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

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Catch the 2024 TMG Year in Review episode with Travel Media Group President, Dana Singer as she joins the Suite Spot to discuss all the milestones and monumental achievements this past year and what hoteliers can expect from TMG in 2025.</span></p>  </p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embee. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining us. Wherever you’re listening or watching us from. If you are watching us on our official TMG YouTube channel, you will see that we are in a brand new space. We’re in a brand new area. I’m so proud to launch and announce our very own Suite Spot podcast studio. This is a long time coming, my guest here in a second, we’re gonna talk about it. We’re really excited. You know, we put a lot of time and effort into this podcast studio to bring you the listener, our hotel audience, the best quality and video, and hopefully we can have more and more guests come in studio and do these podcasts with you today. But for now, we’ve got a very familiar guest, an annual tradition, one of my favorites, President at Travel Media Group, Dana Singer. Thank you so much, Dana, for being on the Suite Spot once again.</p> Dana Singer:<br /> Absolutely. Good morning, Ryan.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we’re excited. We’re here to, as the titles talks about, talk about 2024 TMG year in review. Again, one of my favorite annual traditions that we do here. We cover a lot of ground in 2024 as a company, as an organization, but more importantly for our hotel partners who’ve had a lot of success. Talk to us. We’re gonna talk about 2025 and, and maybe some of the foundation that’s been built for moving forward, but this is a great time of year to also reflect back on all those successes. Talk to us a little bit about 2024 and the journey for our hotel partners.</p> Dana Singer:<br /> Absolutely. I mean, 2024 has truly been a special year for travel media group in so in so many ways. Most importantly, for the hospitality partners that we work with every day. You just mentioned the success that we were able to experience with all of them. And one of our most important milestones though, was really moving into our new headquarters. And it’s not just about a bigger building, it’s about creating a collaborative space that supports the growth of our teams. So we can continue to innovate and serve our partners at the highest levels of support and expertise. Internally, we’ve developed a number of exciting new solutions. We’ve enhanced our services and support, and we continue to find ways to better understand and meet our partner’s needs. And to do that, we’ve intentionally dug deeper, into the challenges and opportunities our partners face, and we’ve created resources around them. We’re so committed to giving hotels the tools they need to achieve their goals and succeed, especially as guest expectations evolve.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, and that’s key. We’ve talked a lot about on this podcast, you know, almost feels like technology in our industry is moving faster than ever. Something that maybe took a couple years to implement is now changing within the quarter that’s due to technology, AI all sorts of different factors. Guest expectations certainly have changed over the past couple years. We’ve talked about it on this particular episode, over the years. Let’s talk about those ever changing guest expectations and what Travel Media Group continues to do to innovate and kind of keep pace with those changes.</p> Dana Singer:<br /> I mean, guest expectations are constantly shifting, so it’s crucial for us to not only keep up, but stay ahead. And at TMG innovation has been at the heart of our adaptation. One of our significant advancements this year was the introduction of the Guest Experience Snapshot. And this tool has really been a game changer for our partners, giving them an in-depth but very clear look at guest feedback trends and enabling them to make smarter, faster, transformative decisions to support their reputation. But innovation isn’t just about technology, it’s also about our people. And when we think about all of our teams across the business, everybody plays such a key role in that. But our client success team, for example, has maintained a world-class NPS score of 75 or above over the past three years. That consistency reflects the dedication and care we bring to every interaction. We don’t just provide a service. We build aligned relationships that support our partners ongoing success. And beyond that, all of our teams are constantly working to find new ways to enhance our solutions. Whether it’s refining how we respond to guest reviews or evolving our social media strategies. The goal is always to make our partners lives easier and their businesses more successful. And it’s so exciting to see how these efforts have made a real impact on so many hoteliers. It makes our job that much more meaningful and enjoyable.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, I think one of the key themes of this episode that we’re gonna start to uncover is the communication that lies between our team and our hotel partners and the alignment there, right? The guest experience snapshot. We heard from our hotel partners that they felt that they weren’t implementing AI in their everyday operations to the degree at which they wanted to. So the guest experience snapshot gives them a great view, a different view with the power of TMG one view AI to really dig in and see what guests are actually saying and having those meaningful conversations. A lot of the new solutions and enhancements come from the conversations that we have from our partners, which is really, really cool to see. Obviously we have our CTO Jason Lee on this podcast lot, and he talks to us about the origins of some of these updates. But I have the pleasure of doing this podcast, hosting this podcast, which is coming up on its seventh year, which is crazy to me in 2025. But we have all sorts of channels and ways that we can communicate with our hotel partners, whether it be our award-winning educational webinars that we put on on a monthly basis, and we hope to up the amount of webinars we’re doing in 2025, whether it’s this podcast, whether it’s physical events, right? That that was something that was taken away from us in 2020 and now has come back stronger than ever, which I’m sure the hotel audience loves to hear. So getting a lot of corporate and business travel, talk to us a little bit about all of those ways of communicating and that interaction between our hotel partners and travel media group.</p> Dana Singer:<br /> Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, it’s the only way to really understand what our partners are going through, right? First of all. But no matter how we do it, talking to them deepens our understanding of how to better serve them. And so we did that this past year, by attending the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, the Independent Hotel Show, most recently the Hospitality Show. But we also continue to educate hoteliers about new trends through our social success series webinars, our Hotel Marketing Insider newsletter on LinkedIn, our FAQ Friday videos, and of course, our continued Suite Spot podcast to ensure that we do this as impactfully as possible. We unveiled a brand new podcast studio, as you already mentioned, which our viewers are seeing right now. And we did this so that we could continue to raise the bar to provide top of the line content to hoteliers worldwide and be a leading voice in the hospitality industry.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, it’s so cool to see and be a part of and hear our hotel audience, really appreciate because things like social media, technology, reputation management within the hospitality, I mean, Booking.com just rolled out an update that’s gonna be implemented in 2025. These are fast changing things. They don’t stay the same. So being able to have a direct line of communication to our hotel partners is vital. But that line of communication works both ways, right? And that’s what’s really cool to see is when we hear feedback from our hotel partners about either the things that we’re putting on or the things they wanna see and that we can implement in our every day. And I think that’s one of the reasons. I mean, our goal is obviously, you know, TMG to be the premier solutions reputation solution provider for the hospitality industry. So Dana, looking back at 2024, how do you think a lot of initiatives you covered, so many of them have impacted TMGs reputation as a leader for hospitality and moving forward for its hotel partners?</p> Dana Singer:<br /> Yeah, I mean, it’s inspiring to see how our work this year has helped solidify our reputation as a trusted leader and partner in the hospitality industry. Earlier this year, we reached the milestone of our hotel partners collectively having over 1 million social media followers. And that number is a direct reflection of how our strategies are helping hotels connect with guests in meaningful ways. We’ve also been fortunate to gain recognition within the industry. The Suite Spot was ranked among the top 40 hospitality podcasts. These accolades mean so much because they demonstrate that we’re not just producing content, but we’re creating resources that resonate with hoteliers and provide deep value. It’s also worth noting the diversity of voices on our podcast this year. We welcome guests from multiple hotel brands and numerous management companies, which allows us to give attention to different perspectives and ideas within the industry. And this kind of collaboration, it just reinforces TMG as a go-to resource for hotels and the impact of all of these initiatives. It boils down to the feedback we’ve received, whether it’s from our partners, listeners, or industry professionals. It’s clear that our work is making a difference, and that’s what drives us to keep innovating and pushing boundaries.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It’s so cool. I was obviously able to take part in that 1 million social follower celebration and to reflect on that, to think that over the course of all of our hotel partners out there that we’re partnering with their social media, that there’s 1 million travelers seeing the content that our hotel partners are putting out. So impactful, right, to think about. So cool to think about. Obviously, like you mentioned, we had some really cool first time guests here on the Suite Spot, including a couple major brands. Just had a collaboration with Booking.com and their giant, worldwide rollout of their guest review, score update. These are the type of things that I think hoteliers look for. I mean, it’s such a tight knit community out there, hospitality in this world. So to be able to Provo provide a resource for all hoteliers out there is really cool to see and be a part of. So obviously this episode is called TMG Year in Review, right? We take a look back, but, let’s talk about the future. Let’s talk about 2025 because it’s right around the corner and it’s moving faster than ever. What can we look forward to? What’s on the horizon for TMG, you know, looking forward?</p> Dana Singer:<br /> Well, I don’t wanna give too much away just yet, but I can say that our teams are hard at work brainstorming and solidifying new initiatives for the year ahead. Every conversation we’re having is centered around one question, how can we better serve our hotel partners in the industry as a whole? And 2024 has been a transformative year, but we’re determined to build on that momentum in 2025. And again, while I can’t share a lot of specifics right now, I promise we’re gonna continue to innovate, find creative solutions, and introduce tools and strategies to help our partners continue to succeed. And there’s just so much to look forward to. We’re very excited for the year ahead.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> There really is, and you’re right. I mean, 2024 transformative year, 2025 looking even better. Great outlook for the hospitality industry. We’ve already got, you know, sneak peak. We’ve already got some amazing guests and Suite Spot podcast initiative. So make sure if you’re subscribing on YouTube, follow us on LinkedIn as well so you can, you’re not gonna miss a second of the action and everything that we’re gonna be bringing to you in 2025 as we wrap up here. Dana, one of my favorite things that we do with this episode, and I think we started this back in 2020, is kind of give just a message of inspiration and hope moving forward for the upcoming year. Any final thoughts as we kind of wrap up today and look towards the future?</p> Dana Singer:<br /> Yeah, I’ll leave everyone with this. When I look back at this year, what makes me the proudest is seeing how everything we did, it’s really resonated with our partners and helped them achieve their goals. We’re consistently receiving feedback about how our services and support have helped save time, improve guest satisfaction, and ultimately drive more bookings and strengthening reputations. And so that’s what it’s all about for us, making a positive difference for the businesses we serve. And we look forward to continuing that momentum in 2025 to our listeners. If you’re interested in learning more about what we do at at TMG, this is a great time to reach out. We’re getting ready to kick off the new year. There’s no better way to do that than to ensure your online reputation is in good hands. So I wanna thank all of our hotel partners for their continued support and trust in us. And thank you Ryan, for letting me sit in on the Suite Spot today. I always love being able to spend this time with you.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, thank you for your time. I think it is one of my favorite episodes of the year that we do, reflecting on all the amazing things, that both TMG and our hotel partners have accomplished. Here’s to an incredible 2025. As you mentioned, we’ve got a lot of stuff teed up, so thank you to our listeners, thank you to you, Dana, for joining me today. I hope everyone has a happy new year, and we will talk to you next time on the Suite Spot To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host, Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>

