This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 286 January 29th 2021

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 286 January 29th 2021

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 286

CoHosts
Dean Schmit
Robert Cole
Adele Gutman
Amy Infante
Show Notes
00:02 — Roberts list of reality and numbers
00:42 — how do you start with a new client about new business for group
00:57 — What is the value of Culture tools like https://trainual.com/
01:44 — Bidding Farewell to The Standard Hotel After Its 22-Year Run
01:54 — Microsoft Patent Shows Plans to Revive Dead Loved Ones as Chatbots
02:06 — Show Ends
Topics

Top Story

1. Half of Hotel Rooms Forecast To Be Empty in 2021

Brands & Product

2. State of the Hotel Industry 2021
    a. 2020 Was The Worst Year Ever For U.S. Hotels. Here’s What’s Next
3. This isn’t your grandparents’ Sheraton: Marriott unveils first group of properties with the brand’s new vision
4. So You Want to Open a Hotel? Now?

Intermediaries & Distribution

5. Business Travel Has Peaked. Here’s Our Future.
6. In-Person Travel Agents May See Resurgence With Changing Travel Rules
7. How travel app usage paints another picture of travel’s fate in 2020

Marketing & Strategy

8. Brand USA Launches COVID-19 Dashboard for Travel Marketing
9. How travel marketers adjust to the ups and downs of COVID-19
10. Perspectives on the Davos Agenda

Tech & Finance

11. Personalization, Tight Budgets Dictate Hotel Tech in 2021
12. Hoteliers Reconnect With Guests Through Digital Engagement
13. Gartner: The future of AI is not as rosy as some might think

Boop!

14. Bidding Farewell to The Standard Hotel After Its 22-Year Run

Ruh-Roh…

15. Microsoft Patent Shows Plans to Revive Dead Loved Ones as Chatbots

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 286 Transcripts (English U.S.)

[00:00:17.430] – Loren

Welcome back. Well, you now know where Robert Bias’s comes from because he forever had no idea we were online. So there we go now.

 

[00:00:25.170] – Loren

We just turned it on. Just turn it off. Welcome, everyone, to this week, inhospitality Margaretville. Good morning. Of Telemark being shown over two point eighty six. With me is the ever present Mr. Dean Schmidt with Basecamp A.M. Marketing. Robert Cole is blessing us with his presence after sending us a gloom and doom, destructive message of ending pain and suffering.

 

[00:00:47.070] – Loren

And on the contrast to that is the ever cheerful, ever smiling, ever effervescent Mr. Doug Hoffman from a stellar reputation marketing idea and highlighting the need to balance Robert.

 

[00:01:04.170] – Loren

The storms we have the yin and the yang of. And then the two guys in the middle, somewhere in the middle, yeah, where does the word somewhere in the middle for all this? Actually, it’s been a beautiful day. And overall, I have to say, with the weather changes and so forth here in Florida, at the very least, it’s nice. I know from a marketing point point of view, there are parts of the country that are beginning to face even more challenging things associated with weather and so forth.

 

[00:01:33.830]

But we were dialogue about Mr. Roberts less than optimistic report listing for those who may not know, Robert put together an amazingly well curated list from Rakita every week. It’s free if you’d like to sign up and go to Bitly forward, slash rakita, dotcom, Iraq, Rakita, all lowercase, no space and send a first news list. And this week was a little less than cheery. I, I just curate the news.

 

[00:02:02.150]

I don’t write the I mean if started tourism and economics come out and say half hotel rooms are going to be full in twenty, twenty one, I’m just telling you what they said. I’m going to do a full approach. Yeah.

 

[00:02:18.720]

Yeah.

 

[00:02:20.740]

I do want to bring up something you did allude to in your dialogue prior to the list. So some of the information that used to be a little free flowing from start trouble is not as free flowing anymore.

 

[00:02:35.390]

Hotelbeds now it’s getting a little less progressive in their content or hotel.

 

[00:02:40.940]

News now has been absorbed into co-star. Right, right.

 

[00:02:45.590]

WJR was acquired by co-star for four hundred and fifty million dollars last year, which is a pretty good sized, you know, amount of money. So KOSDAQ going to buy something like that. You can do with it what you’d like if you pay that much. I suppose so, no. But they, they’ve basically brought that in so they kind of have us news and you can’t do things like and then they have hospitalities so they kind of bolted it in under there and.

 

[00:03:14.480]

Yeah. So it’s kind of the own section. But some of the areas that they used to have on hotel news, now they used to have a little tab for. Yeah. Like data and things like that. And you can go, oh there’s the weekly updates of us occupancies and eighty hours and things like that. Those are still getting posted, but it’s just a little bit different. But they used to have an area for data presentation. So if they did a presentation at the Alice conference or whatever, a convention, tourist board or wherever, they just posted those, which was great because, you know, you can look at the kind of summary of here’s what’s going on and in the industry, here’s the forecast.

 

[00:03:54.020]

But if you can start seeing here’s what’s going on on top twenty five markets. Here’s what’s going on in various chain scales and other things, it really helps you understand what’s going on that seems to be missing. So maybe I just can’t find it. Maybe it’s still there, but. I don’t know, I think I get the impression co-star may be tightening the strings on the availability of data, which which would be a shame, because I think that’s a that kind of information.

 

[00:04:26.400]

I don’t think the industry generally goes out and pays for sort of thing. But maybe EchoStar plans on selling out the equity analysts or something. I’m not sure. Maybe they figure out there’s some market who wants to wants to see it and not the general industry. So they must have their reasons.

 

[00:04:44.550]

One other thing you pointed out, which I thought was interesting, I actually answered this question for clients recently, is that the Starr report has changed its source of reporting, its context of reporting, which you please allude to it. Yeah, go ahead. Well, yeah, it’s it’s interesting. Some of them are changing, changing around. I think CBRE isn’t using Stardate anymore. I think they’re using Colibri data and things are just kind of moving, moving around a little bit stuff.

 

[00:05:18.060]

One of the interesting points I used to say, you know, they had two hundred thousand hotels or something on it. Now, actually, cost starts are sixty eight thousand. So I’m not sure if those are just the subscribers or contributing to the Starr report things. I’m not sure, but that got narrowed down rather substantially. So I don’t know whether a variety of changes going on.

 

[00:05:45.210]

So I tended to summarize the economic report yesterday, which you alluded to in some of the content, Robert, as to some of the optimism, which is atypical to our industry, as you pointed out in your and we’re all very familiar with we all start the year full of Daimyo. It’s kind of like it’s going to be something this is the year that’s going to do this. This year, it’s going to do that. And then the year goes on.

 

[00:06:11.370]

It’s kind of like, yeah, not so much every quarter.

 

[00:06:13.860]

The front so much, I believe. And I’ve been keeping track of the weekly ETR stats since 2006. Right. A little bit before that, actually. But but really keeping track like logging them. And yeah. Those quarterly reports just they start out high and they don’t don’t don’t don’t. And of course, if you’re if you’re forecasting the full year and you have three quarter.

 

[00:06:41.840]

Getting closer anyway. That’s a little bit easier to project, but but it always goes down and I think it really is a function of the industry where the industry doesn’t want you to start to go out and say, wow, things are going to be really bleak. And then all of a sudden later and you go, hey, it’s much better. And we thought, this is this is great. I can do stuff like that, but they can’t.

 

[00:07:06.420]

So good morning, Amy. How are you? Good morning. Good to see you. How’s the end of getgo these days, huh? It’s going well.

 

[00:07:18.990]

Busy, busy, busy, busy.

 

[00:07:24.520]

We were just talking about Robert’s gloom and doom list. As he says he didn’t make the numbers. He just reports them. But it’s not doom and gloom.

 

[00:07:33.910]

It’s just a pragmatic look at the numbers.

 

[00:07:37.490]

OK, so they’ve they’ve got some stats in there and and they’re changing the way they’re doing the stats, too, which I also thought was very interesting because always they would come out and say, we’re forecasting this year occupancy to be NDR, to be Y, and in part to be Z. That’s not happening anymore. They’re basically saying, oh, demand now instead of occupancy, demand will be off or plus such and such percent. So they’ve moved to this year over year numbers.

 

[00:08:10.810]

So you aren’t seeing the absolute switch again. I don’t think it’s necessarily that helpful to the industry, particularly. You’re going to see some really nice positive growth numbers in twenty twenty versus twenty nineteen. I would certainly hope so. It’s really going to be doom and gloom if it’s not. But yeah, you’re going to see these growth numbers. But what are the what are the result in your occupancies. 80 percent rev pass is is pretty important to the industry.

 

[00:08:40.240]

So you look at the other basically saying 20, 20 was like sixty three percent or something like that of twenty nineteen. And you go, OK, well that turned out to be forty four percent occupancy. But next this year they’re now saying, oh well by the end of this year it’s going to be seventy five or seventy six percent of twenty nineteen. And you look at that and you go wow that’s like a 20 percent increase. That’s a that’s a big that’s a pretty big jump.

 

[00:09:11.380]

So wait, are we going to go from forty four percent up to whatever. Fifty, fifty four. No, they said that occupancy percentage is going to be below fifty four. So I don’t know how those numbers tie together. Right. Because it’s not like there’s a big that could happen if you have a large supply bloom. But that’s not happening. Yeah. I just don’t there’s not enough context for how this stuff all ties together when they’re really saying we think everybody is going to be vaccinated by June 15th or whatever, or we’re going to get to a certain period.

 

[00:09:48.730]

That should be those should be the things that were driving these forecasts. But all that stuff is now opaque.

 

[00:09:55.240]

So so I mean, OK, so just put in context. So Adele Deane, Amy, I we are in town and we try to predict when it’s going to rain. We have hotels. We’re we’re going to get rain. You’re flying at fifty thousand feet going up. There’s a storm front over there. It’s going to rain on you. So our perspective is a little bit different. But I think given some of the what’s currently going on this week, like with GameStop, where it kind of showed the darker underbelly that rich people can get rich by their own means.

 

[00:10:24.490]

But when it comes to other people getting rich, maybe not so easily, you’re actually kind of what you’re referring to is our industry has kind of blind eye. It tries to kind of lead the industry by the nose saying let’s not talk about bad stuff, but so let’s talk about stuff at the beginning of the year and let the actual racing come through so that our asset managers and asset investors and people are putting money into the system, don’t get scared from doing it, that they’re going to continue to progress with investment and that for those who are running businesses, let them keep thinking that this is the business they want to keep running so that, hey, if if it’s all.

 

[00:11:03.310]

We’ll do that because it will start a spiral, so in a strange way, we’re being manipulated in how we perceive our industry working well with people that tend to guide the information.

 

[00:11:14.380]

And that’s what you just described, would approach where you see something that has potential risk on the horizon. Right. And you kind of you downplay it. You say it’s not really that bad. Sunny side, we’re going to be through this real quick. That’s right. He froze. I froze. You froze. I got. Oh, no, I mean, I.

 

[00:11:36.850]

I don’t know. So anyway, you have that. Well, that’s kind of how the US approach the coronavirus. Right. Is how the UK approach the coronavirus. That approach does not work out. Well, if you wind up you know, you have to assess risk rationally. Right. And you should have here’s a best case scenario. Here’s our best case and here’s a downside scenario sort of thing. And basically break out and go, hey, you know what?

 

[00:12:08.140]

Maybe the downside scenario is low probability, but high severity. People should understand those sorts of things, right? Because, you know, that’s where we go now. In the case of coronavirus, it wasn’t low probability and it was it’s kind of like high probability, high severity, because that’s how viruses kind of work. Right. And if you don’t do anything to prevent it, they’re going to spread. Right. And now they’re going to mutate.

 

[00:12:35.110]

Right. Which makes it even more interesting.

 

[00:12:37.600]

So as Laura and I were talking about a little bit before the show, we’d like to start off the year saying, hey, I think everything looks great. We’ve we always talk about the pent up demand and how that’s going to come into play and what I believe it will.

 

[00:12:51.390]

And I still believe it is largely for that reason that I do think that we see a strong Sobrino the more we will take you to get out of school. People have been waiting to go travel in the family.

 

[00:13:01.630]

They think maybe they can do this or they just don’t care. Are they going to take a chance, whatever the case may be? So we’ve got that strong pent up Lisner travel demand.

