. And then maybe the values of SVOD and being like are lower on that because there’s no demand in the market. Maybe you want to invest on that specific timeframe because even on a little demand, you made me more competitive than you are normally.

[00:22:58.770] – Ricardo

So again, we’re as Oceanside, we we had a rate shopping solution, Berdy Solution, an API solution, majority focus in sales and revenue management. But now we’re trying to open that really marketing thing because, again, it’s been really supportive of digital marketing companies and their marketing strategy. So, you know, entering your question and really you’re looking at now where this product really built into beta point. But in summary, we’re looking at light searches.

[00:23:31.530] – Ricardo

So the flight searches route, that market and the business originated in the country. So not just like the amount of flight searches for that day, but which countries are searching that market. And also with Netflix thetas thing, we’re looking at online searches. So, okay, metasearch is the brandao mom with you. We’re checking all those searches in that market. We’re looking at what events are involved. These are happening if there is a Bollani in that city or that country and that if there is any big.

[00:24:00.740] – Ricardo

Even even small, even before the verdict. Even as we’re looking at searches, at a predictive accommodation and we’re looking at bright sun and also Neponset, we’re trying to bring with both firms that we choose. What’s the press strategy of a future monarch? Better not just the four or five. Better if you normally say we are your competitors. Let’s say if you if you giving deep this confidence specific date or if this we probably your normal better odds on that, we are not going to be the same.

[00:24:32.870] – Ricardo

Because if you didn’t meet this goal, you’re not competing with a different set of hotels. So we’re trying to capture that base of price and strategy because we’re searching on our date and we’re looking at, OK, which the customers are shopping your hotel, which would. Bulgar Awful shopping. Gordon Their customer journey. So again, I give give the secret sauce. But in summary, that’s, that’s the sort of we’re looking at right now.

[00:24:59.900] – Tristan

So who are you targeting this particular dataset towards. Is it towards digital marketers. Is it towards hotel revenue or is it kind of both the follow up question. How is the information presented and how is it usable? Yeah. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I would say both, because I think that’s really important. Also information for revenue managers to update their forecasts and help them forecast certain in we’re facing. But also, I think, really relevant information for marketing and data from working.

[00:25:35.740] – Ricardo

Again, if you look at flight search, you’re looking at it really early stage of the men. That means that you have time to decide and next on your strategies. And because we’re bringing land from stay in business or is and you can combine all those stuff with our information from, again, additional Martin standpoint and be more assertive in in your strategies. So it is really shown in a queen dashboard. I’ve shown a little sneak peek your. Can cherish me again just really quick.

[00:26:11.530] – Ricardo

This would be a screen of marketing side. OK. So this isn’t this is a fringe of market insight. So you would we would show the heat map of the city because we don’t want to just say hotel, hotel, alert your your city or your market is having high demand on that day or low demand or medium demand. But because the though is insert in the city environment, we wanted to show him. OK. Europe does located Europe.

[00:26:40.930] – Ricardo

But there is a lot of the men happening maybe in this area of the city, in this case, the competitors here and into the light move. It’s what we call market stocks that they can change every day based on search betters and pricing strategies. But let’s say if you were let’s say in this example, Dotel was maybe here in an Upper West Side, but there was a lot of demanded here in lower Manhattan. So you could say, OK, I can expect to maybe have a higher than my competitors just because the demand in my area is lower than other areas of the city.

[00:27:16.180] – Ricardo

So we’re going to show him also the flight patterns you can see here. OK, the overall number of shopping for that day. Which countries are shopping? The average length of state. We’re going to show with the overall searches in Hokkaido for you to see, OK, this is the amount of searches locals are having online for that day and the amount of searches Europe is having. Because you can see, OK, I’m very strong marketing campaign for that day or that week, that period is that being and I’m being visible.

[00:27:44.650] – Ricardo

I’m having a high number and you can benchmark against which betters and information. And we will show you a demand calendar, which is we can easily spot high and lower demand dates. And we circle here what we call opportunities because we want to have. But there’s not. We don’t want to do our marketing teams to look at every day in the next sixty five days. So what we do is we look at the pricing strategy for the TOMPSETT and the hotel, and we relate that to the demand level and say, look, maybe on those SERPELL days your price is too low because we’re forecasting high demand or maybe your price is too high because we’re forecasting a load of Medicare and all year to better or giving ever discounts than you are.

[00:28:26.100] – Ricardo

So maybe you have a look into it, though. And we also show the evolution of debt because we wanted to just show a picture of how demand is looking. Let’s say I think this example for September six. But we also want to show you for the past 10 weeks or for the past two months, week by week. Paul, the demand for this specific date that was six has equal. Is the demand growing week by week? So once we scroll here, all we we have down here, what we call DeMetz pro bar, the heat map and all the information here would be updated.

[00:29:00.160] – Ricardo

So you would be able to see the flight searches from last week. And what’s the flight surgeons day? Maybe what work? We’re to flight search is an average for September six, 10 weeks ago. And what they are today and also the heat map will be updated in terms of changing colors and scale domanski of collars to really show you maybe the average the men of the city is the same. But internally in the city, the demand is shifting.

[00:29:27.670] – Ricardo

So maybe you get let’s say you have a big event that was probably, first of all, well, scheduled to happen on this area. But now that even for some reason, just something happened in the venue were something else that changed to the different part of the city. Maybe the demand will shift along with that, even if it’s irrelevant. Even happened to see. Very cool. You know, I’d like to point out, Dad. For those of you who are seeing this data has always been available from digital marketing, that nobody in sight has bothered to share this with any revenue manager so that we can use it to make strategic decisions.

[00:30:05.960] – Lily

So thank you. Revenue management tool I.

[00:30:12.110] – Tim

Lilly would like that. We absolutely share that with the recommended clients.

[00:30:18.870] – Lily

I suspect you are kind of a bit of a anomaly in many ways. I think most likely.

[00:30:28.340] – Tim

I’m not going to fight you on that one, that’s for sure. I think most of the folks on this show would definitely agree. One of the things we railed about on the show for a long time are the barriers, you know, are the silos between marketing and management, et cetera, and operations. And I think that’s certainly something we all agree.

[00:30:45.350]

I think that this really helps bridge the gap. And as always, a insight has come out with a product that’s easy to understand. Anybody at any level within the organization can understand how to use it. It’s easy to navigate. It’s a reasonable price point. So just for the record, I don’t get paid. I get insight. I’m just a fan. So I got Ricardo that you have a couple of things going on this morning. I just wanted to say thank you so much for sharing this data.

[00:31:18.500] – Lily

And I thank you to get insight for looking into their crystal ball and knowing that we would need this contractual at this exact moment.

[00:31:27.330] – Tristan

Yeah. Go ahead. Quick question, Ricardo. Does it have an API? But build one and I can make your product better.

[00:31:38.300] – Ed

Yeah, it’s a backhanded compliment by the API and I’ll make it work right now.

[00:31:50.930] – Ed

Trece. Are you not only joking.

[00:31:55.050] – Ricardo

Becthe ause I mean we want to, we want to open open to the market in any way. So we’ve heard a lot of them will be early adopters because we have our message system and they will love and feedback data inside your message systems. But they’re also a big word in terms of vision and working with where this could be, combined with other metrics in other environments. So that’s something we’re looking into. And about when Lilly started going to random mentor marketing is one thing we really discussed a lot in Rigidified is how can our rules help it across collaboration.

[00:32:28.220] – Ricardo

Important because we know revenue manager, you have their own. There are many systems that no one knows. Why would that not be revenue managers? You have marketing teams to have their own marketing partners, agencies and companies, and they’re looking at different needs and probably there’s not really cross-border operation. You’ve worked with their own businesses, right? Well, that’s one of the constables will be about marketing side, which is how can we put those two areas on the table and look at and think well and make decisions collectively.

[00:33:00.250] – Lily

And Lily thinks we’re doing right. Meaning it’s a matter of if we’re going to give your feedback and you can work for our brother and your near because they really work for a year and a half, day and night to put this awesome brother on on line. And I’m really sorry. I can say more because I’m loving the especially and a really fun and really exciting year. But oh no, you listen to the rest later on and probably listen to some of the other series because I really love speed and don’t go nuts on any other sessions.

[00:33:41.580] – Ricardo

The pleasure to participate and thank you. Yeah.

[00:33:43.970] – Ed

Ricardo, if people want to find out more about Oatway insight or connect with you, where can they go.

[00:33:50.710] – Ricardo

Yeah. So we on our Web site futa messaging here with you. Oh, inside dot com there. We have a specific session now for Market Insight. I’m also looking people want to reach out to me. I have an e-mail also, which is info on looking side dot com, jeno remail. Everyone was the company and you will be laughing like I’m going to dispose of information here on a Web site when I’m going out.

[00:34:23.090] – Ed

Ricardo, thanks so much for joining us, especially so last minute. We really appreciate it. It’s a really, really interesting product. And, you know, I think, like 10 said, it’s it’s great that you guys have made the effort to simplify it and, you know, make it something that anyone can grab even if they don’t work with Tim here or, to be fair, fuel.

[00:34:49.260] – Tim

Your screen pilot or other smartphone doesn’t stop. Yeah. No, this is awesome. Very cool. And Ricardo, last request before you head out. It’s just X out of the window and do not hit the big red stop button, which just close your browser.

