This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 262 August 14th 2020

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 262 August 14th 2020

This Week In Hospitality Marketing Live Show 262

CoHosts
Melissa Kavanagh
Stephanie Smith
Dean Schmit
Tim Peter
Stuart Butler
Tammie Carlisle
Edward StOnge
Show Notes
00:01 — Introduction to series 8 version of the fuel travel consumer sentiment study. https://www.fueltravel.com/blog/fuel-covid-19-consumer-sentiment-study-volume-8/
00:20 — Creating FAQ pages and adding them into pages within the site and also using a search function on your site
00:33 — What you should be providing to your guests to provide truthful answers
00:42 — what to do about roving hot spots
02:07 — show ends
Topics

Top Story

1. MGM discloses major investment by media exec Barry Diller

Brands & Product

2. COVID-19 impact on hotels and short-term rentals
3. Marriott posts bigger-than-expected loss as virus hits bookings
4. How Hotel Chains Got a Slice of Government Aid for Small Businesses

Intermediaries & Distribution

5. Why travel brands need to reconsider direct bookings
6. TripAdvisor: Using Crisis As An Opportunity
7. Hotel booking platform Splitty acquires assets of Cancelon

Marketing & Strategy

8. Demand drags on occupancy, not rate, in new US forecast
9. The Disaster Recovery Priority Ranking Tool: A Thinking Tool for Prioritizing Post-COVID-19 Recovery Initiatives
10. HDC: Overcoming the industry’s biggest obstacle

Tech & Finance

11. How hoteliers are budgeting for new tech in 2021
12. Airbnb plans to confidentially file for IPO this month
13. Should we rethink the holistic tech strategy?

Boop!

14.These Hello Kitty rooms at the new Asakusa Tobu Hotel are adorable

Ruh-Roh…

15. Tourism collapse puts wildlife conservation in peril

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 262 Transcript (English U.S.)

[00:00:17.290] – Loren

Hello, everyone, and welcome to This Week In hospitality marketing Live show 262, actually our anniversary show, I forget to mention that we are rolling into our seventh year starting after the show with us.

 

[00:00:30.820] – Loren

And Mr. Tim, wait, this is not possible when Melissa is on the show. Tim’s not here. It’s like Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson under the same roof.

 

[00:00:39.040] – Loren

You’ve learned my secret also as a privilege of today. We have the Stephanie Smith with Cogwheel Marketing, who has been busy business traveling, which has tons of stories to tell us about.

 

[00:00:51.760] – Dean

With us also Mr. Dean Smith with base camp Metasearch and metasearch marketing, just almost there at half of it so far.

 

[00:01:02.740] – Loren

And our key wonderful speaker today, co-host today is Melissa Cavanough with Fuel Travel, who is with us for session version eight.

 

[00:01:12.070] – Melissa

Is it eight, which is my lucky number. So version eight of the Fuel Travel Consumer Sentiment Survey with new questions and everything else like that. And thank you all for the 10 other ones that I’m making sure that we’re alive on everything else. Melissa, I’m going to hand it over to you since we always seem to interrupt you when  you start telling us all Chordata. So I’m going to just give you a school data and Tim, because he’s here, he’s going to ask some critical questions.

 

[00:01:33.250] – Melissa

So we’re going to have to you know, you can just hear me out like everybody else. I’m totally. You take it your way. Well, all righty.

 

[00:01:47.800] – Melissa

We did send yet another round of this survey out. This was done at the very end of July, July 30th as well. Since it out, we have just under three thousand responses, which honestly is quite a bit lower than we’ve gotten in the past in. Our respondents are tired of talking about covid at this point. But we did ask some new questions and I think that there were some important questions asking specifically if people have traveled and then what their experience was, if they have traveled during the pandemic.

 

[00:02:24.870] – Melissa

So as it turns out, that we’ve got about 34 percent said that they have traveled since the middle of March, which I wasn’t really particularly surprised by that number, and therefore, sixty six percent that they had not traveled.

 

[00:02:40.440] – Melissa

And so we asked those people specifically who traveled about how the properties are communicating of all the things before their arrival. So we asked about cleaning protocols and mask requirements and checking procedures and the availability of amenities and government restrictions and the availability of local restaurants and attractions and activities. So in a few cases, the properties seemed to be doing a really gosh darn good job of communicating what’s what. People were very satisfied with updated cleaning protocols. They knew all about that.

 

[00:03:25.320] – Melissa

Almost seventy five percent said they had received that information prior to arrival and local requirements were also quite popular. We had over 50 percent that said that they knew about the updated checking procedures, but where people or their properties are kind of falling flat is talking about what’s going on in the area. So people are not knowing about the status of local restaurants and even fewer know about the status of attractions and activities. And I feel that this is a huge fail on the part of hoteliers.

 

[00:04:04.360]

You should be an expert in your area and certainly to your guests who should be able to tell them what’s what so they know what to expect when they arrive. So, Melissa, I have a question. This is apparently one told me I’m supposed to. So when you said thirty four percent have traveled, did you ask or do you have any insights or information you provide about why they traveled? What were the reasons behind the travel? OK, all right.

 

[00:04:33.840]

Did you have any reasons for 66 who did not travel about, you know, was there anything cheap that we did not?

 

[00:04:40.240]

I mean, we still have our questions about the fear and all those things. Yeah. Yeah.

 

[00:04:45.660]

We’ve got any any big change in those numbers in any meaningful way things are.

 

[00:04:52.090]

So from this version seven things have definitely swung back more positive because things were really in the toilet by July. But we’re certainly not even close to where we were in June before the outbreak really took off again. Got it. So let’s talk about talking about the area, because this is really important. And by the way, I do want to point out, I think it’s fantastic that you called out, but they’re not particularly good job. But they’re good.

 

[00:05:23.130]

Gosh darn it. That should be the new standard for like, what are we doing? A gosh darn good.

 

[00:05:30.870]

So, you know, when you talk about talking about the area, you mentioned restaurants, you mentioned activities. Are there other things that really stuck out in terms of the kinds of information people who are traveling are looking for? I mean, so like I said, we ask that all the governmental stuff and honestly the property amenities was a little lower than I would have thought. Only about half said that they had received information about that. And of all the things, I mean, OK, learning about all the restaurants and all the duties of your local activities and attractions, maybe more than you can handle, but to at least communicate with the availability of your own amenities.

 

[00:06:16.320]

I think that that’s also a fail.

 

[00:06:19.150]

Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I mean, you’d think people would want to know. I would think people would want to know what’s the deal with the fitness center? What’s the deal with the food? You know, and I think that’s probably varies by jurisdiction or by area of what’s going on there. You know, Dean Stephanie, what other questions do you have? Some. I just shared the link to the most recent survey results in the chat or anybody else that wants to continue to follow along.

 

[00:06:53.590]

I would be sorry to interrupt if you go on that right now, because digital marketing is where I live and breathe, I would be really curious as to how those people who traveled, how they booked their reservation and their words. What are the tendencies now? Are we seeing them going through the travel sites or are we seeing them calling the hotel directly? And if you are calling the hotel directly, are you asking those questions about, hey, is your restaurant open and different things like that?

 

[00:07:19.300]

Are they going directly to the hotel website? And what does that mix of business look like?

 

[00:07:26.400]

I don’t know that I’ve seen a shift from our own clients. I want you to chime in on that, but I don’t think we’ve seen a drastic shift.

 

[00:07:37.560]

Yeah, I think it’s a question we can we can ask next survey for sure about this upcoming Thursday. But, yeah, anecdotally, looking at the market mix for our clients and keep in mind that clients are typically very low, relying on OTAs in general. You know, we’ve got a lot of them like 10, 12 percent along on Oktay. So the vast majority is coming in historically and we haven’t seen it a major shift in that.

 

[00:08:04.710]

So I can tell you that from our clients perspective, phone calls have obviously been up, always up.

 

[00:08:11.760]

Also, a lot of not to book necessarily, although that is a part of the discovery and confirmation process to make a choice of booking. But also from a pre-arrival perspective, they’re not just relying upon the pre-arrival email to be exclusively complete. They’re calling to know any latest updates as to emoted information, changes to restaurant availabilities, event availabilities, activity centers, attractions and things like this as to the status of it. And with any great survey, it’s not about did you ask all the questions, but did you ask enough questions to give us a direction as to where we should be considering what we aren’t considering now?

 

[00:08:53.640]

And to your point with it, whether we know exactly how they’re booking or how they may have changed the modalities of booking, one thing’s very, very clear. We must be doing a better job of identifying all the information as an authority in our market for our guests, whether it be those things of restaurants, the attractions or just simple security questions that they may have, protocol changes and so forth. The spectrum of questions is there. And the survey points are really clearly like you should know this stuff and you should be telling your guests the stuff and you should be sharing it to people that you don’t even know are going to be your guests right now.

 

[00:09:26.490]

If you think back to a couple of surveys ago, we were asking the question about how do people want to check in? And we were a little surprised.

 

[00:09:35.070]

It was very split. We weren’t surprised that kiosks were at the very bottom of the list. No one wants to use the kiosks.

 

[00:09:40.920]

If people stop trying to put kiosks and alarms and want to touch things, they don’t want to touch things other people have touched up to standing in line behind someone else.

 

[00:09:49.740]

You know, that’s just it doesn’t solve the problem. But the number one most popular response was still in it, skewed by age. But the number one response was at the front desk. And when you peel that back a little bit, I think it’s part of that reason people have questions. There’s a lot of newness to this. We did see that younger folks, so those dreaded millennials or as Tim likes to call them, adults under forty, which mean he’s going to have to change pretty soon.

 

[00:10:16.440]

I’ve got to change that in twenty, twenty one to forty and younger. But so really the year after that. But we’ll do what we can.

 

[00:10:26.280]

The Millennials would prefer a mobile app which suits app propaganda because we sell a mobile app, which is probably why we ask the question.

 

[00:10:34.830]

But but it was interesting to see that so many people still want to go to the front desk because they have questions. They want to upgrade human. And what is that a symptom of?

 

[00:10:44.670]

They want to talk to him because they don’t feel like their questions are getting answered elsewhere. In others, if they’re calling me and asking if the restaurant is open, the problem is they couldn’t find that answer on the website. Right now. I have an opinion on this one.

 

[00:10:56.390]

I have opinion on this one based on twenty years of selling hotels, on websites and running websites. To do this, I get to tell you the funniest thing I ever learned. Every time we did a redesign, every time we did a content refresh, every time we changed features and functions on websites for economy, midscale, upscale, luxury, independent chain across the board. The number one problem people have always had with every website I have ever seen, monitored, worked with, et cetera, et cetera, is I cannot find the information I’m looking for.

 

[00:11:30.750]

And every time you make a change, the number one reason that people the number one problem that people have with the website is I cannot find the information I’m looking for. It’s very hard for some set of people, even when the information is there. It is very hard for all of the information to be presented in a way that that one specific question that somebody has is the thing that they are able to find most easily, because the different questions people have can vary so widely.

 

[00:12:02.250]

You know, that’s this is the universal challenge. And I don’t want to say it’s always been this way and will always be this way. But in twenty years of doing this, I’ve never seen that number move dramatically as because you can only highlight so much information. It may be there, but it just may be, you know, the seven bullet in the list of ten. And they they missed it as they were looking through the both. And it tends to be a pretty consistent problem.

 

[00:12:29.330]

I’ll add a little layer to this, to that that maybe because of where I’m at and the geography’s and people that I know and friends and so forth, there’s a certain reality that’s sinking in to people now of the that there is not this omnipotent control of something or that there is some guidance or there is somebody that’s making mechanisms to this, that there is a very high uncertainty principle to everything that’s going on. But there’s a personal impact on people’s lives.

 

[00:12:55.250]

And it’s a tragedy that numbers represent this. But those that are getting sick, those that are getting sick seriously, and those that are being affected by going to the hospitals and the possibly losing people from this are touching more and more lives.

 

[00:13:08.300]

From that process comes a certain. Trustability for the verification, I’m going to want to know. I want to talk to I want to understand better because everyone understands from our society that we as marketers, as politicians or as anybody can double speak stuff. Best sale ever, small print, you know, best thing ever, small print.

 

[00:13:31.390]

And Lord, I don’t mean to cut you off, but that you make a great point about this. Melissa was talking about amenities at the property. Right now, if it says our pool is open, if it says our restaurant is open and that says that our fitness center is open. That was true when you wrote it. Is it true when I’m going to be there? Right. You know what I mean? Like, if it doesn’t specifically say a pool is open on August 14th or pool.

 

[00:13:54.760]

Right.

 

[00:13:55.180]

Or the center is open for me. That’s thing to say or the complete thing to say. Like people can go in and some you know, we didn’t say that part. We just said the pools open because that’s what you wanted to hear, the exact verification of talking to somebody or being able to relate to somebody and actually asking that because we as humans rely more upon also just how when you tell when somebody is lying like everything’s fine, looks great.

 

[00:14:23.370]

Oh, no, no, I’m sorry. This is where we always look for and this is the focus group of one, but the one we always look for when we traveled with our kids, when in a certain age was adjoining room, which to date you still can’t look on one anywhere. Obviously, once our kids hit a certain age, the number one thing we as a family were looking for was our kids were desperate to make sure we didn’t have adjoining room.

 

[00:14:49.180]

Right.

 

[00:14:49.720]

So so that was always the kind of trip that prompted a phone call for other trips. We didn’t have to do that because that wasn’t important, because we were traveling with our kids from business. My wife was traveling on business. And so the specifics of the search, the specifics of the trip of the event determine what’s important in that in that moment. And then for all guests right now, what what is also taking effect is how how comfortable I feel with the safety protocols generally.