 

[00:13:09.820]

But what happens after that? Well, I would say for Memorial Day, that would be the worst thing that could happen for the country. It would be a setback for setting aside if they aren’t if they aren’t vaccinated. Right. That’s going to be bad, especially. And the lawyers and, you know, it’s gloom and doom. It’s not gloom and doom. If I wanted to be gloom and doom, I would have said, what the hell is this Brazilian variant?

 

[00:13:36.550]

Because the Brazilian variant, which is now popped up in Minnesota, is not good. Right. And they don’t know where it is. They haven’t tested it. It’s the worst in South Africa and the UK variants, which are much more virulent. The other. So, yeah, that’s that’s a risk sort of thing. So the way you stop these things, I mean, and again, it’s how do you approach these things had good outcomes. New Zealand, Taiwan, all these groups, what did they do?

 

[00:14:07.480]

They went into lockdown the day. Nobody’s traveling because that’s how this thing spreads around. Right. So but now what are still doing is saying, well, we won’t let foreigners come into our country, but a US citizen can go to Brazil and come back. That’s fine. Well, the virus doesn’t care what passport you carry. Right? So that’s yeah, it’s it’s going to come in and it’s going to spread.

 

[00:14:31.060]

So translating this to I mean, at the end of the day, I got to go back to clients and deal with their uniqueness as to where they’re located. Adell, you do the same thing, do seem to do the same. You know, we all have and we and we have clients in different markets. You know, it’s kind of like how do we approach with what you’re saying, Robert, as to the reality of tempering the client, putting out a no go.

 

[00:14:53.470]

Look, everybody’s expecting like we did with fuel travels, serve it, you know, hey, look at all this. Pent up interest is going to happen in July. You know, people really thinking they’re going to travel in the middle of the year.

 

[00:15:04.900]

But that’s optimism. That’s not necessarily the reality. What you’re saying is, hey, from a vaccine point of view and everything else people may want to do, that is the reality there that they’re going to do that. Are we hanging on to perception rather than reality?

 

[00:15:19.690]

Look, all the surveys look at the surveys from last spring and last summer, last summer, like, hey, if we’re going to be ready to roll for the Christmas holidays, we’re ready to travel. Of course we’re ready to travel. Everybody is ready to travel anyway. But they can’t because there’s this external factor that’s involved where it’s basically irresponsible from a public health perspective. And the the irony is, I mean, my perspective for for the industry is, hey, you want this thing to continue to promote people traveling now, promote people not wearing masks, promote people not getting vaccinated.

 

[00:15:53.830]

And, yeah, this will drag on. Or do you want to get it done with quick, which is which really should be. Hey, you’re coming in and staying out. Help get your mask on, get it over your nose. One of the worst things in terms of the prospects for the year is how how bad really?

 

[00:16:15.780]

Let’s face it, our vaccination process has been going so far right near what we hope for. I think that report that you linked to was take four percent. It’s just nothing. And and there is since they’re mostly very late senoras, they’re probably not that traveling that much anyway, right? Yeah. And the really the challenges, you’re still going to have people vaccinated. I mean, I saw Falchi on CNN or something a couple of days ago and he’s and so like, OK, so you get vaccinated, you don’t need a mask or anything.

 

[00:16:55.890]

He’s like, whoa, no. He’s like, we don’t know yet. Right. Because you can see there’s the possibility they don’t have enough sample size on this to say, oh, you know what, the vaccine keeps you from getting sick, but you still have oh, you can give it to other people. That’s not that’s not good. The challenge with with the UK and the and the South African variety that these things are are more transmissible than the current one.

 

[00:17:25.270]

So the problem is you run into a race of how can you vaccinate people more quickly? Because otherwise this virus is now going to start spreading more rapidly. And the key is to stamp it out. You’ve got to get people so there they’re immune. Somehow they’re either not exposed to it, which is kind of isolate, don’t travel, don’t interact with other people, you know, wear masks, they six feet apart, wash your hands, all that stuff, you know, behave properly or get vaccinated.

 

[00:17:55.300]

Now, the challenge is the reason it’s more virulent is because of the things mutated and the problem with the and now what Moderna and Fizer have to do, they have to reformulate their vaccine to go say, oh, now we’ve got to take into consideration this thing for the UK in the South Africa. One, the Brazilian one is apparently even worse because it has several mutations that goes, oh, it kind of looks like it’s doing stuff with the spikes.

 

[00:18:23.220]

It seems to be protecting itself from antibodies, huh? That’s not good. Right. So that might need to be another new vaccine. Then you wind up with a situation where it’s like the flu, right? You’ve got the influenza virus every year. There’s a lot of they reformulate it to get the latest strains and things like that. We might have if if you don’t squash us and you can squash it within a month, if everybody works together, I mean, you can make it go away.

 

[00:18:53.580]

But we don’t want to do that. We may have to live with this over time every year.

 

[00:19:00.320]

So so we have the privilege of having a little diversification in our conversations with Amy from a sales perspective, sales team perspective, you know, trying to sell group or or anything like this, you’re kind of like barking up the sometimes an interesting tree.

 

[00:19:16.920]

I wouldn’t say it’s not impossible, but it’s certainly more of a challenge. How are you guys, from your perspective, approaching the. It’s hard to get them even if they want to travel. Yeah, I think right now the approach for salespeople has to be discussion with prospective clients and understanding where they’re at, in particular because everybody’s different in every market is quite different, actually. And I mean, we’re having great conversations with companies who are saying that, you know, they are traveling right now.

 

[00:19:50.890]

They are doing things. It’s I think if you watched the mainstream media, you’re not. And that’s all you pay attention to. You’re not getting the full picture of what’s really going on. And so we have to be very, very careful.

 

[00:20:04.750]

OK, wait, what’s the real picture of what’s going on outside the mainstream media?

 

[00:20:08.290]

Well, Robert, I think there’s traffic, whether people are traveling, there’s Project-Based business. You know, we’re booking millions of dollars of business into hotels right now. Knowland insights, they continue to put out good news of groups actually booking. So the pie chart, the last one I showed, the majority of groups are corporate that are booking in hotels. Obviously, it’s down, right? It’s going to be down, but we have to capture what is there today.

 

[00:20:45.700]

And we also have to be talking to customers about what is their plan moving forward. And some are you know, if this, then that and that’s OK. But if we’re not having that conversation today, how can you be prepared as a hotel when they are ready, right? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree.

 

[00:21:06.700]

More prospecting. This is the message that I’ve been telling salespeople from long before. covid prospecting has never been about pitchin. It’s never been about, oh, you have business tomorrow. Great. Fantastic. Let me get you a proposal. Let me get you a contract. It’s about building Insight’s. It’s about doing research and making sure that you’re a fit for that client when they do have a need. Right. Because their need could be six months down the road.

 

[00:21:40.090]

It could be tomorrow. I have conversations with hotel companies. It took a year to get their business because they weren’t ready, weren’t ready, weren’t ready. But if you don’t build that pipeline. You know, you’re going to live in the choices, the choices that we’re making today, we’re living in those results 90 days from now, six months from now, if we’re not choosing to have proactive conversation. And the fact of the matter is, yes, you can look at the doom and gloom, but what I tell sales people in particular is to keep your blinders on and keep because we should be focused on the future, not to the today anyway.

 

[00:22:24.740]

Right. That’s what sales and marketing is all about. It’s the future. It’s not what you’re seeing today. And what I really get concerned about is when we continue to talk about, you know, an. Yes, I’m living in reality just like everybody else and I see what’s going on, but if we continue to focus on that and we’re not focused on the possibilities and the opportunity ahead of us, then we stay stuck in action and let’s wait and see and we can’t.

 

[00:22:56.380]

And I see a lot of hotel leaders right now doing that. And that’s what I’m scared for them, that they’re going to be living in these results. You know, the choices that they’re making to not take some action and not be having these conversations with potential customers and not testing and trialing different tactics and strategies. There that’s going to to be their downfall. Six months, 12 months, three months from now, I’m sure.

 

[00:23:29.410]

Yeah, everyone who shut down their sales departments and shut down and did all of that, not a smart move. Right.

 

[00:23:36.380]

Really guaranteed the results by doing that. That’s right.

 

[00:23:39.250]

Yeah. You will you will have a certain outcome because you do you need to reach out to reach out to clients, understand what their needs are. And yeah, if you talk to the folks I mean, Bruce Rosenberg, I was with meetings, meetings, dotcom and hotel planner, they’re they’re booking millions of dollars of stuff. Now, the problem is nothing’s converting. Right? It just keeps rolling. Right. Because it keeps getting postponed because it’s not safe to help them.

 

[00:24:03.550]

I mean, again, the the challenges you look at the first that first biotech conference and in Boston, that one conference was responsible for three hundred thousand cases. Right. That they contact traced it back right. At a conference of all things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of got irony. Right. So you don’t want to do that because there’s a risk there. If you go and say we’re going to go do this, we’re going to have a bunch of people, it’s back to normal, we’re going to ignore the virus, you’re all of a sudden going to have a massive PR problem if you get associated with a super spreader event.

 

[00:24:37.960]

Right. And you’re out there going, we don’t care. These are paying customers. This is private property government. Yeah. We don’t care about the regulations and restaurants are doing now, things like that. And you’re getting and all that does is it extends the timeline of the virus is my point.

 

[00:24:54.070]

Right. So you do avoid that. But. Right. I don’t know any hotels particularly that we work with or have spoken to that are going outside of the guidelines in their markets and in their region. So, you know, they’re booking it. When we were talking meetings, it’s small meetings. Distanced. Yeah. Can only.

 

[00:25:19.600]

So what’s Amy, I agree with you on that. I think there’s not it’s not it’s not as clear. Black and white. There’s a lot of in betweens. I’ve had problems where clients have shared pictures of them having hey, we’ve had our first group event and they’re showing their team with masks on. But the guests are wearing masks. It’s kind of like, let’s not show that. And they follow the guideline, but they’re not. So there’s this this re emerging prioritization of people that if they want group business, they got to address the realities, as you put it, out of what is going on.

 

[00:25:52.660]

Like, OK, we’re going to do these things. There’s a way of doing it where people don’t turn into a super spread event that we’re not going to beat the news forward. But by the same token, we’re going to be able to have business. And it does. It isn’t.

 

[00:26:04.690]

And to Robert’s point, it does roll. And some of the bookings, but not all the bookings rolled. Some things do happen. I mean, we have a group events that happen. And, yes, it may take a huge ballroom. These to have a thousand people that you have one hundred people in. And there is a new metric to all of this. But the reality is, is that some businesses do have business.

 

[00:26:22.510]

And you should be setting up your ballroom where you say, look at here’s what you’re doing, here’s how we’re going to keep your people safe. So we are a safe place to do this here. Here’s the whole programming of how we do it. Here’s how we’re doing meals. Here’s how we’re doing everything. And this is great. We’ve got your back. That’s what the customer needs to completely understand. So when you’re ready, we’re ready, right?

 

[00:26:46.150]

I mean, that’s that’s got to be it then if they start. But I think at the same time, it’s also but we’re going to be strict on these rules because it’s not just your people and you might not care, but we also have these employees. Right. And we’ve got to keep them safe. So here’s kind of this code of conduct and these ground rules. And then I think they’re going to be decisions made, whether you take the money or you do the right thing for public health or to protect your employees or protect their attendees.

 

[00:27:16.210]

Because mark my words, a bunch of folks get sick. All of a sudden they aren’t going after the company with the meeting. They’re going to go after the hotel. Right. That it was in the hotels facilities. So, again, you’re opening yourself up to risk and liability. And, you know, that stuff hasn’t been erased by the all the the liability for companies has did not get raised by Congress. As far as I know, that’s not in this new one point nine trillion dollar bill.

 

[00:27:44.740]

So watch TV.

 

[00:27:46.300]

You can always jump in on Robert Wright any time you watch the company. Come on.

 

[00:27:52.020]

I would just say to you that, you know, we have a lot of discussion about group and it’s sort of grieving the past of what group look like. But what the hotels need to be focused on is pivoting to the types of business that still travel today and make sense. And there’s a lot of project based business where they’re not meeting in your space, they’re staying in your guest rooms. There’s obviously leisure that’s happening. So that’s what, you know, the message should be to is, OK, well, what is what is working right and where do we not have to cross that line and get into that gray area about do we take this group, do we not safety precautions and all that?