[00:35:03.230] – Ed

Anybody?

[00:35:05.200] – Ricardo

I’m just going to look my brains. Not a lot rougher.

[00:35:10.290] – Ricardo

Thank you again for the invite. Was really a pleasure. Be safe and we’ll be in the future.

[00:35:16.610] – Adele

Thank you. I love that he said that dancing to the changes. For various times and situations based on what you’re breaking sporadically for that time. It’s both true. I always found that I was very rigid and ran in a way that we’re not really like them at their hotel. So I think that that’s great.

[00:35:44.240]

Well, I think we’re a lot of that comes from is the old school right shopping. Yes. And if you think about it.

[00:35:51.920]

Sure. In old school rait shopping. You wanted to see how buildings were pricing themselves. You know, during any specific time, that’s to scratch a very specific itch. The problem is, is that mentality of commerce set has been applied across every decision, it seems to where you’re sticking to the building and not, you know, in marketing, you should be focusing on who’s competing for the same traveller as you. Right. Which, you know, depending on what day it is, depending on where events are, depending on any number of things.

[00:36:33.500]

The collection of properties that are competing for the same traveler as you as a much wider band than the narrow band of properties you wanted to watch pricing behavior on.

[00:36:45.580]

You know, I think it’s an industry in general. We love our certainty, even if it’s false certainty. And so to be to be fair, you do have to have something consistent to measure yourself against, right? That’s where I start. Concepts come in and things like that. I totally agree that concept is really very fluid, depending on what’s going on in the city. And I love that about this tool that you can really target them and see, OK, maybe for a while I need to be following this other one or maybe then validates your whole concept to begin with just when you start looking at the data.

[00:37:21.020]

But as a whole, I mean, it’s exhibiting now in the people who are making their resiting managers run three different forecasts every week until they’re happy with the outcome. You’re not going to be happy.

[00:37:38.840]

Everybody’s just grasping at certainty and trying to make trying to make the world black and white when it really is not a black and white place.

[00:37:48.970]

I it is when you charge one dollar for every thousand dollars. If you design, each room might work. I try to remember the exact equation, but I think that makes me crazy.

[00:38:04.860]

You know, it’s funny. This is a great time and I want to go back to something. It’s in a moment ago because it’s it’s this is all of a piece that right now is a great opportunity. We want certainty. Obviously, we want to make sure we’re not, you know, grasping at straws. Also, now is a great time to look at what’s working and what isn’t and say, OK, where we’re going to continue to put my efforts, one, to get through the current crisis and to four, where we want to be in the longer term and also say, you know what, these are the things we used to do that we need to stop doing that don’t make sense and not going to make sense for the way the world does right now.

[00:38:38.770]

You know, and they’re probably not going to make sense when the world gets back to whatever a normal looks like in the future. You know, I was very lucky. You know, my point about working with management very closely in the life I was I was incredibly fortunate. I happened to join what is today Windom right after 9/11 and my office. I was the guy responsible for digital and the like. And my office happens to be next to the guy who was responsible for rent management.

[00:39:08.120]

And we became pals and we’d go to lunch every day and we’d have conversations all the time and things like that. And I was shocked that a couple years later, when I found out that not every day that way, you know, where we were continually collaborating and like it wasn’t by design, it wasn’t because anybody told us. It was because we happen to have the offices next door up there, you know? So if it’s that kind of thing I’m saying, if you’re if today your marketing team and your management team aren’t tightly integrated in terms of the data that they’re looking at, the data they’re sharing in that, how their success is measured, you need to fix that now because you’re not going to be in a good position for the longer term infrastructure desk or the sales, marketing and revenue people have to face each other.

[00:39:54.120]

It’s kind of shirt that your parents used to play that you can’t do.

[00:39:59.980]

I think you have to wear facemasks. You can do it just to space to get to 60.

[00:40:06.580]

You started to say, well, that’s not constant. Maybe we need to have a structure where one person is knowledgeable about all of it, should oversee revenue. And anyway.

[00:40:19.730]

Chief Ramsey. Yeah, I’m not sure that’s true.

[00:40:24.220]

That comes. Because what ends up happening is a lot of times common sense or aspirational. I’m a two star hotel and I say, my cub says that four star hotel. Now, I’ve got to contradict myself here. Just a moment, though. It might be if that is the guest that you’re trying to target. If you’re thinking that, hey, that four star hotel guest, maybe they’re traveling on a lower budget and they would be interested in a two star hotel because the other way around to a four star hotel.

[00:40:49.720]

I think in that two star hotel guests want something better than what they had. Maybe that is my target. Right. So it all centers around understanding your goals. What is your objective and why are you targeting that specific demographic? And like a Delta saying, if you have one person overseeing all of that, there would be more in sync with each other.

[00:41:08.370]

Right. And understand your goals should always change, too. Absolutely.

[00:41:13.620]

You know, saying that it’s aligned with your goals because your goals don’t change all year is not a way out. Your goals should constantly be changing. As you know, every day goes by. You have your core big rock goals that are always the same. But when you then break that down to tactical level, your goals are going to change as your realities change. And that’s not just a negative reality change as you achieve success in getting a guest upmarket or downmarket.

[00:41:48.600]

And that cements itself as part of your strategy. Then you’re moving on to. OK. The next phase of those goals is, all right. If I brought a guest up market, how do I get them to spend more money on property? How do I know? So this this idea of, you know, the tethering to your goals. I just want to caution everyone that’s listening to this that your goals should be dynamic as well. Absolutely.

[00:42:15.230]

Not only not thinking we’re not still thinking old school here as well. And you’re actually right. Then ad about the goals constantly changing. But we’re talking about let’s create another position to manage two departments. Did it. Do we not think that these departments are ultimately going to be merging at some point in the future? They need first you have to think about the current structure of most hotels.

[00:42:37.860]

Is less revenue management, more attention or actually are income there?

[00:42:42.660]

Not the silo. The silo starts way, but they actually answer to different entire sections of the business. And a lot of cases marketing is answering to the management company or answering to completely different business entity. Revenue management often is answering up to gas and water.

[00:42:59.720]

Now you have a manager.

[00:43:01.050]

So the silos actually start with the businesses the people actually work for and that have competing interests and they do it. Do we not think about. I’m asking crystal ball time here. I mean, surely they think the next generation of people coming through. I mean, look at the and Yasko Griffin just posted Never look mind Eagles’ choosing hotels based on tech. We’re going to have a much more and tech savvy for them all. You know, Internet ready generation coming through are going to be the next people who will be moving into these senior positions.

[00:43:42.190]

You know, it’s difficult to say because you to with Crookshank, we’re going to follow Tim moving in the stream and it just killed me.

[00:43:51.120]

Well, I don’t want to be I don’t want to be. You don’t be the cynic, but, you know, I don’t want to be the cynic. But but I mean, if you think, you know, whenever we meet people. So I think you’re really on your nose. I do a lot of work with folks outside the hospitality industry as well as folks inside the hospitality industry.

[00:44:05.730]

And it’s amazing when you have conversations with people about them. The train for Chedid Nation, nature of hospitality. Right. If I can coin a phrase of somebody who owns the building, there’s somebody who runs the building and there’s somebody who sells the building. You know, when we think about a brand or the like and those can often be three entirely separate entities. Most people who don’t work and travel and don’t work in the hospitality industry with their head explodes when you have that conversation.

[00:44:35.720]

They can’t even imagine that. That’s the reality that we live in. Very, very commonly then. And as long as that stays the norm, I think that a lot of the challenges we run into where management is responsible to GM and or asset manager and, you know, marketing is responsible to the GM who maybe isn’t part of the asset management company. You know, you turn into a very different reality.

[00:44:59.310]

So it doesn’t mean you can’t accomplish this, but you can. No, no, of course not. Emerson published this personally. Of course you can. Is the thing this doesn’t need to be a top down edict.

[00:45:12.630]

I would argue that it can’t be. But I agree with ACS.

[00:45:17.650]

It is the hotels are structured in a way that it’s impossible to have it down a day. But that doesn’t mean. You in the position that you’re in? Can’t you cross that line and collaborate, you know, and it would be smart for you because both sides win, right? When you become more successful, you become better at what you do. If you’re the marketer in that dynamic, it cements your management company. If you’re the revenue manager, it makes your asset management company look better because the assets performing better.

[00:45:56.210]

So it definitely is worth the effort on the, you know, at in the trenches at your level to make this happen, even if your org isn’t structured in a way where it’s told to you that it should happen. So if you have had the conversation turn about the about Oates’s and e-commerce, as soon as you yourself five. I have clients outside of the hospitality industry. And when you say that, I hope I want an e-commerce platform where I sound like it through my website.

[00:46:28.370]

But I give it to another company to do exactly the same thing and they do it for it and they don’t get it. I understand it’s a total spending on site is out.

[00:46:39.060]

And then I. Yeah, exactly. People who know Amazon actually do get it. If they don’t know Amazon, they don’t. They’re like, wait.

[00:46:44.920]

Well, Kiran, if any of us and our business had someone we could go to to. Sure. Up a month that fell short because, you know, any number of things happened and you you fell out of line of your revenue and you knew you could just turn to someone and they would top it off. And yeah, I’d be a little bit more expensive in some cases. Yeah. I, like anyone, would kill for that too. By the way.