 

[00:15:22.600]

What I mean, who are we kidding? What news sources I’m listening to about whether or not this is something I should be taking seriously or not and all that other kind of stuff that definitely plays a role in there. I have one quick question and start. I know you’re going to say I have one quick question. You know, Stephanie, I beg your pardon. Melissa in question. Can you talk about which of the following protocols would increase confidence in investing in a property?

 

[00:15:48.880]

You know, do you have information or are you hearing things even if it’s, you know, from stories, you’re talking to people in the light of how how good a job are hotels doing at conveying that information over all of the protocols that are most important to people?

 

[00:16:02.020]

Are they doing a good job of making clear to folks, that’s the stuff I do? Don’t know how clear it is, but it seems that people are satisfied. OK. Which is maybe it’s confirmation bias, if that’s what they want to believe.

 

[00:16:21.840]

I don’t know, but people seem fairly OK with what’s going on.

 

[00:16:28.590]

And the other thing that really keep in mind with that specifically is these people that have traveled tend to be risk more more risk tolerant because they’ve already traveled during a pandemic. So they’re crazy people like Stephanie Travel.

 

[00:16:44.940]

Yes.

 

[00:16:45.340]

She you know you know, they may be more tolerant of that stuff or their expectations might be lower on some of that stuff. So be interesting to see over time as more normal folks, not those weirdos like Stephanie is normal folks start to travel. Does that number shift include a highway or a volcano?

 

[00:17:04.560]

Yeah, as long as you tell me on the other side is what I want, I’m there. Yes.

 

[00:17:09.270]

I didn’t want to go back to the conversation about what Tim was saying then, what Lauren was saying about people can’t find what they’re looking for on a website. And I think when we often, as marketers design creative and messaging and communication plans, we do it to cater to the lowest common denominator and we do it en mass. We try to talk to as many as wide an audience as possible and we sometimes lose sight of every individual person has individual thoughts and individual needs and is looking for something specific to them, which is why you get questions at the front desk, inevitably from almost everyone who checks in.

 

[00:17:47.340]

So it’s been interesting to me why there’s been a reluctance or a lack of adoption of simple search technology, which is prevalent across every e-commerce site in the world. But the hotels haven’t embraced it and we push it to some of our clients and a couple of adopted it. But you can gain such insight by not just having a search widget to book, but also a keyword search on the top of your website that just lets people type in and easily find what they’re looking for.

 

[00:18:18.390]

It solves the problem almost every time and you find insights. And in terms of the type of content you don’t have and what people are really looking for, and you can start to prioritize that content or create that content if you don’t have it.

 

[00:18:32.490]

So it’s a mystery to me that people aren’t embrace that more.

 

[00:18:35.850]

And I know I have a thought on this just based on, again, sample size of one small experience, but it was in my day that sent them. So we had seventy five of properties. We had, you know, half a million rooms and things like that. We actually did conduct a test with regular keyword search and we didn’t do a robust implementation of it because we weren’t sure if going to work it was, you know. Well, and it was hard back then to do it.

 

[00:19:00.330]

At the time. It was hard and it was expensive. So we ran a somewhat controlled test. We selected a very small amount of traffic to it. And every single search we got at the time and I want to be very clear, this was 15 years ago. So this might be a little different today. But research we got was Orlando, San Diego, Chicago, Anaheim, Disney. They were all the patients are coming now. But let’s be fair, we were a brand with a ton of properties.

 

[00:19:28.050]

We have lots of lots of property as most people were coming to us. We’re looking for a destination and see what hotels were there. So that may have it may not be entirely correct, but I completely agree. I think it’s an easy enough thing to do now that there’s no harm in most hotels having served.

 

[00:19:43.120]

Yeah, it’s good product. So there are cheap products, of course. And so I’m not trying to say a sales pitch.

 

[00:19:51.160]

You think. But aren’t you involved with something like that.

 

[00:19:53.670]

So. Oh so first, full disclosure. Full disclosure, I am a partner in a software company that mostly does work outside the hospitality industry. But yes, we do provide site search to folks. This is not meant to be a pitch. This is something we talk about a lot is that site search is the first personalized experience that people have on your website. They’re literally asking you for help. A really good thing to do is maybe answer their question, help them write the challenge.

 

[00:20:22.560]

You run into the site search and we see this on sites all across industries is site search in many, many, many cases is nothing better than a random Web page generator. Yeah, we do a really bad job of actually answering the call and in some cases, a random Web page generated with a bunch of ads unrelated to rat race. The worst experience? Oh, it’s the worst experience. And it’s definitely something that hospitality as a whole should get better at.

 

[00:20:50.310]

Because, again, here’s here’s the simple thing. If you think about a chat bot, if you think about other technologies that people claim are coming, that is that is also search just with a different interface. It’s just a good search result.

 

[00:21:03.750]

You certainly can’t get to work most. You last week, the one that asked about the platform was bragging about praise. Yeah, it’s kind of the same conversation where a little bit of it where it’s creating the internalized answer box on your website. And then on top of it, it’s finding you as to Stuart’s point, cultivated nuggets of gold and what people are really interested in and cultivating that content and moving it into your site for content development.

 

[00:21:27.100]

So same sense isn’t another option just to kind of come up with an ethic you page either in conjunction with site search and having. Yeah, and then if you put schema on that, people are using Google and you answer the question. I mean, maybe don’t even need your site anyways. But I think what we did was embrace that.

 

[00:21:44.620]

Right. I think that’s something we’ve seen much better buy in from. But I think the to kind of work in concert with each other, they inform each other or you start to. Put new fake use in based on the queries you’re getting, but the content has to exist somewhere and you’re going to find that some people are going to navigate to it naturally. And it can be we’re big proponents of putting the fake not just on an epic page, but in contextual places throughout the sites of this epic news about the pools, have them on the pools page, for example, so people can discover it, but then other people want to search.

 

[00:22:22.270]

So having them search, they’ll probably land on the fake page. That’s how it manifests, which just is how they get to the information. And I think that that’s a part that’s easy to solve and not many people do.

 

[00:22:34.060]

My other thing would be to say, listen to the phone calls that you’re getting from your gas and work those into the air. Thank you. Not I’m saying the site search will have some of the components, but I think really know what people are actually asking and making sure those are current and top of the list right now.

 

[00:22:51.220]

There’s a really good book by Jay there called Utilities A White Utility. He’s a really smart guy. He does a lot of research and then realize that just common sense for marketing. And he had a case study in that that book about a coal company that did exactly that. They they were struggling. They had no budget. They were getting crushed by the competition. And they literally went and said, OK, who’s the owner of the company on his own?

 

[00:23:16.090]

Said, What are all the questions? I get asked regularly? And he wrote just down a list of hundreds of questions. He talked to his installers. He talked to the sales folks. And everyone is interacting with consumers. So in this case, in hotels, it should be a reservation stock. It should be a front desk staff. It should be a maintenance of everyone that it’s going to talk to, to guests, compile that list of one hundred two hundred questions and then start prioritizing them.

 

[00:23:42.040]

And what the company did is they just started taking one at a time. And every day or every week they would just write a new article that really followed the videos and the videos. And then they eventually went to videos and very a lot more sophisticated once they got traction. But it started out just writing simple answers and putting that as blogs on there on their website. And they rapidly became one of the biggest pool resources and companies, businesses.

 

[00:24:09.340]

They went from almost going under to massive profits within the space of about 12 months because your you’re answering customer questions is a good idea.

 

[00:24:17.950]

I know. Isn’t that crazy? That’s off the chain on that one.

 

[00:24:22.660]

But but they also to expand that and this is a a recent thing that I’ve been doing. I was mandating that the GMs get on a call with us and I was asking for three questions from a marketing perspective. Where are the people coming from at your front desk? Where are they going? Why are they with you? Just answer the three questions for me. Just start giving me some. Because if one had helped with our targeting on what we’re doing for marketing, for destinations to and from us too, it was helping we understand what the purpose of travel was.

 

[00:24:50.200]

So we know how to do it, to isolate them as well. And it allowed us to begin to put those pieces together. And a first term senator, like, what was I going to do? Is like, you understand that I have the keys to a spaceship. I don’t know where to fly it.

 

[00:25:00.610]

You need to tell me where I need to go. And I can go find anybody you want to find.

 

[00:25:05.470]

If you just tell me who they are, whether anyone has a spaceship, do not give them the keys to the keys.

 

[00:25:16.000]

Anyways, Melissa, now that we’ve digressed off of your the conversation, please, I have a question for Melissa about a specific question.

 

[00:25:25.240]

Melissa, can you talk about the question?

 

[00:25:27.760]

Well, a little bit question well, is, oh, how soon will you be willing to make the following trips? We’ve asked this forever, but based on our last conversation when I was on this show, we changed these categories, swapped out the local staycation type, and we added in a one hour drive. We have the two hour drive and then we added the three hour drive and then broken down by house to people will travel it, it’s like it’s a graph that goes like this.

 

[00:26:05.330]

The closer you are, the more likely people are to travel. Over 50 percent are willing to travel to one hour from their house within the next 30 days. And then we slope downwards for every bucket after that. So 40 percent up to two hours. Twenty nine percent up to three hours, etc. all the way down. And I will say this again, as I said. So just looking at the two hour category on our last survey, where do we sort of hit not rock bottom, but we hit pretty low on the last survey, we were down at 20 percent, but now we’re back up to 40 percent.

 

[00:26:43.400]

So that’s that shows the impact the media has, because if you remember right at the beginning, first couple of weeks of July, everyone was just on the wrong path. There was the big debate about masks. There were a lot of articles coming out of the mainstream media about certain destinations being a petri dish of just disease. And everyone got a little skittish and we saw a big swing. We’ve been on this upward trajectory of confidence. And it just it took us back almost to the beginning, but it’s recovered a lot quicker this time.

 

[00:27:17.590]

It kind of just went down, up, and now we’re kind of back on that trajectory.

 

[00:27:22.790]

So it’s so if you’re a hotel and you’re watching this and that’s the fact of what you’re seeing, you know, what recommendations would folks have about that and what should people be doing differently as a marketing team about that hard hit the crap geographically and those people I mean, you’re one to three hour drive market I.

 

[00:27:44.860]

Do a good job.

 

[00:27:53.030]

So so in terms of doing that, like what are some options for the people to be aware?

 

[00:27:57.590]

No. One, hopefully you have a really great CRM system where you can segment you are very awesome email database and send targeted messages versus people, whether it’s through display retargeting, whether it’s social targeting. There’s so many options out there to be able to target demographic for sure.

 

[00:28:22.950]

To Stuart’s point on one thing and Mr. Ed Henry is standing, by the way. Oh, I don’t understand. So now we’re hearing about following the worst public health issue coming up that this fall will be the worst. The CDC chair flat out says we’re going to expect the worst. It’s going to be a big cluster. Does that mean we have an artificial wall coming up? Because, as Stuart said, media’s influence, you should see it. So now the media is pushing their next tragedy, which is fall.

 

[00:28:58.820]

Guess what terrible calls bad fall is going to be the worst. Go ahead. I’m sorry.

 

[00:29:02.390]

I was just going to say, let’s be fair. The media and I agree with start generally on this, but specifically the media simply saying what the CDC director has said, it’s all good.

 

[00:29:13.370]

But the narrative to push. Right, that, you know, if it bleeds, it leads. That’s the mantra. Yeah.

 

[00:29:21.920]

Our media is based on sensationalism, not on reporters that don’t want to start a debate about it. That’s the point. I do think there’s a difference between what the media highlights, a story of when a public health official who is a top doctor in the country says, hey, this is something that’s going to be a real problem for sure.

 

[00:29:37.820]

But also health officials are saying other things like if you correlate like I was looking at a chart this morning of the state of South Carolina in the cases based on whether or not there were massive mandates or not. And you literally can see a correlation across the board.

 

[00:29:55.220]

It is undeniable that in every area where they’re being most of being enforced, the cases are going down to the point where in our area, which was quote unquote, the cesspool of covid at one point, now has our hospitals at maybe 10 percent capacity of ventilators and stuff like we got this under control with simple tactical changes. But everywhere that’s not is dealing with the problems we were dealing with.

 

[00:30:22.070]

By the way, that is maybe you start reporting now better for sure. You know, there are multiple narratives that the media is choosing the scariest one, because it’s sells right now in the practicalities of this.

 

[00:30:37.370]

You have what you refer to as Tim is like this is the fact this is a statement. Media to Stuart’s point is on sensationalism because it drives attention what they are. And then you have the others that are on the other end. The marketers are saying, don’t worry, it’s fine. Yeah, you can come visit, come travel, you know, so we’re on this and you get the politicians going. Whereas most of the people because that’s where I want to be, because I want to get re-elected.

 

[00:31:00.650]

But I think this goes back to the point of it’s incumbent hotels, it’s incumbent on dmoz, it’s incumbent folks like that to provide accurate information about the reality. And I think we got to say what Melissa’s talking about from the very beginning.

 

[00:31:16.040]

We first started talking about this. We should be the authorities of our own truth and say about what we’re capable of doing, what we are doing, what’s around our market is being done and so forth.

 

[00:31:27.320]

We should be the point of truth for what people are asking us questions. We of anybody should be the one that says, regardless of the you know, the pendulum swings and then the disparity, you’re going to say paradigm.

 

[00:31:38.960]

I was like, I’m going to take it up. The truth of it.

 

[00:31:48.230]

So we have our own paradigm really started to say something.