 

[00:28:39.690]

There’s a there is a lot of group project based business out there filling up hotels and transient travel happening that we shouldn’t discount that just because we want to fill our ballroom space. We want to fill the meeting rooms, but we’re going to have to be a little bit creative for the next several months in order to do that. And and having conversations with the clients is the first step, because you can’t continue to make assumptions about what companies are doing and what you know, because, yes, big large companies that we’re talking to, risk mitigation, legality is really important to them.

 

[00:29:21.420]

Small and midsize companies don’t have as many shackles. And they also have to get out in some ways. And I don’t mean to make generalities, because, again, my point is talk directly to the customers, have the conversations with them and ask them what is their particular situation. And I think people would be quite surprised when they start having those conversations and the the, you know, what’s going on inside of those companies and and why they might be traveling under the radar, not sharing that information, because they need to do some of those things.

 

[00:30:05.640]

And then also, you know why they might why why they might have a better risk management procedure in place and feel that they’re ready to send certain groups of people out into the marketplace. So every company is very different right now and every market and region is very different right now.

 

[00:30:30.570]

Amy, are there any particular types of projects that you’re finding coming up? Is there anything that surprised you?

 

[00:30:41.850]

It’s mostly it’s kind of been pretty consistent over the last. Eight, nine months, I would say, with there’s a lot of construction type crew business out there, retail, transportation, medical, obviously consultants. So consulting firms that need to, you know, assist with their clients. And some of those clients are large companies. That large company is not traveling, but their vendors are traveling and they’re not necessarily meeting. But they maybe need to go to a facility for something.

 

[00:31:27.690]

I’ll throw in on that, too.

 

[00:31:29.620]

That’s another strong suit where, unfortunately, the physicality of having to be there, it’s one thing to do remote support. It’s another thing. I got to go change a server. I got to check your connections or I got to yank some wire. There’s a reality to actually the physicality of somebody being there a lot.

 

[00:31:45.030]

Just, you know, certainly logistics, medical, governmental type thing, depending on your people having to go out to do do certain things. They’re really to. Firms are doing some travel or having folks come in. So that’s another area we’re seeing. Accounting seems to be remote sort of thing. But yeah, the things where you really have to get out. Yeah.

 

[00:32:09.900]

You have to be kind of lends itself to something that maybe our industry will learn from it. We usually is industry. And I go back to two aspects. Boxley three, but two that I want to talk about is 9/11. In 2008, our industries, typically the German under the hatch, OK, business goes back, batten down the hatches, cut costs and operations, maintain equity and liquidity and wait for the storm to pass and then pop the hatches back out.

 

[00:32:36.520]

Well, fortunately, the storm is lasting a lot longer and with the unpredictability of when that’s actually going to emerge from it. And so hence our optimism. There’s some people that are starving, waiting for the industry to come back and they refuse to take what efforts they have and go into and say, what business can I get now? It may not make me the super profit margins I went into this for or even a profit margin to exist.

 

[00:33:02.400]

Maybe it’s just a sustainability factor to this, but reduce the losses, drying up, waiting, you know, and then other companies, unfortunately, do false starts.

 

[00:33:12.480]

I mean, there’s there’s no right way in the sense of, oh, this is totally wrong. This is totally wrong over here. It’s some companies foster, they come out of it when they got the money go, OK, let’s get back in the business is July. The things come down. Our government saying it’s going to be all good bye another thirty days from now. And then they fall started and they burned up whatever money they had and now they’re on the block or somebody’s bottom or eat them up or whatever, you know.

 

[00:33:35.700]

So there’s been some false starts to try to. But I think all of us are saying the same things. And that is if you need to sustain this, you’re going to have to do a business for whatever business is out there. And this is not the time to broadcast on your social look who showed up. You know, this company that’s traveling, you know, it’s like maybe we just leave it alone that Brad Pitt showed up, but we didn’t have to share it and do the business that we have to do.

 

[00:33:58.920]

Yeah, right.

 

[00:33:59.880]

And and certainly the non city kind of it’s all the smaller, the more location it is, things like that, less density those are doing and lower down on the chain scales to right now all those three.

 

[00:34:19.230]

That’s better. And you can do it. The really big large cities that are convention hotels, those are the guys who are really having trouble and they’re the ones who really have to get creative. I mean, and you’re completely right. You’ve got to find out in your local who has business, what can they do, how do you compete? And then how do you make sure at all it all works properly? Because if you don’t do that, yeah, you’re just going to be sitting around waiting for something and you’re just going to you’re going to run out of cash or you’re going to close your doors or whatever and then hope to maybe reopen later, which is not going to be a great prospect tomorrow.

 

[00:34:54.190]

The church is on had luck with Smurf marketing, mid-Michigan and responsiveness. I guess in some ways it is the only group is floating around my neck. You know, that being said, it’s also getting containment as to what you can offer and municipality restrictions and everything else, I guess in Florida where there is no restrictions.

 

[00:35:12.660]

What let me tell you, when things get cleared up, I mean, there is a bright spot, anything that’s been postponed, right? Weddings, honeymoons, things like that. Those are going to happen. Right. And there is real true pent up demand for that sort of thing. So all of a sudden you fire the green light goes on. There’s going to be let’s go make this stuff, make this stuff happen, which is great. But the way we kind of got started into this was kind of looking at the macro versus micro from a macro perspective.

 

[00:35:45.600]

My whole point is. But to end the end of the year at 50 percent, 50 percent occupancy or something like that, when you don’t know if the vaccine’s best case is maybe, I don’t think it’s going to be June. Half the year is July one. Right. And the peak periods for hotel, at least in the US, is always, what, that third week of July, that sort of thing. It’s like week 30 or something like that is always the peak.

 

[00:36:15.390]

If you miss that, all of a sudden you start going down. There’s going to be a big push to get kids back in school. Right. So all of a sudden you’re going to have the kids back in school. That’s going to limit people. You know, that’s going to put a damper on some of the freedom of the pent up leisure travel, things like that. And then our large groups immediately going to start in the third quarter.

 

[00:36:35.470]

No. Yeah, those things take a little while to get organized. And as Amy said, yeah, the mitigation, they want to make sure everything is really good so they don’t do a false start, get everything set up and then, oops, we got to cancel the group again. So that’s going to start lagging in. That is what makes that hockey stick go up, right. That’s my big question. What are the fundamental drivers on a macro level that make the industry go, wow, look at that curve and no one’s been able to communicate in scale how that how that demand.

 

[00:37:10.860]

And that’s the thing. I think it’s issue.

 

[00:37:13.650]

I think it’s a scale issue is, yes, we’re all optimists who think the aspects and channels of business and segments of business would come back. I want to give credit to Adam Sachs, who did the presentation yesterday for Richest in terms of economics guy. He made one reference I thought was pretty solid. He talked about the fact that from a meeting’s perspective, a group perspective, we’re all hungry for personal interaction. This kind of tilings screening thing does this function has its value.

 

[00:37:38.430]

It’s not going to totally replace our need to get together. And we’re all working on what he says residual collateral are. Last time we met each other, the last time we saw each other, the last time we engaged with each other, last time we interact with each other, we’re still riding that ride of what it was like. When I get to hang around with the and have a beer in New York and talk about whatever we’re talking about, you know, we sustaining it now, but it’s still distant.

 

[00:38:03.630]

And so there is going to be that aspect that as we go through. And I think I think Ed brought this on in many shows and so did Stewart and Melissa and everybody else. It’s going to be in pockets. It’s going to be regionality is going to be not globally to your Robert.

 

[00:38:19.080]

It’s not going to be the hockey stick of everybody in the world. Just flips on a switch and off we go. It’s going to be Indianapolis is going to have a massive surge because of March Madness. Maybe not because they can attend, but because they want to be around it or something. Who knows that? Meanwhile, New York might be without international travel, take on some of the domestic travel where people who don’t normally go to New York, go to New York because they don’t have to be displaced by the people that are actually traveling.

 

[00:38:42.930]

Perhaps there’s a whole mass of different dynamics that are going to go on that all of us have to agree.

 

[00:38:48.990]

We’re trying to find for most people that we’re working with what those things are. I mean, did you have a struggle with the fact that metasearch is usually a relatively pragmatic, OK, I want to do something. What’s the best value approach? But you can’t shut it off because to shut it off means you’re ignoring the people that are wanting that decision. But you can’t really amp it up because there’s not a lot of people within that decision. So I don’t know how do you balance that off?

 

[00:39:13.120]

You even know that is really hard because, you know, I actually I’ve got a couple of plants I’m working with that one in particular, actually, I actually a great fifty to one return on ad spend for them, but fortunately the volume wasn’t there.

 

[00:39:25.500]

Right. So how do you you you have to have somebody searching for that traffic and searching for that and, and having the volume. But as you said, there’s different ways that we have to target them now and particularly within metasearch. I think that it and Google’s been working on this. It has to get more targeted and more refined, whereas right now I can target my point of sale by country. Well, good grief. OK, so I could talk about the United States.

 

[00:39:47.640]

That’s a little broad, right? I need to be able to get down and be more specific where I can target not even by state, but by city, metropolitan area drive distance and different elements like that because the guy isn’t going from California to New York. That’s not my target. That’s not my audience. You’re certainly not going from Italy to New York, so I’ve got to be able to target that better. So I think we’ll see a lot of evolving technology that helps them to do that.

 

[00:40:12.270]

Google is always kind of lead on that area and I think they’ll continue to do so. Really, the question will become, you know, so there’s a lot of different systems out there that help automate those campaigns. And using the technology to do that, will they be able to keep up those changes and not picking on any one company? There’s a plethora of companies that have to do that.

 

[00:40:33.840]

Can we agree with you if you have any outdoor space on your property that you weren’t using?

 

[00:40:43.980]

I think you need to create an. Fraction and say, look at what you can do here, socially distant, because we have this wonderful lawn and and here all the activities that we can do outdoors a little bit separate, but still together, but separate and apart, because what you had is an attraction may not be there or just doesn’t work because of the situation. You have to reinvent it. I have a question with this. When you work with a new client in the current circumstances, you sit down with the blank ledger saying, OK, let’s start.

 

[00:41:30.410]

Where do you start? That’s a great question. Well, we really we want to know what they consider their backyard and then what is the drive market and what are feeder markets, what have been key demand generators in the past? How has that switched and changed the way we go from a few different angles? We actually have. An assessment that we do a lot of the research ourselves and the groundwork, one cool thing that we’re doing right now actually in Nevada is we are we have a technology stack that allows us to search through what companies are actually searching key travel words into a market.

 

[00:42:23.490]

And then we can get those contacts in front of the hotel and start prospecting there. So lots of different ways to dissect it. But you have to start somewhere. And my thing right now is take imperfect action. Don’t spend so much time trying to get the perfect strategy in place and the perfect tactics take action, which is literally so simple, like let’s not overcomplicate it. It’s reaching out and asking people questions, you know, having a conversation.

 

[00:43:00.630]

You can also use, obviously, past customer lists to reach out and reconnect. And, you know, we use lots of different reports and tools of customers that have been coming into the market, competitor reports, things like that. Dean, you were going to say something.

 

[00:43:18.120]

Sorry, I was just going to comment, actually, last summer you had posted a quote that I’m sure you got from somewhere. Borb, maybe it’s your own, but I’ve used it again and again since then. That being actually is the antidote to fear. Right. And that is so very true. I do something, do anything.

 

[00:43:31.350]

Just don’t do nothing, right? Absolutely. Well, some people think, oh, what was that? To do something smart and responsible.

 

[00:43:44.470]

Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

[00:43:47.820]

So probably the same question in some ways because I mean, obviously, by the time somebody has the smarts to bring you on to the dialogue with them, you know, they’re facing the fact that they’re not doing it well, certainly not doing as well as they should. But by the same token, you have to do in my mind and correct me if I’m wrong, you’re presenting two things value of what you’re doing, plus results of what you’re doing with, because obviously they understand that there’s something that’s missing and there’s something they should be doing better and they may be doing really well service wise, but they’re not representing themselves well.

 

[00:44:18.030]

But how do you approach somebody when you get with them and say, OK, in this climate of diminished demand, diminished business opportunities, fluctuations and so forth, where’s the value proposition of when you walk in? How do you change what they’re doing in a way that makes them beneficial? Well, I’m not sure exactly what the one gripe you do a lot of questions, you know, but you know, the conversation about following the data, it seems to come up a lot.