[00:47:10.140]

I did. It’s actually one of our core strategies. I give the sort of people all the time. It’s the way you should use Oji Eggs, right? I have I have people in warm weather markets where August is tough for them. Right. Because people are going to places that are hot and humid in August if they can avoid it. It’s a free time to get out today business because you’re probably not going to fill those rooms and the other way.

[00:47:32.150]

Right.

[00:47:33.490]

And so that’s the issues when you when when you’re so reliant upon the altar. Correct. That’s that’s where it becomes an issue. And there’s too many properties that I’ve come across when that is the case where there’s virtually well.

[00:47:47.520]

And it’s at zero cost because they don’t write a check.

[00:47:50.530]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it does. I, I apologize. I’ve been talking a lot today. But I’ve been trying to get a lot in quickly because I’m actually leaving now when I’m going to tee up.

[00:48:04.020]

But I to tee up a question now that we have to be here really in second terms at setting a I think realize your contract was on a words set basis.

[00:48:16.440]

I’m not conference, I’m not getting paid. So I need to have a laugh.

[00:48:21.720]

No, no, it’s it’s it’s it’s I have to get a certain number of steps in every day. You know, this is like status.

[00:48:28.670]

So but it’s great. See you all.

[00:48:31.360]

I want to tee up a question, you know, especially with me here now and Lily and Adele, you know, as we’re talking about this, how, you know, you work with properties and on property everyday and the like. How do you break down some of those silos or how do you encourage folks to break down those silos and work with, you know, across the team functions more effectively? So I think that’s a really important thing for people.

[00:48:52.550]

I was going to open a hotel or a hotel company. I make a chief revenue officer, make the key ends and they do it there. And you write your friends and your group people report that, because I really think that that that. I really don’t think a lot of the general manager, it has the expertise in the big, you know, or or revenue field or whatever in order to have the thought, was that their own thing to say?

[00:49:34.070]

No, not at all. But that’s what I mean.

[00:49:40.600]

I like to take the Nike approach. Just do it.

[00:49:46.870]

If there’s one thing that I’m learning through this crisis, because now all of a sudden it’s happening organically in companies where they’ve been striving to do this for years because people are realizing they don’t have all of the answers in their department. And that’s what we all need to realize. So if I wanted to be an annoying leader of multiple teams, like let’s say I’m a GM where everybody’s reporting up to me, then every time one of those disciplines came to me with an action plan or a strategy or something, I would say, oh, that’s interesting.

[00:50:19.960]

What did the other two guys say about this? Accept any strategy until they get buy in from all three departments and everybody’s on the same page because you really have to have that push back. Otherwise, if you’re accepting things one at a time, then they’re just going to continue to do things one at a time. So sometimes you just have to say, OK, starting today, you’re all on the same page.

[00:50:43.420]

Figure it out like that. If we have a problem with is a hole in our occupancy, we can see firming up ahead. We say, OK, what do we need to supply? We need a special rate. Maybe we need a package that could have a press release. But I think those media on our Web site. Now, there it goes. Ways or not. You know, I have an e-mail blast about it. The sales people make nothing indoors and helpful about it.

[00:51:25.520]

We need to send a letter, whatever, to plan for lunch because that particular thing is a holistic approach as opposed to segment it, just like. It’s gonna have to be a seriously, well disciplined person to manage all of that. I think that would be such a strategic appointment. You’ve got a point or wrong with the go very disastrous for the hotel.

[00:51:56.530]

To add more complicated than all of that. Oh, sorry.

[00:52:00.210]

I don’t think it’s easy, but maybe it’s because we’ll never tell again.

[00:52:05.140]

Because you’re just doing it. Yeah. There you go. I heard about it.

[00:52:09.930]

And the structure of your properties. You don’t have an asset manager and a management company, right? It’s owned and operated. Right. So, I mean, in an owned and operated hotel, your dynamic is so much easier than what the majority of hotels out out there are.

[00:52:27.950]

I mean, when you think about you want to add even more complexity to it at a brand as well.

[00:52:32.720]

So you have a management company, an asset manager and a brand, all with different goals, different stakes in the game, and honestly, even different kepi eyes on how they make money. Different time horizon.

[00:52:46.720]

I see. I thought this disagreed with some of what you said there. And I think the reason why it works is because it’s sat down and I will do as I’m told. Fidele tells me to do it. That’s true. To be fair, you are right.

[00:53:00.400]

You just take a lost cause. Tammy, I think there’s a problem with your audio. I see you trying to speak up, but I’m not hearing anything.

[00:53:08.270]

By the way, folks, I do have to run. It is, as ever, a pleasure to see you. Thank you. I you. Well, as you say. And CNN. By Tim. Wallwork. Nope. Still no audio damage due to the medium of mine. Yes. Sorry I had to duck out there, you know, to the magical wonders of technology. My lunch was being delivered.

[00:53:37.340]

You got to love that. Where you can order lunch and get it without having to speak to a single person. What’s someone like the lout with the last name like St. Onge? It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

[00:53:50.450]

So while we’re waiting mountain where we still can hear you. Well, we’re waiting for Tammy to get audio. Do we want to look at some of the you Robert Cole provided topics today.

[00:54:03.540]

Is it the right time of the show? It is point four. I know we do.

[00:54:10.750]

We still have an hour to pontificate before we get to anything of it.

[00:54:18.320]

Well, I think I dallier bring up the McKinsey article. Now earlier. Right? Oh, they read. Yes. I was very excited to hear one thing that they said. Let me just see. Here is no. This is the CNN article. No, no, no, no. Oh, no, wait. I look for it.

[00:54:46.700]

Tuckerman’s well, she’s doing well. I mean, that’s what I loved about their article, is, you know, they really focused on something I think a lot of people forget when they’re in the trenches in the detail of their day to day, which is the purpose of travel is to build memories. I mean, that’s really what we do. It’s and that’s not done by a lot of the things that get overly focused on in this industry.

[00:55:12.740]

And, you know, this is the competing, again, the competing nature of how a business, how a travel business operates of, you know, the owner wants real estate, KPI eyes in a lot of cases where the actual business is in the business of making memories. I thought that was an interesting kind of take from, you know, from a company that is a consultancy company.

[00:55:41.110]

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Let me just see if they actually quantify the benefits of having putting the guest experience first, which is just not what I was expecting from them. You know, one moment I’m going to. You know, and I like this comment as well. I think customers more choice and control. I think that that is just so. Everybody wants to feel like the reason they love their their iPhone or whatever it is, is that they can choose their playlists.

[00:56:29.710]

They can choose what they want to hear on their watch on Netflix. And they can choose their hotel experience even within picking between the very unique brands that there may be out there. And then individualise, they need themselves. That’s that’s certainly very.

[00:56:49.450]

This is what I want it to be. It pays to listen to customers and take an agile approach. We have found that companies that surpass their peers in customer experience design tend to share a set of feature. They have agile, cross-functional teams. That’s what we were just talking about, that develop and iterate with end use and deliver seamlessly across all touch points. Companies that deliver at the highest level across those he recognize real returns, outperforming their peers by nearly three to one in revenue.

[00:57:30.120]

And one point five to one in Russia, a return to shareholders in this time of great uncertainty and fluid demand. It will be more important than ever to listen to the players and understand the rapidly evolving needs.

[00:57:43.380]

I just love that you would ever think to ask your customer what motivates them, what they want to do, what they enjoy.

[00:57:55.650]

You don’t need to do that.

[00:57:56.730]

I mean, you’re better off not asking a single question of your customer until after they’ve transacted with you. And the question should only be. Related to your trip advisor writing? You know what, if TripAdvisor didn’t exist, then you would never ask it once again.

[00:58:19.370]

But even if it didn’t exist, reviews will always a good word of mouth has always existed. You will always be the right thing. I agree.

[00:58:30.230]

And I’m being sarcastic for those of you who have never watched the show before. The most important thing you possibly can do it. Any phase of the buyer’s journey is attempt to have a conversation with the people who are interested in being your customer or have been your customer because you don’t need to guess.

[00:58:50.510]

People are willing to tell you what they want. What they find interesting, they can make your job a lot easier by understanding what the needs and motivations are of the people you’re trying to work with, countering, talking with somebody the other day on this very topic.

[00:59:09.140]

And they were saying, you know, oh, well, you know, we’re excited because that’s not you right now. But, you know, what are you hearing? Because I’m conducting a lot of research right now with ateliers to understand pain points and things like that. And you’re like, well, what are you hearing? Like these people who are starting to travel now? What is it that they want? I said, well, you said 40 percent.

[00:59:34.010]

Right. Yeah.

[00:59:35.690]

I said, why don’t you ask why the people there are in law and talks about this a lot.

[00:59:46.190]

He hasn’t talked about it in a while. But, you know, think back to the old school days of the GM who was playing lounge lizard and was just interacting with guests, understanding where you come from. What made you decide to come here? And you know that you don’t need to stand in a room anymore to do that. You can design that in across the entire journey. And even pre-booking, you can you can intelligently figure out what people want, why they’re interested in your area, because knowing that can help you attract more people to be interested in your area, can help you speak better to others.

[01:00:29.390]

If you understand what the draw is for the people who naturally, you know, decided to come your way and the summer and then they’re available now.