 

[00:31:51.710]

We’re going to go, well, no, I’m just going to and I join late. So but you guys are so spot on. I’ve been looking to try and figure out, can we take a day or two, we can get away or something. And the number of websites I’ve gone to that have no information about what’s going on. I talk about all the the kids, all the stuff that I know isn’t there. But they’re still not only talking about, but there’s no information at all.

 

[00:32:21.050]

It’s really difficult from a consumer perspective to the point that I have not booked a trip and I’m in the industry and I want to go somewhere.

 

[00:32:30.410]

I need to be persuaded with the right information. Exactly. The right information is all I want is a nice little bathtub, maybe a hot tub to go into. There’s little tiny things that when. Just persuade us to to book, and we haven’t partially because. Frankly, a lot of the websites I’ve gone to just don’t have the information that I need as a consumer.

 

[00:32:56.420]

So let’s break that down. That’s uncertainty, right? Uncertainty was creating doubt in that can easily be overcome with information. If you give reassurance and provide facts that eliminate some of those fears, you move from someone that’s shopping and dreaming to someone that’s looking for is basic marketing. And I think the challenge is a lot of hotels right now just still running around with a chicken with their head cut off. And the people that are probably still on furlough, laid off, will let go completely.

 

[00:33:31.580]

That will usually doing the messaging or updating the website. And they either don’t know people that don’t know how to do or don’t have time to do it because GMs are manning the front desk. So. Right.

 

[00:33:41.600]

And not not to bash the brands by any means, but that’s one of the challenges that you run into. Go and pull up any brand.

 

[00:33:47.580]

Well, that’s right.

 

[00:33:52.250]

When they had to pull up any brand website for any branded hotel in your local market where you’re at and look at and you find that they’re typically a cookie cutter template, right. They have content that is specific to that property about where it’s located, the amenities and things like that. But you can’t go on there and the individual hotel can’t go on there to customize it and say, yeah, that attraction across the street is open, closed, whatever the case may be, and try to get that something from somebody from corporate to do that’s very difficult in their defense.

 

[00:34:23.510]

Trying to do that individually across four thousand hotels in the country is very difficult, practically impossible. But it’s a conundrum, right? Because, well, hotels can’t have control over it. Corporate doesn’t have the resources to do it. What do you do? Go ahead. You’re better at this.

 

[00:34:39.590]

Theriot is just now rolling out a new module just recovered five months into the pandemic with its landing pages to talk about the covid stuff. And I was like, OK, now that we can actually add something custom, you know, five months after they started.

 

[00:34:56.660]

So you’re the hope of your moment is competing with two hotels, branded hotels and will remain the nameless. I’m competing with them. They are hiding behind their covid badge that even when people are calling them, they’re saying, oh, everything’s fine, everything’s open or pulls over, everything’s fine, even though there is a missile mandate that the pool is actually still closed. So they’re lying, everything’s fine, but do you understand, it’s Cobra 19. We don’t know when situations change and they’re hiding behind their badge and when they show up at the property.

 

[00:35:25.710]

Oh, I’m sorry, the pool. Yeah, that’s quite closed.

 

[00:35:28.840]

They’re hiding behind it so that they sell the room and the people show up and tell them the real what’s going on.

 

[00:35:34.870]

When you say there is this the property or the property?

 

[00:35:39.860]

Yeah, they’re hiding behind that. They they they can’t change their brands like they have the big bonuses. covid-19 those things have changed over. You can call the property. This was brought to my attention from one of the hotels is my client that when they do their test calls and so forth, it’s worth doing. The hotel is actually answer and everything is fine and open until they show up and then they tell them what’s changed in such a short sighted approach.

 

[00:36:01.650]

Hey, Lauren. Yeah.

 

[00:36:03.240]

Are they call are they actually talking to the hotel or, you know, a lot of the branded hotels to the hotel? Okay.

 

[00:36:09.180]

Because I was curious if maybe the issue is that they’re being transferred to us. No, I thought so.

 

[00:36:15.810]

Yeah, yeah. No, no. They can’t even hide behind that of saying we don’t know enough about the hotel to tell you this is actually reaching the local. No, talking to the hotel. They’re deceptively saying everything’s fine without giving you any updates.

 

[00:36:27.330]

So so you take away here is don’t lie to your guests. I mean let’s start with lot.

 

[00:36:33.480]

Well if Fidel was on, she would talk about how that’s going to lead to an increase in negative reviews because they’re lying to their guests. And so, yes, in the short term, I may make a few bucks, but in the long term, already the hotel also the moral of the story is as a consumer, read the reviews because they’re going to tell you the information that the hotel won’t write.

 

[00:36:54.510]

That one is true. It’s I think it’s been at least a lot of my hotels have gotten unfairly hit with the volume of negative reviews right now. You know, I think I think some people I think there’s some consumers out there that don’t try to educate themselves before they travel or they have I don’t know, let’s pretend to blame the consumer by any means. But it’s you know, they just assume, you know, if I go I don’t know.

 

[00:37:23.190]

I don’t know what their assumptions are, but I feel like the volume of negative reviews has been little fake.

 

[00:37:28.350]

This is something.

 

[00:37:30.360]

Yeah, I bought my I want my 20000 rashers of bacon with my breakfast buffet, dammit. That’s what I say. Hey, don’t take away my life.

 

[00:37:40.410]

Do you have. You’re right.

 

[00:37:44.010]

But I think this is a perfect example of you talking marketing all the time about how you want to surprise and delight at the moment, the best way to delight is not to surprise.

 

[00:37:53.670]

You know what they’re going to get. They should know what the right expectation is. You should be able to meet that expectation. You’re not feeling that you’re going to get bad reviews. You’re going to get people saying negative things about. Then you’re probably right, I guess, to get. Yeah, and we’ve been encouraging. I mean, we’ve talked about how to keep your own website updated with the people, the different types of travelers that we’re getting through the years.

 

[00:38:16.560]

I’ve been encouraging a lot of our hotels to go in and use the automated messaging through booking. And so kind of like the pre, say, email messaging that you can automate their expedient booking dot so that you can share those specifics about your pool, about breakfast. And again, just so you can align those expectations for those type of guests where you don’t have those minutia details that you can put on your own website.

 

[00:38:41.070]

So Tim Coleman, in the comments, that’s a really interesting question. He said, you know, could this be the exact reason that hotels are losing out to short term rental markets? Currently, hotels are knowingly lying to their guests before. I mean, I think it’s less about the lying and it’s more about just the fact that people can’t get the questions that they need. They are talking about. But I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on that.

 

[00:39:04.590]

I can tell you that even from a vocalisation point, I’m talking to Richard, by the way, for our in our chat about the local drive market to one of the hotels in Fort Lauderdale compared to where they’re getting it from. We have our thing here in southwest Florida that were a lot of people come from the East Coast because of the markdowns they’re incurring over Miami to get out because they actually have curfews and so forth. Their head gear freeze.

 

[00:39:25.560]

And so they come over here. But they were never informed of the by the hotels that if you have if you’re not a resident, you can’t go to certain beaches if you just kick in.

 

[00:39:36.720]

That’s why I came over here. You can’t go anywhere and you’re going to be at the hotel or that’s it. And then also the fact that if you were trying to go to public parking, if you weren’t a resident, you couldn’t actually go to public parking, they would not allow you to get a parking ticket. None of that was conveyed by the hotels who were just happy to get the business that would show up and pay to stay in the room.

 

[00:39:57.120]

They didn’t also talk about the restaurants that were closed that also did not offer delivery because a lot of the restaurants in certain markets were actually bars that served a little bit of food. And they can’t exist in their current environment cause the bars were shut down. So a lot of the things to Richard’s point of what to do when you get there rather than just sit your room didn’t exist. And then for a while there, there was actually times that the beaches were open and closed, like you could be at the beach until 11:00 a.m. and then you had to leave the beach and come back at five o’clock for the sunset.

 

[00:40:23.040]

I’m not making this up. This really is how some of the beaches were being handled. And so everybody piled into the pool at the hotel and there’s no basic requirement. Oh, good stuff. None of that was being shared. Well, there are were a few I’m not going to say everybody is law.

 

[00:40:38.460]

And all those people went back to Miami and got their covid test and it counted against Miami, not against the hotel.

 

[00:40:45.930]

I mean, come on.

 

[00:40:47.580]

Actually, the big the big concern right now is we’re expected to have a very active, severe hurricane season because, you know, twenty, twenty. And the concern is, is if one points at Miami and they have to evacuate Miami, that’s going to cause a massive covid issue in the rest of the state. Because if you look at the numbers right now, most of the covid cases are still that Miami area. It’s very contained to that area.

 

[00:41:20.460]

Like our big case count this past week, half of the cases were from Miami.

 

[00:41:27.240]

And so, you know, there is a challenge, like you’re saying, where you don’t want to bar Miami people from going elsewhere, but you kind of want to make it not attractive.

 

[00:41:41.760]

And the governments are doing that. They’re they’re putting in these wacky things that you as a hotel have to have to communicate or you’re going to just permanently burn your relationship with anyone you do get at this point and potentially permanently drag down your review scores.

 

[00:41:59.940]

So everyone from the front of a loaded question, because I’m curious what people think about this. You know, what we’re seeing right now.

 

[00:42:08.640]

You know, everybody talks about when we get we’re new in new and unprecedented times, but we have to have a new normal and all this other stuff. Maybe this is the new normal. Maybe there will be hot spots and periods. Maybe there will be places where it gets better for a time, etc.. That’s what we’ve been seeing over the last six months or five months, where you get periods where your market is doing great, you get periods where your market is doing less.

 

[00:42:31.860]

Well, if that’s the if that’s a reality you may be living with for a while, you have to come as marketers. You know what hotels do differently to kind of communicate. Hey, all clear at the moment. That’s so clear now, kind of, you know, thoughts or is the premise of the question, you know, you’re all like, that’s crap. There’s got be a vaccine on Monday.

 

[00:42:53.690]

But I think, one, adopt a methodology of marketing that you always should have done, which is your marketing is never done. You should always be looking at how you’re communicating, always looking at the journey, the digital journey you’re presenting to your guests and asking questions are, you know, are you relevant? Are you adding value? Are you helping move them into, you know, becoming a guest?

 

[00:43:22.380]

These are things our industry are notorious for just saying, oh, check websites done up, check his social media calendar pre-built and just it’s done.

 

[00:43:36.360]

I did it. I completed the project where we all know that the best marketers are always going through and adding, changing, you know, rethinking, you know.

 

[00:43:49.500]

So go back to marketing 101 and that will help you quite a bit in these unprecedented times, so speak.

 

[00:43:59.280]

And literally have a conversation today with a client who. Broaden in their marketing professional, it was an ownership group that had their marketing guy come in so we can also see where this is going already.

 

[00:44:15.810]

And they wanted their annual budget. And I said I wasn’t going to do it. And he asked me why, he says, are you trying to hide behind what you want to spend them like?

 

[00:44:24.250]

Absolutely not, but I don’t want to waste my time putting paper that you’re just going to put by a toilet anyway because, well, he wasn’t all that impressed.

 

[00:44:35.020]

Anyway, anyone who calls himself an expert first, you know that that’s going to be an interesting conversation.

 

[00:44:43.360]

The idea of it is, is that the teacher. Yeah, it’s adaptive.

 

[00:44:49.180]

I mean, every day is going to be different because one minute you’re targeting a market and then all of a sudden you’re not targeting the market because that market is no longer desirable. I don’t want Miami over here right now. I don’t want to market to them to come over right now, even though I know they’re right to come over to market to a hotel. But I do want to target people that are willing to travel for the circumstances they want to travel for and the distance they want to travel by.

 

[00:45:10.480]

And that’s going to constantly changing the cost of getting in front of them is going to change. And the channels that are most effective are going to change. So as you do it, you’re constantly changing. But but when you do it expand, it’s one thing. It’s just one path you’re taking. You’re doing one path, but you’re planning for five. You’re you’re looking at if I do have to shift over to the left, what are we going to be doing about that?

 

[00:45:30.910]

If it does dry up, if that freedom market does dry up or we turn into the hotspot, what is our what is our modality at that point? What are we looking to do to compensate for that actually happening? If it doesn’t, great. If it does, at least we got a first step. So I would say that there’s a multi Grynch to this aspect as well.

 

[00:45:48.430]

I would add to that as well, the fact that we we know something is going to happen somewhere. Right. That’s just inevitable. It will sorry to say, but it’s the truth.

 

[00:45:57.130]

Well, when you say anything that generally that is always true, something will happen somewhere.

 

[00:46:03.490]

Well, what I mean by that is something new hot have somebody will get and I know I’m a supporter of the booking movement.

 

[00:46:12.190]

I think everybody on this call probably is. But I think we can all agree that it’s going to be more important now than ever, because as that happens and as you’re having to shift those strategies and my my health club is going to be closed next week, OK, I want to be the one communicating that to my guests. I don’t want to put that in the hands of anybody else to do that. So I think we have to exponentially increase our focus on bookings, you know, in real time communication.

 

[00:46:37.270]

The other thing I would say to Tim’s original question about how do we prepare, what and what do we do knowing that we’re probably going to have to ride this out for a little bit longer? You know, we’re in a probably a 12 round match with Mike Tyson. And he’s he’s punsters right now, knows a couple of times already.

 

[00:46:53.410]

And there goes your plan. Right.

 

[00:46:57.880]

Right. Which is with all the budgeting that we did last year, has gone out the window after the first punch. And we he’s probably going to get a few more licks in if we can last the twelve rounds. But you cannot lose sight of that. There are going to be resurgences in your area. There are going to be restrictions lifted and changed and regulations. You’ve got to keep your community, your tight community of staff members and guests at the forefront of your decisions, especially the staff.