 

[00:44:51.800]

And I think that I think that, you know, if you learn that this is this is what people are needing or this is what people may be looking for you, if you need to find a way of communicating that and why you do it better than anybody else does and how you do or even not even better than everybody else, but how beautifully you do it and you do that verbally and visually, and you show people enjoying the things that might be the thing that somebody else is looking for and make sure you’re getting the right images and the right tax and the right communications to the right people.

 

[00:45:33.230]

And you’re not just saying the same old thing that you always necessarily did before. You have to customize an experience that makes sense today for this moment that’s going to emotionally impact somebody, I think. Of course, I always talk about, you know, the social proof. If you have anybody in your hotel today, and they are even if you only have five guests in your hotel today, somehow let that show other people who you know, what kind of a wonderful experience that they can have tomorrow, just like these people did.

 

[00:46:16.310]

I think probably and you would say the same is true for sales. If you see companies like this having projects like this and then you go, who else is going to be able to and let me show them, you know, this is the this is the setup that worked so well.

 

[00:46:36.650]

Look at the happy people that if they allow you to allow you to take pictures of them and show them to others, which many will just ask them, I’m not sure I answered your question because there was a lot I mean, it just is like because we’re all Ōtomo value proposition.

 

[00:46:53.570]

If you walk in the door, you’re saying, I’m going to show you how to do things better than what you’ve been doing them or have not been doing well for yourself. You do the same thing. Do you do the same thing? I do the same thing, Robert. I don’t know what he does, but he does. Oh, no, no, no.

 

[00:47:05.990]

I ask I ask three questions to start off with. Right. One is, what are their core business objectives? What are they really trying to accomplish, not necessarily tactically on this particular product, but just as a business. So we make sure that’s very clear. Second is how they’re differentiating themselves for their customer. What are their unique selling propositions and key differentiators. Right. What makes them special? And then third is really looking at their profitability and margin, like what numbers they really need to come up with.

 

[00:47:35.960]

Right. Because if you cover those three things, you can kind of get a good idea for, OK, here’s what we want to do. And then what I normally do with my clients is we agree, OK, at the end of this project, if we can’t if we can do the following eight things which should tie back and be consistent with the business strategy, with the competitive differentiation, with the profitability, you go up here, all the things we do, everybody’s happy, right?

 

[00:48:04.070]

This is what we’re shooting for. Everybody’s on the same page. Good. So all of a sudden, you know, the starting line kind of looks like, you know, what the finish line looks like. And then it winds up being a lot easier to figure out the map of how you how you get there. And what’s interesting is I’ve had a couple of clients in the past where we’ve done that. We’ve said we even had like one client in particular.

 

[00:48:24.260]

We had sixteen things. It was just like, good. This strategy accomplishes everything. It drives the profitability. It does us. And they still didn’t want to do it. And you kind of go, OK, that’s fine, but what else would you do? And they didn’t do anything right. Which I look at is just like, wow, that’s that’s too bad. This would have been really good because it did everything and there wasn’t like some untoward risk.

 

[00:48:47.030]

Well, if you only put in a three point five dollars million, this will happen. But yeah, it was all reasonable. But it’s interesting because what happened with that organization, they didn’t want to do anything really. They wanted to go through the motions of trying to do something. But they were so kind of conservative, not really conservative, because it wasn’t a it wasn’t a radical, you know, high risk sort of project. And it was is just a lot of fundamentals.

 

[00:49:14.570]

They really didn’t want to do anything. They wanted to keep doing things the old way, which they had admitted at the beginning weren’t working. Right. OK, well, that’s that’s fine. But I want you to be my client.

 

[00:49:27.530]

They want you to be an enabler, telling them it was OK to keep doing the right they’re looking for.

 

[00:49:32.690]

Well, but they started off saying this isn’t working right. Here’s the problem. And we’ve got the strategy. We’re trying to make such and such happen. You go good. So what’s the definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome? I think I think some of the current circumstances has really.

 

[00:49:51.270]

It exposed some of the underbelly badness of how our industry is organized. For instance, you have a brand hotel. Given current circumstances, that’s already a detriment because the brand has not really adapted or was not built for being flexible. How to approach helping the hotel. And given the current market, you have a ownership of the hotel that has their own goals as to why they invested in it. You have a management company of that hotel that has been tasked to running the hotel efficiently for the owner associated with their brand relationship.

 

[00:50:22.560]

And then you have the property team. And so you have to your point about if you walk in and sit down and talk to them, you’re going to get multiple answers from each one of those people based on what they consider to be the objective goals. The owner of the hotel wants to not lose money at this point. The management team wants to justify why they’re being paid money so he doesn’t lose or they don’t lose, she doesn’t lose money.

 

[00:50:43.740]

And then the property team wants to be able to make payroll so they don’t lose more team members. And the brand is out there. Just want to make sure they get the go get the brand funding. So you have these different nobody is willing to be the one that steps forward. Sometimes I would say nobody. It’s very rare for someone to step forward and say I’ll be responsible for making the decision that impacts all of us. Probably does want to step on the wrong toes because from a property perspective, whoever walks in the door, that’s the flag that’s on the pole.

 

[00:51:10.740]

Hey, ownership’s here.

 

[00:51:12.240]

You know, a manager is here, you know, so it’s really hard for some of these hotels because when you ask about what is our differentiating factor, there’s nothing different.

 

[00:51:22.320]

It’s a box beside the road between us and for the hotels just like it, you know, and that’s where the Adel’s come in, because it’s like we have to talk about what makes us different. We have to create a culture. We have to create what makes us different. It’s talking to Dean, going, hey, let’s make sure we show up better than those that can show up for the same stuff. We’re showing up. It’s going to Amy going, Amy, jeez, where can we go?

 

[00:51:46.200]

Hunt, you know, where can we go find these people? And going to Robert going, Hi, what?

 

[00:51:52.110]

You got to pick it up, Robert. But yes, I mean, that’s the reality somewhere of it, though.

 

[00:52:00.070]

I’m sorry. Go ahead.

 

[00:52:00.930]

Oh, I was just going to say it’s. It’s so powerful to have every guest that leaves your hotel. Excited and ready to share their story, and not everybody will do it online, you’ll only get a few percent that will do it online.

 

[00:52:22.890]

But if everybody had a great experience, not a Nokia experience, not you, you met their expectations, but you’ve gone enough out of your way to allow them to say things. These are the nicest people. This was such a beautiful room. My breakfast was so delicious.

 

[00:52:42.900]

If you’ve really gone through all of the touch points of the experience and they didn’t frustrate me at any step of the way, not at the booking engine, not on the website, not that they gave me a thoughtful priest out. They they thanked me for the stay every step of the way, including at the end. And I feel connected to them. That kind of the feeling when people leave your hotel like that, you have hundreds and then thousands.

 

[00:53:15.570]

And then over time, all of those people out about in the world saying, oh, if you go to Budapest, I know where you have to stay and they’ll never forget you because you did something extraordinary, which is really connect with them on a human level.

 

[00:53:34.420]

And in fairness, revenue in fairness, that’s not easy to do because as the saying goes, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it right. But it has to be that you have to give them something to talk about. And let’s take a neutral example. I recently had to buy a wall charger for my my Oculus, which Lauren appreciate. I need a new wall charger that I bought from Amazon, got the wall charger plugged in. Everything worked as I wanted me to post a review.

 

[00:53:59.490]

But what do I say?

 

[00:54:01.590]

I bought the wall charger. It seemed like a nice product. I put it in. It worked. OK, I’m gonna write a review that says that you OK, whereas if but you’ve got an opportunity in hospitality to have that experience with the guest, if nothing else, you can do that. Right. And that gives them something to talk about.

 

[00:54:24.120]

I, I agree. I’ve I’ve always said let’s give them something to talk about. And sometimes we do something strictly for that reason so that they can say you’ll never believe this hotel that I’m staying in. It’s a library hotel. They have six thousand books in every room, is dedicated to a different subject and has fifty to one hundred books on on a unique subject in so many quirky details, people like to have some a little story to share.

 

[00:54:54.380]

But I always challenge when people say to me it’s difficult. If it was so easy, everybody would do it. They don’t do it because they don’t know how to do it or they don’t believe it will work or they don’t bother to really try, but probably not really that hard. You know what’s hard?

 

[00:55:22.190]

Dealing with complaints again and again and again and again, dealing with the same complaint all the time, wasting the front desk time, constantly answering the same questions, the same questions that they answered yesterday, the same as the day before and the same as the day before, because nobody has made it so easy to know that information, because we’ve communicated so well that nobody needs to ask the front desk. They’ve already they’ve already know what it is. They know what it costs.

 

[00:55:49.910]

And they booked it on their mobile device. I mean, it it should be a lot easier. And if we were all using the brain power of our collective team members and associates who all want to do the right thing and want to make people happy, you know.

 

[00:56:10.560]

You would solve the situation in a way that you don’t have to deal with it constantly, and we waste our time just doing the mediocrity when we could just invest a little mind, mind time in conversation and collaboration, time in order to find out how to have a little bit more excellence every single day.

 

[00:56:34.360]

Well, and then you’re blown away. Wow. That wasn’t really that hard. Wow. This is a lot more fun. And all I do is just try to teach people how to connect the dots between the information and the questions that come in and how to change things so that you’re not stuck in Groundhog Day and you keep going. I’m sorry. Go ahead. No, no, no. That’s not what you’re really talking about is culture. It’s building culture.

 

[00:57:11.520]

And and so we’ve been very intentional about that at getgo. And one of the things that I found the hardest through our our building of this culture over the years was when I was it awakened to the idea of how important process and system are in setting up the culture, because you think when you say culture, you think it’s all of the soft, touchy feely, you know, everybody kumbayah. But really, what is the what what makes culture work is the systems and the processes of communication that you set up.

 

[00:57:52.830]

I think you and I have had this conversation before that, you know, one of the things that I find interesting and I’ve been digging into it on how can we implement this and kind of transfer what I’ve learned from the entrepreneurial world into the hotel space is we have a process that we follow for cadence of communication, how we communicate, how we keep everybody in the loop. And because hotels are such a complex environment with so many different people involved, like you were saying, Lauren, from the management company, the brand, the owner, the team on property, how can we bring all of that together and sort of scorecard and process and keep that, you know, so that it’s at the forefront?

 

[00:58:41.700]

What are the main objectives this year? You know, keep the main thing, the main thing, because we start to have everybody squirrel and have their own idea of of where we’re headed in the year. There’s got to be a central hub. And the moment we did that get go, it changed our world and it made our culture, the vision that I had for the culture became real when we started putting process and systems in place to capture all of the necessary communication and keep people, you know, centrally focused and aligned on what the true goals are and scorecard those goals.

 

[00:59:26.430]

Yeah, you know what? There are some some really wonderful tools out there. I don’t know what you’re using or if you want to share it. But for example, there’s a tool called Train UOL where you can combine it, compile all the information about the hotel, about the brand, about the sister hotels, about best practices for the front desk, for for this kind of situation, that kind of situation. Another situation. You can have videos and you can have audio messages in it.

 

[01:00:05.850]

You can have Silkies, Problem-Solving tips, everything.

 

[01:00:12.600]

And it’s such great communication tool and it can be available like even if you’re just walking the front desk things or sales and marketing things or whatever it is, you can have that available where an ambitious housekeeper who one day wants to break out and move to the front desk or move to the spa or something else can read up about how that department works and what’s on their minds and and actually can feel like they have. Now, I have a great understanding about the way this hotel works, and I’m able to answer so many more questions that people have.

 

[01:00:55.920]

And some people are, you know how some people are readers and some people are listeners and some people want to watch a video and you can have a combination of all of those things backing up the message about the goal, the. Vision, the purpose of the company all moving everybody in the same direction, and it’s great also if you can have a tool, as you say, within the company communication.

 

[01:01:23.460]

So something like beekeeper, which I didn’t have the pleasure to use, I found out only after I had already left the library, the collection. But actually I was looking for something like that. Beekeeper is an amazing tool for hotels to communicate.