00:13:47

153 – TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Jason Pirock

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In this episode of the Suite Spot, the head of marketing at Springboard Hospitality, Jason Pirock sits down with podcast host, Ryan Embree, to discuss the incredible Springboard Hospitality brand, exciting hotel developments, social media strategies, and much more. </span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Tune in now to learn more about what makes the Springboard Hospitality brand one-of-a-kind.</span></p> </p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check-in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embee. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree continuing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. We’ve done quite a few of this, but if this is your first time hearing it to set up the series, this is all about those individuals, brands, management companies, all paving a way forward for our hospitality industry. Trailblazing a path, and we have a great guest with me. It’s certainly an embodiment of a TMG hospitality Trailblazer, Jason Pirock, head of marketing at Springboard Hospitality. Jason, thank you so much for taking the time.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, thank you for having me.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Now, I asked this on every single Trailblazer episode. Always get a different answer. But since this is your first time being on the Suite Spot, we love to hear stories about how you made it into hospitality. Sometimes we just fall into it as a career. Sometimes we went to school for it. What was the hospitality journey that led you to Springboard Hospitality?</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. So I probably have more of a non-traditional background when it comes to hospitality here. A lot of folks have sort of been in the industry for their entire career for a very long time. I actually started my career in retail coming out of college. I was recruited to work for Target Corporate in Minneapolis. And so I started off in merchandising there actually merchandise presentation, which was at the time their entry level marketing. They didn’t really have an easy way to get into the actual marketing department, but that was the closest point. And then spent some time with Target and moved into marketing and then found my way through a, a few other companies throughout the years, Sears Corporate. I worked for a company called Brookfield Retail, formerly, uh, General Growth Properties. And then I had sort of a reflection point in my career where as much as I was having fun with retail and liked it that’s all I knew. And that’s all I had done. And I knew that I was super passionate about travel, I loved hotels, all aspects about it. The experience, the design just always gave me such a great feeling. And so I thought, I wanna try out hospitality, I wanna move into that space. And I was very fortunate to find an opportunity with Hyatt Hotels, their corporate office out of Chicago. And so spent some time there, then moved over to a company called a Perim Hotel Group and helped them build their marketing department and marketing team. And that actually is part of what led me to Springboard. Springboard was looking to sort of revolutionize their, their marketing department, really rebuild it, take it to the next level. And they found me as someone who had, had done that with Perim. And so here I am today.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. And let’s talk about that role that you have of head of marketing, this being a digital marketing podcast, I’m sure there’s a lot of hotel marketers that are just getting started in their career. Talk to us a little bit about your role as head of marketing and really the story as marketers. We love telling stories, right? Of Springboard Hospitality.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah. Well, I’ll start with with Springboard Hospitality. We own, operate, and develop hotels, restaurants, and bars all around the country. We’ve got about 50 hotels in 14 states, and we’re predominantly in destinations, sort of urban environments as well. And we’re truly across the whole U.S. we’ve got, we’re about 80 to 85% independent. So we really lean into that sort of boutique, independent, non-branded space. A few brands here and there. But again, that’s what makes up a majority is is that independent. So in my role, my role is sort of all encompassing when it comes to marketing, brand and communications. I oversee those functions that impact not only the Springboard brand, the brands within our collection. So we’ve got some independent brands within the portfolio, and then all of the actual hotels themselves. So that role is everything from traditional to digital, to social media, PR, communications, lifestyle, and experiential. So it really is a gamut, creative, you name it, all folds under me.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. And so important too, especially with a portfolio where you do have a lot of independent hotels, because it’s just so crucial that travelers might not know that story. I’m sure there’s a lot of creativity that you and your team can bring to that to be able to tell that story of the independent hotels in the portfolio. We’re gonna talk through some of those methods a little bit later in this episode. But you’ve seen scrolling through Springboard Hospitality’s LinkedIn, so much impressive growth. And you’ve touched on the variety of properties, both branded and independent. You know, this is a time we’re in November right now. We were just talking about how the end of the year is coming up quick, typically a time of reflection. Looking back, can you share with our audience maybe this past year, Jason, some of those notable hotels, whether they’re rebrands, acquisitions, some of those 2024 projects you’re most proud of?</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. So, a few that stand out for me, one is Luana Waikiki, really, really great property in terms of where it’s situated. We’re sort of at this, this crossroads of, you know, the hustle and bustle of the shopping district of Waikiki, but nestled in this park that’s really close to the beach. And so I love the, the juxtaposition of being more in this serene environment, more nature focused, but being so close to everything that, you know, Waikiki has to offer. So that’s been a great project for us and a great property that we brought into the portfolio. We actually have undergone a light rebranding, um, in terms of just refreshing the brand and really leaning into what is there and how we sort of cascade that across the, the different customer touchpoints. Or the guest touchpoint. So that’s one that stands out. Outbound is a collection of ours, Outbound Hotels. And we’ve got, um, there’s currently four hotels within that portfolio, one of which opened earlier this year in Stowe Vermont. And it’s a really neat property. I mean, Stowe is absolutely stunning. It’s a, it’s a really beautiful destination and not just a ski destination, but sort of all year round for outdoor enthusiasts. And this property is converted sort of older motel, but that we added some other buildings to and created these cabins, created more of these sort of apartment style lofts, if you will. And so it’s a really great property. That one definitely stands out. And then finally another one is Paia Inn in, Maui. So this is a smaller footprint for us with 17 keys, but great restaurant that’s getting ready to relaunch right on the water event space. It’s absolutely stunning. All different and unique room types, which is kind of fun too. So this is, this is gonna be a really exciting one for us as well.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> You certainly paint a great picture. We can tell that marketing background there with the terms like, you know, nestled in the heart or serene and stunning views. So it’s all about telling the story, right? And, you know, some of those, I think you also make a a great point too from a marketing standpoint. Sometimes we think of whether it be a refresh as a giant renovation in a giant project. And sometimes those little touches to a project can make all the difference, right? To a property. And if it’s told that story is told the right way to your, to your guests, you know, because we’ve also seen major renovations that sometimes is lost on the guests. They come in and they don’t even notice that. So being able to communicate and use that messaging is so important when telling that story. You know, we talk on, on this podcast, Jason, a a lot about reputation management, right? And the importance of a strong reputation, Springboard Hospitality, obviously no stranger to reputation success has seen a lot of fair share, especially in 2024, recent recognition in the Michelin Guide, TripAdvisor, traveler Choice Awards all over the portfolio. Talk to us a little bit about these incredible recognitions, what they mean to springboard hospitality, and then in your position, Jason, how you can use these awards, accolades, recognitions to grow the SpringBoard’s reputation within the hospitality industry.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, thanks for calling those two to the attention of the audience. I mean, we’re super proud of the awards and accolades that we received this year. And a lot of that goes to the caliber of products that we have in the portfolio and, and really the caliber of the teams that we have so super grateful for, for all of those that come our way. But I think for us, it really is about showing what we’re capable of, what we’re capable of to guests and putting their trust and their investment into us, in terms of, you know, wanting to stay. There’s a lot of choices out there, right? That they can, they can select from. And so I think those help us stand out a little bit more. So it’s really important for us to kind of get that stamp of approval. And then I think, showing owners and investors what we’re capable of too. Like not only are you coming into our portfolio and we’re here to offer the services that we have to provide you and, and making sure that you are running smoothly, efficiently, and profitably, but that we can get you a lot of exposure and engagement from folks through awards and accolades like this.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, no, I’m glad you brought that up, Jason. ’cause you’re right, you know, we think about these reputation awards and obviously these, these were made for travelers, right? Sometimes they’re picked by travelers like the Traveler’s Choice Award, but I think it’s a great point you make about ownership and investment and assets these owners are looking for. Reputation is a great place to be able to kind of wave your flag and say, this is a huge differentiator. We’re gonna take care of your asset. We’re gonna win these awards, these recognitions, and make sure, you know, that’s going to be our, that’s gonna be kind of our seal of approval, that we’re doing the right things, right. Uh, there. So let’s get into that a little bit about hotel management. It, it’s certainly becoming a crowded space in 2024 became even more crowded. There’s tons of consolidation that’s happened recently. I feel like there’s either some sort of strategic partnership or merger happening every single day on LinkedIn that I’m seeing a new hotel management brand erupts, uh, you know, every, every week. How does Springboard Hospitality differentiate itself? You talked about the reputation, but how does it differentiate itself to owners and investors for hotel management company?</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Absolutely. So I think the first way that we differentiate ourselves is we’re really focused on independence, as I said, at the top of the podcast, right? And there’s not a lot of management companies that are really leaning into that space. And so I think that does make us stand out because a majority of our portfolio is independence, and we know them and we know how they, they operate a lot of times it’s not a one size fits all. It’s very tailored and, and customized. So I think that’s one way that we differentiate. I think also the collaboration we have with our owners, there’s a lot of calls that you are getting our CEO you’re getting our leadership team. You’re not just getting your your day-to-day contact. You’re getting access and you know that accessibility to a lot of the strategic minds that have a lot of experience and knowledge in all of these different areas. And just to prove the point that we’re here to support you and it’s not just selling a deal or whatever it may be from the CEO, but he’s actually involved in revenue strategy calls, right? So I think that’s a way that we differentiate. I also think our focus on, you know, everybody’s talking about data and reporting and, and those are all important and, and should be expected in a management company, but we try to take it a step level and focus on what we call hospitality intelligence. That is not just reporting out on numbers, but talking about the why and the how and what we’re gonna do differently in order to improve the business. So I think that’s another thing that sort of stands out to me in terms of what we offer. And then finally, with from a marketing perspective, you know, we offer a lot of the, the different services that you’d probably see at a number of different management companies, but we also have capabilities and expertise and things that you don’t traditionally see. You know, we can run brand marketing workshops. I’ve, I’ve hosted several of them, two day immersive workshops to really get to the bottom of, you know, your brand architecture and your pillars and those types of things. We can run PR, agency RFPs, we can run influencer, you know, management campaigns. There’s a lot of different things that maybe go above and beyond what you typically see out there. So I think all of those are just ways that we help to set ourselves apart.