 

[00:47:24.490]

So you should, regardless of what your situation is now, if the cases are low or high in your area, you’ve got to operate as if they’re always high. You’ve got to protect everyone on staff and always be cautious, because the tricky thing about this little bugger of a disease is that you don’t know when it’s really beginning to flare up until a couple of weeks later, because the way the symptoms don’t show the way that incubates is it can be a two week lag.

 

[00:47:49.840]

So you might be sitting there thinking, we can let our guard down, we can relax some of our operational processes, and then all of a sudden you’ve got twenty percent of your staff have covered. So really very cautiously for the next, you know, until there is some kind of permanent resolution to this. And that’s the new normal that I think Tim’s talking about. We have to assume that Tobins all around us, you know, don’t stop what you’re doing, but adapt to what you’re doing with that realization.

 

[00:48:17.860]

So you don’t recommend, like hotels like follow suit of like the Big Ten in the PAC 12 and just cancel everything.

 

[00:48:25.030]

And I don’t think that’s that’s viable for a lot of businesses.

 

[00:48:28.180]

On the other, Elsas is realizing that we don’t have control over some of the dialogue, while a lot of the dialogue really.

 

[00:48:33.520]

But, you know, when we’re when we have the fear of bedbugs, you know.

 

[00:48:37.930]

Well, you can get you can get somebody to just talk about. I got told that one of the staff members got Kobe know he’s working to do that.

 

[00:48:47.440]

You know, by the time you even address it, whether it’s accurate or not accurate or whether, you know, whatever. So being in front of this with what you’re doing is for protocol, how you’re trying to make sure your team is safe, how you try to make your guests safe, take the leadership stand that says, I’m sorry, there’s no local ordinance for me to hide behind this as I have to make you wear mask. But as the business operator and the choice of doing business for you, I’m mandating that everybody that’s a guest of our hotel where mess if you are not willing to comply with that, I’m going to refund your money, kick you out of our hotel.

 

[00:49:18.220]

Thank you. Have a great day.

 

[00:49:19.820]

And just realize that whether they think it’s God given right or not, the messaging and delivery a little bit, General, just make sure if you’re going to go that route, you’re you’re also hardcore on your staff because everything will nothing will land you in hot water more than being a hard core approach. And then having 50 reviews on Google and TripAdvisor saying that your staff is walking around with their face masks around their chin.

 

[00:49:50.690]

And you know what is I have a one of my clients right now, nothing under the nose. They sent some pictures with some of the staff members, had their masks under the nose.

 

[00:49:59.900]

I’m like, don’t there? They’re in there doing things for the class of like, what’s with this? They’re like, well, they’re the mask. I was like, no, they don’t.

 

[00:50:09.830]

So we had to pull the pictures down, like we put that, which makes me sad.

 

[00:50:13.760]

It just makes me sad like me.

 

[00:50:16.400]

And that’s part of the problem. Right? You still have people that either, A, don’t know how to wear a mask appropriately. Right. The chin or my chin cover or don’t think it’s a big deal. What about that sheriff in Florida that has said you can’t even come into my police station if you’re wearing a mask. But, you know, so.

 

[00:50:38.350]

Yeah, I mean, let’s let’s start with what you started with, Sheriff in Florida.

 

[00:50:47.240]

But this challenge is not every business is going to go that route, right? Not every owner is going to say I’m willing to walk away from revenue by enforcing the masks. Not every to Ed’s point, then, OK, let’s say they do say that. Then you have the staff that don’t I mean, if you’re getting pictures from people for your websites, for your social, that show people with masks that are below their nose, the chin, you’re doing it wrong.

 

[00:51:15.530]

Right? Right. You’re actually you’re doing so much damage by doing that, because, first of all, it’s incredibly ignorant. Like, I’d rather you say no masks than wear a mask incorrectly in your photography. Like, because you’re you’re you’re perpetrating just the core issue here, which I mean, in all actuality, wearing no mask, you’re at least taking some type of reasonable stance, you know, and it’s politically you can argue whether or not it’s right.

 

[00:51:44.360]

I mean, the sheriff in Florida, by the way, I will just say he is in a county that has almost no cases because the state of Florida is freaking gigantic and there are very large swaths of the state that no one goes to from outside the area. And there are no cases but showing incorrect usage of mask, allowing your staff to be lax. You are you’re you’re putting out there that it’s OK to cheat, like, oh, look, wink, wink, we’re wearing masks.

 

[00:52:21.380]

Wow.

 

[00:52:22.340]

And this is just in that, too, because it also the whole point of mask squaring, whether you believe in it or not, it has a psychological impact on all the people that are fearful. And one of the questions we ask and eventually we’ll get back to those questions but is about fears. Right. And you see the motivators or the the things that are preventing people from travel, our fear of public spaces, fear of interactions with guests, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.

 

[00:52:46.850]

Those are the things preventing people from traveling.

 

[00:52:48.860]

So by saying, I’m going to wear a mask a little bit, it’s a psychological battle.

 

[00:52:55.220]

You’re telling them we’re reassuring you that we’re doing things to protect you. But as soon as you say we’re doing some things to to to protect you, well, we really then you start creating more doubt, which creates more fear. Right. So if they’re not wearing their masks, are they not sanitizing their hands? Are they not cleaning the rooms? Are they not doing all the other stuff they say they’re doing? So it’s infinitely worse to show that it shows that you can’t be trusted.

 

[00:53:21.860]

Yeah, exactly. And and that that will hit you in every aspect of it.

 

[00:53:27.560]

Like Stewart likes to say, do or do not.

 

[00:53:31.430]

There is no try it. You made some good comments off to the side. One was the addressing of lost group business and so forth, which we will make sure we don’t lose track of. But the other is he said he heard a GM tell one of his housekeepers that she had to wear a mask in the hallway, but to remove it in the guest room. Really? You know why?

 

[00:53:46.700]

If she’s not around people, what is the point? I think that’s OK up.

 

[00:53:51.730]

Applying the gas masks are meant to stop human to human transmission when you can’t be far apart if you’re alone in a room.

 

[00:54:04.750]

Why? Why is a mask needed when you’re alone in a room to two critical components to that?

 

[00:54:11.110]

And that is so that there’s no negative airflow. Whatever’s in there is just in there. You’re putting your housekeeper at risk because you don’t know what the person is. There was in the room while they’re in there that there’s a durability to it in the air that they’re already saying is lasting longer than we’re anticipating. It goes farther than we anticipated before. And regardless whether we discount surface contact or biofilm and all the other conversations we had, there’s a residual not knowing when she walks in.

 

[00:54:32.950]

If you told her it’s OK to walk in and the guest just walked out, what difference does it make that she didn’t have a mask on? A lot? She’s breathing whatever he just left or she just left for a duration of time where it would be better just to be consistent in saying wear your mask at all times while you’re working, because we’re putting you exposed to people regardless of time or they’re in front of you or distancing that you’re inhaling or potentially inhaling what was left behind from them.

 

[00:54:57.240]

We don’t know what the condition is of.

 

[00:54:58.300]

I guess so.

 

[00:55:00.190]

But this brings up an interesting point and brings us full circle back to what we were talking about before. And Melissa, you’ve got this right. That’s the thing. See what I did there? The thing that, you know, comes up a lot is people aren’t traveling because there’s a lot of uncertainty.

 

[00:55:15.040]

Right. The fact that we’re having discussions and debates about whether people should ask or not, master, how it’s transmitted, not transmitted and things like that speaks to a lot of the uncertainty that exists at the moment. Melissa, can you talk about some of the things you saw in terms of the uncertainty that you saw in the data and what people are saying about what’s causing them to have issues traveling, things like that?

 

[00:55:35.410]

So. Well, yes. But before we do that, I do want to talk about masks for just a minute longer, because we asked that question again on this survey about how a mandatory passed ordinance would impact your travel plans. And we saw a huge shift for the last time we asked this question. We’re still having about half that saying I don’t care. My decision is unchanged. But in the last survey, we were pretty split between I would be more or less likely to travel to that destination versus less on this survey.

 

[00:56:10.660]

We’re at 35 percent saying I’d be more likely to travel versus 19 percent. That would be less likely to travel from there.

 

[00:56:19.570]

That’s a huge shift. That is a huge shift in three weeks, in three weeks time.

 

[00:56:26.450]

And if you think about the timing of when the first time we ask that question was right in the beginning of July, when this debate was probably at its peak about Marzook, there were people that had resisted putting in mass audiences. There were people that were just beginning to do it, and the science was getting a little less fuzzy.

 

[00:56:46.660]

There was some clarity coming out on data that showed, OK, this is this is why scientists have changed their recommendation, even though Ed thinks it’s a government conspiracy.

 

[00:56:58.120]

And the scientific consensus, I think, for for a person to person transmission, regardless of what the science says, why risk it? Just wear a mask, which I think a lot of people are coming to that realization.

 

[00:57:10.430]

But in the heat of the battle right there in the fire was at the highest.

 

[00:57:14.530]

So that I think that’s why we saw it so evenly split. But it’s good to see the rationality has kind of leveled out a little better.

 

[00:57:22.660]

And more people who agree that wearing a mask is not a substitute for social distancing because of the number of times that I’ve gone to a store and I’m looking at something and some person comes in right in front of me in my space and my Jackson comes out six feet.

 

[00:57:40.410]

Unfortunately, my wife, she wasn’t amused, but that’s how it goes right from the bottom of the hour. I just want to say, this is a great discussion. You guys are doing great. So I’m going to leave you to it. I hope you all have a great week. I’m going to read through what a great rest of the week weekend, rather. I have to read through the rest of the results of and you’re going to see some of our show up on and see if you want to hear about your podcast, what to do.

 

[00:58:06.880]

Where is the fundraiser and computer dot com? The podcast is Computer Dotcom’s podcast. I’m Tim Peter on pretty much every social channel except for Twitter, where I am Peter, for reasons that are lost to the annals of time. And Peter now looks like a modern website instead of something that was built in the nineteen.

 

[00:58:29.500]

Oh dang. Yeah, yeah.

 

[00:58:35.200]

I, you know, that site was built not in the 1920s, it just looked, I mean but there at least kept the 90s or the late 90s logo color, you know.

 

[00:58:50.020]

So I mean you didn’t. Completely go away. I just want to hit counter at the bottom. Now, to have other colors than blue folks, it’s not only color.

 

[00:59:00.900]

What are you talking about? There is no other color but blue.

 

[00:59:04.160]

I mean, you all have a great weekend mumbling that Smith that Tim and Melissa are not the same person.

 

[00:59:16.870]

OK, you want to address Tim’s question before before you left about the uncertainty? Because there’s some good questions around fears and things like that.

 

[00:59:27.950]

Well, we as her every round of this, we do have our word cloud, of course, that we ask what people are thinking about traveling at the moment. And safety just is still at the forefront. It has not changed. That is it is the number one word. We still have fear. We still have risky. We still have all these sort of negative connotations with a few scattered rings of relaxation and relaxing. But also masks are what people are thinking about.

 

[01:00:01.490]

And we haven’t had tons and tons of change here.

 

[01:00:05.480]

It’s stuck.

 

[01:00:06.080]

Well, it looks like it’s skewed back to the more prevalence of negativity than than, you know, you had a couple of your versions, had some emergence of positivity coming in, and they just went and then it’s gone back to why is zero and prevalent or is it just is it just zero zero zero cases?

 

[01:00:34.430]

And things are just wondering, you know, that’s my favorite.

 

[01:00:40.410]

Just want to make sure that he wanted to tell you that he appreciates very much your word cloud. He said if you didn’t make it back by the time we brought that up, that you wanted to let you know he loves the word cloud function on that.

 

[01:00:50.930]

So it’s also fun to turn the word cloud into sentences. It’s scary fun, very risky.

 

[01:01:03.260]

But like this, that word cloud down by people who have traveled versus people who have not traveled and those who have not traveled, additionally, not surprisingly, had more negative things. But they also had nervous uncertainty and fear were pretty prevalent in the word cloud of people who have not yet traveled. I really liked your question.

 

[01:01:28.430]

Thirteen that comes up next there about where people would travel within the next month.

 

[01:01:32.030]

And being from a small town, small town takes the dominant stage there and people traveling. So more power to them. I love that.

 

[01:01:41.360]

But also, I think that’s an opportunity for a lot of people who are not in the major cities like hotels. They’re not in the major cities where maybe before they were going away from you go to the major city. Hey, now you can reverse that flow a little bit this week.

 

[01:01:55.130]

And this is the first time small town has been the number one spot. It’s a destination that is somewhere in nature, followed by small towns. So it’s interesting that that has now taken over the top spot there.

 

[01:02:08.180]

Well, I wonder how much of that plays into where we are in the seasons of travel.

 

[01:02:14.330]

Right. You know, I mean, because when you think of each destination, especially your audience specifically, it’s really, really hot right now.

 

[01:02:23.390]

You know, we’ve gotten some good engagement on the social side for for some hotels talking about, I wouldn’t say off the beaten path because that’s too generic.

 

[01:02:32.390]

But the the wine of the wine vineyards, the farmer’s markets, the road trips, destination stuff, countryside driving, discoverable things that are not downtown centric, urban centric, attraction centric museums and event. It’s about OK when you get here beyond being here. This is some other things that are just kind of fun that you don’t have to be really engaged for a lot of places or people. You can keep good distance, but they’re pretty cool things to go do, like farmer’s markets.