 

[01:01:41.000]

When you you know, I’ve heard I’ve heard many other hoteliers talk about this before. When you go into the shared drive on your hotel computer, it’s a mess. You have twenty seven different versions of the credit card information for you or or of the S&P for this. That and the other thing, nobody they’ve saved it on their own computers. Nobody has the most recent version. And and you know what?

 

[01:02:09.930]

In what I do, I’m constantly using feedback as the driver for for change and continuous improvement. So there’s no such thing as an SUV that stays the same or best practice is the same. We’re always updating it. So how can I communicate to everybody when everybody has saved something so and 15 versions of it on the computer? And if it’s taking up a lot of space, just, by the way, and causing a lot of confusion. So to have one central point, like a train whistle or a beekeeper or, you know, it’s so easy, the housekeeper just goes in, she take, oh, look at this crack tile.

 

[01:02:54.650]

I’m going to take a picture of that crack tile and attach it to the thing. And now engineering knows, oh, room five thirteen has a crack tile. Let me go take care of that fix or look at this. Beautiful. I look how I made this bed with rose petals into a heart shape and how wide and how I put some electric handles around to to welcome our guests back for their anniversary. They had their wedding here five years ago and the housekeeper so proud the way she did it.

 

[01:03:26.210]

And then she shares it and everybody in the hotel sees it. Well, the social media person puts it online. The the other housekeepers see how cool it is. The front desk is saying, oh, the concierge is saying, well, now, next time I talk to somebody, I know that they’re able to do something like this. And now I have it. The communication tools using everybody, all their ideas and what they’re doing to make it so that everybody knows what’s going on.

 

[01:03:54.440]

It rocks the system. It will change your life. You don’t have the luxury hotel either.

 

[01:04:03.320]

You really never know when when do we stop using real candles?

 

[01:04:09.970]

Not really welding torches. Yeah. Georges, yeah. Yeah.

 

[01:04:17.810]

I was really I’m sorry that I heard that you can’t use the term Teekay anymore.

 

[01:04:23.590]

No, not anymore.

 

[01:04:26.280]

You purchased tiki torches aren’t so good they go for them.

 

[01:04:33.830]

Or just a reference of how it was used left. I don’t know.

 

[01:04:37.280]

I don’t know. I think it’s just how you use your how do you.

 

[01:04:41.950]

Patio patio. But what do you know. They’re beautiful.

 

[01:04:48.650]

It’s fun, right. Yeah. MBO fiery, sticky things. But the thing is, you can do this. We were talking about your just the box on the corner. Right. You’re out on the interstate highway or intersection or something like that. And you don’t have to be exactly like everybody else because again, you can develop kind of this enterprise knowledge. Right, because if people come in, they will ask questions, hey, we’ve got some sort of food sensitivity or what’s the good?

 

[01:05:19.760]

How do you figure out how to provide those answers? I mean, one of the topics that I rarely see written down in cheat is how do you it’s comes from call centers. Right? How do you solve the problem on the first touch? Right. It’s always like, oh, they asked the housekeeper. They said to the front desk in front of the concierge. Yeah. And it’s like a pop up for people later. They’re like, oh, forget it.

 

[01:05:41.930]

It’s not the button. Yeah. How do you figure these things out and how do you create that institutional knowledge? You go here’s where you and some of it may be if you do have a mobile app or something like that. Well, all those FAA cues and certain things should be really easy to find so they can go do it that way. That’s fine. Yeah, but then all the guests can do it too, or all the staff.

 

[01:06:01.640]

And as you said, it may be, you know, use the talents of your staff. Maybe you had a housekeeper who used to work on a cruise ship. Right. And let’s say you are one of these properties and they have kids staying there, will you probably if you’re around 50 percent or 60 percent, you got leftover towels. Well, maybe they can go, hey, here’s how you make a monkey or an elephant or something like that.

 

[01:06:23.570]

All of a sudden that makes that that’s like the biggest thing that’s going to happen in that family on that trip. Right. Because they are giving it all low on expectations, especially for the economy of limited service properties. You start doing anything that’s personalized, anything that’s out of the norm, and people are just over the moon. Right? It’s not that hard. It’s the mindset of the staff of how what can we do to make that individual guests stay a little bit better?

 

[01:06:55.940]

And it might be, hey, what’s a great restaurant in town? And it’s not us. Oh, we always tell them the such and such. It’s like, well, what kind of food are you interested in? Or something like that? Or let me look at you know what? Let me check their hours because I think they close early on Sundays or whatever the case may be, you know, things to help them out and they’ll remember you for forever.

 

[01:07:17.940]

Yeah. It’s a no at the at the Library of Luitel collection. You know, sometimes I would I would pass by a room when I was showing somebody around or taking pictures or whatever, and I will get a glance at had a housekeeper setting up a room and like the way she will put the the the toys of the children, the on the on the bed in such a loving way and the way she will prepare how the wine and the strawberries or whatever it is else is going to be in the room or the welcome messages with the rose petals.

 

[01:08:02.660]

They kill themselves to to whatever they did before the end because it’s so much appreciation. And when you appreciate the team for their creativity and the love and the passion for hospitality, that they will they will just do more and more and more and more.

 

[01:08:25.220]

And they and you constantly have to say, look at who you are. You know, people talk about reviews and they are only talking about the bad reviews. But really, you need to talk about the great reviews. The more you talk about the great reviews and say, look at who you are, you are the kind of people who get these passionate, enthusiastic reviews, bring that every day, bring that to everybody. And as long as they say when they take into their hearts and minds that, yeah, that’s who we are, I’m on that team.

 

[01:09:00.710]

I’m one of those people who will do anything it takes to just try to think of something that’s going to make somebody a little bit happier. And when they identify that, that’s who I am. You don’t have to be you know, they will do things that give my give me goose bumps. I could never train somebody to do the things that they do.

 

[01:09:27.830]

They just need to know they’re the kind of people that will do it.

 

[01:09:32.030]

I don’t think is passionate about this. It’s just me and not just I just think this is just a passing interest.

 

[01:09:40.160]

I do want to point out just living something out.

 

[01:09:42.050]

She’s living a very important part out library hotel collections, empowering those housekeepers to do that and not saying, what the hell are you doing, organizing toys? Get out of the room. You got faster. Faster, because you got to do whatever. Yeah, they’re empowering them to have to have some ownership and control over what they’re doing. Same thing with the front desk. Can you solve certain problems for people? And maybe it’s a little bit of money for this, but you give them enough.

 

[01:10:11.900]

Enough, you give them a playpen. Right. And it’s like as one you can stay in the playpen. That’s OK.

 

[01:10:16.940]

So, you know, they know that the mission, the mission, the goal is to make sure everybody walks out happy, even if it means that you have to pick up the phone, call another hotel and and book them to move to the other hotel because you don’t have what they need. And you’d rather be had had them be happy at another hotel and be unhappy at yours. So, yes, everybody knew exactly what they needed to do and they knew all the tools.

 

[01:10:50.090]

We always have tools for them. If somebody calls to complain about you told me these ten things people complain about, you have you have a few options for each one of those problems. If there is a new problem comes up, tell me and we’re going to have a little committee meeting and we’ll all collaborate and find tool.

 

[01:11:10.250]

For how to handle that problem in the future, if you didn’t handle it well, we’re just going to have a conversation. How could we have done it? How can we do it better next time to learn from each day we learn something never, never paid well.

 

[01:11:26.330]

And you can apply that to everything you do in the hotel, every meeting, every post post event type thing. What, what? Well, know it’s always important, right? You need to celebrate. Well, what didn’t go so well. OK, but a lot of groups just stop it there and they beat on someone. Right. And they got it. They did it wrong. You don’t want to do that. You go, OK, what happened there.

 

[01:11:50.000]

Something broke down. What can we do to make it better next time? And then you have that process that’s repeatable and then it just becomes part of the DNA where they just do that because that’s what you do, right?

 

[01:12:01.310]

OK, we look out across the streams, the same goes. But no, I.

 

[01:12:06.410]

I want to be my Pleydell on the side.

 

[01:12:07.880]

He pointed out something else, Adele Dell, Mr. Dell, because Dell pointed out to us the other platform as well, corporate engaged.

 

[01:12:22.220]

And you also asked or they also excuse me, is anyone using MLP biological controls? I don’t I know, not me. But I mean, I don’t know what you guys are familiar with that platform and then capacity. But I did want to make a mention back to your point about I did call in my entire adult at one point when I was talking to Mr. Hermogenes, owner of boxes on the side of the road, Vanilla Land brand, where the idea of of this what what makes us different?

 

[01:12:52.400]

There’s nothing different. I’m sitting in a parking lot with three other buildings just like mine, with different flags on it. To your point, what are you doing for culture? If not anybody, why not me is what I basically portray to them is if you’re the same with everybody else, then why not be different with culture, with how you treat people differently? Know what? We didn’t put rose petals on beds and no, we didn’t do all that cool stuff because they were running one housekeeper just to keep up with the transition of the rooms.

 

[01:13:19.190]

But the idea was make them feel as welcome as positive affirmations about safety and security and all those things that were causations for people to be nervous about traveling, settle those down and be different than everybody else that didn’t care or just felt like they were just there waiting for somebody to show up at the front door. So, yes, I didn’t tap my internal Adell, you know, doing it, though. I mean, we we.

 

[01:13:48.550]

By the Korsakov, you know, because it’s more of a luxury hotel, but a cup of coffee, a chilled bottle of water on a hot day, you know, at the library hotel collection, our logo had a monkey reading a book. So we had a little fuzzy monkeys that only costs like a dollar. And whenever a child would come to the hotel, they would get a fuzzy monkey.

 

[01:14:17.410]

Those parents would light up when they see their children’s face light up. So you can give a candy bar sometimes when you want to give a little extra something.

 

[01:14:29.140]

The smallest thing, and I think it’s been said before, the twenty five cent bottle of water that you got at Costco, you know, to some people is just as well from the bottle of champagne.

 

[01:14:41.080]

Right.

 

[01:14:41.980]

So you you’ve got apples and things are a nice little thing to.

 

[01:14:53.980]

So I’m still putting in my head the sit down with Amy conversation. You say, OK, hotel walks in the door and you’re literally trying to convince them something that they feel is a struggle. I mean, you have so many tools that you have and convincing because I mean, to deal this with clients already and the prospective clients and so forth, they’re weighing where they put their money and they have very little of it and they’re literally waiting where they’re going to do it.

 

[01:15:23.020]

And I have arduous conversations advising them for marketing, which I can much easier convince them about the return on value of. If you’re not going to advertise, you’re guaranteed the result. I feel like the arguments a little bit on your side, too. If you’re not going to do sales or have somebody answer the phones or make those relationships, you guarantee the result. But you have the additional argument of there’s not a lot of it out there right now.

 

[01:15:47.330]

So how do you push people to realize that they need to invest working with you to make that a value proposition for them? Well, we usually show them data and insights and proof of what’s been done already for similar types of clients and things like that. At the end of the day, you know, we’re busy helping customers and we’re getting fantastic results. So I want to work with people who not just need our help, but want our help, because if they’re not willing to put in the work themselves and to have that mindset of this is not a light switch, there’s it’s a long game at play.

 

[01:16:33.490]

And, you know, we work with a budget. Right. So I understand I am a small business owner myself, and I totally understand the cash flow necessity for these hotel owners. But at the end of the day, you have to to be able to take some risk. I just there was somebody that posted on LinkedIn and I, I, I said a quote. I was like, you know, that you cannot I’ve heard too many hotel owners say we aren’t going to start our proactive or not even owners.

 

[01:17:09.220]

But sales leaders even say we’re not going to start proactive activity until we start to see inbound inquiries or until we start to see business starting to book. And my response to that is just nope, that’s not how business works. You have to take a little bit of risk and make some moves in order to see those results in the future. And so if they don’t understand that and grasp that, you know, then I’m I’m OK saying. All right, well, when you’re at that place and you want the help, we’re here.

 

[01:17:52.750]

Right. And I think that’s as being just a business owner. We can’t convince everybody. And I have that persuasive tendency. Right, because I am a sales person by nature. But at the end of the day, I’m here to support and serve as many people as possible that wanted and need it. And you’ve got to be in the right headspace. First, that it starts with you and make a choice, and you also have something that a sales manager can just sign up for on their own, just for their own knowledge and and professional development.

 

[01:18:36.390]

Right. It’s not just that you’re talking to hotel owners or brands.