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, you make a couple great points there, Jason, especially about the data. We talk about it all the time. We’re seeing it all over the place, is how can we use AI, how can we use data to improve the guest experience? Numbers are just numbers until there’s actionable insights that are created with that data and being able to track that whether it’s social media analytics, whether it’s guest feedback, sentiment that you’re seeing trends over time, it’s really gonna be those hotel management companies, as you put it, hospitality intelligence, right? That really use the data to their benefit. And then as far as far as the power and numbers go, that’s also fantastic for independent hotel owners as well. Sometimes they don’t have the leverage that a big brand does. We’ve heard that from time to time. We visited the independent hotel show. We go there annually in Miami and hear that from, they’re just like, I, I just don’t have the resources that these big brands do. So being able to have kind of that white glove service approach certainly helps those independent hotels and can pack a punch too when you’re talking about marketing and some of the trends that you were talking about, you touched on social media and that’s another topic obviously we’re very, very passionate about on this digital marketing podcast, as you can imagine. What’s the relationship with social, with Springboard Hospitality and social media, and what role does it play in your overall marketing strategy?</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, for us, social media is extremely important. And I mean we’ve really, we really try to follow the, the trends and the data that are out there. Expedia had released a report not too long ago, I think it was earlier this year, showing sort of the, the guest journey and how social media ultimately dominated the inspiration phase. And that was a really powerful statistic for me, which helped us to further double down on evolving our model. We went from more of a centralized social media support effort to now being more of a in-market kind of cluster. So we look at, you know, contractors, in some cases, agencies where it makes sense to really be there to provide more content, more frequent posting, more real time types of actions on our social media accounts to ensure that we are staying relevant in that inspiration phase, that we are discoverable. And we know that that’s such a big part of that guest journey in terms of planning their trip. And so just making sure that we’re very front and center on on those channels.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, you touched on it and it carries throughout that, that traveler journey too, Jason, we’ve talked about it before. I mean, think about how excited you might be to go on a trip and you’re anticipating, you know, you’ve booked already, you got that pre-booking phase where you’re getting excited, you follow them on Instagram, you’re looking for events that might be popping up that they might be sharing on their Instagram feed, maybe, you know, some seasonal drinks by the pool or something like that that you’re looking forward to. So it really follows you social media from inspiration. Huge great place to obviously be discovered, but also to carry it throughout the entire journey. Even asking for advocacy at the very end of, you know, make sure you follow us for any deals, specials, promotions that we might have running, you know, if you, if you’ve taken any pictures, please share that with us so that we can repost and use that user generated content to how help our, our guests tell their story, right? Because sometimes they’re our best storytellers if we’re giving them the tools.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> I think one thing, you know, it’s important for us as hotelier to meet people where they are, right? And social media is a great place to do that. And I think that it’s ultimately you’re putting yourself out there and it’s a reflection of your brand. So the more that you are engaging with that channel, the more that you are sort of taking care of that channel, it’s gonna take care of you, right? Because ultimately to the point we’ve both made is that a lot of people are looking there for that inspiration. They’re looking there after they’ve looked at the website or maybe even before the website, right? But it’s probably the second most visited next to the website where they’re doing that additional research. So if you’re only posting once a week and you don’t have a really clear vision on what you want to get in front of the guests, they’re gonna notice that. And that’s gonna be reflected in their purchase decision</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Sometimes in itself tells a story, right? The inconsistency there, outdated information on your social media profiles you haven’t posted in the last six months. You’re posting a picture of a beautiful swimming pool when it’s the dead of winter and it’s not matching what the experienceis like today. This is a great way to reaffirm booking confirmation in a time where, you know, over the last couple years with the pandemic guests have come accustomed to saying on the fly, if I don’t like what I’m seeing, I can make an easy switch to a hotel across the street. So keeping them engaged during all the way up till they walk into your lobby and then some more, right? Follow us. Because we’re gonna be doing some really cool events and we’ve got some great programming that you can follow on our social media. So obviously me and you are in agreement there, social media, if you’re not on it certainly need to be. This is a great time going into 2025. We’re just doing a webinar this afternoon on doing conducting social media audits for hotels and make making sure that you’re set up for success in 2025. We’re gonna switch gears a little bit. Talk about an unfortunate headwind for our industry over the last couple years has been staffing unfortunate as it’s been, it’s really risen. I think the creativity level of brands, hospitality management companies that are looking for hospitality workers, whether it it’s more flexible schedules, they’re doing some different style of recruiting, what have been some maybe ways that Springboard Hospitality has recruited and retained talent and continued really to thrive and grow your portfolio in a time where it’s really hasn’t been that easy for most?</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. I think from a retention perspective, I’ll sort of start there. We do an engagement survey, which I ultimately think is a really intelligent move on our part in terms of checking in on team members all the way across the organization, right? And really getting a sense for how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking is working and not working. And I can tell you as sitting on the leadership team, that we really do take that feedback to heart and discuss it and look at ways to better improve the organization. So I think just by listening and hearing, what our team members have to say is a way that, you know, we do keep that engagement. I think things, we do have some unique incentives that I think are help with that retention piece as well. And I also think that like, at the end of the day, sometimes what makes people happy and what keeps people there is not always monetization or it’s not always truly a perk or a benefit. I think a lot of it is about leading with empathy. I think being grateful, showing appreciation, a simple thank you, and a text or an email goes a really long way. And so all of those things I think are ways that you keep people engaged, you keep them retained and you kind of keep that workforce or, or that team sort of motivated.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, no, absolutely. And one of the common threads that we’ve been hearing in this series is mentorship. And I think to your point about the monetization, sometimes you hear stories sometimes of saying, you went across the street, just for a little bit of a pay bump, but having someone that they feel like is a mentor to them is a really, really strong incentive to keep someone in a position. So making sure that you have leaders, that you have really, really transparent path to success stories within your organization as well, I think is really big for you and sharing that with your employees. So yeah, fortunately we’re hearing that this is hopefully slowing down and, you know, the staffing issue, but I do think, again, some good will come out of this because it really has turned our industry upside down on where we’re recruiting and the opportunities that it’s created for some. So this is my favorite part of the episode and I typically save this line of questioning for our spotlight series, where we typically will look at a one particular property, but in seeing your portfolio. Jason, you guys have such a fantastic portfolio. I want to quiz you on this, so I apologize in advance if these are tough, but favorite view at one of your properties. We’re gonna do some rapid fire questions here.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, I would say Pacific Edge in Laguna Beach, just staring out at the Pacific Ocean is pretty magical.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> I’m sure very Instagrammable, as we were talking about those social media, there’s tons of photos that come outta that view there. Fun fact about one of your properties.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, so this one’s interesting. One of our property in Anchorage, Alaska, there’s a retaining wall that holds up fourth Avenue and it runs underneath our hotel. So it’s almost like our hotel is holding up the street.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> That is a fun fact for sure. Favorite signature dish at one of your properties.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> I’m gonna actually, I’m gonna go with cocktail kind of in the same realm, but Green Lady, which is a speakeasy that we have in in Waikiki at Honolulu. Every cocktail is incredible there. A great old fashioned and great Manhattan. Shout out to Maddie, the bartender there. She’s incredible.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And then last but not least, favorite piece of art at one of your properties, Jason?</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> So at Hotel Irwin in Venice Beach, there’s a lot of great artwork scattered throughout the hotel in terms of the history of Venice Beach, but within one of the meeting spaces, it’s called Larry’s Loft, there’s a lot of really neat old photography in there. Lots of movies have been shot there from, from years and years ago, and so it’s just sort of, sort of a time capsule. So I think that one’s really cool.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> As we wrap up, I’d like to say you’ve taken us all over the country with this portfolio and this those line of questioning, I don’t think you duplicated any of the properties there. So, again, a fantastic portfolio. You have really cool, fun facts about that. As we wrap up as marketing professionals, you know, we’re always excited for the next thing, right? We’re ready to market and advertise that next big project or announcement or milestone as 2024 comes to a close. You talked about some of those acquisitions what are you most looking forward to for Springboard Hospitality in 2025 as we look to next year?</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, so there’s a couple of things that stand out for me. We have a project in Palm Springs that we just transitioned, so look for more to come on on that one in particular. I’m really excited about this property. I think internally really a couple of things that I’m excited about. One is shifting a little bit more into that commercial mindset and really bringing our disciplines together to solve problems. I go back to that hospitality intelligent piece and I think that having siloed data doesn’t benefit anyone. And so really it, it is a shift because it’s a way we haven’t done things before, but, you know, really getting everyone’s buy-in to start thinking about these properties holistically and thinking about them commercially. So I’m really excited about that for what’s to come in making some shifts.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> And then I think the other piece from a marketing perspective is having been with the company for about a year and a half, there’s a lot of foundation that’s been built, a lot of groundwork that’s been laid and going into 2025, we’ve got a lot of that in place now. And so we can, we’re now in a great position to sort of take it to the next level and do some more testing and learning, do some more creative and cool things to really help take these properties to a new performance level. So that’s super exciting.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Awesome. Well it sounds like you got your hands, you and your team got your hands full for 2025. We’ll keep an eye out for Springboard Hospitality and its continued success. Any final thoughts as we close out today, Jason? We covered a lot.</p> Jason Pirock:<br /> Yeah, no, I really appreciate lots of great questions and appreciate the conversation.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well thank you so much for joining us, Jason, on the Suite Spot. Thank you all for listening and we will talk to you next time on The Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>  </p>