 

[01:03:06.080]

I know it sounds really silly that keep pointing it out because I was one of the strongest ones we’ve got people engaged with on the social life. Are people just a cool idea of going somewhere and then traipsing out into the countryside and having a couple of markets because of seasonal things that are being sold at the time to your idea of small town? It’s not like going to the small town. This is actually out of a side of a city, but they’re going outside of the city.

 

[01:03:26.070]

You’re going to go do these things. So it’s been kind of interesting that connects to it.

 

[01:03:29.530]

And then Ellen Ellis of made a comment in our chat and sentiments decreasing along with parents finding out they need to homeschool.

 

[01:03:39.360]

But I’ve got to tell you, I’ve already seen some of our some of our partners have already started their, you know, shoulder season campaigning on Bring the Kids Learn, Learn from.

 

[01:03:51.000]

Beach type thing, because let’s face it, I mean, my kids, their school got kicked till the end of the month. They were supposed to go back this. Last week, and it got delayed because the principal had covid, yeah, I know, right?

 

[01:04:10.850]

But I will say, like we’re starting to feel it.

 

[01:04:13.460]

The kids have been primarily home for since the second week of March because they were on spring break before all the lockdown started. So they had an extra week of that.

 

[01:04:26.310]

And, yeah, it’s it’s getting tough. They’re getting a little slaphappy.

 

[01:04:32.170]

My son’s going to miss the first week of kindergarten because he was exposed to it at camp and we’re back in quarantine.

 

[01:04:42.680]

It’s amazing. Yeah. And it’s really great to be in quarantine when you move into a house, when you have no furniture and you have to be delivered, when you have no toys and no nothing boxes, if you just move, you’ve got boxes that the best toys for that five year old even I have boxes.

 

[01:05:04.370]

So I have Amazon Prime buttons and stuff.

 

[01:05:11.560]

Just go to kids toys, same day delivery, but you get you get boxes and toys, you win.

 

[01:05:20.730]

And I do think back to school things an opportunity and a couple of ways. One, I think you’re right and that everyone’s doing it differently. But a lot of schools are still going to be doing remote learning. And there is an opportunity to to get people to leave their house, to go to educate the kids and work in the morning, swim in the afternoon or whatever. But I also think the media is going to change its attention and you’re already beginning to see it.

 

[01:05:44.300]

You know, travel was the big villain in spreading covid early on in the last month or two. But the media is going to be like a whole on as schools reopen. You’re already seeing these stories bubble up about where the hot spots are. So media might be a little bit.

 

[01:05:59.420]

And hopefully at some point the media shifts to the fact that it is an election year.

 

[01:06:04.610]

Maybe they’ll actually start focusing on, I don’t know, the election now and give us a little bit of a realistic covid coverage is about the election.

 

[01:06:13.850]

It’s all a Democratic ploy to get you out of office.

 

[01:06:18.410]

I will say I got a full education on Q and on this morning by someone who firmly believes in it, who we listen to a podcast called Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know.

 

[01:06:31.550]

And and it’s it’s full of Kuhnen stuff experience on another.

 

[01:06:36.560]

I told you that those hotels in the atmosphere talking to the local school boards about creating satellite nexuses for their conference spaces, and it kind of twisted into a new dialogue of creating those nexuses for students that do not have computers because the conferences have the big screen.

 

[01:06:59.030]

What’s missing is a camera that’s there. I mean, there’s some technicality. I mean, there’s always logistics to this stuff. But for those families that don’t have the technical facilities available, but they can have the ability to bring their kids to these little nacelle, potentially education things the dialogue’s not been advanced to. How do we address them? Because they can be served food and they can be left in a room and isolated from the rest of the hotel and they could be operated.

 

[01:07:22.370]

There’s some outdoor space for them to go to the days of shortened anyway, because it’s mainly about class education time and all this other stuff. But if they can start providing a service to a community that is vastly underserved right now, which is the families that do not have the financial means to have the technology necessary for remote learning, I mean, that’s a I’m hoping that soon comes through because men will be pumping the PR out of that.

 

[01:07:49.370]

I just heard from a property that is the term they’re meeting space into sort of a Q virtual drop off for the parents to go enjoy themselves while they have a propter in the meeting space that can watch as kids to their virtual work.

 

[01:08:10.160]

I like that was really a couple of a couple of venues here have done that to help working and it’s actually meant for working families. These venues are large enough that the kids can have pretty substantial social distancing. They brought in a couple of team members who are registered professionals on dealing with children. And it’s literally, hey, you’ve got to go to work and your kids got to do home schooling. So here you can bring them home schooling.

 

[01:08:40.370]

It’s virtual learning. There’s a difference between a distinct difference between virtual learning and homeschooling.

 

[01:08:45.680]

Just to clarify, there is is virtual learning done at home because it’s homeschooling that I’m sorry if you’re if you’re on participation from the parent, virtual learning shouldn’t require nearly as much active participation in homeschooling you.

 

[01:09:01.650]

I have to go through and have your own curriculum and develop all that, so I’ll see the state of Florida has had resources for families who wanted to homeschool their kids, but keep them in a real curriculum where it’s Florida virtual school. So you didn’t have to develop your own curriculum if you didn’t want to, but if you didn’t want your kid going to the school, you could do that. So, yeah, but it’s at home. And if you’re if you both work full time jobs where you can’t be home, you now have a new problem, which is having someone, you know, take care of your kids and help them through their coursework, because I’m sorry if you have young kids or kids who struggle, who need special attention on certain things, then you basically are homeschooling your kids because you have to help them through the virtual coursework Q4 of last year, I had to learn a lot about the American Revolution that I had totally forgotten 20 years ago.

 

[01:10:02.370]

And we’re just. Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Nope, nope, nope. Not even close.

 

[01:10:10.000]

So another aspect of marketing, which has come up a little bit now, is and this came out of a New York Times article recently, which was a reaffirmation for me is why do I live here? But the change in the work requirements of an officer, not necessarily an officer being at home because it’s out of a hot spot situation and or the fact that the company isn’t bringing people back into the office environment again, a lot of people are doing real estate shifts.

 

[01:10:34.720]

And it’s actually a huge problem right now because inventory is super low. Demand is super high. Like last month in Florida, sales were up twenty one percent, but available inventory was down like 18 percent. Yeah, it’s caused a huge there’s almost a real estate gridlock happening here where we’re seriously down here because a lot of people are coming to the market.

 

[01:11:02.600]

If you’re in Florida right now. OK, I’m sorry, but I’m saying in the sense of people wanting to get out of the Miami Metro, Tampa Metro, they’re coming down looking for homes in this area because it’s like I don’t want live in I don’t want to live down there.

 

[01:11:19.820]

And that’s what’s coming up through, which actually is going to have a few really interesting repercussions to it. One, it’s going to shift the political landscape of the country to where you’re going to see more democratic kind of growth in areas that have been traditionally conservative Republican, which will kind of be interesting to mix that part of it. I think it’s needed to get these people face to face, but to I think states like New York and California are in for a very long term fiscal crisis, because, let’s face it, it’s not the lower income that are going to move out of California.

 

[01:12:03.550]

It’s the higher income that are going to move out of California because they can remote work now and live in an area that they’re not paying the California taxes. They’re not doing any of that in New York and California are incredibly dependent on their tax base. And even with it, they can’t kind of dig out of some of the sins of the past with, like, you know, their different retirement plans and things like that that were, you know, choking them totally real to yesterday because with one of those crazy people, the selling and buying a house during a pandemic, which if anyone wants to move to the beach, you have a house for sale.

 

[01:12:43.870]

By the way, he was telling me that he literally last week sold a house on Zoome. He did a virtual walk through of a million dollar house in Myrtle Beach to someone moving from New York. They’ve never seen it.

 

[01:13:00.370]

They put an offer in on the spot and they’re going to close and move down here, partly because that house they saw for a million bucks was seven times the size of the New York properties and and had land and.

 

[01:13:13.780]

Yeah, and taxes.

 

[01:13:16.660]

Well, and that’s and so that’s going to have some interesting long term effect on on our economy, on our political landscape. You know, covid is going to leave just years and years of change and it’s going to be really interesting to try and track. And why I’m bringing this up is not just, oh, look, it’s happening. It’s going to change how you market. You know, the what a girl looks like is under a massive dynamic switch already.

 

[01:13:47.950]

So ago where previously you said, oh, they were middle income, know whatever, you may blink and all of a sudden their their income level of that zip code has gone up substantially because a bunch of Google people, you know, moved and are working remote now out of that area. It’s going to be kind of this few years of you can’t trust any of your historical marketing data, especially as it relates to go.

 

[01:14:19.520]

We’ve talked a lot about throwing out the old playbook you used to go to earlier. Use another one. You’ve got to unlearn what you’ve learned. You’ve got to pretend like and I said this on the show a couple of weeks ago, you were just transported to an entire another planet. You just opened a new hotel that isn’t the same hotel you were working at before. And you’re targeting a completely new audience because that’s the reality you’re facing now. What one what they need, what you offer is fundamentally different.

 

[01:14:48.640]

They have new you have new landmines to navigate.

 

[01:14:52.300]

Yeah, you have to if you’ve been furloughed, just came back to the same job or if you stayed there the whole time, you need to come in with a new mindset and say, if this was brand new, I was starting the day. I forget everything I’ve learned. How do I approach this? That that’s how you’re going to have to tackle the next six months?

 

[01:15:11.600]

Hmm.

 

[01:15:13.080]

You add to that, like I said, I have a cluster of hotels to replace the one hotel that succeeded early. On best was the one that actually had a restaurant inside of it and compared to those that didn’t because it was an easier solution for people to say, OK, so if the hotel’s doing that than the restaurants doing that and I get food from the restaurant.

 

[01:15:32.020]

And so it’s an easy solution for them than saying that is the restaurant a couple of blocks away, still open or whatever, it was an easier answer for them. You think it’s fair to say?

 

[01:15:42.490]

I think to your point, hotels that do have their restaurants open right now, it seems that they’re having a higher capture ratio of their in-house guests and what they had before. So a lot of hotels like, oh, we can’t open a restaurant now because you said but your old data, like your cat, you have to think about what your new potential capture ratio is to that point, because I do think there are more people that are just more comfortable staying in the hotel and walking down stairs versus going out.

 

[01:16:09.850]

Yeah, right. If there’s some of this I know the Richard is eager to hear more information from security.

 

[01:16:17.560]

Ask me for the link back to what you’re talking about, because he loves your data.

 

[01:16:20.530]

So it’s at the top of the chart. I know. If I put in the bottom as well, I just got to see it.

 

[01:16:29.010]

Well, let’s talk about cleaning protocols, because this is the new question that we asked and we asked how different protocols would change the confidence in staying in a property.

 

[01:16:42.330]

And so we asked about leaving the room vacant for 24 hours between guess 48 hours between guests putting the seal across the room and after it’s been cleaned, a deep cleaning between guests, providing toiletries, checking versus having them in the room, putting the TV remote in a sanitize bag and an option to check in the mobile app because we had to throw that in there.

 

[01:17:11.130]

Overwhelmingly, there are two things that stood out that would have a drastically increased confidence. Level one was a deep cleaning between guests, whereas leaving the room vacant for 24 to 48 hours is only twenty five to thirty one percent with a greatly increased. The deep cleaning was almost 70 percent of people said that that would increase their confidence.

 

[01:17:36.330]

And the great thing about that is it’s such an ambiguous and we would deliberate with this because with were toying with messaging. So this is as much about perception, because as we discussed on this show before, that doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence. There’s a lot of contact, indirect contact spread of this disease. So what the deep cleaning really means is somewhat nebulous, somewhat ambiguous.

 

[01:17:59.280]

Well, and that’s the interesting thing, because, like, if you were truly saying what some of these are probably thinking, it’s sanitisation vs. the show versus a cleaning, as we learned about biofilm for sure. Like when the poop episode.

 

[01:18:15.380]

Yes, we can we can use that as as marketing experts in our messaging and change our protocols to classify it as a deep clean that’s going to have way more impact and be less costly, less problematic then. And by the way, twenty four hours bacon.

 

[01:18:34.020]

We make for slightly more cleaning than your normal cleaning was. And you can say it’s a deep clean.

 

[01:18:41.520]

Right. So. So that’s INSIGHT one.

 

[01:18:46.950]

Well, it’s not lying if it’s deeper cleaning than you normally would do, it is deeper. You have the article that came out the other day. It talked about all the brands and all of their clean certifications, whatever that they’re doing, the lifestyle partnership and so forth. And I keep on thinking to myself, what does that really mean? So you partnered with Lysol.

 

[01:19:08.250]

How do I know that you’re a person when it’s all well, read the side of Lysol and it will tell you that the one percent that it doesn’t cover is coronavirus.

 

[01:19:19.770]

That’s just that’s why I even if it did, how do I put that in the room? I just reassurance.

 

[01:19:24.990]

Right. It’s it’s classic marketing where you align yourself with a brand, sell a message or create a narrative that you want.

 

[01:19:31.880]

But if you wanted to save a ton of money and not have to deep clean but get almost the same effect, just clean your TV remote and put it in a sanitisation bag, it is the next biggest improvement you can do on this data.

 

[01:19:48.720]

It’s fifty four percent said greatly would increase, which is weird.

 

[01:19:55.060]

How weird is coronavirus that when you walk into a grocery store and you touch something and it’s wet, that’s actually comforting to you where previously you touched a car and it was what you’d be like, oh, what is that?

 

[01:20:09.780]

But now it’s like, oh, it’s sanitized.