 

[01:18:42.360]

Yes. We’ve got a lot of. In the sales and marketing space, now that one of the things we just recently launched is a coaching program, so our get go spark is a self self-paced membership portal that they can go in. And it’s not designed as a training where you have to go through a module by module and learn everything in order. It’s really what’s my situation? Where am I stuck? Do I need a tool for that? I can go in and get scripts for how to open the door.

 

[01:19:18.780]

We have a crisis prospecting presentation. There’s videos in there of how to there’s email templates, you know, the emails that are working because we’re testing it every single day at getgo or we’re doing these things ourselves. And it’s just a way for us to share with salespeople knowing that there’s a tight budget in place and they’re being asked to do a lot. And in a lot of cases, they’re being asked to do things that they’ve never had to do before because, you know, historically, sales have been able to just react to inbound inquiries and respond and be very reactive.

 

[01:20:00.930]

And now we have to switch to being proactive. And it’s scary for a lot of people. It’s very uncomfortable. And so we’re doing what we can to help give them the tools and the knowledge and the data that they need to feel comfortable going out into the world more proactively. And a lot of times they are.

 

[01:20:23.730]

The people are. For them within their hotel, they’re they’re being expected to do it without necessarily having had the experience and not having a support from above to call.

 

[01:20:40.610]

Exactly.

 

[01:20:41.490]

And it’s it’s good for that. And also for folks who have been in the industry for a really long time and just need a refresher. So there’s that aspect. And then we have another where they can do one on one coaching with myself or one of our coaching consultants on the team. And we can actually pinpoint what might be blocking them from hitting their goals and reaching where they where they want to go. So it’s a lot of fun. That’s as a passion project of mine.

 

[01:21:12.690]

Actually, my team was like before covid. They’re like, no, we do not have time to do this and you cannot launch this. And then covid hit and I’m like, well, there’s no time like today.

 

[01:21:26.160]

And so we we accelerated the plan to get that out to market. And we just started marketing it late in twenty twenty. And so I’m excited to see where it heads, where it leads. That is a good a good suggestion to add in whatever discipline that you’re in, covid has opened up time a little bit, right?

 

[01:21:51.500]

You don’t have a full hotel now. So what can you do?

 

[01:21:55.700]

Well, if absolutely nothing else, maybe even be above that threshold, but do some training, right?

 

[01:22:01.770]

What can you train yourself? What can you train your staff? What can you cross? Train your staff? What opportunities out there? And there’s a lot of things out there from paid training. I’ve got one myself and I recommend everybody to do that and talk about metasearch, even some free ones. I just I just recently completed actually Google Garage Fundamentals of digital marketing. It’s a free 40 hour course that includes Google certification. Yeah.

 

[01:22:27.740]

Go do that and find out things like that, whether it be college courses or online courses, whatever it take advantage of the opportunity. And again, like we said, action is the antidote to fear. Right. So go do something. As Robert said, do something responsibly, of course, but do something well.

 

[01:22:45.890]

But if you can get your staff to who take those and they have good outcomes, then you can share that with saying you put into a structure where they go, oh, if you’re looking for to learn more about such and such and such and such, and there can be things where they start going, oh, what the hell, I want to learn more about Rooms Division or I want to talk about food and beverage and all of a sudden they can kind of get an idea of it and then go, yeah, how.

 

[01:23:08.360]

Well yeah, we can cross-trained you here. Yeah. But you need to have those processes set up. So, so they’re successful. Right. What you don’t want to do is to have someone who, who’s very eager, wants to grow and isn’t ready, doesn’t have the background, doesn’t know what’s expected. You throw him in and then they fail. Right. That’s just not fair to them. It’s not. It’s a waste time for everybody.

 

[01:23:29.840]

So how can you make sure that your staff are are supported and successful in these outcomes? Is the sound of silence. While you can have a system like train, you will that only housekeeper see this and only marketing people see this and only guess people see this. But if you break that was I mean, if there’s no reason to put those limitations, why wouldn’t you let your front desk team understand how sales works or how recruitment works? Why wouldn’t you want everyone to know what the procedures are in the gym or in the spa night?

 

[01:24:14.630]

Tomorrow’s asking for information from you on the check box over there.

 

[01:24:18.860]

You’re here. And I’ve got a I’ve got a question. Anybody look at the the new Charatan photos. I just wanted to get you guys. I did. I did. I did. I like that. Not like it. That they look different. Does I look different? Yes, it’s different. I like the quiet booths. I got to say, that’s my favorite feature is the quiet booth. But honestly, I feel like it’s I wouldn’t say a little too late or lipstick on the it just it’s a tough time to really cool the Sheraton when it’s I think it’s strong.

 

[01:24:59.870]

As I said, they pointed out in the article, you’re likely going to find a Sheraton somewhere, work up. Traveling to a known destination place, I know that they’re trying to change up the look and so forth, but I just.

 

[01:25:15.540]

Yes, I don’t know, it just seems like a hard thing to reinvest into a lot of people that are hanging onto the Sheraton or really because it’s the affordable brand flag and they get to have the access to the tech. But other than that, being told to do this is major for me.

 

[01:25:30.180]

And some of the I’m wondering how some of these I mean, I don’t know what fabrics are using. And like you look at that first lobby shot, is that stuff going to hold up?

 

[01:25:39.660]

And does it look like what was very durable and you can have very good looking, modern, durable furniture? That doesn’t look durable to me. It just in all the upholstery rooms, all those upholstered corners I look at and go, oh, that’s like being shredded very quickly out of the room.

 

[01:25:59.740]

And to replace it, you’re going to have to replace the whole panel, right?

 

[01:26:02.920]

I mean, it’s that’s the you look at the rooms with the tables and so forth. They’re not really anchored, stable, wise. They’re usually getting knocked over. Gosh knows how many times you lean on a table and it’s a stick table and thing falls over and they have drawers.

 

[01:26:15.330]

The main I don’t know why they’re putting drawers and the tables in the lobby. That just seems like let’s invite a lot of really gross stuff.

 

[01:26:24.660]

When you open those drawers, you know, they’re not going to be clean very well.

 

[01:26:28.560]

But why why would you have a drawer is for someone who’s going to come back to the same spot for in some area and took the Marriott community table idea and say, let’s shove it into Sheraton.

 

[01:26:41.160]

Are there no. Where are they? Just designer decorative drawers.

 

[01:26:44.670]

Do they actually open the open open and they’ve got like there’s there’s an iPad in there and some pens and paper and notebook and you go, that’s not going to stay like that. And yeah, and there’s going to be other things going, you know, as a so that maybe if you’re giving little treats like candy bars and things like that, they’re going to wind up in those drawers. Like half eaten ones are ones that are spit out. They’re not going to be good.

 

[01:27:14.340]

So I.

 

[01:27:18.740]

I commend them for trying to do something. I just think this was. Out the notification, because I can’t see them enforcing this for any change to some of these hotels that are barely if they are still operating in some capacity to say, oh, now we want you to finance all, if any, rebuilding my building, I just don’t see how this is a time.

 

[01:27:41.960]

I mean, a year from now maybe.

 

[01:27:44.150]

But when you close, when you when you close and sell, the new owner can here’s what they’re going to do to get a decent share. And I hate to say it like that, but I think that’s kind of what it is right now. It’s for it’s not for necessarily the existing ones, because, again, to get that r y, you’re going to have to. Yeah, that’s going to take some demand coming.

 

[01:28:08.240]

And actually lends itself to a couple of articles you posted of above opening a new hotel now and so forth. And you know, you know better than I do. And you probably know the players better than I do in New York right now, the shifting and moving of ownerships within midtown, the closings, the non reopenings, the ones that are still operating, being sold for pennies on the dollar, what they were originally valued for, are they really going to operate as hotels?

 

[01:28:32.990]

Are the just asset acquisitions for resale?

 

[01:28:35.990]

I mean, that’s a I mean, what happens with the new owner walks in a hotel in Midtown. They bought it and they’re letting it run. Are they really expecting it to do business or are they just expecting to own it? I don’t see any. I mean, you’re the people in the market better than anybody. She refuses to answer to your question, and you can’t make her.

 

[01:29:03.660]

No, well, I don’t know how anybody in New York is managing I. Yeah, it’s quite closed. I mean, right, the restaurants are closed. You know, yeah, yeah, but I guess the question is, are they going for pennies on the dollar? Because a lot of these things that the asset values are holding up, I’m finding for a lot of these that people are getting to wipe the debt off.

 

[01:29:32.610]

I mean, a lot of these looked like they’re acquisitions going to restructure.

 

[01:29:36.470]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, no, I’m working with I’m working with a spack. And it’s it’s interesting because they have a ton of money and they want to build you know, they want to build a portfolio of these independent hotels. So that’ll be, you know, great, nice. But they’ve done really good stuff in the South. So this isn’t like this fly by night group or anything. These guys can really legitimately build a nice little boutique hotel chain, but they’re challenged with finding the right deals where they can generate an hour.

 

[01:30:08.010]

Why? Because these nicer hotels, the the values are still inflated based on the volume of business. So it’s it’s interesting. There hasn’t been that kind of. Yeah, reconciliation at this point of the valuations versus versus the. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s going to snap or not that it’s going to be interesting.

 

[01:30:29.040]

Now I take it when I say this, I give it a grain of salt that I do hope that this is not indicative of the value of associations in a going forward sense to this. But a couple of things you posted, Robert, on your thing about the covid-19 board from and you say oh ho ho is guide in putting being put things behind walls again, HSBC finding its ground as to what its offering for its memberships and so forth, still missing the leadership thing.

 

[01:31:04.620]

I just I don’t really feel that is a clear voice to our industry in some sort of rallying. I think that everyone’s still responding and reporting, but they’re not really rallying what’s going on or what they could do. I don’t know. Is it just maybe a mistake?

 

[01:31:23.870]

I think L.A. has a challenge because to the government, they’re saying this is the worst. We’re we’re we’re sitting in the bottom of a smoldering crater, send us relief funds, right? Yeah. This is the worst that could possibly be. There’s no way out. No hotels will survive. Please throw money at us. And then to the community, they’re kind of like, hey, everything’s great, we’re going. So, you know, it’s kind of who are they?

 

[01:31:52.970]

Are they talking to? And it’s yeah, it’s there’s not like a clear a clear approach. I think it is kind of everyone kind of on their own doing doing whatever. But regionally or, you know, there’s just not a lot of coordination or focus.

 

[01:32:09.480]

But I think Aitchison man is a good dose of Adele.

 

[01:32:13.610]

You know, I, I, I want to talk to to Bob because in Europe, the Aitchison me has in addition to what we have in the Americas, we have sales, marketing and revenue. Those are like the three pillars of the hospitality, sales and marketing association. But in Europe, they also have people and culture in the tourism program and they devote they devote to programming and initiatives in that direction because they understand how it’s part of the sales and marketing.

 

[01:32:53.840]

And actually, I received the first service award from the European Aitchison me. I flew to to Budapest and and had a representative give give us a nice set of. When I was at the Aria Hotel Budapest for being the number one hotel in the world and TripAdvisor and all the service initiatives that we made in order to boost our sales and marketing efforts. So I hope that actually we do join that and I will be up for assembling a committee.

 

[01:33:39.540]

It just need to figure out how to get back to the membership of all those hotel salespeople, though, right?

 

[01:33:46.910]

Yes, it’s really an issue because a lot of you go to the meetings, it winds up being a lot of the venue and the event people and things like that, the activity of managers.

 

[01:33:57.300]

And so we’re pervasive a group that was growing with it and justifiably it wasn’t represented in the name itself, but there was this displacement where sales kind of waned for a while. That’s a contributor of the aspect of just me. I mean, it was the one board that seemed to have to redefine itself into its role because, I mean, back even then, way back in the day when digital marketing, e-commerce was growing, it was at the detriment of sales impact of what they were doing in the digital marketing at the lion’s share of attention, the new shiny penny, so forth.

 

[01:34:31.160]

And as time went on, sales got redefined as to what its role was in the relationship with the organization. And then the sales dug its heels in and redefined what it was valued for. When people realized it wasn’t marketing, it was sales, and that it became redefined as to what it was. It truly didn’t get its full voice back. And now we’ve assimilated so many combinations of things revenue management and marketing, sales. You know, now they’re turning into this concentric swirl of of engagement that’s necessary, not just not just because of reducing the internal bandwidth, but because you have to have, as you say, cross disciplines.