00:26:32

152 – Booking.com’s Guest Review Score Update

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Tune in to the the latest Suite Spot episode to hear from Senior Product Manager at Booking.com, Laura Xhaferaj as she breaks down the guest review score update being rolled out by Booking.com and how this new innovation will impact travelers, hotels, and hotel management groups alike. </span></p> </p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Very pleased to bring you another incredible episode here, a unique episode, exciting episode. As you can tell from the title. We’ve got an update with one of the major players in hospitality, Booking.com and with me today to kind of break down this all important update is Laura Xhaferaj, Senior Product Manager at Booking.com. Laura, thank you so much for being on the Suite Spot with me.</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> We’re excited to share this news. I mean, this is a huge update that Booking.com is about to roll out that has a huge impact on hoteliers and travelers alike. But before we get into sharing this news, I’d love to start, since this is your first time on the Suite Spot, share a little bit about your hospitality background and your role at Booking.com as Senior Product Manager with our Suite Spot audience.</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> I am the Senior Product Manager for user-generated content at Booking.com. And you may hear me refer to my team as UGC, I have been leading initiatives that improve how we showcase guest review across the platform. My journey in hospitality started years ago, even before I joined Booking.com, and I’ve always been passionate about enhancing travel experience, whether it’s helping hotels connect with guests or finding new ways to elevate guest satisfaction through reviews. Working with UGC, I got to build features that bring authentic travel voice into the booking experience globally.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, I think this is one of those, I’m sure, an amazing role that you’re in to be able to kind of look and see what travelers are saying about their experiences with the hotel partners that you’re working with. Making sure that information is as accurate as possible so that guests and hotels alike can make the best booking decisions, make sure hotels are making the best operational decisions to improve the guest experience. So I’m sure it’s a really cool role to be in. You get a lot of feedback probably from both hoteliers as well as guests. At Travel Media Group we do a lot of innovation and, and updates and rollouts, sort of like what you’re going through and what we find is there’s always typically a why behind making these changes. Right. So I think maybe the best way to understand and update like this is to maybe talk about the guest review score update and the why behind it.</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> Of course, we initiated this change based directly on partner feedback partners highlighted that on our previous system, which calculated overall score using a simple average of users from the past three years had some key limitations for those who had made significant improvements such as renovations, upgrades in services or new guest facilities. The all the reviews still had too much weight slowing down the reflection of their progress. In response to this feedback, we are introducing a weighted review score where recent reviews have bigger influence. This adjustment means that hotels actively enhancing guest experience will see those efforts reflected more quickly in their scores, rewarding their commitment improvement. And it’s an update designed to encourage continuous progress and ensure travelers see the most relevant and recent experiences.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean this is what we talk to hotel partners all the time about, when they come to us and say, how can I improve my reputation? And maybe they have those reviews that just have been plaguing them for years. Obviously we’ve been having a staffing shortage in this industry for a while. You know, maybe there was a time where you were short staffed years ago that could still be having a really bad, uh, impact on reputation and you’re trying to play a little bit of catch up. So I think this is such a cool update needed. We spoke previously about, because with a rollout like this, Laura as you know, can’t just flick a switch. Right? I’m sure there’s a ton of research, ton of testing that’s done. We had spoke previously about the pilot markets and the comprehensive rollout of this update. Can you walk us through, give us a behind the scenes look of what that rollout looked like and really all the things that you did prior to officially announcing this guest review score update?</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> Certainly we took a phase approach to this rollout, starting with pilot countries to ensure a smooth transition. Our goal was to validate the concept with real data and learn directly from our partners about their needs. We began with smaller markets like Mountain and Iceland, and then expanded to larger regions such as Greece, Brazil, and Australia. During this pilot phases, we conducted interviews, sent surveys, and kept a close eye on how the change impacted partners and guests alike. One major insight was that partners prefer the preview period of two to three months to see the upcoming score change before it went live, which allows them to prepare and understand how their recent efforts are impacting their score. Another takeaway was the importance of clear accessible information about the change. Partners want detailed documentation, so we are committed to providing them with all the support they need.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, and we’re gonna talk about a little bit about that support. Because obviously with a rollout like this, there’s always questions, right? There’s always a little bit of anxiety that comes around with any sort of change. So what would you say to those hoteliers that are wondering, listening to this podcast, maybe hearing about this guest review score update for the first time on this podcast? How is this gonna impact their score as this score update is rolled out and implemented?</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> This update is all about recognizing and rewarding effort for hoteliers. It means that they have a real opportunity to influence their review scores more quickly by focusing on guest satisfaction. The more you invest in the guest experience, the sooner you will see that reflected in your score. It’s a powerful motivator to keep listening to feedback and continuously improve, not just after the stay, but even during it. As guest share their experiences by addressing feedback during the trip hotel have a chance to make adjustments, real time turning potential issues into positive experiences that are reflected in their scores sooner than ever.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we talk about that all the time on this podcast, Laura, about trying to keep a close ear to your guests. That every touch point in the guest experience, it doesn’t, we don’t just have to wait until afterwards till we get that feedback. If you’re able to meet that guest where they might be having an issue or a positive experience too, that could be a great opportunity to encourage them, we see that you’re having a great time here. We’d love if you left us some comments and feedback. When you get that request for a review or solicitation for a review. Going back to the pilot, you know, we spoke about one of the things you looked at was seasonal properties, and I think this really demonstrates, Laura, when you do a rollout like this, just the meticulous planning of this rollout. You talked about seasonal properties and you talked about properties with fewer rooms that really could see a smaller review flow, right? I mean, a property with 500 rooms gonna see a lot more review flow than let’s say a 32 room bed and breakfast. Talk to us about the pilot results for this segment of properties and those that might be concerned, Hey, I’m a seasonal property, or I don’t get that many reviews. How is this gonna impact me?</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> Great point. Seasonal properties were definitely a focus. Imagine a beach villa in south of France that only operates in the summer. Reviews will likely peak during the season while the rest of the year it’s quieter. Through the pilot, we learned that partners of seasonal properties sometimes worried that a single negative review in the off season might drag down their overall score. In order to address this, we designed a system to weight reviews by recency. So even if you get a lower rating in the off season, it won’t have a major impact. Those fresh high season reviews will carry more weight and reflect the experiences that guests are having in your busiest times. Also, having the score logic be more sophisticated enables us to make the score more fair to different review volumes and distributions across the seasonal home and chain hotel properties.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we saw some of the results from that pilot and some impressive stats when it came to seasonal and even smaller volume of review properties still not having an impact, but not having a negative impact on their scoring. I think it really comes down to what you said, Laura, at the top of the episode. It’s gonna be for those hotels that are focusing on the guest experience today, how can they improve that today that are gonna really see the benefits of this rollout? And I think overall it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna talk about that in a second, but what about those properties that are a part of a hotel group or chain?</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> This update is especially positive news for hotel chains. We know the chains often maintain high standards across their properties and work hard to ensure consistent experience for guests. With a new weighted review system change that are actively improving guest satisfaction, we’ll see those efforts reflected more quickly in their scores. In fact, through our interviews and feedback sessions, we have found that many chain properties are genuinely excited about this change. They’re eager to see their score more accurately reflect the experience they have been they’re delivering today for change. This update means that they can make swift strategic adjustments and see the effort rewarded in their scores. This visibility into recent improvements is valuable asset for change committed to providing great stays globally.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, I mean we’re hearing the same sentiment from our hotel partner our reputation hotel partners as well, Laura, that really put a lot of effort. I mean, think about how encouraging this will now be to, we just talked about it, a staffing shortage to say, Hey staff, let’s go out. Let’s get some five star positive reviews and now all of a sudden you can actually see an impact a lot quicker to your overall score than you might before this rollout. So this should be a really exciting and motivating time for hoteliers and their staffs to say, “Hey, we can make some major jumps on our score on Booking.com.” So really cool. But we really focus a lot on the hotelier and obviously this is a hotel marketing podcast, but ultimately I think this is gonna be mutually beneficial. That’s the beauty of our industry, right? We’re hoteliers as well as travelers. We do our own traveling and I think looking from a traveler’s perspective, this is gonna ultimately benefit them as well to put them in the best decision to make an informed booking decision based on recent review data.</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> Exactly. It’s a win-win for travelers. Recent experiences are crucial when choosing a stay. Research shows that travelers are more influenced by recent reviews than those from years back. So by focusing on recency, this update ensures that guests see an accurate reflection of the current guest experience at the property. For hotels, this means that guests will see the results faster, leading to better matches between traveler expectations and actual guest experience. This in turn, will trust and boost satisfaction for everyone.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. We talked about set the importance of setting proper expectations prior to a guest arriving. Some of those properties that have been performing at a four or 4.5 star service rating, but really in their overall store has been reflected a little bit lower because of maybe historical data. Should be really excited about this. I think this is a great way and way to look about this guest rollout, right? What advice, Laura? One of the biggest questions we get at Travel Media Group from our hotel partners is always looking to improve, right? Nobody’s satisfied with where they’re at. What advice would you share with hoteliers looking to improve their score on Booking.com, 2025 when this, this new rollout happens and beyond.</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> There are a few practical steps that hoteliers can take. First, make sure your property information is always accurate and up to date from photos to room description so guests know what to expect during their stay, provide helpful resources and ensure that you are available for any urgent issues after checkout. Encourage guests to share their feedback on Booking.com and remember, small gestures can make a big difference. A welcoming touch or a quick response to feedback can elevate the guest experience and boost satisfaction. Your score now reflects those efforts faster. So every improvement counts.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. I love that you brought up the speed of reaction, responding to a guest, the quicker that you can do that we even talked about even before leaving the review and trying to meet them at the guest experience to try to solve any issues or even solicit feedback during that time, I think is gonna be crucial during this rollout. Another thing I would say is just to be mindful of the score at all times. I mean, with something that can change so quickly now and you can have such an impact on it so quickly, it could be very fast changing. So making sure that you’re aware of getting notified, checking Booking.com of any recent reviews and feedback that are coming in. It’s gonna be very important to keep a close eye here because now those impacts can happen at a much faster pace. As we wrap up, as I mentioned at the top of the episode with a rollout like this, a global rollout like this, Laura, I’m sure you’re getting questions. You know, people want resources, they wanna find information. Where can our Suite Spot audience go if they still have questions about this rollout and the impacts that it’s gonna have?</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> We’ll provide extensive resources on partnerhub and through our review management platforms, partners can access documentation, best practices and guidance on these channels to understand the full scope of the update. Our support team is also on hand to answer any questions and guide partners as they adjust to the new system.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And Laura and I will be conducting a webinar in early December as well to hotel partners to kinda roll through this, this guest update, make sure everyone has their questions answered. But overall, this is super exciting. Congratulations to you and your team. I’m sure this is a long time coming and I’m sure you’re anxious to get this rolled out for everyone. So as we wrap up today, Laura, any final thoughts, anything to share with our audience?</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> This update is all about valuing continuous improvement and enhancing guest satisfaction. We believe that we believe and have heard from partners that their system is fairer for everyone from partners to travelers, and it fosters healthy competition in the marketplace. For partners, it’s a chance to show their commitment to guest experience and see that care reflected in their score by focusing on creating memorable stays, staying engaged with guest feedback and keeping property details up to date partners can build strong reputations and attract even more travelers.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Which is what everyone wants here listening to the podcast. And Laura, we appreciate you and your team, listening to that feedback from hoteliers and implementing these changes so that again, really a win-win situation for both the hotelier and the traveler. Thank you so much for joining me, Laura, explaining and understanding this new guest review score update. Thank you again. And we’re excited to be collaborating with you on a webinar like I said, next month with Booking.com.</p> Laura Xhaferaj:<br /> Sure. And thank you for having me. We are super excited to see this change go live and thank you.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> All right, awesome. Thank you so much and thank you for listening to the Suite Spot. We will talk to you next time to join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>  </p>