[01:00:37.850]

So they had somebody datapoints available now that you can you know, there’s more information available to you than there has ever been thrown in. And we’ll go full circle now back to LTA Insight. And you’ve got a tool that’s designed to give you exactly what we’re just talking about, that move in physical data. You know, you a mobile airline potentially coming up because that’s the majority of the airlines coming into your destination. At that point, you get to know where they’re coming from, all the connecting points.

[01:01:06.160]

And, you know, the captain helps it come from. There’s so much information you can now take even further than the lounge lizard. Just in know way you from. You know, I’m from wherever. Well, actually, how did you get here? Well, we can figure that out.

[01:01:19.150]

We can have a map for that. Let’s do a real quick check here, Tammy.

[01:01:23.720]

Make a noise of Christine’s point, though. You’re right. We have so much more data now, but I almost think that can be part of the problem, too, right. There’s so much data that people don’t know how to use it and the crew gets overwhelmed by it. Right. So, you know, things like go to union site where now you go to Tim’s point earlier when he was talking about, hey, I’ve been doing this manually for years, you just automated the whole thing.

[01:01:50.240]

The more that we can automate data, the more that we can figure out the attribution modeling, the you know, how how to pull this in and how to intelligently use it, the better off it tells you going to be.

[01:02:01.190]

Well, the more you can turn raw data into actionable insights. I mean, really, that’s that’s and that’s part of the problem is a lot of the B.I that’s been put in the hands of hotels is raw data. It’s not true business intelligence. It’s just data. And unless you’re incredibly skilled at what it takes to move someone from a date, one data marker to another, you can’t walk off a broad data easily. It means that you need to be able to analyze it and understand what it’s telling you and not get caught in the trap of, oh, it’s telling me this.

[01:02:39.410]

But it also could be telling me that. It could be telling me this. And you get paralyzed from. From analyzing it. And so, yeah, that’s one of the big challenges is we don’t need more data. Ah, ah. You know, the hotel industry needs more insight. They need more understanding.

[01:02:55.530]

And I think that’s true. It’s kind of crossing topics. Again, here is one, I think with the LTTE inside, that’s where an eight eight eight just falls. Tiny, tiny, tiny, little bit short for me. It’s a brilliant tool, as you said that. And it’s a tool that we don’t have. But that, too, could be so, so much better. If it was then actionable and there’s ways that you can do that by taking the data industry, you know, specialist that is LTA and then merging that with other industries such as digital marketing, that tool.

[01:03:25.850]

And I pitched this to LTA probably about three years ago. That, too, if they had it back then, could automate and control your digital market accounts. So, for example, if you’re seeing that the you’ve got a shortfall on a certain day, a week coming up in the next, however many weeks, you can put more digital marketing spend into your marketing channels, accounting for lead time and funnel, that’s all in there for for those particular debt.

[01:03:54.110]

And if you fall, you throw it back, because at the moment what we do is we apply digital marketing and spend virtually on a linear, linear basis. You know, we’ve got, you know, three thousand dollars divided by thirteen point thirty days. That’s my daily spend. And what then segment in between Facebook and metasearch and this and the other by having access to that data? That’s the point I was making before. I think that it’s to the point.

[01:04:19.200]

They can tell me we can really, truly start to make an influence upon connecting this data and actually making it actionable and then being a lot smarter with how we target markets. I definitely could be reached out to Ricardo and say that point to him, which is why I the API.

[01:04:37.520]

You know what we’re when we’re talking about listening to the customers and we’re collecting data generally, we’re talking about collecting data directly from the customers online or on a review or something like that. And what we’re completely missing is, I think, the most critical point, which is having a way to enter the feedback that the employees are getting and have them be able to input that information into the semantic analysis so that it reaches the top decision making people and is included in that conversation.

[01:05:21.590]

Even a wonderful tool like. Does they have a way for data from the inside the front desk saying this person had a problem because such and such, you know. And this is what I did. But we really need to sit down and find the root of the problem. Not you know, it’s not what he was actually complaining about it, you know. Yeah. And we got back on track. And that’s your most important thing, is the person standing in front of you and the person that they’re going.

[01:05:59.810]

Yeah. Wow. I really empathize with you, but they’re not backing down. Find the root cause and.

[01:06:07.980]

Do you think, though, that the reason for that is that most hotels in the management structure that we talked about before and have multiple different layers and this, that and the other different companies? Do you think it’s because they’re just not geared up to focus on the hospitality in the hospitality industry? I know that you put right at the center of what you do. You know, TripAdvisor reviews. I you know, we’ve worked together before and I know how fantastic the reviews are for all of the library collection.

[01:06:36.790]

But that comes because you’ve made a a a line and drawn a line in the sand and said this is going to be important to us. Do you think perhaps that other hotels in the struggle to do that or can’t do that because there’s this too many blocks?

[01:06:49.230]

I think that the reason is a mindset. This is my hotel is not this is my bricks and mortar around me. I can’t make it the Mandarin Oriental. I can’t make it a Roseworthy or Belmond. So I guess these are the kind of reviews that you get edited and even even some hotels that have really incredible names, you’d be surprised. And you’ll find them with very average reviews.

[01:07:20.740]

You know, I think part of like a DLT to your specific example. It actually is easily you could easily accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish. The problem is, is even though it’s easy, it would be incredibly expensive. And so that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. It’s incredibly difficult to sell someone who doesn’t understand what the value proposition that will build.

[01:07:46.850]

And it’s not a value proposition that you can say it’s definitely this activity that’s going to do that, because you could easily, in a CRM window, record interactions in a straight, open field narrative and then apply a guy over that to actually gain insights out of it. That is. Incredibly simple to do. It’s just also incredibly expensive. What about the culture change the culture? I don’t said it’s the most effective way to increase your revenue.

[01:08:26.900]

Agreed. The initial investment in that you that’s your hump. It’s not even the investment of changing the culture to record it or anything like that.

[01:08:36.050]

It’s it’s going to be hey, step one is we need a way to collect. We need a way to train. We need a way to to analyze and report. And then step two is we need to figure out what the heck are we going to do with it, which has its own set of investment and thought process. In a perfect world, yeah. You could productize that very easily.

[01:09:02.540]

I’m going to disagree with you on that. Step one actually has to be give them something to talk about. And that’s something bad to talk about because you can go to a lot of hotels out there. Think about your typical cookie cutter hotel. Right. You go in, your checking process is seamless. And and today, maybe you buy a kiosk, right? We want the no contact check and everything you get there. Your room is clean. The Wi-Fi, we’re good.

[01:09:21.980]

You slept good. Everything was fine. But how many people are writing reviews saying everything was fine? Right. You have to be able to give them something to talk about where they can’t talk about. But you say that.

[01:09:35.110]

You say, well, that’s difficult because you can you can do to train. But again, you could productize the. The injection of Yohei. You know, you can inject one of these conversations. You could actually productize because the a lot of these people are standing in front of a computer screen. You could productize injecting specific questions at specific points of interaction that are not skewing negative because that’s one of the mistakes a lot of review structure has to. It is it focuses on what could we have done better?

[01:10:13.580]

How did we fail you? And you can actually get the same insight without asking the question negatively and without putting someone in the Friant in the mind frame of your asking for me to tell you something that was wrong. So let me look back through my recollection of my experience through that lens of something was wrong. You can productize all of that. And this is where I was saying functionally, you can solve for the human issue. You can even solve or tracking an employee’s interpretation of the interaction over enough interactions to actually adjust if they skew to positive or skew to negative in their telling of the feedback.

[01:10:57.320]

All of that product wise is super easily solvable, like it’s it would be one of the most simplistic products to build because it would use its all off the shelf architecture. The problem is, is all that architecture would be incredibly expensive.

[01:11:12.710]

There’s already way new management tools. So all you have to do is take the line from what the person put it in the comments below that asking your interaction with you and then with your stay. Or you know, when somebody comes to desk or anything I can do for you thinking that. Especially if there was a problem. And I’m pulling the report today from that field and just have somebody interpreting Eric issue management. This is not what the problem is.

[01:11:50.720]

How would your self I mean, that is as bad of a question as what could we have done better or did. Was there anything wrong? Because how was your stay has turned into almost a greeting. Just like when you know, a lot of people, instead of saying hello, say, how’s it going? They’re not really asking, how’s it. How’s it going? And the person that they say it, too, also knows they’re not asking, how’s it going?

[01:12:17.600]

It’s a greeting.

[01:12:18.500]

And they say the same thing. Back to you. So the same would like to say yes. Yes. Sometimes they will tell you that sometimes.

[01:12:27.980]

But you actually if you designed the questions and then measured the responses, you could fine tune the questions to a point where you could actually get amazing insight and amazing insight that would have very clear actions off of it, because a general question like how was your stay? Is not going to get a response from a large amount of people to a granular level. They’re not going to think of, you know, everything was amazing except this one tiny thing that did not at all ruin my stay.

[01:13:06.320]

But was friction existed where? What? If you were really going to do this right, you would find a way to actually identify friction points in the guest journey. And that. Again, is achievable. All of this I could I could chart this product in a matter of days to a pretty easy level. The problem is it would probably end up being something that an average hotel would be paying thousands of dollars a month to to have. And it would easily drive massive benefit to them.