 

[01:35:07.100]

People have to understand how everything works together. And but sales still. I’m sorry, you can’t take a revenue management do. Sales doesn’t work. You can’t take a marketer and do sales.

 

[01:35:17.770]

You can if you have a process to yell, orient the trend and to try to make them aware. And sometimes a salesperson is aware of revenue management is very, very helpful right now.

 

[01:35:34.940]

Knowing how it’s done. I can drive a car, but I can’t drive NASCAR.

 

[01:35:39.200]

OK, so we forward we start in sales.

 

[01:35:48.620]

And I mean, you’re you’re in you’re in a sales role in a hotel and then you’re director of sales and suddenly you’re dealing with public relations, communications, the website, the advertising and and everything combined. So it’s it’s it’s kind of the process. So it’s not like we usually hire people from the beginning to just focus on marketing. Although now because of social media, sometimes you will have an entry level personal that it will just deal with social media, which you would say is not sales.

 

[01:36:30.830]

But normally the progression from from the day when I started was always, you know, starting that through sales and then moving up and having that role expand to a customer relationship management end and email marketing and the website and everything else. Those are just things that I always say.

 

[01:36:56.510]

I’m a hotelier and I’m not a digital marketer. I’m a hotelier. I just as a hotelier, I know I have to do digital marketing in order to make my hotel successful. And I have to do PR to make my hotel successful and I have to do sales to my hotel successful.

 

[01:37:14.360]

And I think it’s just better if if people know the whole talk know enough to be dangerous for sure.

 

[01:37:22.130]

I think that’s what challenges is. What I see from the sales side is a lot of properties. I mean, that’s just the reality they live in. They don’t have the means to have specialists in all of these areas. And but you have to have your sales person, if you are in that situation, dangerous enough to know how to write an email campaign and build that into an automated system like a mail champ or something like that. That’s not happening by and large at the property level right now.

 

[01:37:56.900]

And that’s where we’re we love to jump in and help build those processes for sales people. So they’re enabled to do what they’re good at, which is take customers over the finish line, write a sales. Person should be closing business, they should be, yes, having relate building relationships, but the goal obviously is to bring revenue in the door. They can’t do that by also recreating every email, you know, every time they’re sending something to a customer.

 

[01:38:30.970]

Things fall out of the pipeline constantly because there’s not a process in place for that. And so that’s that. I wanted to make sure I mention that. But I also wanted to jump back. You guys, we’re talking about HSM. I and I want to do a little plug for them because I’m on the sales advisory board. We were talking about training. They are I think it’s through the end of March offering. It’s it’s a special on their certifications.

 

[01:38:57.730]

So as Dean was mentioning, you know, now’s the time if you have some time on your hands. Not a lot of people do, but you can get those certifications and you can purchase it. I don’t think you actually have to take the certification by the time it’s just purchasing it. And then but don’t quote me on that.

 

[01:39:17.440]

I don’t yet purchase it. You can do it in your own time. And and I many years ago got the the digital marketing one when Holly was doing the presentation right before the Adrian Awards or the Digital Marketing Awards conference. And believe me, that was so much more delightful in a way than doing the business acumen one online by myself without lovely Holly to answer all my questions. But it was so much fun. Once I got into it and I asked my questions, they answered me quickly.

 

[01:40:01.060]

And it was really so much fun because the a simulation there and you were like, oh, how can I get my revenue up higher than last week? How do I get my how do I get my turnover down? How do I get better scores on my reviews and more social media posts? And and it is really a lot of fun. And that one was 50 percent off, I think. I think the other ones may have been 20 percent off right now.

 

[01:40:27.880]

But you know what?

 

[01:40:29.830]

I’ve been a member since nineteen eighty, and Samii has given me so much in terms of of professional growth.

 

[01:40:43.240]

And that was, you know, with a Dell.

 

[01:40:45.790]

That was when I started the prenatal membership today.

 

[01:40:55.740]

And I am picking up the Adrian Awards winner and I said, no, this but two people here that are very familiar, they’ve just I mean, what are they to me, Adrian, awards this year?

 

[01:41:06.940]

I think the last I heard was maybe me and maybe in Florida.

 

[01:41:12.730]

Yeah, there’s a few days I couldn’t even tell you the latest update on on that. But I know that there’s a lot of moving pieces going on.

 

[01:41:22.930]

The reason I ask that is because I would encourage everybody out there to follow the word, especially this year, probably more than every other year. And the reason I say that I had the pleasure of being a judge for the awards this year and judging several of the entries on there, the number one lot of amazing entries, a lot of fantastic entries.

 

[01:41:41.020]

The number two is really fun to judge these because, boy, people really had to be creative this time around. Right? I mean, let’s face it, you prove it. It was a very difficult market. How do I market in this environment?

 

[01:41:55.660]

And there were a lot of entries and some of them were about disaster recovery and different things like that. So there were a lot of entries that tackled that. And I’m really anxious to see who the winners are. So whoever they are, they’re very well qualified. They did amazing job, I can tell you that without a question. So that’s somebody you want to pay attention to. You want to watch and see what these guys are and see what it is they did and then think about.

 

[01:42:22.180]

My agree. Yeah, sorry, I was going to say the betting odds are Lauryn’s one that he did for his client with targeting the meth lab and crack house that was conducted by NPR.

 

[01:42:39.740]

Oh my God. Long-Life.

 

[01:42:41.340]

Repeat the business. It was all good. That’s. How do you repurpose those hotel rooms? I know it’s a quiet little place, but eight two things. One is sales to people. NPR. I’d like to address two things about those salespeople.

 

[01:42:56.100]

My hardest gig I ever went through from being a food and beverage, from being in operation operations, from being a marketing. Everything else was when I had to be responsible for sales because the first perception I had going into sales was, oh, I just had to take orders.

 

[01:43:08.430]

I just had to fill contracts out.

 

[01:43:10.410]

Yeah, no, it’s smiling and converting what they want versus what you can give.

 

[01:43:16.960]

That was the first hard won.

 

[01:43:18.060]

The second hard one was OK, so I’m at my desk, got a clean little blotter, cute little pen holder. But I do now go out and finding and creating those relationships, creating those communications and finding used to do this. And then it’s just some of your points of the technical technologies that we have to do. Now, the second is PR. I think people just put these things in the bottle sales. I was just taking orders is just smiling, going to events, cocktail hours, crappy, crappy stuff.

 

[01:43:45.660]

The other is PR where it’s like, oh, you just have to broadcast this stuff. No real PR is the fact that you pick up a phone to somebody that’s important, that has a voice, that has an audience as a means of distribution.

 

[01:43:57.840]

They actually pick up the phone. Anybody can distribute news, anybody can distribute content. It’s whether it’s being put in front of the right people. The the skills of a salesperson, a genuine salesperson and the skills of a genuine PR person is, as night and day is telling that somebody can go into a professional kitchen and cook out restaurant meals if you’re not a chef doesn’t equate. Just because I know how to cook doesn’t mean I can make a restaurant work.

 

[01:44:25.230]

Gosh, have had clients that thought they could be in the other cases, you can’t as a salesperson just think you’re going to just smile and sign contracts.

 

[01:44:33.270]

It doesn’t work. So it just as much as the skill front desk, somebody they can deal with, people multitask.

 

[01:44:40.260]

They’re checking somebody in while they’re answering questions over here and handling something over here and doing their skill sets that make them distinctively different. And to that end, I want to just lean over to Dean for a second. People, just because they’ve read an article on metasearch does not mean they know how to do metasearch. There is a lot of nuance every day. I think I know metasearch every day. When I have a question, I go d my source for metasearch.

 

[01:45:04.830]

I call them up. I’m like Dean. I think I got this figured out. Such is that he has a really nice smile and pause and then really totally corrects everything I just did.

 

[01:45:14.300]

And like everything that keeps changing to. Right. That’s your other challenge.

 

[01:45:18.170]

Yeah. Yeah you’re right.

 

[01:45:23.190]

I’m sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.

 

[01:45:24.690]

Sometimes I will see somebody speak or read somebody quoted about something to do with reputation management and I’ll go, oh how are their hotels doing. Oh number one. Fifty out of three hundred. Oh right. Why, why is this happening.

 

[01:45:46.560]

We find that it’s called the robber gets requoted on stuff where people go. It’s like, oh I’m giving you this advice and there’s so much white noise right now. I think I’m going to try to self-propagating ourselves in this conversation. We have Ed, we have Stuart, we have Tim. We have so many people around the show, Stephanie Liley, experts in their field. I will never I mean, out of dialogue with Lily about revenue management.

 

[01:46:08.320]

At the end of the day, she will stop me like a bug at the end of the day, OK, because as soon as I think I’m doing good, it’s like when I play pool with my wife.

 

[01:46:17.940]

Whenever I win one game, I will be crushed. The next five games, like, oh, I’m like, oh, I won a game. She’s like that really. You know, I lose.

 

[01:46:25.650]

But anyway, the idea of it is that we all have expertise and there are experts in the fields. And as soon as we get complacent thinking that we know what we’re doing, we should always evaluate against somebody that really does, you know, and going to an MBA and saying, hey, this is one thing I’m doing in sales. That’s nice. It’s good. Maybe we can do this differently or going to deal with metasearch or Adell, like you said, reputation manager.

 

[01:46:49.110]

There’s so much white noise of people that when that’s a bad word, they regurgitate but re purpose other people’s content and say that they’re the authority on this. Look what this is what it really is, just being handed off the data from somebody else. And they don’t do, as you said, Dell, Pritch, what they practice or practice what they preach sorry, reverse programs.

 

[01:47:11.940]

You’ll see that. And you’ll also see the I think you might be alluding to where a writer will just go in because they want to. Create a feel for their blog or their website, and they’ll read five articles on the subject and then they’ll write some kind of amalgamation of that word, it’s correct. They’ve scraped a little bit of the surface, but they haven’t given you anything insightful on really how to innovate, change. And so and and further to your point about, you know, a lot of times.

 

[01:47:59.430]

Hotels right now will have people who are have moved up and are having now to bear the responsibility that of things that they’ve never actually witnessed, done or actually done themselves. And they don’t have any leadership in front of them who can guide them, because very often the general manager is not an expert on sales, marketing or revenue or or could be some other things as well. But they may and they may have come from food and beverage or come from accounting or something like that.

 

[01:48:34.080]

So they can’t give them that kind of expert advice. So it’s true that right now is a good time to get consultants who are experts in a particular area and can illuminate that for you. And because reading an article that somebody has written, you know, just reading the book. Or watching the movie may not change your life. It may if you already have everything that you need to take care of it to to take that to the next level.

 

[01:49:10.060]

But usually you need somebody to go to you and say, here’s how you apply it to your situation and your needs, because every hotel is different, every situation is different. And it’s all a matter of.

 

[01:49:27.000]

Let’s test something and if if it’s working, we keep moving in that direction and if it doesn’t give us the results we want, we have to try something different. Fail fast, move around and see what tweak it is that’s going to help you make that right. Yeah.

 

[01:49:44.700]

The one the one thing my recommendation would be I think now’s an excellent time to hire. I mean, depending on what the situation is. Let’s just go with the assumption. A lot of hotels have laid off their sales marketing departments. Right. They shut them down. And skeleton crew, there is a lot of great talent available. And if you can go scoop up a really good sales, like a highly regarded lots of content, this is the time to get it because again, the stuff is going to come back.

 

[01:50:15.180]

Right. It’s just a matter of when and how extended the the gap is going to be. If you can get that where they they have the relationships. They understand how to sell your types of properties. That’s a huge one. Plus, when they start needing to add more salespeople, they may be able to attract people. Person, or they were on the teams before and huge, huge opportunity to to get that person to do that. Right, because that’s all were saying before.

 

[01:50:47.110]

Let’s just wait until the phone started ringing. It’s going to make the phones start ringing.

 

[01:50:52.400]

I actually put a sharper point to that and say this is the time of group sales managers. Yeah. And the reason why I say that that is the hardest skill sales person to have, because they have to have the finesse of collaboration. They have to have the finesse of negotiation, and they have to have the ability to go over. And Garner leads when, as team you pointed out earlier, it isn’t about business tomorrow, it’s about business when it gets cultivated down the road kind of business.