00:14:59

151 – 5 Key Takeaways from the 2024 Hospitality Show

<div class="et_pb_section et_pb_section_1 et_section_regular"> <div class="et_pb_row et_pb_row_1"> <div class="et_pb_column et_pb_column_4_4 et_pb_column_1 et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough et-last-child"> <div class="et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_1 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light"> <div class="et_pb_text_inner"><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this special episode, Suite Spot Host, Ryan Embree covers 5 key takeaways from the 2024 The Hospitality Show that took place in San Antonio, Texas. </span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">The industry event was one-of-a-kind and featured incredible panelists, vendors, guest speakers, interviews, and much more from the hospitality industry. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tune in now to get the latest details from the event and why you should be excited for next year!</span></p> </p> <em><strong>Episode Transcript</strong></em><br /> <em>Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.</em></p> Ryan Embree:</p> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today is episode 151. Just want a moment to recognize 151 episodes. Wanna thank our audience, uh, for being with us, uh, whether this is your first episode or 151, thank you so much for all the support and we are so excited to bring you another incredible episode. This, as you can see from the title The Hospitality Show, are five key takeaways. We just returned from San Antonio. In fact, again, just like last year’s takeaway episode, I haven’t even had the opportunity to do my laundry to get in my normal Travel Media Group attire. So, I was just so wanting to get these takeaways to you from the episode. First off, an absolutely incredible event. The Hospitality Show, this is the second annual one put on. The first one was last year. Inaugural show was last year in Las Vegas. This in San Antonio. Want to thank the city of San Antonio for hosting to our A HLA Questex. They put on an incredible show to all the sponsors. If you have not already looked into or are thinking about attending the hospitality show, it is a must attend event. So many interviews, so many insights, content. They had some incredible keynotes, guest speakers, so many cool activities. And of course, hospitality. You have to be able to throw a party and host people, right? And they absolutely nailed it in San Antonio, celebrating Dia de DEOs. Just did a fantastic job. So let’s get into some of these takeaways that I got, and it’s gonna start with one of the most prevalent topics and patterns, ai, in fact, in these top five takeaways, two of my key takeaways have to do with ai. The first is, from a hotelier’s perspective, seems to be this just battle right now of where AI is best utilized with our industry. And there’s this push and pull, whether it’s for efficiency, reducing costs, which we know right now is really, really hurting a lot of hotels across the nation, whether it’s rising construction costs, operational costs, staffing and wages continue to grow, uh, and get more costly. So is it for efficiency that it’s best use? Or is it to drive revenue? Right? Top line revenue. And, and there was kind of this, this little just debate of, of what is AI best used for right now? And, uh, you know, there was a, a incredible panel on ai. There were several of them, but the one I had the pleasure, uh, there was one guest speaker who kind of talked through the stages of AI and where we are and actually broke it down into three stages. And we’re on the precipice of, of the third right now. So go through the first one, which was predictive, right? That’s your chat, GPT just kind of giving us maybe, hey, write me an email answering sort of questions for you. Uh, and then we kind of slowly moved into this co-pilot. You know, you see a lot of these big companies kind of roll out this co-pilot that was really supposed to do actions for you. And now the panelists has had kind of challenged that were into this third, which is assistive and, uh, autonomous and agent kind of stage of ai where this would be kind of the human touch mix with ai. And I think he’s, he’s definitely onto something as far as, you know, some of the things that we really could make more efficient portfolio requests, right? That was the great example of how many portfolio requests. And yet there still has to be human touch involved. And if we can just figure out a way to kind of use AI to really, you know, help us expedite that process and become more efficient, think of how much time that’s giving back your staff. How many times, uh, we’re answering that phone call, answering that email, text message for a portfolio request, right? You know, in fact, one of the panelists was talking about kind of the, the gap in technology in our industry specifically and saying that we’re definitely making progress, but are we there? And, and her cited example was, was ordering room service, right? So we’ve got this great QR code, you look at the menu and everything like that, you still have to pick up a manual phone or your cell phone to order it from the hotel. So we start there, we start at this technologically, you know, sound place with the QR code, but then at the very end we’re, we have to get these, we have to get that human touch involved. And if there’s a way to automate that process, again, how much smoother and efficient and for the guest side that’s gonna feel and impact the guest experience, which what we’re trying to do, you know, I was talking to Alexi Kajavi president at Questex Hospitality and Wellness about this in our interview, which, um, all of the interviews that, that I’m gonna be talking about today on this episode, you can find on our YouTube page, we’re gonna be releasing them over the next couple weeks. And I was talking to him about, there’s gotta be a feeling of this fomo when it comes to AI for hoteliers. You know, there was someone from Salesforce on a panel talking about how they have implemented AI into their work processes and order to essentially get a year’s worth of rollouts and updates into one quarter. And you hear something like that from a hotelier standpoint and you say, am I really taking advan full advantage of what AI is? And I think we have these grand ideas of when we hear ai, when we hear, you know, technology within the hotel industry. I think we go straight to maybe some sci-fi esque type things where, you know, you’ve got the robots delivering things, you’re going ultra speed when it comes to your operations to processes, you can cut down on staff. And I certainly think that there’s going to be a time where we get there, but really right now it’s becoming small steps. How do we implement the power of AI in our everyday lives as hoteliers? You know, one of the things we did at Travel Media Group was launch the guest experience snapshot, which looks at your guest reviews. AI gets that information and kind of summarizes that information, gets it back to you, not just with emojis or a thumbs up or thumbs down, but actually blurbs bullet points into what guests are actually saying about their stay. And then it actually provides you with suggestions and recommendations on what you can do to improve the guest experience. So, small example there, but a very powerful way to implement AI into your everyday operations so you can feel a little bit better about when that question’s asked of, are you truly taking advantage of AI and it’s power and capability? You can at least say, yes, I’m on the path to doing that. ’cause I think right now we’re at that place where a lot of hoteliers, if you ask them, are you taking full advantage? They’ll probably answer no. But if you ask them what pieces of the hotel operation have changed since you implemented ai, I think there’s a lot of hoteliers that can say yes. You know, we have implemented some AI into our everyday operations, and if we can just take those baby steps, you know, hospitality, we love it as an industry, but we’re very slow to implement technology. You know, COVID, uh, certainly accelerated that path. AI’s gonna continue to do that, but overall, there’s a whole panel and session on this is how can we accelerate technology into our industry? But it really should be about empowering, uh, your employees. So how can I use AI to again, assist with portfolio polls a request when guests are are asking me, how can I summarize my guest feedback like the TMG guest experience snapshot, these little things. And, and with a younger generation kind of coming into the workforce, a lot of these college kids right now have had chat GBT for the last two years, right? They’ve probably been told not to use it in their college courses, but as they graduate and get to the workforce, guess what they are going to be used to working with these AI and new technology. So if you don’t have something laid out or if you have an inefficient process, a manual process, it really could hurt you in the recruiting front too. Your younger generation, that younger generation coming up into the hospitality, that new generation that we’re talking about on the college campus call that we did at the Suite Spot, they’re ready for that. They’re, they have an appetite for new technology. Make sure that you’re providing that for them. So AI from a hotelier’s perspective, number one, key takeaway number two, FMB is the place to be. Okay? So a lot of talk about FMB in the hotel. Now, FMB has always been ingrained in the guest experience, the hotel. And in fact, we had an amazing guest that we interviewed at the Hospitality Show from Hampton by Hilton, uh, sharing some really tasty news about a, uh, brand new waffle that was just introduced at Hilton. But now hotels are starting to think beyond breakfast. You know, there’s a reason why that is. On our guest sentiment reports at Travel Media Group, there’s a reason why breakfast and f and B always find its way into the top 10 and sometimes even top five most mentioned tags in guest reviews. It’s a major piece of a hotel experience. And hoteliers are seeing that. The hospitality show really leaned into that this year for the first time, they had an outdoor hospitality showcase where they were showing really creative ways that you could use your outdoor space for f and b, whether that’s bar, whether that’s food. You had, uh, uh, an incredible keynote from Jose Andres, the, uh, famed restaurateur and philanthropist who had just some incredible stories with some recent natural disaster and how food and hospitality, he was also really grateful and thankful for those hotels that stay open during those natural disasters so that he and his team can go into these disaster areas and provide food for those that are most need at that time. But it goes beyond that, you know, hotel restaurants, you know, I had Paul Cory on from Cory Hospitality, he mentioned it. Hotel restaurants are now becoming community gathering spots. We’re seeing at Travel Media Group more interest than ever on hoteliers and properties that we work with that wanna manage their online reputation and, and respond to their, uh, guest reviews that are leaving reviews about their restaurants because they know that that’s a powerful differentiator for their property. This is also a really amazing opportunity for you to showcase your local area, your culture, personalization, hotels, new developments. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing multiple GMs, managing director of brand new developments. And the place where I really hear the passion shine through in those episodes is when they’re talking about their f and b and the meticulous planning that goes around those restaurants, hoteliers, developers, they’re seeing this as a, a revenue generator. It’s a differentiator. And it’s also, again, a way for you to really embrace your local area, your culture. I mean, San Antonio, we had the Chief Strategy Officer from Visit San Antonio, another interview we conducted at the Hospitality Show. He was talking all about how they’re really focused on Michelin’s coming to Texas for the first time, how they’re really focusing on cuisine and, uh, f and b travel, which is, is is a growing, growing trend right now. So f and b, certainly the place to be. My second key takeaway at the Hospitality show. Third key takeaway, sustainability. I love these conferences be, I love the hospitality show in general because all of the brands, all of the power players from management companies are present at this show. They have a a, a really big presence there. And what you find is in hospitality, obviously there’s a lot of differences, but there’s a lot of the same. And those big issues like sustainability, responsible, uh, green travel starts to rise to the top. You had multiple brands making commitments that we’ve seen over the last couple years to green initiatives. One of the panelists kind of use the phrase little to bigs. So over the years, if you’ve traveled anywhere, you’ve probably seen those small shampoo or lotion bottles, body wash, and now those were used to be those little plastic containable. Now we’re in kind of a dispenser mode, right? So you’re little to bigs. There was some incredible stats shared of the plastic and frankly, the savings that were, uh, monetary savings that were associated, uh, with that trend and how more and more ho hotels are adopting this. But one thing I would challenge the ho hotel and hospitality industry to do is to really educate the guests on why we’re making these changes. I think one of the best things that really became popular, you know, three to five years ago was the housekeeping rule, right? Keeping your towels up versus throwing ’em on the floor knowing if you wanted a fresh towel or not, right? That was effectively communicated to the guests and there was a real reason and kind of responsibility around it as your guests to make that decision. You almost felt accountable for that. If you were keeping your towel, you know, you felt maybe a little bit like you were doing a little bit of good, right? A little bit of green travel there. Some of these changes that we’re implementing are fantastic for sustainable travel. They just have to be properly communicated to our guests, right? Recent example for me personally was at a a, a great hotel in San Antonio. The water pressure was a little bit lower than I preferred, right? But as, as I’m sitting there thinking about that, wishing that water pressure was a little higher, I started thinking, well, maybe this was a, a something implemented from the hotel for a low flow, uh, water system for green as kind of a sustainable initiative for the property. But I didn’t see any sort of cards talking about that. You know, I didn’t see anything that communicated to me that that was the case. Now, I knew that because I work in the hospitality industry and I knew that that is a sustainable practice that hotels do, but for a lot of guests they don’t know that, right? So challenging hotels to really communicate any from anything locally sourced food at your f and b, if that’s locally sourced, that goes a long way. Your guests will appreciate that. Any green initiative, make sure that’s communicated. It makes for some great social media posts. Goodwill could be a differentiator for you, especially with the younger generation, which we’re gonna talk about. You know, corporate travel, they’re gonna start looking a lot closer at this. I heard, you know, the other day talking about monetary budget and a carbon budget on corporate travel. They are going to start really focusing in on those properties, those hotels, cities in general that have really green sustainable practices that they’re implementing at their properties. You know, some of the questions that were raised on the sustainable panel, things like renovations, right? I think a stat was brought up where there was actually more of an environmental impact on bringing in all the materials that they needed for that renovation than it was actually the efficiency savings that they were gonna get post renovation. So how do we manage that? Sourcing our materials for renovations? What do we do with the waste Best? Western was talking about how they implemented something where there needs to be 50 inch TVs in all of their hotels by a certain date. Some of the franchisees were asking, what do we do these existing TVs, right? Isn’t that creating more waste? So these are important questions that our industry has to answer for the most part. The good news is, is that we’re getting there, we’re making progress. A lot of commitments. A HLA, there’s some amazing things with Green Key Global, which they just announced this past year, absolutely amazing to see. It’s gonna start impacting bookings. I talked about this, especially younger travelers who prioritize this. This is something that’s important to them, right? We think of when I pick a hotel location, a price, we could see a day where a traveler looks at price, location reviews and they also could look at what’s the green initiatives? What’s my carbon footprint? We’re already seeing that on airlines that will show you the carbon footprint that you’re taking. Which one is most efficient as far as your flight goes. So I it is, it is not within the realm and it’s also gonna be, IM important to recruiting employees, right? When you’re talking about hiring someone and you’re able and, and they’re looking at a job, a front desk agent for your property or the property next door, very similar pay, very similar location. Maybe opportunity for growth is a distinguishing factor that you prioritize sustainability in your operations at your hotel. That is absolutely something that someone would find as compelling and could be a, a positive differentiator for you in your recruitment efforts. So again, keep all of that in mind as you move forward and start to implement these practices moving forward. We had credible idea that’s being implemented right now. One of the Suite Spot guests that we had, uh, I believe a year ago said along with the physical invoice, you know, monetary invoice for your stay, you also were included a carbon invoice. So you know, the carbon footprint that essentially your stay cost quote unquote. I just think really, really creative idea. There could be something where, you know, people get competitive showcase that online could make for some great marketing. So sustainability, uh, my key takeaway number three from the hospi, the 2024 hospitality show. Number four, back to ai. This is where we started the episode. We talked about AI with hotels, hotel owners and and management and operations. What about AI and the travelers journey? Really, really cool things that we heard could be coming down the pike. Travel planning with ai. You know, one of the things that the panelists was talking about, how the younger generation has shown that they are prioritizing experience, overt material. That is fantastic news for the hotel industry. They are gonna continue to do just as much research as you would do on Amazon. If you’re buying a new car. Think about the amount of research that you do when you’re buying a new car. So this younger generation that is prioritizing experience over material. They are going to do their due diligence, they have the channels to do it, and they have maybe different channels that we’ve been prioritizing as a hotel industry, right? Social media, we’ve seen completely be a place where TikTok right now is more of a search engine than Google. For some hotels, that’s a scary thought, especially if you don’t have an account. Instagram is someone where they’re sharing information. But with that, a big thing that they were talking about AI and maybe some of the kind of caution flags for hotels out there in hospitality is we’re gonna fake feedback is gonna become a real problem here soon. Whether that’s deep fake images, fake blog posts, fake guest reviews, we know that that’s a huge problem. This is gonna continue to be an issue for hotels and it’s really going to impact those that really rely too heavily on AI to create content for them online authenticity is was the word of the year last year, right? And it’s only going to become more powerful. If you can create authentic experience that guests share a trusted guest share on credible sources out there, you will have an advantage because this fake feedback is limitless. Really. If you wanted to create as much fake imagery about your hotel, you can, there’s ai, generat, uh, image generators out there, but it’s gonna negatively impact your business. In fact, one of the suggestions was actually to hire a team and that we might see this in the future, a team to audit your online presence to look for fake feedback, look for fake images, fake blogs, anything that looks inauthentic online. The more we see this, the more especially younger generation who’s coming up, they have a lot of money now. They’re getting into the workforce, they’re starting to travel more. They are able to see this with a different eye than we were five years ago. ’cause it just wasn’t as prevalent. So number four, key takeaway AI in the traveler’s journey. I’m excited every, everyone on this listening to this podcast is a traveler. So there, there’s some really cool, innovative ways that you can start searching for travel, but it’s going to be the hotels on the other side that are leveraging that properly and authentically that are going to have the competitive advantage there. Last and final key takeaway, this is the first year that they actually conducted these on the main stage was the GM of the Year awards. And the reason, this is my fifth takeaway. We just work in such an awesome industry. Some of the nominees, winners and their stories. I would absolutely encourage you look up that GM of the year and hear some of the stories and you will just be moved by the hospitality spirit in some of these people. Um, from everything for people that have been in this industry for 35, 40 years and still have a passion for it and have, you know, we talk about in sports how coaches typically have coaching trees and the amount of managers and hospitality leaders that one person can impact is absolutely insane to think about. And when it’s, when it’s recognized, it’s such a powerful thing to, you know, helping people in natural disasters. You know, one of the GMs was recognized, you know, had to go through those fires last year in Hawaii. And to hear the stories and how that hotel opened its doors to its employees, to the local community and the impact that that hotels and hoteliers have on their, their local community can’t be understated. And it was a very, very powerful piece. I’m so happy that that was on highlighted and showcased on the main stage this year. I hope they continue to do it again. We just have such an incredible industry. We had the pleasure of interviewing one of the GM of the Year nominees, Michael Milon, and we have an interview with him. He’s also an FIU professor, so we got to talk about our visit there in the Suite Spot college campus cr. But yeah, my fifth and final takeaway, it’s just, we just are in such incredible industry. It’s to hear, uh, some of those stories was just so inspiring. So happy that they do that because that’s really what makes our industry great, is the people that work there. So those are my five key takeaways from the second annual Hospitality show. So happy that I was able, that had the pleasure of, of joining Plan on being there in Denver next October. Plan for it as well. Again, if you haven’t been thinking about it, definitely make the trip. It is well worth it. Thank you for listening to The Suite Spot and we’ll talk to you next time.To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</div> </div> <!-- .et_pb_text --> </div> <!-- .et_pb_column --> </div> <!-- .et_pb_row --> </div> <!-- .et_pb_section -->