 

[01:20:14.370]

Well, again, it goes back to maybe by no means to use the question, but just from a survey of seven know, it’s like, would you be happier if I said I have a air filtration system that will sanitize sanitize with the ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent the air and in a room within ten minutes over the fact that I cleaned your room, which is as simple as installing UV lights in your coils, which, by the way, if you’re in a humid climate, you should just do that anyways.

 

[01:20:50.130]

It will actually increase the life of your air conditioning units and have the positive effect of killing airborne borne bacteria and viruses.

 

[01:21:00.120]

I mean, right now, you can’t get UV plates are balanced right now.

 

[01:21:03.480]

It’s it’s it’s a month backlog market. Right now.

 

[01:21:07.090]

The UV light doesn’t get behind the bed in the drawer, on the shelf, under the table.

 

[01:21:12.600]

Holder said, what are your guests doing that they’re infecting? And we want to do Kliman.

 

[01:21:20.790]

I want to be here. I really am concerned that you need to clean the back of a. Head board, that’s up against the wall. Have you look back there? Have you worked for a hotel before? Actually, to be fair. No point you’re making is that the expectation is probably a safety improvement scenario, much more beneficial to a guest than to the surface contact. Like we have a biofilm. Cleaning that deeply ambiguous is the statement you may purposely do represents, but that requires an education process to the guests that they’re still not going to feel as comfortable as taking videos of us wiping down the old elevator switches.

 

[01:22:03.830]

Well, that’s the word right now.

 

[01:22:05.780]

None of these protocols really have a meaningful impact on safety of the guests. Just psychology, right? It’s purely perception. So I think that’s what we’re really trying to get to. You know, we’re a marketing agency. We want to find out what are the buttons we can push, the levers we can pull to move people from like Tamme earlier when she’s, like, uncertain about traveling but wants to. How do we get Tami’s over to the to the light side from the dark side and and and how do you get levers with buttons?

 

[01:22:36.560]

I mean, because that feels like that was a red button on the ground level.

 

[01:22:41.550]

Right. Really hard.

 

[01:22:42.920]

So, yeah, this brings me back to something I said earlier about people of the people who traveled and their perception of their safety measures. And so we asked, you know, how do the property meet your expectations in terms of cleanliness and sanitisation? Over 60 percent said that they were meeting more than that, said that they exceeded expectations, cleanliness and sensitization of the rooms. Also, 60 percent expectations were met across the board. All these categories, mostly expectations, were met or exceeded.

 

[01:23:22.040]

But I will say this. This came up I think Deani said it before that, you know, the whole mask thing doesn’t counteract the social distancing aspect. And the one thing that did not meet the highest thing that did not meet expectations was the social distancing enforcement on property. Yep.

 

[01:23:43.770]

And listen, I’m nowhere, nowhere near Lauryn Gray and how much I’m freaked out by this thing. However, I will say I had the experience of going to IKEA. Everyone was wearing masks, absolutely everyone was everyone was wearing them correctly, it was just there were too many people in there.

 

[01:24:04.380]

I felt uncomfortable. And I’m not Lauren Grey like it.

 

[01:24:09.000]

It made me want to leave.

 

[01:24:12.000]

I think, you know, as the crazy person on the show who’s done a fair amount of travel in the last few months and my of travel, it’s a fair amount of crazy stuff and travel all over the world.

 

[01:24:26.250]

It has been all over the United States, but it was partial. You know, I didn’t do any of this really is your half of it was work and half of it was taking care of my in-laws and the other. Well, that doesn’t make it a third and third half. Yeah. And we had to move across the country to your point. And I think for me it was just it’s just as easy to social distance, if not easier in a hotel as it is in a grocery store or Home Depot.

 

[01:24:54.570]

For me at an airport, I’ve been able to easily social media. You go through security, but it’s still there. So empty, like Boston Logan, it’s so empty that I had no problem social distancing. And it was easier to do that than it was for me at Home Depot or the grocery store.

 

[01:25:11.850]

Yeah, but it’s it’s that fear of the unknown that that everyone’s struggling with or the fear of.

 

[01:25:20.760]

Listen, I hate getting on a plane and having someone sit next to me in the middle seat.

 

[01:25:24.480]

Right. In normal times, I would lose my mind right now if that happened.

 

[01:25:30.600]

So I’ve taken I’ve been on eight flights from between between since Corbitt started eight flights. And I’ve only had to sit beside somebody one time. And I’ve been flying the airlines that have not you know, I’ve flown both American and United who have said that they will sell the middle seat. But as soon as today, I’ve only had to sit on the side one person that was on a regional jumper flight. So I’m only sharing my experiences. I’m not saying everyone has the same, but.

 

[01:26:00.480]

So in your experiences, call out the heroes and the Xeros. Let’s go Rapid Fire three heroes.

 

[01:26:08.670]

Yeah, I want to say that I’m just going to share some observations. Let’s say, like you nine and I’ve flown them three times, but they haven’t been consistent in their boarding and all morning. So like I’ve been on a flight where they said, OK, we’re going to they actually would call Rose and said, OK, Rose, one through five. You can board, you can exit, but nobody is supposed to stand up until your ROE is called.

 

[01:26:33.270]

So they did that on two of the flights, but not on, which made me feel better because that’s when the people some people like to get up in crowd. And then on the third flight, they didn’t do that. It was still like a free for all. And I was like, I like that. And I started to like it. And then they I was like, maybe it’s a united thing. And then it turned out by the third flight, it was it.

 

[01:26:52.860]

So I’m like, why? Why didn’t you always do this? So I’ve stayed it.

 

[01:27:01.710]

And I guess regionally I’ve stayed at hotels in California, Washington, South Carolina, Florida, Florida, the last state in May. So we know Florida was a different place in May and that the people working at the hotel were not even wearing masks at the front desk. Yeah, and I think that’s changed now. But at the time I was coming from the West Coast, so I’m like, you can put a mask on, you know, and only thing they had done is set up a six foot table in front of the front desk to, you know, to make me lean over, to pick up a know, to put my credit card in or whatever.

 

[01:27:41.550]

The when I flew, though, out of North Carolina that when I flew out of Raleigh there statement, the airport had that mandated massive majority of people there were not wearing masks. By the time I got to Seattle, that was state mandate and everybody was wearing a mask. So I think it’s just been an evolution over time as I’ve kind of watched some of the Southern states catch up and get back on track. But I also don’t believe in the context.

 

[01:28:11.790]

I don’t believe I can catch covid from contact from some over services. And that’s just my personal belief. So maybe I’m just less fearful of of. And then I moved to Grand Junction and my son is exposed. And that’s been my first exposure throughout all. This was when I moved this super small town where there’s no inventory and to buy a house or to live and in a. So it’s you can’t win anything? No, I wouldn’t say it’s random, but it’s definitely out of influences and the spread of the chaos that you can’t really say just because you’re in a small town and nothing else is there, that that can’t eventually come around and be something.

 

[01:28:56.510]

Yeah, yeah, so what are we missing, some highlights we want to make sure we hit. I think the important things we’ve covered, like I said, I mean, all the other questions, as I said, just in terms of trends, have shifted more positive, but just not back to where we were yet.

 

[01:29:20.240]

Well, except for how likely you are to book a trip. Next 30 days, next 60 days, that’s gotten worse, hasn’t it? It’s not as bad as it was last. OK, seasonality changes well to.

 

[01:29:34.860]

Well, that’s been one of my feelings on this this whole time, as some of this is seasonality. Like for a while, like everyone was saying, they would absolutely not book a trip to a ski destination. Well, because all the questions are being asked when there was no skiing, you know, and they’ve obviously corrected that in their questions here. But, yeah, I mean, it’s still, you know, problematic to see how few people are maybe or more positive is no longer 50 percent for the next 30 days.

 

[01:30:15.150]

And there were a couple of points where we had hit that happened.

 

[01:30:17.970]

We maybe I missed the last one, so.

 

[01:30:22.510]

Yeah, yeah. OK, I know that the Florida restaurant for the Restaurant Association was referring to a statistic, a third of the local news that those polled and I would I want to find out where they pulled this from because they didn’t say it was theirs.

 

[01:30:39.030]

Seventy two percent are waiting for a vaccine or a solution before they make travel plans.

 

[01:30:45.360]

I want to see where they pull that from because they didn’t say it was their survey. So please understand a grain of salt. Don’t know where this is coming from, but they referred to it in their newscast in reference to their concerns as to their industry. They referred to that number. I think that’s going to be a moving goal post to.

 

[01:31:00.870]

So I wouldn’t hang your hopes on that because it’s not just going to be that there is a vaccine, then the media is going to focus on the fact of how few people have gotten the vaccine. And it’s Cassi and. Right.

 

[01:31:14.580]

I mean, the fact that they’re looking at the fact that people might try to double up what they said was two hundred and nineteen was accounted for. Nineteen active vaccine research is being done right now and and thirty seven of them is in phase three.

 

[01:31:31.590]

How is that concoction of cocktail is going to happen? If somebody wants to start jumping on ship on all that?

 

[01:31:35.610]

That’ll be Darwinism, though.

 

[01:31:38.520]

I’m sorry. Some of this is that is Darwinism. Is that play.

 

[01:31:44.010]

I’m sorry. Yeah. I mean, it’s a real problem, right? Because there’s going to be this information war and propaganda and lobbying and marketing saying this. You should get this one, not this one. This, which is going to create this immense amount of confusion and uncertainty which is going to limit people’s willingness to jump in and take that.

 

[01:32:03.710]

We just have to go to Russia and take the vaccine. They already came up with it. We’re fine. It’s OK.

 

[01:32:08.010]

I am again going to say there is a little bit of benefit in time of a pandemic to not having a free society.

 

[01:32:18.810]

China China’s dealt with this really well by just basically telling people if you leave, you’re going to be arrested and enslaved or executed. Yeah, they don’t have the problems of, you know, how like someone getting into a fight at a grocery store because they ask someone to put a mask on. Right. It’s not happening in those areas.

 

[01:32:38.550]

I would argue they have some other problems.

 

[01:32:41.580]

So I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m saying this is one of those. I don’t think prior to pandemic, you could ever convince me that there were any positives to a non free society. And I’m just my my my brain is spinning by the fact that we’ve actually found some fair grainne.

 

[01:32:58.980]

New Zealand is a free society and they were as much about the lockdown minus the threats.

 

[01:33:05.130]

And I think they threatened anybody with this theory. I’m sure, though, there was a lot of political cleansing went on in China at the same time, mysteriously in New Zealand, one of their greatest successes as to why they are free right now is they they mandated a lot of things and there was no just out sides and all this other stuff. They were very much about it.

 

[01:33:24.360]

But they have a very small population.

 

[01:33:27.180]

And so they had the ability right now, I mean, there’s some density of population to a couple of cities and so forth. But also they had a singularity of leadership that was mandating this.

 

[01:33:38.490]

And they only have they have under five million people living there.

 

[01:33:41.610]

You can have two political sides that are deliberately trying to make the leap to a single leadership decision.

 

[01:33:49.890]

Is South Korea, you know, same same way that they handled what they did.

 

[01:33:53.250]

And they don’t have a population that puts freedom above everything else, including their own like life.

 

[01:34:03.090]

I guess it’s New Hampshire.

 

[01:34:04.050]

Got it right. Live free or die. Yeah, maybe so.

 

[01:34:10.350]

Well, to that end, I guess really what we’re talking about, the fact of going into the fall and so forth and the precipice of how many influences will be on follow, you have the aspect of saying we’re going to go into a very terrible social health situation. From CBC’s perspective, you have the uncertainty as to the school situation as to how this spreads and how it may grow because of the systems of going back to school. And there’s a lot of people that do need to put their kids back into an environment that is educational for them at the lowest risk possible.

 

[01:34:40.340]

It’s hard to just blanket say you should send kids back, but by the same token, you shouldn’t also blink and say you should send all the kids back because you can’t do that. It’s all there. Certain kids that you can put.

 

[01:34:51.770]

I mean, I will say I like at least from what I’ve seen of the school systems, they’ve created choice, you know, which which you do need to do because there are kids whose lives have been very negatively affected by not being able to be in school. And you have kids who’ve lost their lives due to not being able to be in school. So the answer can’t be no school. The answer needs to be situational because there are children who are starving who the only meal they get in a day is the school program.

 

[01:35:27.830]

And that that can’t be spoken about enough. And then I feel horrible for the families who have an abusive person in their household.

 

[01:35:38.870]

I can’t even imagine what these last five months have been like where there is no outlet, there’s no escape, you know that the hell that those people must be going through.

 

[01:35:49.820]

So there are situations that need to be thought of when building policy.

 

[01:35:59.110]

Well, and also without Cat being here, because they’re doing the whole conference right now, you know, the the the abuse of human trafficking, you know, fortunate repercussions of now we all get to wear masks and hide and walk through cameras and not know who we are unless some of the features that can make it identifiable for people. But and also the means of keeping it under wraps, of not being discovered and not being seen in isolating and not going into rooms and confirming safety and so forth.

 

[01:36:28.030]

You know, when we went through and this is not too many years back, you know, as a D.A., really, I mean, a D.A., you know, given the circumstances of what happened in Las Vegas, we had that whole discussion.

 

[01:36:37.240]

You know, how often do you have to go into a room to ensure safety, security and so forth? And that’s been removed from the conversation. So there’s a lot of ramifications, plus the mental fatigue associated with this. I’m sure it went from looking just in general that there’s a certain frustration of wanting to do, but not the safety of being done.

 

[01:36:55.840]

And yet where does that manifest itself right now?