 

[01:51:17.560]

And that requires a skill set. So we use it. And you say whether it’s like, well, I don’t have any group business right now, I don’t need a sales manager. You need the skills that a group sales manager has, the ability to mine conversations, to do those engagements, to create those relations communications. And I’m not saying that all sales managers other than groups is like. But right now, group sales managers had a skillfulness.

 

[01:51:41.830]

Transient sales is a matter of demand and awareness and so forth.

 

[01:51:46.510]

And that’s more marketing. But sales group sales, corporate sales, corporate sales even lend itself to negotiations and engagements with businesses over group sales was about what walks in my door, like was pointed out by a woman who’s Atama earlier tomorrow. But that’s that’s how whoever walks in my door, I got to be that person. If I’m going to deal with the wedding, I got to be that person. I do it with the family. If I’m going to do with fraternity, I got to know how to adapt my messaging, my communication, my prioritization, my questions.

 

[01:52:17.560]

That’s a skill set. That is high skill set. And yes, I’ve been waiting for those calls. You should be getting them in, making those calls now.

 

[01:52:25.390]

Well, for a full segment, no, I said for a formerly maligned segment.

 

[01:52:32.170]

Right. Because nobody want to do Smurf. I want to do association. I want to be corporate. I wanted the national. I want to do whatever. Right.

 

[01:52:38.590]

Yeah. So I think it’s really important, though. One thing we’re seeing is.

 

[01:52:46.080]

You really have to evaluate you’re looking at the talent that’s out in the market. Why were they great? Right. And what? Because you have to be careful today, the proactive effort is so important and a lot of sales people were not they were they were getting a lot of inbound inquiries and reacting to those. And can they flip that right? Are they able and here’s one thing, all caution. We’ve been finding this across the country where leaders are getting frustrated because the sellers are not they’re not feeling that sense of urgency from them and seeing them go out proactively.

 

[01:53:33.580]

There is a a modus operandi that matches a proactive seller versus a relationship builder. And there there are assessments out there. There’s lots of different ones where you can see. But I really would say encourage people who are hiring salespeople to implement some type of a assessment. It’s not the end all be all for your decision making. But one of the things that we use internally, we actually have a kolby certified consultant on our team and we have somebody take a very simple assessment and it gives you four numbers.

 

[01:54:13.150]

And one of the things that you want to look for in a proactive seller is a high QuickStart number, or at least a medium QuickStart. And what QuickStart means is they’re not afraid of going into the unknown. They’re willing to take some risk. They live in intangibles versus I need to see I need to dive in and get all the facts before I’m willing to take action. And so that’s one thing that we’re seeing as people are getting frustrated by the lack of the proactive.

 

[01:54:47.770]

It’s typically when you run their assessment, you’re seeing that their way of operating is opposite of what you’re looking for in a proactive seller who can sell in this uncertain kind of crazy environment. And so just a word of what we’re experiencing and seeing. And I think it might be really fascinating to implement something like that into your hiring process, if you can, so that you’re getting the right people in the right seat, because you also mean it depends on how you’re going to deploy your sales efforts and where your gaps are.

 

[01:55:28.240]

Right. But that proactive piece is when I see a lot of teams missing that because they’re hiring somebody, thinking, well, you’re a salesperson, you have skills of a salesperson, you’re going to be able to go do that. It’s deeper than that. It’s not just the skill set and what they know cognitively. It’s how they operate, their natural way of being, how they get the work done that you have to look at, right?

 

[01:55:53.320]

Yeah, their skills and the process is by far more of a sudden one Takanawa covers camera, but at the same time they you know, we are getting close to the two hour mark, which is thank you so much for spending all the time and for everyone else. And that kept us in conversation and so forth. I did want to be respectful of Robert having given us this list this week. There is typically the poop in the front row.

 

[01:56:21.700]

The book, unfortunately, is to be more Ruggero in the sense that we’re looking at the bidding farewell to the Standard Hotel after twenty year run. They’re certain there’s just certain hotels or certain, you know, Beverly Hills Hilton, you know, they’re just they’re always going to they’re always in the genre of what we think of as gestations and so forth.

 

[01:56:41.300]

And to think that such a place that had such a run of things that kept it in the news is just not there anymore. I mean, and again, to to your point about it just said, do you think about New York? There’s so many landmark restaurants, some amazing landmark restaurants in New York. They’re just closed ones I’m not closed to. So many things are closed. Yeah.

 

[01:57:07.180]

And can I just say a prayer for the passing of the Standard Hotel in L.A.? Yeah, I feel that that’s that’s so iconic and just beyond sad.

 

[01:57:20.710]

It is, because these are benchmark. When you think about our industry, you think I mean, there’s there’s many hotels like this. I would say many there are hotels like this that are iconic and what they represent.

 

[01:57:33.190]

And this was one of those ones, probably the Chelsea Hotel in New York when it finally faded. It’s probably another one that you would say, wow, they had a run.

 

[01:57:43.240]

I mean, it was just it was it was a mainstay of news centric things and people and just it was kind of the hub of things. This is one of those hotels that it’s just like, wow, you know, these this is the reality of what we’re going. Now, that and I think more of the New York restaurants, food wise to me, it’s like, yeah, that’s sad, but there’s so many places, not just in places like New York and L.A., but there are many places around the world that are just not in business anymore due to all of this.

 

[01:58:13.260]

And it’s a shame. So, yes, in that sense, a Roberts back. Were you mad at Amy up now? No. No, there’s no cure for you, Robert. Oh, everyone is OK.

 

[01:58:24.690]

And the last one I want to throw up is Robert’s Little Rock Roll, which is an interesting role because to me that the book was a bit of a rock roll, though. No, but this one platen shows plans to revive dead loved ones using Chappe.

 

[01:58:39.960]

I read this as being something that they were going to use this to revive some of the movie cast character.

 

[01:58:45.600]

People initially thinking, OK, this is just giving them the technology base to take people that are no longer with us and somehow bring them into this fake kind of world capabilities where the nuances or mannerisms or speech dialogues get brought over. But as the article points out, I know there’s probably a little bit more to it than that.

 

[01:59:09.630]

Talking about I know you all have watched the show Dark, Dark Mirror.

 

[01:59:14.540]

It’s it’s scary, spooky tech, it’s the what happens if what we see in our current technology, like the Boston Digital Abbas and tech dogs get out there and run autonomously and stuff like that, it’s pretty scary. Like what? What what does the dark side of the tech that we see being developed right now? It’s it’s a scary show like that, but very interesting. It’s like watching a train wreck. You don’t want to what you do, it’s kind of that one of those shows.

 

[01:59:41.420]

So anyway, this one’s just talking about how far advanced our technology is going, that we actually can have technology emulate the nuances of a person’s personality based on what they’ve technology contributed to and their dialogue, speech and so forth and images.

 

[01:59:57.210]

So that was it. Bit boop, boop, boop, boop and retro. Roberts are you what? Meudon us kind of.

 

[02:00:05.300]

Not really, but maybe filled up with that in mind.

 

[02:00:16.460]

Adell, if people want to know more about you and where they can find you is that they can go do well, they can go to aspire reputation, marketing dot com, but only for a little while because I’m going to change it over to my name. I think I’ll definitely find the Hospitality Reputation Marketing podcast on Apple podcast. What is it at Spotify and all the places that you enjoy podcasts and everything?

 

[02:00:50.570]

And I have a YouTube channel that I just started posting the videos to, so I hope you’ll come visit my family or or go to the website and you can request a complimentary reputation assessment and I can start to help you right away for free. Just putting the connecting the dots between your feedback and your aspiration to have great experiences and great reviews tomorrow, not the taking.

 

[02:01:25.100]

Some of it actually has been on the top hotels on TripAdvisor. Yeah, I’m just saying, Mr. Dean. Or metasearch where they can find you.

 

[02:01:36.140]

You can find me at two websites, actually Basecamp MEDCOM, where we focus on the educational aspects of them.

 

[02:01:43.540]

So if you ever want to learn more about what is metasearch, I’ve got some free overview content on there. Certainly look at that as well as a paid webinar series. If you want to get into the kind of the to a one level of information, we’re actually working on a three on one level. Lauren, you and I have talked about that a little bit, getting into more deep dive, getting into Google. And actually what does it look like when you go into Google and want to manage them and campaign and things like that?

 

[02:02:08.960]

Also then over at metasearch marketing dot com, where we are more about the doing, how do we optimize a metasearch campaign? If you’re looking to have a an unbiased opinion of, hey, what technology should I be using? So I don’t have a salesman telling me, hey, you should use mine, you should use this. I’ve worked with or for just about everyone out there and can help you along with that. Also, you’re a challenge I put out to you.

 

[02:02:33.770]

Anybody listening?

 

[02:02:34.670]

If you are working in metasearch campaigns right now, send me your data. Let me take a look at your data. Last thirty days, last quarter, whatever it may be, and let me see if I can suggest a way to better optimize what you’re doing on your metasearch. I’d be happy to take a look at that for you, and I bet I can’t. So that and last but not least are Google Medda for Small Hotels program, where we offer a free 30 day trial, no strings attached.

 

[02:03:02.750]

Let me see if I can set up a metasearch campaign for you on Google. Chances are other vendors have told you you can’t do it. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. In fact, you know what? I don’t even need to have a booking agent. I don’t even need you to have a website. I can get you on Google map.

 

[02:03:15.800]

So if you want to learn more about that metasearch marketing dot com and interview either one for a dollar any time, I think I know what I’m doing and that’s what I’m doing, which is the thing that’s sweet.

 

[02:03:31.100]

Hey, look, I think I got this all figured out. It’s like, you know, maybe if you just, like, didn’t do anything, just thing you just said, do a little bit better.

 

[02:03:39.950]

Bless your heart, Amy.

 

[02:03:43.130]

People know about get go ewers. They can find you.

 

[02:03:45.830]

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Amy and Phonte, our website is being redone, but it’s still up. And I’ll be alive until we do all kinds of new fun things on that. So it’s easier to navigate. But it’s the get go group dotcom and that’s G i t geo group dot com. And you can find getgo on LinkedIn and all social media platforms, YouTube, all the fun. Exactly the opposite of that guy that Amy was talking about earlier.

 

[02:04:17.820]

I do want your data. I want to see the data.

 

[02:04:24.840]

Did you know I feel like Robert, I want to do a Beetlejuice on you where I get to just talk like over you, like Beetlejuice did with the girls, like, oh, yes, I want to marry my man of mine now. I can’t even hear you now. Now we just you just you’re I can’t right now. You’re just like anybody.

 

[02:04:41.460]

But if you want to know more about the amazing Robert Cole and the stupendously amazing Rock Cheetah program and his amazing news actually is newsletter’s awesome, fiddly. Why for such rakita, all lowercase, no space. It’s a free thing that Robert does each week, which is phenomenally, well, true. Truly, genuinely great content. We were making jokes about it, but any time I think I know statistically what’s something going on, I get the know. What would you say your bless your heart from Robert and bless your heart.

 

[02:05:15.300]

Where’d you get that data from?

 

[02:05:18.560]

Because let’s talk for another phrase, but we won’t say the other one. Yeah, right. That’s you guys. Yeah. Really true. But for Robert with Robert Cole I rakita for all things related to wonderful. I mean you’re doing the J.D. Power thing, the focus. Right. He’s got some big dogs that rely on his data. So anyway, with that in mind for replay of this show, you can go to the hospitality digital marketing dot com for a live look for shochu number in eighty six.

 

[02:05:44.730]

There will be a podcast that we do each week as well, which will have a quick recap of the show. Plus, we talk about tools and techniques. So it’s a separate category of tough topics and that stays shorter than the show stays less than 30 minutes. Oh, don’t forget Denes podcast search marketing our metal heavy metal segment, heavy metal podcast, heavy metal podcast and Addo aspiration, hospitably reputation, Baqi said before and then hours.

 

[02:06:11.340]

And then there’s also the sales marketing podcast and LILLIE’S, which is the revenue marketing podcast. So with that in mind, thank you everyone for the time today. Truly, genuinely and thank you and to everyone that participated. We will see everyone for show number twenty seven next week. Next Friday.

 

[02:06:25.740]

Thirty Eastern. So for that. Thank you.

Founder / CEO of Hospitality Digital Marketing

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