00:22:56

150 – Introducing: Guest Experience Snapshot powered by TMG OneView®AI

The Guest Experience Snapshot powered by TMG Oneview® AI is here!</p> Tune in to hear from the Chief Technology Officer at Travel Media Group, Jason Lee, on the latest technological innovation being offered to hoteliers as a part of our digital solutions for hotels.</p> This new offering uses generative AI in a unique way to help hoteliers interpret guest feedback and dial in on how they can improve the guest experience at their properties</p>  </p> <em><strong>Episode Transcript</strong></em><br /> <em>Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.</em></p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check-in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. If you are watching us here on YouTube, we have a few announcements to make. First, we’ve hit an incredible milestone. This is Suite Spot, 150 episodes. Thank you all. I just wanna take a moment before we get started on this great episode that we have today to thank everyone for taking the time to listen to us for all of your support. You know, 150 episodes is something absolutely insane saying it out loud. So again, thank you. And we have a very familiar guest who I feel like we’ve been on quite a number of these episodes. Jason, our Chief Technology Officer at Travel Media Group. Jason Lee, thank you again for joining me on the Suite Spot.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Thank you, Ryan. Really excited to talk to you about this today.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we’re super excited. And if you’re watching us, like I said on YouTube, if you’re not, first of all encourage you go to our YouTube channel, you’re gonna find some exclusive content there that you’ll only find on YouTube. But if you are watching us on YouTube, you’ll see we might have a little bit different feel and vibe. We have moved into a brand new Suite Spot. We are so excited to showcase this new space. It was custom built. You are gonna see all types of new looks from this space. New, exciting content, so be sure to follow and subscribe The Suite Spot. We’ve got so much jam packed for you. But speaking of innovation and new, that is exactly what we’re here to talk about. Jason, we have had a number of episodes talking about the incredible developments that you and your dev team here at Travel Media Group and some of the innovation that you’ve put out there. This might be one of the most innovative, the guest experience snapshot powered by TMG OneView ai. Before we get talking about it, what we’ve come to learn is with these innovations, there’s always kind of a story or a why behind it. Walk us through that with this guest experience snapshot.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Well, for a long time, I mean, we obviously accumulate reputation data. So we’re, we get data from all the sites, we get it from all the hotels. And so we have been, anybody who’s seen any of our stuff knows, we have lots of numbers, lots of ways of kind of creating different types of metrics, and showing those metrics in various forms. And I think that’s really sort of industry standard where we get a metric or a KPI, we sit on that, we manage to that. And in some ways you sort of lose like what that KPI is for. So you’re sort of like almost the purpose for your improvement of a KPI is the KPI. Instead of for what the KPI was originally for. And I think with reputation, we sort of get into that where you have so much data that you sort of lose, you lose track of what is most important. And so what we wanted to do is even going deeper than sentiment analysis. So sentiment analysis really was this natural language processing that we have been doing for quite a while where we take sentence chunks and we look at word modifiers and things like that to create positive, neutral and negative statements inside of a review and then take those down further into the various aspects of a guest stay. With this though, with generative AI, we have an opportunity to actually pull even further than that and take, it’s not just the metrics. So what you’ll find is when you look at the guest experience snapshot, there is no metric on it. It’s literally the text of the guest. It’s the experience a guest had and the text that multiple guests had. So the text that of that experience. So for example, if a bunch of guests really loved the experience at the front desk with, with the staff at the front desk, you would see most guests mention an amazing front desk experience. And then there might be a front desk clerk’s name called out inside of that sentence. And then you’ll see maybe 17 mentions. And so what that’s doing then is it’s saying, here’s sort of like, it’s accumulating all of this text and saying from that, here’s this thing that went right. And then the same thing for thing, something that went wrong. And in the industry we really don’t have anything like that. I think TripAdvisors sort of went out there and created sort of a summary of guest sentiment that they put out. They’re like, oh, this is AI generated and it’s a summary of guest sentiment. But inside of like the ops side or where I’m maybe even evaluating what’s going on at this hotel from a management standpoint, all I have is metrics I don’t have unless I read one review at a time.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, to put it in perspective, Jason, the educational webinars that we put on with reputation and social media, one of my kind of best practices was to physically print out some of your reviews and start highlighting those keywords that you’re seeing over and over again. So this is obviously the more technological next step to that, but also can give you some insights on how to improve on maybe the things that you’re falling short of.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> No, absolutely. And I think that’s again, what makes this so powerful is that you’re coming out of maybe the emotion of a number, you know, and the emotion around the number to a KPI that you’re now getting into actual guest sentiment. The other issue with single review analysis, let’s say, is that it’s easy, very easy and common for you to take an issue, a single issue that a guest had and discard that as a one-off to say that this was circumstantially, this series of events happened, that this guest had a bad stay or they had a bad experience here, but this only happened to this guest, not to anybody else. So what we sort of see it, we see it in aggregate. So we sort of, of, as we’re responding to reviews or even looking at review data as a whole, we can sort of see this bigger picture. But as you’re sort of ingesting review by review either through alert system of your brand or through one view with TMG, you’re still just getting these little snippets instead of all this together. So what the other big purpose of this is to create this thing called interrater reliability, which basically, so in order for there to be a sentence chunk in the guest experience snapshot, multiple guests are, have to have had the same experience. And so that’s another big, the very, it’s a key point of this. So this is also something, so that’s why we start with positive and then go to negative is that you have a bunch of guests that are having great experiences. Here they are. Right. And then here you have the same, you have another bunch of guests that are having experiences that, that are really an opportunity operationally or an opportunity from a service standpoint, but you can now see them and you can’t discount it as a one-off.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And sometimes that’s tough to do because, one of the things that now I challenge hoteliers with this, with this guest experience snapshot is say, what do you think are issues at your property? And match them up against what people are actually saying in your reviews, or what do you think people love about your property? And see if there’s alignment there. I think as hoteliers, we tend to think that we know our hotel better than anyone else, but our guests are really telling us at a moment’s notice what are the positive and negative things that they are experiencing at that time. And as we know, not every single person is going to a review site to leave that feedback. So if your inner rate of reliability is 6 or 7 mentions on an issue, that could really be three to four, five times more than what you’re seeing and guests are experiencing.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Correct. I think you take really, like probably the key pieces of sentiment, right? So probably the most looked at piece of sentiment is cleanliness. So you look at cleanliness, often we will see positive and negative cleanliness sentiment, and they will, they will be the top numbers. They’ll be the most people mentioned cleanliness, and the most people mentioned dirtiness. So it fits into that cleanliness, positive negative. So you have the same thing actually in the guest experience snapshot, but what we find in the guest experience snapshot is different types of mentions of cleanliness. I loved how the pool area was clean and beautiful. I loved the lobby. Right. And then there might be another mention there, then there’s multiple mentions of a bathroom issue. So when you see that you can, it’s way more you can diagnose that so much easier than saying, well, some of the guests like cleanliness and some of ’em don’t. It’s a 50/50.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And it’s one of those things where if guests are reading reviews about your cleanliness in a negative light before they’ve even stepped on property, that has lowered the bar for what they think clean is for your property, they could come in and see if they’ve been reading all day reviews on multiple sites about, Hey, this room is dirty, you’re gonna come in naturally with a different eye than if you would’ve come in and not known that information. So this is really good to kind of take from an operational standpoint, but the AI doesn’t stop there, which is giving you that information. It actually gives you some ways to improve the guest experience too, which I think is really, really cool and unique.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Yeah. So we didn’t want to just leave it at that. And that’s why we also have these bundled in months. That’s why it’s a month at a time. And so we added something called recommendations, and it’s a really cool part of this, and it probably was the trickiest piece of training that we did by far. Because if you kind of leave generative AI to its own devices, it kind of, it says a bunch of crazy stuff. So we had to really reign it in and take real world scenarios and real world fixes. But what’s kind of cool about this is that things that you sort of go, you look at that are, that are maybe causing guest friction, but you as a hotel, you look at and you’re like, eh, you know what, how am I gonna change that? My hotel’s near a busy road? How am I gonna change roads? I can’t do that. So some of the recommendations that we have are really more, maybe not as much about how do you fix that? How do you fix the physical plant of your property? But it’s more about how do you inform guests? How do you create a situation where guests know the situation they’re walking into, you put them in the best possible position to set an expectation for their stay. And so some of that has to do with that. It’s about training your front desk to handle these situations in a different way.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely. And you know, it’s educating the guests before they arrive. We’ve talked about that. By doing that in things like review responses, social media makes for a great way to do that. You know, one of the examples would be if someone says the lack of variety of food within your breakfast, right? Instead of maybe just talking about your breakfast on social media, show exactly what that breakfast looks like. And then all of a sudden, now I know what to expect when I come on property. I’m not expecting this breakfast buffet, this giant breakfast buffet. I know exactly what I’m getting. Might not necessarily turn it around and say, this is a great variety, but it actually will lessen the blow and maybe improving your reputation on a few points. But it could be something where that recommendation also says maybe add variety. Right? And talk about that. And we’ve heard stories. I mean, we talk to hoteliers every single day and encourage them to make little tweaks and changes like that. And the guest experience snapshot, month over month looking at that will give you a good indicator of the sentiment of what guests are feeling about those changes.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Absolutely. It’s that kind of like, interesting thing. So it’s not like we’re telling you how to run your hotel. It’s just giving you some, like, some ideas that these little irritants that are happening. I’ll give you an example. We had a hotel, that we sort of were looking at from the beginning. And so we’ve had this now live for three months, and in the first month we noticed that they were having issues with their shower doors, like the doors specifically. There was a bunch of mentions in the first, in the first time we looked at it. And so the next month came, and again, there were mentions of the doors and it had a little bit of a different text, but it was the same mention. The third one had the same mention. And so, you know, so the recommendations are sort of like varying a little bit, but still trying to be like, Hey, you know, I wanna look into this. And I do think it’s those kinds of things, is keeping it top of mind. You’re not gonna fix everything all the time. You know, there’s things that, that are gonna be stuff that maybe are part of your renovation or they’re part of other things, but it’s about awareness that they’re causing guest friction. And talking to that, one thing that’s sort of hard in operations is you’re, you’re balancing so many other things and just getting to that space where you’re saying, yeah, this is a problem. And admitting that to yourself and saying, yeah, this is a problem. But then being proactive about it. I guarantee any hotel you’re listening to this podcast right now has rooms at their hotel right now that they rent last. It’s like the last rooms I rent because I know there’s problems. So I know there’s gonna be issues down this corridor. But that’s what this is really about. It’s about taking this data and making it very accessible, very usable.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And we’ve spent a lot of time on this podcast episode talking about the negative things. And one of the things is it also provides all the great sentiment that guests are saying, and this could be a great gameplan and blueprint for you for a social media strategy if you are seeing that people love attractions, restaurants, location, start sharing the businesses that are near your location to just even further amplify all the things that guests love about the property. So I know we’ve talked a lot about recommendations and fixing things and obviously the things, the low hanging fruit that we can fix to improve the guest experience, we’re always looking to do that. But it’s also a great guidebook on using what people, what guests love to market the hotel. Right?</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a lot of really great points inside there, and I think social media is a great place to use it. So, you know, we have really friendly people at our front desk and our guests talk to us about it all the time. You know, why not, why not mention it?</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And there’s also some really cool use case and potentially using competitor data, right? We’ve talked about that on this podcast, on educational webinars. Sometimes when you’re reading those reviews about guest cleanliness and you don’t happen to have a cleanliness problem highlighting things like a housekeeper for the month, talking about your cleanliness protocols, subconsciously, when you see that and your competitors have struggling with their cleanliness scores, now all of a sudden you have the upper hand competitive advantage. And we’re always looking for that, especially in a really crowded competitive market there.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> But I think this type of data to your point where you were just talking about, I think you can print this out and bring it to your front desk meeting. Talk about the positive things that are going on. Really praise people for the, the positive comments that are coming in and then say, Hey, and then we also add some stuff we need to work on for this month, you know, and let’s, let’s, let’s do it. We will revisit this next month. So it’s a, it’s kind of a cool way to, you know, same thing with housekeeper maintenance, but it, I think it’s a very kind of portable, cool thing you can use inside of these meetings to help make things better.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. It’s so cool. And, and be mindful also of the season at which you’re looking at this, right? I always talk about summer being the ultimate stress test for a lot of these properties. You might be able to keep that room that you were talking about unoccupied throughout the winter just because your occupancy isn’t there. But all of a sudden, on summer you’re renting that thing every single night. And problems maybe that were like minor issues are now starting to bubble up into major problems during those summer months. We saw an influx, a huge influx. I mean, you guys were on pace for responding to reviews to what, what was the number?</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Like over 40,000 a month.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. An incredible amount of reviews, which is fantastic, bcause a lot of hoteliers saw those guests. And that made for a very busy travel season. But it also can really uncover some things looking year to year, month to month, all of those variables there are gonna really create some cool patterns and trends. Give you some extra insights into the, the property.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Yeah. We launched this in summer, so we did see a lot of, like, to your point, we saw a lot of AC climate control stuff. You know, because it could be going back to a stress test. It’s your first stress test, with a full hotel and everybody using the AC.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Let’s talk about AI because I feel like one of the things that we’ve been seeing, whether it be on social media or reading and publications and stuff like that, is the use case for AI within hospitality typically in an industry that I would argue is a little bit slower to get to technology, implement technology, but we respond to reviews. Right. Super important. We’ve talked about the importance of responding reviews, hit some milestones with, I think we’re closer to 1.8 million guest reviews responded to. Maybe there’s some hoteliers on here that are saying, well, why not use AI for responding to reviews? What would you say to those hoteliers?</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Generative AI has come a very long way, and it feels like almost like weekly. New models are coming out, new pieces to this puzzle are coming out. So not just text, but also image and other stuff that it’s just unbelievable. Just incredible. But we’re still kind of in this weird space, I think, and especially when it comes to review response. So I think you get to this space where you can, there’s spots where you could use it but not yet hear. And the reason why we have not gone there and, and we’re actually really careful about this and very deliberate about this. We’re using it in tech summary and some of these other places to create better analytics. But when it comes to communicating with the guests, we’re very deliberate in that space. And the reason why we are is because we see that as actual communication. We don’t see that as some sort of throwaway platitude from AI. We see this as, this is a, this is a human being who stayed with us, and we want to be as part of that conduit between the hotel and their guest. Our responsibility is to represent them in the best possible way, not just to the guest who wrote it, but to all the people that read it. And we think, you know, the primary pillars of of review response have to do with communication. It’s authentic communication to the guest who wrote this review. And if you do that correctly, you do that in a really sincere way, it resonates with the guest who’s reading it. And guess what, you get some dividends with the OTAs for responding to all your reviews and other things on top of that, you know, you get three really powerful pieces of ROI out of review response. But I think if you don’t have that first part, if that is insincere and that’s funky, and AI uses very specific language. And you’ll see vocabulary that is not normally used in the course of communication that a lot of AI uses. You could spot it in emails that you get sometimes you spotted in these various spots. And, and I guarantee an insincere, verbose response is probably AI or template. And so we don’t use either at this point, you know, in the foreseeable future, especially for negative reviews, I don’t ever see that happening just because you have to be, I think in the moment, sincere acknowledging the issue and looking to create recovery.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And what I would say to that is, if not in hospitality, then where, right? I mean, as far as we are looking for a human to human, as we’ve learned, this is the oldest industry out there hosting people. What have we heard over the years of, oh, well at one point we’re just gonna have a virtual check-in and that’s never come to pass. And how many times are we seeing that sometimes a experience is make or break at the front desk because of another person behind the desk? And I think that is a great illustration of why this human to human communication, can it be done? Sure. But it’s not gonna be as impactful. And as you mentioned, as more inauthentic communication begins to rise. And we’re seeing that in our emails every single day. The authenticity is gonna start to bloom out of these organizations and companies and businesses that really embrace that. Well said on your end, this guest experience snapshot, it’s so cool to see AI come to Travel Media Group and this be the first way that it is because it goes back to where Travel Media Group started, which was to help hoteliers. Help hoteliers improve the guest experience. And that’s exactly what this cool innovative tool is doing. So congratulations to and your team Jason, on this. Any final thoughts before we wrap up?</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Yeah. You know, I will say, just one last thing. As I always do.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> That’s why we have the question in here.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> I think all of this is really what Travel Media Group does or what we try to do. What I aim for on a regular basis with our review response team, our social media team, our development team, is that what we’re able to do is we’re able to focus here, we’re able to focus on reputation, we’re able to focus on the information, we’re able to focus on responses, we’re able to do that because we’re not operating because we’re not doing these other things. And so we’re able to really care about this. And we do. And I think that, you know, really is what all of these tools are about. It’s about giving you the information in a way that’s palatable, giving you the information in a way that’s accessible, but also helping, helping in a way that you might not even be able to help yourself just because of the level of care and focus that we have on it. And, and I really, I mean, I passionately believe in this part of the guest experience that this is their final experience with your hotel and we are just so committed. I know this is a sales pitch, Ryan, but I’m gonna say it anyway, but we are so committed to making sure that that experience is meaningful and impactful.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. Well, it certainly felt and the way that you talk about it and the solutions and innovations that you and your team are developing over in development. So congratulations again, any hotelier listening to this or your hotel portfolio of hotels, this is something that if you reach out to us, we can give you a guest experience snapshot. We’ve got a live demo that we are putting on together. Would love to get you this information. If anything, like I said, make it a challenge. I think these are the five things that issues with my property right now. Here are the five things that people love, see how many of them match up. And, you know, it’s just cool information to see and how AI is continuing to kind of change our hospitality world. So thank you Jason. And thanks for joining me on The Suite Spot for 150.</p> Jason Lee:<br /> Thanks Ryan.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, thanks. And we’ll talk to you next time on The Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host, Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>  </p>