[01:13:45.550]

The problem is it’s in slight improvement here, a slight improvement here, a slight improvement here, a slight improvement here. So all that massive benefit is just, you know, incremental improvements across all these different lines. It would be really hard to keep a hotel dedicated to that level of service. Either. Well, that proves that that leadership and management, isn’t it? I mean, you could say the same for my business. It doesn’t know if you’ve got any thoughts on the mindset.

[01:14:18.130]

It comes from bottom open, top down at the same time. You’ve all got to be bought into having that. And, you know, and I’ve I’ve been fortunate to work in some environments where there’s very little leadership at the top or certainly no ethos coming from the leadership. And all the ethos that is coming is one that I just don’t agree with. And I think he’s outright wrong. Then you get unhappiness in the organization that leads to, you know, poor quality of service.

[01:14:44.800]

You know, lately it’s slights. Little things here, there and everywhere leads to communication breakdown between departments. Before you know it, you’re in that. Yeah, it’s been that spiral.

[01:14:55.220]

Yeah. If you wanted if it’s if you if you believe that, like McKinsey says, that you can have three times the revenue because you are listening to your customers, that you can DIY it in a way that is easy and not expensive technology wise, as long as the reputation. I mean, even if they didn’t cooperate and let you enter in the front desk, I mean, not just be digitally rich each continent, then. Then you’d have to really do it, say, to the front desk, look, we want to kill it.

[01:15:39.640]

We really want to be number one. We want to be the kindest, nicest, most wonderful experience that they’ve ever had. So when somebody comes up to you with a problem, don’t just empathize with them. Make sure that that is input somewhere where management can take that information and find a solution. And we’ll get back to that for that. You know, there was this one little thing. It didn’t really damage my day, but it was a friction point.

[01:16:10.180]

And let them know, you know what? That was a great insight. We really appreciate it. And this is how we’ve changed the verbiage to make it more clear or we, you know, put more communication behind it or from now on. We’re going to put a double check so that those things aren’t NI’s or etc.. I mean, very often the solutions are so simple. Yes.

[01:16:35.580]

Yeah. And what about for me? I mean, you wouldn’t be able to necessarily tie it to a guest, but even a simple start could be like one of those servais form. Right. So you create a couple toggles. Right. Is a customer service. Was it related to product for you? Some different things. And then I eat Delane talking to you. I’m complaining about, I don’t know, the elevator or whatever. And when I leave, you’ve taken care of me.

[01:17:01.960]

You just lie. And, you know, there was a complaint about the product at the hotel and it related to the elevator. And you start to see these get aggregated and you start to see, hey, these are where our biggest issues are.

[01:17:15.640]

You could actually simplify that even more now thinking about it, where you could create two fields, a positive keyword mention and a negative keyword mention. And just ask your team if anyone brings up anything positive or anything negative, try to give me the main keyword of what it was about. Right.

[01:17:36.760]

That someone is going to look for in any case, paid. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:17:42.580]

And then I would greatly simplify quite a bit. But you’d still have the training issue of asking it, like once you’re past the first blush of the impact that gives you getting down to the secret sauce and really becoming well oiled would require more intelligent questions based off of, you know, what was their body language like? You know, did they blow you off on the question? And if they did. Is there any way you can, you know, potentially still get information out of them without being annoying?

[01:18:21.700]

Right.

[01:18:22.050]

Like, there’s if you wanted to really take it to a scientific level of like once you’re past kind of the first level of improvement, could you really get this to a point where you can understand even the impact on the real impact on guest satisfaction of certain things that we know hotel struggle with deciding on anyways, like when there’s a certain aspect of the hotel that really needs overhaul. But, you know, you continue putting it off because you’re really not sure how much it’s impacting, you know?

[01:18:55.660]

So it’s not an obvious in your face. It’s not the pool is gross looking. It’s the overall finish of the the hallways. Right. Like, you could get down to understanding the impact on guest satisfaction down to that scientific of a level which would help you understand some of the soft stuff that is friction. Right? That’s not the obvious. It’s not. Your person was rude. You lost my reservation. You know, I waited forever to get into the restaurant.

[01:19:32.230]

It’s not the easy that’s all the easy stuff.

[01:19:34.450]

The more interesting stuff that, you know, you can really get to is what are what are the things that Apple would look at if they were looking at having a hotel. Right. Because they wouldn’t look at those big things. Those are those would be the obvious things they would design around. They it’s the the impact of the aesthetic, the impact of the overall vibe and feel and sound and smell, because those are the things that when you nail those and I can think of multiple properties that have nailed those things, those are the hard things to continue investing in long term.

[01:20:11.260]

Once you’re over the initial hump of the you know, hey, we’re we’re running at, you know, top occupancy, top ADR, how can we get better? Well, that’s when you actually have to start going into those things. And you could get that to become a core part of your every day by building system.

[01:20:32.610]

To really collect that in an intelligent way, and that’s not going to be done by a guest survey. It’s things you would need to accomplish by intelligently and understanding how to ask the right questions throughout their stay with you. To not have it be annoying, but also to get the insights you’re really looking for.

[01:20:53.580]

It also depends on where you’re trying to go with this, because to eat, you’re almost talking about the pursuit of perfection. To a certain point that most hotels don’t need to get to that. And if that’s true, you’re still so far behind perfection that all they need to do is exceed expectations of that. Yeah. That’s all it is. You know that that’s to stop acting like a two point one stop. You know, just that little bit extra than what I was expecting when I came here.

[01:21:21.540]

That’s what makes the experience footrest.

[01:21:24.030]

You haven’t known me long enough that I’m a hundred and fifty percent. It’s one hundred and fifty percent or zero indeed.

[01:21:31.350]

I just want it mathematically. A hundred and fifty percent is impossible. You can see just just you know, it’s not going to work. Okay.

[01:21:39.680]

But I kind of know you were joking, Ed, but kind of to the point that, you know, those perfection. What’s a perfect day for me is probably very different growns. It’s dynamic.

[01:21:50.280]

So it’s also thinking through how do we make sure that each guest has that perfect experience? Because what I enjoy or what I like as far as my experience, is going to be very different than probably everyone else on this call. Yeah. And so it’s a tie not in as well.

[01:22:08.910]

I’ll give you a perfect example. One of the nicest hotels in Vegas. I absolutely hate because they pump this strong vanilla smell throughout the whole property and it just makes me sick. So to a lot of people, that’s perfect.

[01:22:25.260]

Vanilla is such a pleasing smell, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can’t stand it.

[01:22:29.900]

Oh, that’s so artificial, though, for me, because what are some of the best hotels I’ve ever stayed in? The smallest ones where the the it’s the customer experience. I get a personalized experience that the people who I speak to genuinely care about what I have to say. They’re looking out for me when I’m going outside. You know, if I’m on a leisure vacation, I’m walking out. And they had to me an umbrella say, hey, the weather is going to be back in, you know, potentially.

[01:22:57.710]

And I was time. Take your umbrella. You look at all of that type thing. But equally, I also know people will hit that, you know, like Ben, who’s not on it on the show today. He genuinely doesn’t want to speak to anybody ever, you know, even wife and kids. I’m not joking. He can really get that interaction. He looks at the tech side of it. So it’s Apple. Open the hotel.

[01:23:20.010]

He would stay there and only there forever.

[01:23:22.980]

So it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s managing. And listen, I’m in between. I want you there when I need you here. But I do not want you pointing out to me constantly that you’re there. And that’s where I struggle with super luxury, because super luxury to me feels like you’re just constantly telling me and making it obvious to me that you’re there and I don’t want you to be there.

[01:23:48.340]

But I’m not letting that. It’s so funny that you say that, because my first experience at the St. Regis Belle Harbor years ago, I was there for a Starwood training because Starwood was a big fan of scheduling mandatory training at the most expensive properties possible. But anyway, I. I had not been in a super luxury environment prior to that, and I felt uncomfortable the entire time because it was so over the top, like a walk you to the elevator, they go up in the elevator with you.

[01:24:20.640]

Sometimes I just want a little privacy. So it was left the room and everything. But for me, ultra luxury, it’s not a fit.

[01:24:30.360]

You know what? My mother used to say something to me that really clarifies that it’s not about the opulence when she was a real estate agent. She said that the young couples who were getting their first home and you show them something basic, they will. And just, oh, it was a nice thing. Clean and fresh, very bright. And even if they can just see the potential link and you know what, another. And believe me, I know hotel super cool New York City property thing, very trendy was opening the thing.

[01:25:16.860]

And you know why you’re on the top on TripAdvisor. And then they changed management and went down to number two hundred and seventy. Now the bricks and mortar, it it’s the people know. And that you can it is three inspiring people to do the right thing, to listen, to try to solve problems, make you feel at home and hiring the right people.

[01:25:47.180]

Right. Is the best cost savings you can have months. So many fronts.

[01:25:53.030]

Hire a great message, hire the right people, have a culture.

[01:25:56.870]

Have a real culture. By the way, not a concocted culture. Hey, concocted cultures, you know, have have a real culture, a culture of kindness and hospitality and make sure your management lives that culture, you know, because that that is how it happens, you know.