 

[01:36:59.560]

It could be in and possible mild depression or whatever. How do we encourage or be helpful in helping these people, as you said, that donative of distance that people are willing to travel? How can we make it feel comfortable enough for them that Stephanie’s ability to isolated a hotel but still feel comfortable enough to do something of enjoyment that’s not at home where you’ve been stuck for five months? How do we translate that into our, I would say marketing? Because that means we’re always trying to take just the good stuff.

 

[01:37:26.980]

But how we and our way of answering questions on our website that let people discover what they need to know to make the decisions that they want to make, that probably is the way to translate it. What I can say, because you’re right. Yeah.

 

[01:37:39.940]

Without it being a great date thing going on and stuff like that, I mean, even for us, I mean, we were talking about trying to get away for a few days and just go, as we say, wiggle our toes in the sand, you know, so we’re even talking to Airbnb and Garbo’s and so forth. And it requires contacting the host direct and asking very specific questions that do not get reflected on their website. They’re still not up to identifying all the things because there’s too many diversities.

 

[01:38:03.880]

They can get totally anal about what they do or they can go over and just give them as much information as they can, knowing that as they open the channel communication, people like me is quick to point out. I’m going to ask whether or not you’re using certain chemicals for your cleaning process.

 

[01:38:17.830]

For God sakes, do you use a hazmat suit when you check me?

 

[01:38:23.570]

Because I’m not going to go.

 

[01:38:24.890]

Lauren, just just take the boat to a remote island like you have a boat. Oh, yeah. There were, you know, any remote islands around you.

 

[01:38:34.480]

We went to book Grand and the sandbar is up there. Yeah, I know.

 

[01:38:38.710]

Social distancing was going to hoard like little I mean, the sandbars were worse than anything else.

 

[01:38:44.740]

They’re all like in a big group, like over in students neighborhood where he doesn’t wear mask with, you know, well, we got a house in a nicer neighborhood, so they’re all, yeah, you know, but I mean, and talking about the mental health aspect of this, like, you know, this this entire everything about what’s happened in the last five months is so taxing because first of all, like even not talking about the really obvious stuff, but how many people go through their life with very little change.

 

[01:39:22.180]

And yet in the last five months, the amount of change forced upon everyone is is so overwhelming and how much the change has changed. That’s a lot of what society is struggling with right now. Is there used to kind of picking a truth and that truth holds long enough that it’s not uncomfortable.

 

[01:39:42.160]

But there’s so much dynamic happening here that every day, every hour there’s change. And and, you know, that’s that’s grating on certain types of people who really have a hard time with change, you know, and then God forbid something happens, you know, like if you’re put into what’s already a tough situation in normal times and then you have to deal with it during what’s happening right now. These are all things that need to be thought of as we’re building, you know, plans for what’s allowed, what’s not allowed.

 

[01:40:18.100]

There has to be some room for thought on. Not everyone is perfectly well-adjusted and healthy. You know, they and need certain things that are maybe not obvious to someone who is two to two perspectives to to this that I find interesting through the dialogue of friends of mine that are here, that are retired.

 

[01:40:38.440]

When I’m speaking for them, not all of them, they refer to the fact that they are losing time, they’re being squandered, they’re being stolen from because here they have retired and they were going to be doing all these things.

 

[01:40:54.280]

They have an RV, they have a boat that whatever it is that they’ve acquired. Through their hard work and they’ve retired and they can’t do anything but stay at home, a lot of these people already stayed at home most of the time anyway. But now I have friends that are actually building pools in their backyard where they said they would never have one. Why? Because they can’t go out and do anything. So they’re going to start creating the environment around their home that they were going out and doing.

 

[01:41:16.300]

So there’s a lot of that is a as a potential in the future tense that if you can create some level of safety, security for them to make the decision to say that you can go to them. Which brings me to my question point.

 

[01:41:27.280]

If you have the the physical facilities to be able to isolate sections out, know identify them, whether it be a group of cottages or a wing of a building that can be isolated. Do you think there’s any value to say that we have this ultra sanitation’s sealed, all the things that you pointed up with the stickers and the sanitation? This is the ultra super duper safe. Nobody sees anybody that does anybody thing.

 

[01:41:53.740]

Does that sell or is that just an overdramatic fraction of what is coming as the was you’d say when you invent the shit, invent the shipwreck? I think it creates a shipwreck in that the non superduper sanitized area is now the dirty area.

 

[01:42:10.150]

And I think that’s the perception that a lot of people would say, well, even beyond that, like, are you going to put access control so that the people from the dirty area can’t mingle with the people from the clean area?

 

[01:42:21.730]

I mean, is the staff going to be allowed to be in the dirty area or, you know, with the cameras in temperature checkers and everything else? I mean, you’re talking about the whole ball of wax and good and bad at that point.

 

[01:42:36.790]

And that’s never a good value proposition to sell to people because you’re going to likely have more bad and good in terms of what you’ve got to accept.

 

[01:42:45.580]

Only the super wealthy allowed in the clean area. Like, again, this goes back to something you pointed out from Wiki websites. Do we make it for the least common denominator? We’re doing the same by not doing that.

 

[01:42:57.880]

What is it? I know what you’re saying, but I’m not disagreeing with you. But I’m just on a point of it saying for those who find this to be the ultimate and I’ll give you the example. I have a friend of mine that I’m helping to his marketing with. He sells it to doctor’s office.

 

[01:43:09.640]

They do a one room, single sanitation seal. And that room is for high risk or high concern risk people that they are brought into by a back door, by somebody that is completely checked every day for testing and brought into that room for that purpose of being completely isolated from everybody else. And nobody sees or does anything that isn’t being completely checked as being before walking in that door. Safe to be seen.

 

[01:43:36.670]

Yeah. So I actually but I have my risk free and there’s a lot of them in the market already right now. And also for those who are have high concern that they just don’t want to be around the general populace.

 

[01:43:47.350]

But there’s a lot more catering for extreme cases and extreme. Yes.

 

[01:43:52.150]

In creating a class hierarchy. Right. Because we were talking earlier about don’t cater to the lowest common denominator, but be specific and personalized. It’s additive. It’s giving each individual what they want. It’s not taking away from someone else. What you’re creating is the haves and the have nots in that, especially in the society we live in the America people are kakas and we’re going to let them walk around without mass underwear or anything that they want.

 

[01:44:22.000]

You can’t you can’t have that because you’re actually creating an expectation that’s going to end up getting you sued if one of your employees happens to have covid and gives it to one of these uber isolated people.

 

[01:44:37.870]

Again, it goes back to logistics. I mean, that’s that’s that’s done you to understand a lot of the logistics. You’re talking about catch most cases of covid, but there have been multiple cases of covered with no elevated body temperature, you know, like so because you can’t completely section this off like you really couldn’t.

 

[01:44:59.500]

Hospitals can’t even do it. So what makes you think a hotel can you shouldn’t set an expectation to welcome a traveler that that needs that. Because really, I mean, what you are catering to is a traveler who needs it.

 

[01:45:14.800]

And, my gosh, your first of all, you’re going to be charging them more, which also means they have more resources because of the legal ramifications of not delivering on such a crazy promise is going to be substantial because the argument will be you didn’t have to do this as a business.

 

[01:45:31.240]

You have I’m not saying we’re guaranteeing. I’m just saying that we have done all the following list of this finds to be safety for you. And you feel comfortable that we’re doing all these exceptionally additional things to the point that you’re willing to make a choice for travel.

 

[01:45:43.940]

Are you going to charge more for it? Yes, you would be all right.

 

[01:45:47.630]

And sooner or later, though, we have to accept that there’s a certain level of risk and the things that we do and we talk all about covid, you know, there’s nothing worse than killing people these days. People just took a hit by cars. Whatever sleeping disease is actually a good you know that.

 

[01:46:04.360]

So certainly it’s very hard for people who die every year from overdosing on water.

 

[01:46:13.450]

There you go. You know, so you just say, I have a two story house.

 

[01:46:17.410]

I wake up in the morning, I could fall down the steps. OK, now, I’m not trying to minimize covered babies. Don’t misunderstand that.

 

[01:46:22.690]

But it’s not the only thing that kills people. We take a mahamed every day. So what do we define as at a point where I’m ready to accept this risk of what I’m doing? And I, I just think that’s something we have to come to terms with.

 

[01:46:36.610]

And you can you can use flu as an example, right, in the US. Fifty thousand people a year die from flu every year and have vaccine. We have a vaccine that some people choose, not a lot of people get.

 

[01:46:48.130]

And there will be a ton of 50 50.

 

[01:46:50.690]

Now, I got the vaccine I to why the hell did I get the flu from you?

 

[01:46:55.070]

But you’d like if you’d like to prove that in science and you can do so. But, but you’re right, 100 percent thing that people will get a tolerance level at some point.

 

[01:47:06.460]

You know, there’s some threshold where the media and I’m not blaming the media for over sensationalist sensationalizing it other than to say people react to what they’re being told.

 

[01:47:18.760]

And when we stop calling them the media, can we just call them the entertainment reporters? I mean, because that’s so true. I wish it wasn’t. Yeah, yeah.

 

[01:47:31.090]

I mean, I think it’s and I think people will get to a point where they’re comfortable with taking some risk, just like we risk every day when we get out of it or even staying in bed, we could get hit by a plane that crashed into our house.

 

[01:47:45.070]

And there are still things that kill more people than the covered virus does, like heart disease, heart disease. Tuberculosis is still a thing.

 

[01:47:52.660]

No, we don’t know if it’s because of tuberculosis that it’s OK.

 

[01:47:58.240]

Would like to make this distinction on some things. There’s a lot that kills us, but not a lot of it can be transferred. Yes, OK, there’s a difference between I have heart disease, I die compared to I can give you heart disease and you die. There’s a lot of things like heart disease that no one talks about.

 

[01:48:17.680]

Very true as well.

 

[01:48:19.900]

Diabetes, but we can’t control the practice was our sedentary lifestyle. All right.

 

[01:48:27.140]

We should start marketing around how our resort has all these great amenities so that you don’t have a sedentary lifestyle, so you don’t get heart disease and let nature travel and wellness resource are a thing.

 

[01:48:37.960]

Now, that’s absolutely I think to Lauren’s point, I know where you were going. I tend to agree with Stewart Net as far as I think it was a little overkill and ripe for lawsuits. But the idea that if you have cottages, if you have something that’s unique and different or you’re on the coast and you have these private rooms talking about that and marketing, that is one thing. But I think to go up like a wing of our property is this ultra high end luxury and all super clean and perfect really does open you up to potential losses to all the things that they said.

 

[01:49:15.250]

But I do think if you have something like I’ve looked at places here locally and buy locally, I mean Northern California that have cottages, unique room types or different things where you are kind of sequestered or away from other people as options. And I think from a marketing standpoint, that’s fine as long as you’re not trying to create something. Extract or has the perception of a guarantee, right? Well, not going to do it, but there actually are some all inclusive resorts in the Mediterranean that are now listing themselves as covid, free covid, safe covid traveling destinations where they go through pretty much what I just described, a complete overhaul of anybody that’s in contact, constantly tested, constant cleaning, constant sanitation.

 

[01:50:06.800]

Everybody that’s around there is kept in a bubble and they’re constantly tested. And they you go to these places and everything’s included and you don’t go anywhere else. And they’re in existence right now. I don’t feel that that works.

 

[01:50:20.630]

I’m making this an extreme case and think they just but the idea of saying that there is a spectrum of safety, as we have all acknowledged, there are those that don’t give a rat’s butt and then there’s those that like me that want to know what the latest brand cleaning product you have. So, you know, and then even beyond that, because there is those that really do have genuine risk, factor of contriving, contriving.

 

[01:50:42.050]

And unfortunately, those people shouldn’t be traveling right now. I don’t really think that.

 

[01:50:48.830]

You can’t say that. You can’t say, gee, I’m really sorry for your life. You can’t travel. I refuse to do that. There is everybody in the world has the right to travel.

 

[01:50:57.080]

And if I could I didn’t say they can. However, like, if I get on an airplane, I have a far lower risk of dying from covid than someone with no immune system.

 

[01:51:09.890]

So, you know, I am caution you need that doesn’t put anybody else on it to get you to someplace you’ve never seen. You go on a beach you always wanted to be on. God damn it, I hope I’m the guy. And I hope you have that much, because let’s be honest, the people who are really feeling this pain are not the ones who can do the things you’re talking about. They’re fine. That’s the thing.

 

[01:51:34.020]

That’s the thing.

 

[01:51:34.860]

So if you have the method of of of providing you want to charge more for it, which then instantly undoes what you’re talking about.

 

[01:51:42.600]

No, you don’t want to charge more for it. It’s not the purpose of charging more for its purpose.

 

[01:51:49.150]

Well, you have to charge more for it because it’s expensive to do and instantly makes it to where it’s not available to the person, to the benefit of not just business travelers, that if you can put a refrigerator in the room, it wasn’t about the rate of the room. Is the fact that you were attentive to the fact that they needed it.

 

[01:52:06.420]

I’m told of the same mentality.

 

[01:52:08.340]

If I can bring some blame yourself in this doubling your staff to create the environment.

 

[01:52:14.040]

You’re talking about it in itself. The expense of that is astronomical. Go ask the NBA. Go ask Disney how much it costs to create a bubble.

 

[01:52:23.850]

They can tell you it’s not cheap.

 

[01:52:26.490]

So the fact that we can possibly do this and I mean this from a Make a Wish Foundation supporter, if you can create the solution to the problem, why can’t you? Well, but you’re talking out of both sides now.

 

[01:52:38.980]

I was I was literally about to stop this debate because oftentimes when we pick on you and I will get people tell us we were mean to you on the show and never mean spirited.