[01:26:16.190]

That’s how, you know, seeing seeing the GM walking in the parking lot, picking up trash and, you know, the simple things like that. It’s those those have more impact on how your employees will act that actually telling them that that’s what they should be doing. Yeah.

[01:26:33.140]

So you’ve got the tech equivalent, haven’t you, at way. Wait, you’ll you’ll see all of these jobs that come into the cool, hip and trendy tech companies and they’ve got free beer and a foosball table.

[01:26:43.730]

I hate it. Great. That’s great. Right?

[01:26:46.670]

Oh, I want to go. What for you. For the free beer, the feasibility.

[01:26:49.460]

Well, you know what that tells you about that company is the leadership or a holes. Yeah. Because you have to do that stuff to say you have culture. If you have to do that stuff to force the team to want to interact with each other, it means there’s something wrong. Yeah, totally.

[01:27:09.000]

You know, I do have to say, though, add the one caveat to that might be in an area like San Francisco, because at this point, so many tech companies have it that I think it becomes almost like a hotel, a menaged when everybody else is offering free breakfast and you don’t. People aren’t going to stay with you. So I think it might be a little bit of a blanket statement to say that every company who offers that has bad leadership warning you.

[01:27:35.970]

But it is definitely a warning sign. There’s no question. But I’ll even tell you, like, let’s use the ones in San Francisco, for example, compared to working at other tech companies, working out of Facebook, working at a Google, working out an Amazon. You are a slave.

[01:27:53.750]

I mean, I know what all that stuff there. Right? They don’t want you to leave. I’m good because they want you to square everything there.

[01:28:01.480]

And I mean, I’ll even here in Orlando, I’m sure you all know people who work in the executive level of the largest employer in Orlando. And I can tell you anyone who makes above one hundred thousand dollars a year for that employer is basically a slave.

[01:28:18.320]

They are 60 plus hours a week grinding constantly, can not have any live work balance whatsoever. And it’s because they built a machine to find the people who see that as their dream, you know, and it’s it’s their concocted culture.

[01:28:43.760]

And, you know, every single actually, I can say their name Disney, they can say their name because I would never work with them because they’re a horrible company.

[01:28:56.330]

So but, you know, and I personally, through my career, have deprogrammed a number of their employees because they are they’re brainwashed. But it is it’s that fake culture that that false culture. There are a whole nother level of it.

[01:29:14.370]

But I do love the irony. If they said because you’ve got The Avengers on your wall right behind you.

[01:29:20.770]

Listen, I think we’re going to hate their culture and love their product. I have a state of mind and outlook makes them so incredible at what they do.

[01:29:30.380]

And annoying at the same time. Yeah, I am totally with you. I think Coke culture isn’t amenities in the same way. Respect the hospitality is amenities, the things that you supply to people. It’s how you supply it. It’s what you give the additional benefits. It’s the whole package. And the exact same thing goes with culture in a tech company as it does in a hotel, and it sells through management. You’ve got to have the right people in the right positions and passing that message from top to bottom and back up again.

[01:30:01.910]

That’s as important as it is coming from the top. He’s been able to listen to the people who are on the front line and doing their job. So, you know, doubt hit the nail on the head that, you know, walking into the front desk and say, hey, we really want to be number one. But then turning around and listening to what they’re saying as to why we’re not number one right now, getting that message from the CIA.

[01:30:22.280]

It’s the same in a tech company. You’ve got to have any thoughts. You’ve got to stand for something. But then you’ve got to listen to the people who are doing the work, who are communicating with your clients on a Day-To-Day basis. Otherwise. It’s just going to be a broken, broken system. And just another company. I’ve been on a lot of customer service calls for different companies, insurance, Kaveri, all kinds of different things. And I own only one of about five companies.

[01:30:50.230]

When I said that something was a problem. Did they make me feel like they’re going to be they’re going to report it. They’re going to find out the root cause and it’s going to be solved. And that’s all I wanted, was to have that satisfaction. I work in asking for them to do something, you know, for me, except so my my problem at the moment. But I wouldn’t have walked away happy. And that’s how I walked away, unhappy from those other companies where I felt my comment just would die with that one person.

[01:31:25.750]

When you feel like you are the problem as opposed to the problem, you actually tell the guy that’s what we do.

[01:31:31.810]

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I have kind of two thoughts around that. And first of all, I think that this culture discussion is exhibiting a lot right now in the way that people are let go. And I think that we’ve talked about this quite a lot before. But just this past week, somebody actually took a picture of a letter and posted it on LinkedIn and said, hey, I know some of you have been reaching out about this or this or that with my hotel.

[01:31:58.450]

But based on this certified letter that I received in the mail yesterday, I’m no longer employed there. So I can’t really help.

[01:32:07.990]

So out of so awkward a certified letter in the mail. No phone call? No, not even an email, nothing. Just, you know, proof that you’ve received this and you can come get your stuff.

[01:32:20.740]

So that’s one thing that’s worse than the Xoom I heard about. And it’s so impersonal.

[01:32:27.730]

Also on a second point, and it kind of back to Ed’s point, I’m sure that some of the people were listening to us over the last 10 and 15 minutes, like, yeah, I can’t even get my agent to put in an email address into the guest act alone. Give me a keyword specific contact. But I think if I were operating a hotel today, what I would do with my front desk agents is I would call them sales managers in training and I would not hire for front desk skills.

[01:32:57.430]

I would hire for sales manager skills because sales managers care about the relationship and it matters whether or not they record all of this information. And then the people who do the best at creating those relationships have an opportunity to move into the sales department over time. But rather than looking for, you know, your typical high schooler who just wants a paycheck, really invest in those people, build your own pipeline of great sales people that aren’t just order takers, but they really can display how you have to kind of punt and find and make it the best thing possible and logging the information not just in the PMRC, but right into the CRM.

[01:33:36.340]

And I think that that would be a really interesting way to kind of operate a front desk, but also really do understand that the answer may not necessarily be changing your property or changing your people. It may be changing who you’re acquiring as a customer. The answer isn’t always how do we get better to meet that customer? Sometimes it’s we just never going to be right for this specific consumer. And if that’s the case, how do we make sure those consumers don’t make it here?

[01:34:09.390]

Oh, okay. I think that communication net keep themselves out. Understand? That’s not what we are. Right? Yeah.

[01:34:19.420]

It was program that was such a wax on wax on moment that really for me, that was brilliant. That was my idea. You know, that was a sales.

[01:34:28.570]

I like the idea that this was a good idea to speak. I mean, how you ask the question is as important as what you ask. So like I was saying earlier, how was your stay? That’s not a great question or a great way to ask him. If I were to look you in the eye and smile since it was everything you do. Enjoy your drink at the bar last night. OK. I do like how did you know I had a drink at the bar, you bring it to you.

[01:34:54.880]

But you still say that, though. What a weird question to ask. Just kidding. I’m kidding.

[01:35:03.870]

Ads follow him. Right.

[01:35:05.250]

I just when I have my name tag on and people are like, hey, Ed, I’m like. I know, especially if you like, forget that you have your name tag on. I definitely was that person who would leave my front desk job and go to the gas station or something. And I’m like, why is everybody calling me by name?

[01:35:22.980]

What’s happening here on a milk carton?

[01:35:29.580]

So. So do we want to dial this into something? Yeah, that was a great conversation about something that I think most people are going to walk away going, OK, do we want to pull this into something that maybe people can walk away with an insight that they could do something with?

[01:35:47.430]

Well, I’m curious, Lauren kind of touted this as including something about predictive budgeting. Have you guys seen anything different either in your hotels or with your clients about the way that people are focusing on budgeting? Because that’s right. Where you see starting budget season pretty much right now and a lot of people have no clue where to start right now. So what are you guys seeing in that? And I’m happy to share my thoughts after you guys chime in.

[01:36:16.920]

Big Noji is usually what we’re hearing in many cases. Not not every case, obviously. But it’s a we’ve just like you said. No. No clue what the future’s going to hold. We might have a project. We might not have budget. We’re still waiting to find out more data on on how how the recovery is going to be before they can do that. So it’s making it’s making 2021 just a complete enigma. It’s a complete question mark right now.

[01:36:42.030]

But here’s the thing. They should look to how fast growth companies have constructed budgets, because as a fast growth company, you end up tethering line items together. So you hit certain types of revenue thresholds that unlocks certain types of spending. So you start with a very simplistic. Here are the core spends. So here are the thresholds that we have to hit. So those core spans are hit. And then when you start ratcheting above those thresholds, that unlocks investments into other parts of the business.

[01:37:18.510]

I had to do that for years. That easy yield, because like you, there were two or three years that we were impossible to forecast because of the, you know, the craziness. Yeah. And it was really when we moved from kind of a standard product that, you know, independent hotels bought. So when we moved into Enterprise and we were an enterprise grade architecture because a single deal could add 30 percent to the company’s revenue. In a single contract, and it made it really difficult to, you know, just come out and say, OK, we’re gonna do this, we’re going to hit this target.

[01:37:55.990]

And we tried and every time we were too conservative on what we’d be able to achieve. And so it screwed up our spending. So then we moved to this idea of a tethered budget where when you hit certain markers, it did it opened up and made a much more complex budget structure.

[01:38:17.210]

I don’t know how hotels will be able to even get their heads around that, let alone trying to implement any different than any any regulations will be.

[01:38:26.900]

That would be yeah, that will be incredible. It be incredible if if we can do it, it will be very dynamic and it’s kind of what is needed. But I just can’t see a lot of my clients yet. They don’t feel safe. Tell the what? Yeah.

[01:38:46.800]

Well, you know, there’s the big challenge where Chris and I, of course, work mostly in the marketing and marketing. And there’s the challenge of how do you do marketing when you don’t the marketing budgets. So what do you do with that? And so a lot of hoteliers are turning to more of the commission oriented programs. So things like what Google is doing right now, what their paper stay on metasearch, things like that. I could give you a long list of reasons why I don’t like that model, but I can’t argue the fact that if you don’t have a marketing budget, those are the kind of things that you have to look for.

[01:39:15.440]

Right. Is how can I still market and pay after that gets to stay and stand in front of it? Dean, I don’t disagree with you at all.

[01:39:23.220]

And I think you’re right. A lot of people are moving in this program. But it also kind of makes the point we all complain about the 80s and the over reliance on things like I heard that earlier today. And yet that’s exactly what a lot of those programs end up doing. You become over reliant on something that you’re going to at the end of the day, the cost of getting the business from that man. Yes. You don’t pay up front.

[01:39:45.620]

So it’s easy to you. Well, I’m a marketing budget, but I could acquire that guest from much cheaper with other avenues and strategy. So it’s kind of balancing that I get maybe to simplify, add your all.

[01:40:00.850]

You know, it it it it is just even looking at it very base level. We think we’re gonna hit here. And so based on that, we’re gonna come up with a base level budget. But you know what? If we start to trend where we’re gonna hit here, we bring in these other things. And then if we you know, so you have kind of three tiers at a very simplistic level. You know, this is, like you said, our core operating expenses.

[01:40:23.960]

This is what we’ve got to have in the budget. No matter what. And if we start to see the market coming back and more. Yeah, we’re doing all the right things and we’re starting to see great occupant’s secret revenue numbers we hit here. We’re gonna unleash these additional things. And then when we hit here, we’re going to unleash these additional things. So kind of in line with what you said, but maybe in a much more simplistic structure, because I got a great Christian, I think many of the hotels trying to do it the way you mentioned, it’s not going to work.

[01:40:53.150]

And especially when you think of some of these bigger companies that have, you know, hundred, 200, 300, 500 hotels that they’re trying to roll up to. Yeah.

[01:41:00.760]

Not this year that they can do back, I. I think the. What do you think on this, though? The potential issue you’ve got if we hit this revenue, then a little luck, more money. It depends on where you set that market because you often need the more money to hit that revenue. It’s kind of like it kind of kills itself. I’m speaking purely digital marketing here, you know, a direct digital marketing.

[01:41:25.940]

It’s a it’s difficult. You’ve got to really it’s quite a negotiation to try and just edgy, just a little bit lower. So it will look that. So you’ll actually get that higher rep, because we know as digital markets we’re going to get it even in a compressed market, even if four percent occupancy, because you just become more you become more agile. Become slightly more aggressive. If if the hotel allows you to do it and it’s about gaining market share of what’s out there, you know, because there are people traveling, you just want more of it.

[01:41:54.690]

And then you’ll come in, which you do not go in now.

[01:41:59.490]

And look, I 100 percent agree, and you’re right that the downfall of that tiered approach is, like you said, you’ve got to spend more money to make more money. And so how do you how do you figure this out? And unfortunately, I think this is going to be a really interesting budgeting season because let’s be real. There’s a lot of experience on this on my screen. None of us have been through anything like this before. I don’t know.

[01:42:23.060]

None. Yeah. So, you know, I think maybe one hundred years ago, Great Depression. The good news is hopefully this is our one in 100 year mark.

[01:42:33.890]

And, you know, so I just think you’re right. We we need to really balance. And that’s where the conversations with clients. I was talking to my team yesterday. Hey, guys, get ready. Budget season’s coming. You know, we’re hit in July. Next week, someone tells a lot of the guys I’m talking to are starting in August this year. So it’s starting to think through like we’re doing a lot of work on recovery strategies.

[01:42:57.830]

And what kinds of things can they be doing and how you can? How do you help build and grow the revenue that’s coming back into the hotel and build that trust so that people. Well, you can increase demand and you can get people to book with you. But I think it’s gonna be a really interesting budget season because I do think a lot of hotels are going to try and apply. Same systems and processes that they have for the last 20 years.

[01:43:20.340]

And I don’t know that it’s going to be exact, right? Well, I think to from my perspective, one of the things that we haven’t really touched on as a revenue management field where we do a lot of the budgeting along with operations, is cash flow projections, because in the current environment, it’s important that people understand that you’re PNL doesn’t necessarily mean that you have cash in the bank. So what does that mean for you in how you’re planning your budgeting?

[01:43:50.880]

And it’s really fascinating. I’m I’m glad that I started this company eight years ago because I’ve gotten through some of this myself in that our business has very little seasonality. A lot of times were hired because somebody has gotten a new job. And other than waiting out year end bonuses, that very seldom has anything to do with the time of year. So we always have to kind of throw a little bit of a dart at where our revenues are going to fall month by month as a consulting firm.

[01:44:23.040]

So we’ve gotten really used to what we call zero based budgeting, which is similar to the official zero based budgeting. But we kind of look at, OK, what is the fixed cost that we have to cover? And where do we need to be for that? And then for every additional dollar, how much of that is going to go to staffing? How much of that is going to go to projects that we want to accomplish? So we create almost like a floating barometer for flows through with additional dollars, keeping in mind that, you know, for a hotel, for example, if you forecast five percent occupancy, you need X number of housekeepers.

[01:44:59.910]

At what point does that jump up one more housekeeper and how are you doing that? So since this is a show of shameless plugging, I will remind everybody that episode of One of the Things Up Enterprise is Hospitality Revenue Management podcast. Great walks. Thank you. Literally walks you through this calculation. It was originally around how to close your hotel, but the same metrics work for budgeting when you’re uncertain about your revenue future.

[01:45:28.800]

So I think that’s an interesting point you bring up about PNL in cash flow because, you know, we’ve been guilty of it in this conversation. Hey, here’s a just you need to have your market know and. Yeah, absolutely do. But the reality is, you know, the summer hotels that may still owe money from previous market and other Venters, that when when this mad rush came that everything’s dried up, everybody’s counseling, quick pull everything. And now we’re furloughing stuff.

[01:45:57.330]

There’s still going to be invoices that are outstanding from pre Kofod maintained for some properties. And that is when you will come back to, you know, opening back up the same level. It’s going to be a huge conundrum and a huge, huge problem for a lot properties. And you still got to you’ve still got to operate. You’ve still got to pay staff. You’ve still got a market. You’ve still got to use the OTA as you’ve still got to do everything they could do previously to kind of get the business in so you can pay that off in the past.

[01:46:29.310]

And that’s complicating budgets yet further because it’s like, well, you know, what does that picture look like before we can even look at what the future is going to be? And I think it’s a tummy. It’s a yoke when you are mentioned about your teams and its and its budget in. The biggest advice that I would given and what we’ve given our top teams in the past is just communicate. I mean, it sounds really obvious, but you’d be surprised how and how difficult and awkward those conversations can be with some people.

[01:47:03.150]

They’re not comfortable about talking about money. And even though it’s not their money and it’s company budget and whatever, it’s still quite an awkward conversation. But we’re in totally unique situation.

[01:47:14.640]

As we said, just if you’re a hotel, be open and honest and have that information say, hey, look, you know, this is the Situation Room, because then your markets it all, you know, that the service provider can pivot and build a plan for you. Ready to that takes into that that big chunk of money that you may all equally the market has got to turn on and. What is your position? Because it’s pompous me doing a whole lot of work and saying, hey, let’s go and spend a hundred thousand dollars a month when the reality is you’ve got 100.

[01:47:46.340]

Right. And you have to balance it because, of course, it increases your cash flow later on. But what is the timing after what you expect to see an hour away? And for how long can you maintain this expense until you see an hour away? Because we’re all about like you should really keep all your sales, marketing and revenue management people to right now. But there is a lot of should and there’s a lot of what can you actually do.

[01:48:09.990]

So this is obviously all of our comments for the past weeks. And what you really should be focused on are valid. But they do assume the. You have cash to focus on these things that are making strategic smart budgeting decisions with what you have given the uncertainty of how long it’s going to take till demand really resurfaces.

[01:48:31.780]

The pay per stay makes sense, I think.

[01:48:37.040]

Exactly. And then that’s the reason that things are making that it’s you know, it’s it’s not the best marketing solution for a hotel, but it’s the best for a hotel right now given the set of circumstances. And that makes total sense to me. The question is going to be that when when we all eventually dig ourselves out of this hole is not to rely on it and it become another LTA type channel awaits an overreliance. It becomes a I’m going to keep it until I’m ready and then I’m going to move it to tablets, point to a much more efficient and know digital market channel, a way of getting that book.

[01:49:13.540]

At the most cost effective point, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to have to disappear off. And it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you all. Have a great weekend. And if anybody wants to get in contact me, I’m available at Tristant Hayward at three and six time agency. That’s three and six, all in letters and numbers. Once again, thanks very much. See you later, too.