 

[01:52:50.880]

It’s know we respect each other greatly and we like to have these little sports because it’s entertaining. All of you can’t say I’m going to create this elite system that people are going to paint in a weird way. And we say, but I’m doing it in this futuristic way to help people that have the need for it in its own right. You can’t be high end luxury and charitable at the same time.

 

[01:53:15.660]

I’m not talking about high end luxury. You’re adding words that I never added. I didn’t say elite. I didn’t say luxury. I said as well.

 

[01:53:22.920]

Speaking of creating a solution, then solution works best for those who it’s an expensive solution. But for those people, they can afford it.

 

[01:53:34.800]

But for those who can’t afford it, why shouldn’t it be possible? Yeah, if it can’t be done, why can’t we do it? Is your mess, right?

 

[01:53:40.770]

I think it’s going to be talking about the value proposition of how much money you can make or whether or not.

 

[01:53:45.600]

But if I keep saying that sarcastically or were you. I wouldn’t necessarily.

 

[01:53:49.530]

I see this, but there’s a lot of logistics to go and there is the potential that it’s a legitimate point. If you can do it, then why aren’t you doing it now? So the answer may be, is it cost too much money? OK, how do we solve that problem? Right. So solve the problems. But first, what’s the goal?

 

[01:54:05.760]

So solve the economic issue of bubbling your staff an extra sanitisation and all this extra investment and solve it in a way that it does not at all touch profitability.

 

[01:54:16.800]

And Lauren’s vision that didn’t even add that four person that. So you’re saying a business would do this not profitably because.

 

[01:54:25.260]

Oh, Ed, what I’m saying is for a person that builds companies to solve problems, you’re absolutely pooping on the very concept of solve problems that are presenting this.

 

[01:54:35.430]

You’ve shifted your you know, I change what I was saying at the beginning.

 

[01:54:41.040]

They’re coming up with creativity.

 

[01:54:42.690]

If you don’t have the means of saying this as a ploy to help a business make more money during a pandemic, you’re in this as, hey, what about this?

 

[01:54:53.880]

Should a business do it at a loss?

 

[01:54:55.710]

Let me ask that. Let’s let’s start with this. Should a business do that at a loss?

 

[01:54:59.350]

NBA are you kidding me?

 

[01:55:03.780]

If the NBA wasn’t on TV right now, the loss would be substantially more due to ESPN and Disney have invested in this because they were about to lose billions and billions of dollars by not having the NBA. All right. So it was for profit, but it’s not profitable, afforded people who can afford private jets and all that.

 

[01:55:32.370]

It’s only being done for like the wealthiest of wealthy are at a loss right now.

 

[01:55:37.980]

And there continue to be at a loss rate now then they would be had they not done it.

 

[01:55:43.260]

Oh, so you’re saying it’s OK to be at a loss as long as it’s attempting to be profitable?

 

[01:55:47.970]

I love Disney, which let’s face it, this is all about Disney, because when Disney Disney yet gets to the Jack Daniels over the next six months because they have endless supplies of money, they lost three point three billion dollars in one quarter from their theme parks.

 

[01:56:13.170]

OK, to bring it back to reality of what we’re talking about, I have lost ever. So I’ve lost money to create a guest experience because it was the right thing to do for the guests at the time.

 

[01:56:25.770]

Could I do that to every guest to walk to my hotel? Absolutely not. But for that one guest, I was willing to eat cost to make sure that I lived up to what I said I was going to do for them.

 

[01:56:34.260]

Now, in that process, if I can provide a service because of the logistics that it takes to do that, then yes, I want to always do for because I’m running a business.

 

[01:56:43.590]

But too, there are times I. Opportunities to your point that you think I’m making?

 

[01:56:48.000]

I’m talking two sides out of my mouth that that could be given to or at least helpful in giving somebody an opportunity that can’t afford it out of the profitability spectrum, allow them to, like, sell a lot of it to wealthy people and mark it up even more, because for every night they stay, they give a half night to a I don’t know s all those people that make socks and give another pair away.

 

[01:57:10.230]

I don’t I mean, you’re talking about the fact if you have the ability to go over and do it as a hospitality person, why wouldn’t you try to free the spirit of what you’re suggesting now?

 

[01:57:21.030]

I agree with one hundred percent, but there are not what you started this conversation about your current new argument.

 

[01:57:26.640]

Sure, yes. I talked about the pendulum swinging, but if you could isolate a wing and so forth just to see what the idea was, but to whatever he was pointing out, there must be some middle ground to being able to isolate out what you are capable of doing and presenting it in a format that people appreciate that that might be what they needed to see and understand to make a choice. All.

 

[01:57:50.670]

I want to get back to what you were talking about with the closed environment, with the all inclusive resorts, because there’s another industry, another segment of our industry that that I think the only way that they come back is to replicate that as the cruise industry, the all the way cruises have a chance of coming back. And might you see the reports? Royal Caribbean says twenty, twenty one bookings are just going like crazy. But the only way this works is if a the the ship is hospital, great, clean.

 

[01:58:18.030]

Everything has got to be sanitized and be everything. Everyone that comes on has got to be tested. And I don’t mean just to test that you get results from three days later. I mean, like we have to have a way to test them there. Now prove you are not carrying this disease.

 

[01:58:32.130]

So they’ve now got a boost environment. You don’t do any ports of call because that’s a risk. But you’ve got a closed environment on a floating hotel that can go out to sea and you can have a good time.

 

[01:58:42.930]

But again, the problem is you’re out of the water, everyone, 14 days before they put a foot on the right.

 

[01:58:51.450]

And the other problem is, is are no ports of call plus social distancing on a boat. But wait on a boat, social like real social saying, I just got on the boat.

 

[01:59:03.690]

You’re in a safe zone, but you’re not.

 

[01:59:05.610]

You know, that’s the thing. This isn’t this isn’t a disease that like we have anywhere near the ability to hit one hundred percent. You know, you’re right.

 

[01:59:16.200]

And we won’t in January either. And we likely won’t in March of next year. So here’s the problem. Yes. Royal Caribbean and all of them have record bookings for next year.

 

[01:59:28.950]

And in January, if one cruise ship in the entire world gets a massive outbreak, it’s all gone.

 

[01:59:35.610]

You’re exactly right. Right.

 

[01:59:37.530]

So, you know, and then what you were explaining, if you did set up that Shangrila, it’s really close to a floating prison.

 

[01:59:47.670]

Well, there’s a fine line there to think that they want to enjoy. They want to be floating around in an open ocean, watching, catching some sets of sunrises, sitting at home worrying about sunsets. And so I think I think I think you’re looking at the fact that we’re going to all take our own advice and realize that we have to change what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. Stuart, to your point, maybe there is a 14 day isolated quarantine hotel by the Caribbean cruise line that sits outside there and they have to sit in there for 14 frickin days until they can get on the boat.

 

[02:00:17.410]

I don’t know. I’m just making this up and then we’ve got a problem and that they can only go to certain places and be in a bubble.

 

[02:00:25.380]

We don’t know.

 

[02:00:26.220]

I think you just go in hazmat suits and let them just go on with their life.

 

[02:00:30.720]

Everyone has to wear a full hazmat suit for four twenty twenty one where we’re just going into Mad Max, right. Next year. It’s Mad Max year. It’s the year the film took place. Obviously, this is what led to Mad Max. So let’s just, like, lean into it.

 

[02:00:49.170]

And again, you may be better than, you know, but by the same token scares me.

 

[02:00:53.550]

I think that as long as we have the hope that we can figure some of this stuff out that we won’t be following into, that we will figure out different ways of doing that. We will be water over Iraq.

 

[02:01:01.470]

Anyway, sorry to drag everybody into a fun dialogue. I love you guys. I love you.

 

[02:01:07.300]

Lie to like, sorry, everyone that I did this knowing that Lauren will Kollberg me and and after this show and say, hey, that was a fun one. We really got into that one.

 

[02:01:21.270]

I don’t know if you guys actually have a scheduled phone call with Lauren. I do actually know where likely the conversation is going to be.

 

[02:01:29.580]

Wow, how fun was that conversation?

 

[02:01:33.030]

We all agree. The fun of this is when we get to disagree, because honestly, we just keep nodding heads to each other’s like all the grief. That’s wonderful. The idea of it is, is that we have different perspectives on some of this stuff. Melissa, you were the. Out of this today, because you brought all the different stuff and they just don’t put that, she’s like, don’t put that on me. Don’t put your dysfunction on me.

 

[02:01:55.180]

I brought up a hypothetical that was a way off.

 

[02:01:59.470]

Melissa is counting down the days that they’re no longer doing this report. So she no longer has to come on the show.

 

[02:02:05.690]

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, never. I have to run. I have an important call coming in. Have a great say. Bye. Oh, all right. Flip to that’s where it came from. All right, you guys, Stephanie Telemarketing.

 

[02:02:21.700]

How do they get a hold of you marketing dot com or check me out LinkedIn, Stephanie Smith. And we’re going to be rolling out some social media stuff. Videos related to Cornell and Cornell is rolling out their hotel digital marketing course because so might be something to check out if someone needs new training. I think maybe somebody from Milestone has some videos on there to think a yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

[02:02:51.800]

Neil typically does a lot of stuff for for Cornell, so. Yeah.

 

[02:02:55.510]

So thanks for this.

 

[02:02:57.520]

You guys helped you back a regular regularly now that I have a place to live and hopefully get some furniture in and the kids would be crazy not to.

 

[02:03:09.410]

All right, Stephanie.

 

[02:03:13.330]

So tell me where some people can find you and milestones. Absolutely.

 

[02:03:17.380]

Milestone Internet.com or I’m on LinkedIn is Tami Carlisle. And yeah, Stephanie said, you know, Cornell, there’s also something I’ve been doing a ton of education and stuff on digital marketing, revenue management in the like. So lots of opportunities. And I know we’ve got a lot of webinars and content on our blog as well.

 

[02:03:35.770]

So, yeah, you have some good stuff coming up. I saw that I signed up for some stuff. Really always good stuff from you guys.

 

[02:03:42.610]

Thank you for that, Dean.

 

[02:03:44.650]

More about your your complex and totally comprehensive metasearch world domination based camera design for training agencies until I was about Medda and metasearch marketing dot com to provide you a platform agnostic consultation about running your metasearch before Stuffier left, I was going to actually say on one of our live shows down the road here, I want to spar with you a little bit over metasearch. And I have some varied opinions on whether or not it can attract new guests. So they’ll be a consequence of that.

 

[02:04:14.020]

So we’ll be the the Steward Laurant Ed dialogue. It’ll be the dean. Let’s go.

 

[02:04:20.140]

OK, Melissa, if people know about you and of course, fuel, travel and the integration of the survey and everything else like that and all the other cool stuff that Stewart takes credit for, where can they find you and your podcast, the award winning podcast, all things related to fuel field travel, dot com, either podcasts, blog.

 

[02:04:43.540]

That’s where all the survey results are. You can find me on LinkedIn cabinet or I’m on Twitter any capital. Mr. Stewart, but listen to what she said, but I will say that for those of you interested in this data, Melissa and the team, I’ve been working really hard on this and we have been doing a deep dive into every question on the podcast as they come out. So we’ll be recording for those who want to dig deeper into this volume.

 

[02:05:09.360]

A will be recording that this afternoon. Pushilin now probably on Monday. So you subscribe to the filter our dot com slash podcast or so you can search for your hotel marketing podcast. Anywhere you listen, you’ll find it. But we’ll be digging deep into that data. And then anyone listening to that’s interested in improving their checking process, reducing contact between guests and staff. And we have a really cool mobile app that is selling like hotcakes right now because everyone is looking to keep everyone safe and reassure guests and get people back back in the hotel.

 

[02:05:42.280]

So you’ll travel, I’ll call them is the place to look at that as well.

 

[02:05:46.980]

Also to your booking at one of the only GPG compliant platforms at this point.

 

[02:05:52.470]

So we we have a booking engine that’s very mobile friendly, very data secure. So GDP in California Privacy Act, and it’s also as close to ADA compliant as you can get. So basically two point one double standards, it meets those. I think we are the only booking engine that can claim compliance.

 

[02:06:15.590]

So first of all, thank you for everyone’s patience on our dialogue at the tail end, but I certainly appreciate the inspiration for it for this and all previous and 61 episodes of the show, which is this show is actually our anniversary, six year anniversary total. So we’re going to roll into our seven. So you always get that out. And when it actually started in 14, but it wasn’t consistent.

 

[02:06:42.150]

15 was consistent. And so now we’re so people with the consistency aspect of it, with the numerics and so forth, we roll into the seventh year after the today, technically. So we’re we’re finally at that point, I get to go and be right after a year. I feel like Trump eventually.

 

[02:06:57.270]

I’ll be right on that side. Also, we do a recap podcast which goes over through some tools and techniques that we don’t talk about here on the show as much as we used to. And also a recap of the show, which I’ll admit the Talin conversation is being completely right and completely wrong.

 

[02:07:16.470]

And but please join us again next week. Show number two or sixty three, thirty eastern US Eastern Time.

 

[02:07:25.740]

And for everyone that did, watch us and listen to us and follow us and comments in the chat box. Sincerely appreciate your participation in dialogue and always an open invitation for those that do join us. If you’d like to join us on the screen, you’re always more than welcome to as long as there’s an open chair for it. As you can see, we don’t mind disagreeing and agreeing and or listening. So thank you all very much for your time today by everyone.

 

[02:07:47.610]

And thank you guys.

Founder / CEO of Hospitality Digital Marketing

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