[01:49:39.120]

Thank you. I think your Trystan brought up a good point there at the end of the day. Do something, do anything. Just don’t do nothing. The worst thing you can do right now is do nothing but do something with the understanding that you’re probably going to be wrong. Be agile and have Plan B ready to go and A plant C and probably a plant D and start along the alphabet. Right. So be nimble and and be ready to adapt.

[01:50:05.390]

And case in point, I can remember actually on this very show about three months ago in March, we were a little bit earlier in the corvids scenario at the time. And remember, we’re having conversations. We were just talking about what does konbit look like? And we all predicted the cove. It would be subsided by the summer. And there were actually all kinds of polls out there in the industry. You can find them all over linked in the images and so forth, infographics.

[01:50:29.840]

So, yeah, it will be better. Well, we’ll be coming back by summer. Well, we’re into June now, almost July. Here we are. But at the time, we also said that, hey, you know, big brands like us say Windom. They’ve got these budgets that are allocated for these things. They’re just not spending right now. But they’ll be spending in Q4. What’s the prediction? Guess what? That that’s no longer the case.

[01:50:50.180]

Right. So everything we said three months ago. Wrong. OK. And that’s going to happen. And we have to keep adapting. We have to keep looking at the new realities. I guess I just use that word, Kimberly, or use that phrase anyway. But that’s the way it is right now. And what we see is six months from now, it’s not going to be the same thing that we’re seeing today.

[01:51:12.530]

At least he said new reality is not normal.

[01:51:19.560]

Yeah, even even a few weeks ago, we wouldn’t maybe we would have, but we probably wouldn’t have expected the clothes down again in places that have already reopened, for example, or for New York to say, I’m sorry, other states, you can’t even Florida, where we are so tightly connected, we call it the sixth bureau.

[01:51:45.930]

So true.

[01:51:47.930]

Yeah, it definitely puts puts a crimp on things. And I think that that was an appropriate retro from Robert’s standpoint, because other states may also follow suit. And the more we see things like this, the more of damper it’s gonna put on travel. Not that I necessarily disagree with stopping the spread, obviously from state to state, but I think sometimes a lot of the rules that we see coming out of this far more related to politics than they are to anything else.

[01:52:15.780]

Unfortunately, when you go down a huge rabbit hole of that topic, which is why I brought it up to twenty two, I think that maybe in addition to it being data driven because they’re watching the numbers and they’ll change that rule as soon as numbers change. But I think maybe it’ll even make some people more comfortable with coming to New York, for example, because those people, if they oh you know what, they’re blocking the places where there are where there are flare ups.

[01:52:52.270]

So I feel good that something is being done. That means that I in Connecticut, in New Jersey, we have a lot of people coming to New York, even from New York State. We have people coming to New York City in normal situations. And where we aren’t saying that the drive area is going to be our first response. Right. So maybe there’s something fair to say saying, don’t worry, we’re watching out for you, maybe better.

[01:53:23.100]

And so. I guess that was a mike drop. I can’t add anything to that.

[01:53:34.500]

I have to run. Thanks so much. I like, in fact, in the in the back.

[01:53:40.890]

Thanks for getting down here. I saw you summarizing over there. Day. Bye bye.

[01:53:49.830]

Thanks. And then there were three.

[01:53:52.920]

Yes. Any last topics we want to hit on before we wrap up for today? Family. I know I’m. I’m good. I just showed up to hang out today. So we appreciate you both joining in.

[01:54:09.730]

You know, we’ve talked about in previous seasons as we look at some of the recovery of the industry and where we see it really taking place. Well, one thing I will say that we were right on is camping in RV communities and luxury RV resorts, everything. Good grief. Those things are taking off the skyrocketing like beyond belief. Just saying and I understand why you can bring your own RV. It’s your own home. It’s safe. It’s social distancing.

[01:54:33.710]

But unless everybody’s packed in there, of course. But oh, yes, it’s a good route. But the other thing I think that we’re seeing right now, and it was Stewart was on the line here with us, Mr. Stewart from Fuel Travel is on the board with the Myrtle Beach CVB. And they’ve had people coming every weekend. Their weekends have been 90 percent occupancy better. And what we’re seeing is that even though we keep hearing reports about record breaking numbers of coalbed and record breaking numbers of Goban being right or being wrong, society’s getting to a point where they don’t care.

[01:55:05.740]

And I hope that’s good or bad. But it’s the it is the reality. Right. So take that however you will. And as such, I think that’s good for travel. But I think we have to be careful with that as well, too, because we can screw it up really easy as well. Also, very delicate balance.

[01:55:21.870]

It’s that psychological fatigue setting in. And I’m hearing it all across. I mean, even my parents were like, you know, it’s weird, but I feel like coronaviruses over and I’m not sure why, because logically, I know it’s not. But I just hit this wall one day and all of a sudden I no longer care. I think that, you know, there even in an at risk population. So I think it’s very difficult for the human mind to sustain these kinds of restrictions and alterations to who we are naturally at our core for an extended period of time.

[01:56:01.650]

And for that reason, whether there’s restrictions or no restrictions. I think we’re going to see people continue to go out. I think we’re going to see the spike in cases. It’s important to obviously keep an eye on that, the health care situation, because that was really the main reason to flatten the curve, right, was to give them a chance to catch up and all of those things. But I think it’s it’s really important that we do take those those safety measures to make sure the staff are wearing their masks correctly, that we’re observing social distancing in the hotels and being responsible with the gift of the vans that we have been given right now so that we’re not contributing, but we’re also not slowing down the demand for travel.

[01:56:44.280]

So it’s a very fine balance. We have to walk. Absolutely.

[01:56:47.790]

Yeah, I definitely agree. You know, it’s interesting. One of the biggest things I I’m seeing a couple different hospitality groups isn’t so much the hotel having trouble with. The policies are the things they put in place, mask the Plexiglas at the front desk, the extra cleaning, all of those things. The biggest complaint they’re getting in, the biggest challenge they’re having is other guests not following the social distancing rules. So really interesting to kind of see over the next few weeks, like how those things impact.

[01:57:18.530]

I knew you for us. I mean, I’m out in California, the Bay Area, where we finally, you know, two weeks ago I could go sit at an out side restaurant. I still can’t go inside a restaurant, but I can sit outside a restaurant. And, you know, we’ve been talking about we’re seeing kind of all a lot of people are getting more lax. Right. We were we actually went to our mall last week.

[01:57:40.340]

And I have to admit, after being in there for fifteen minutes, we walked out and we’re gonna wait a bit to come back because we saw too many people not worry mass not following, you know, rules kind of getting a little close. It’s like, okay. And but you’re right. I think there is a lot of that that fatigue about this is like, you know, gosh, I just want to I just want to get on a plane and go to Disney.

[01:58:04.060]

I mean, regardless of what good or bad you want to go do something, right? Right. Yeah. It’s gonna be interesting to see all these next few months kind of follow through. And especially as states are spiking in, some states are coming down and the rules that get put in place.

[01:58:22.160]

Yeah, and I hope everybody does have a chance to go in and actually read the McKinsey article because they talked about that as well, about the kind of fear of other travelers being a main point. There’s just so much good data that we couldn’t possibly have talked about all of it today. But I definitely recommend that you, all of our listeners go back and listen to it. So I did not know that I was closing out the show today. So I will do my best to remember Lorence spiel.

[01:58:48.500]

But since we are approaching the end of our time. Dean, can you tell everybody how they can get in touch with you and learn more about what you do?

[01:58:56.030]

Absolutely. What Web site is pending, actually. So I’ve got something a development with that for right now. You can find me on LinkedIn just searching for Dean Smith. And I do a lot of things in the area of digital marketing, reputation management. I’m very fond of back. We had a deal on the show. She’s an expert on that as well. And probably the court is metasearch marketing can help people out with that.

[01:59:14.900]

Excellent. Thank you. And Tammy, thanks for joining us. Also, where can people find more about you in Milestone?

[01:59:20.700]

So I’m head of hospitality at my store, and you can find me on LinkedIn at Tammy Carlyle. I’ll drop my email here in the comments section as well. Milestone Internet.com Digital Agency. And then I’m just going to do a shameless self plug. And next week, on Wednesday, we’re actually we’ve been doing a webinar series on recovery. And we actually have Chip Conley will be our guest speaker next Wednesday. So feel free to shoot me an email saying Kerchiefs, if you go to LinkedIn for a milestone, you’ll find that the link to register.

[01:59:53.420]

Excellent. Lots of good content coming out from you guys, which we appreciate very much. Thanks. Awesome. And I’m Lily Markram, CEO of Total Customized Revenue Management, where we focus on excellence in all things day to day revenue management and founding partner of Link-Up Enterprises, where we focus on consultations, profitability by channel assessment, technology selection and audit projects and many more things, as well as the podcast, which I linked to during my shameless plug about Episode one earlier.

[02:00:24.320]

So thank you all for joining this. If I remember correctly, this is simulcast at a different time zone later on for the recording. For those of you who are joining us from Asia Pacific and other areas around the world. And we hope that you will join us again next week for show. Two hundred and fifty six. Thanks, everybody. Guys, every week.

Loren Gray

Founder / CEO of Hospitality Digital Marketing

aahoa, ahla, hospitality, hospitality broadcast, hospitality marketing, hsmai

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