00:22:30

149 – Suite Spot: Spotlight – Hyde Midtown Miami

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The Suite Spot visits the Hyde Midtown Miami in the next episode of the Spotlight series. General Manager of the hotel, Henry Martinez joins the podcast to give travelers an insightful look into the guest experience and what makes the property one-of-a-kind for travelers. </span></p> </p> <em><strong>Episode Transcript</strong></em><br /> <em>Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.</em></p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. We are not here at our Travel Media Group studio. Instead, we are live on-site for another incredible and amazing edition of our TMG Suite Spot: Spotlight series. We’ve got such an exciting property to showcase today and an amazing guest to do it with. Henry Martinez, General Manager of the Hyde Midtown Miami. Henry, thank you so much for being on the podcast with me.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Well, thank you for hosting me.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we’re excited about it. Before we get into this incredible property that I just had the pleasure of touring all around and seeing, let’s talk about your hospitality journey. This is one of the most unique things in our industry. Everyone coming from all aspects of maybe not starting in hospitality, but ending up there. Uh, what made you fall in love with hospitality? Where’s your journey and, and led you here to the Hyde Midtown Miami?</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Excellent. Absolutely. Well, first I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you and your audience a bit about our hotel. So how my journey started, I went to college unsure what to study and with very limited knowledge of the English language. So I took a career exploration test. Now I think it’s called a career workshop, which is an aptitude test. And that test is designed to determine a person’s ability or propensity to succeed in a given activity. Meaning there’s really no right or wrong answer, and to no surprise hospitality came on top. So my career in hospitality truly expands over two decades, working at seven different properties and opening four hotels, beginning as a front desk agent. I quickly advanced through various roles within the rooms division, and eventually stepping into leadership positions such as director rooms and director of operations. In April of 2022, I was honored to take the role of general manager of Hyde Midtown Miami. Each step of the journey has prepared me to do what I love the most, which is interacting with people and trying to make a difference in their lives.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. It’s a common story that we hear, is a lot of hospitality leaders didn’t really think about hospitality as a career, and then once they get into it, they really find a passion for it and a love for it. So fantastic to hear. I came from very similar beginnings, front desk, work your way up. You know, that’s what the stories that we love to hear about with this. So let’s move on to this incredible property that we’re at right now. Had the amazing privilege, like I said, to tour it with you this morning to show me the grounds. But before we get into talking about specific amenities or the room types, talk to me a little bit about the history of the project and how the Hyde Midtown Miami came to be.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Absolutely. Hyde Midtown Miami is a true gem. It offers an intimate, welcoming atmosphere. Our location couldn’t be better right in the heart of Byron City activity and only a 15 minute drive to the beach. Designed by the renowned architect, David Rockwell. The hotel reflects the essence of local art and culture, creating an ambience that resonates with both young professionals and leisure travelers. And it’s really the only property of its kind in the midtown area, making a tough choice for those looking to truly engage with the lively Miami community.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that incredible location here in a minute, but it really is an immersive atmosphere. I mean, we walk through those lobby doors, everything that you just said about the art from the art being in the lobby, just the feel and the vibe of this hotel is fantastic and I encourage my entire audience to check it out for themselves. But let’s talk about the hide brand. You know, locations all over the world, very fast growing. Maybe share with our Suite Spot audience who’ve never stayed at Hyde before, what they can expect from this brand.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Sure. At any Hyde location, the guest experience comes to life through key touch points. Guests can look forward to an experience that goes beyond the typical hotel stay, Hyde is designed for those who appreciate art, culture and community. Just like the one that we’re sitting in right now, the moment you step into our expansive art filled lobby, you’ll feel the vibrant energy of the space. We pride ourselves on hosting social events and providing unparallel amenities. It’s all about creating connections here. Hyde is about embracing a fun lifestyle that encourages both relaxation and social connections.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, speaking of connections, we are right at an intersection of art and decor, and we went out onto the seventh floor. You were able to point to me to the design district where Wynwood was the airport. I mean, the old adage is location, location, location. And you have it right here. Paint a picture that you painted with me right outside of these doors of where everything and how centralized this property is when it comes to the different areas of Miami.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Absolutely. I’ll be happy to. Hyde Midtown Miami has an unbeatable location. As I showed you earlier this morning, in the heart of some of Miami’s most vibrant neighborhoods, just steps from the hotel, you can immerse yourself in the colorful murals of the Wynwood Art District and indulge in luxury shopping at the stylish boutiques in the design district. This neighborhood has so many restaurants, cafes, and even a Dog Park that I showed you earlier, I’m sure that there’s always something exciting to discover. Again, it’s all about embracing Miami culture.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, no, absolutely. And it’s felt through these doors. And a big part of that and a big part of the guest experience is art. You know, I want to talk about kind of the relationship of art in this hotel because it seems like it’s really ingrained in the hotel experience. You want people to leave these lobby doors and really appreciate the design, the architecture, and the art associated with Hyde Midtown Miami.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> I’ll tell you Ryan, a feeling that I got from the moment that I joined Hyde Midtown Miami, I recognize the immense potential of incorporating art to enrich our guest experience. We wanted something that will not only enhance the attractiveness of the property, but also connect with a cultural excitement of Miami itself. This vision came to life through our collaboration with Steven Manes, the founder of the Manolis Projects Gallery, one of South Florida’s most renowned contemporary art spaces. After visiting the gallery with my assistant general manager, Robinson Rodriguez and Marketing manager Capri Crescio, it became clear that this partnership will be perfect fit for us. The gallery’s bold, modern look aligned seamlessly with the creative energy we wanted to foster a high midtown. The result is the big picture exhibition that you saw in the lobby earlier, a carefully curated collection that invites our guests to experience art as part of their state. This collaboration has elevated our property without a doubt, transforming it into more than just a place to stay, but an immersive artistic experience.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely. It is an experience. We walked into that lobby and your eyes, you just can’t take your eyes off the incredible art, and I’m sure that this is something that really is a part of the guest experience and definitely something I wanted to bring up today. We talked about all the things there are to do outside of the hotel, right? We’re talking about some of the art inside, but there’s also a ton to do with the amenities that you shared with me. I mean, everything, we’ve got almost 90% suites at the property each with a balcony, a giant balcony mind you, overlooking some green space. You’ve got a tennis court out there, which was recognized as one of the best tennis courts by Conde Nast. Talk to us a little bit about the amenities that you have here at the Hyde Midtown Miami.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> You know, very fortunate, to be leading a team at Hyde Midtown Miami. We created a home-like comfort that blends perfectly with our upscale accommodations. Our suites with stunning floor to ceiling windows and most feature outdoor balconies that offer views of the Miami skyline. We have equipped each guest room with modern conveniences, including a kitchenette and spacious bathrooms with premium bath amenities. One of the highlights of our property is the seventh floor rooftop area that I took you earlier this morning, which truly feels like a private retreat. Here you can enjoy an Olympic-sized swimming pool surrounded by large gardens, tennis, core pot and green. And our state-of-the-art gym not only features the latest fitness equipment, but also a stunning bay views. Salva Miami, blends global flavors with the creative fresh approach, serving up the dishes that are as bold, as vibrant as the city itself. Every detail is crafted to make dining an experience to remember.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. We were up there at that space that you were talking about Henry, and it really puts into light all of the things that there are to do at the property, but you can also see everything that you can experience off property. So it’s a perfect blend there at this place, at this special hotel. Let’s do a little bit, a rapid fire quiz you a little bit on the property. Let’s talk about your favorite view at the property, Henry.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Wow, good question. I have quite a few, but I think if I have to pick one, you know, the view from the rooftop pool area, it is absolutely amazing, especially at sunset. Truly a moment to remember while looking out of the Miami skyline.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> So private too. You were telling me, we both walked out on the pool deck and you’re like, it’s hard to believe this is on the seventh floor. And it absolutely was. I was like, it’s very private, very immersive, really relaxing atmosphere out there. So fun fact about the property. I always love to hear these.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> I think that besides the stunning pool that you saw, which is heated all year round, there’s not really that many properties here in Miami that have that feature, but we also have a fully equipped tennis court and putting green, which is perfect for active customers. And you know, you mentioned Conde Nast Travelers, one of the top four hotels as well in the world.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> What about a favorite piece of art at the property?</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Another hard to pick. You saw our lobby and the many art pieces that we have and we also have an incredible selection of art from all star artists in our hotel. If I really have to pick one, it will probably be a piece for my friend from Steven Manez, Title Citrus.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> One of the cool things, Henry, is that you also change out those pieces of art, right? It’s not something that’s constant the entire year. You’ll actually have different exhibitions within your lobby, correct?</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> That is correct. Actually, this is the fourth exhibitions that we’ve done since I got to this hotel and we actually, there’s another one coming out for Art Basil pretty soon.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we’re excited to see it. Henry, you know, as a general manager, I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down and interviewing a lot of hospitality leaders and general managers, but one of the most important pieces and task of a general manager is really keep a close pulse on your guests, right? You have to know the feedback, the sentiment they’re feeling about the experience they have, especially somewhere like this where there’s so much to experience, right? As general manager, as they walk out those doors, whether they’ve immersed themselves on the art, whether they’ve explored the design district, Wynwood, whether they’ve gone to the beach, which is again just a couple minutes away from this property. What do you hope that they say about their experience at the Hyde Midtown Miami?</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> I take a lot of pride in my team as well on what the guest feedback is, but for the most part, the guest feedback has been very positive. Many highlight the engaging atmosphere and comfort of our suites and balconies. Our staff engagement and genuine appreciation receives praise consistently as well. Since the hotel opened in 2018, we rank among the top 10 hotels in Miami. In fact, in 2022 we were the number one ranked hotel in Miami on Triple Advisor. Currently we rank in the number four spot, but this achievement is just as a great testament to our team’s dedication and ongoing efforts to enhance the service we provide. But Ryan, Hyde Midtown staff are really the difference makers.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, I mean the hospitality was felt when me and my team walked in here, so we really appreciate you hosting us here. We’re looking to wrap up here. Any final thoughts before we wrap up Henry?</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> Absolutely. I invite you to discover, the unique charm of Hyde Midtown Miami firsthand. It’s more than just a destination. It’s a vibrant, immersive experience that represents the very essence of Miami’s culture, creativity, and energy. Whether you’re visiting for the art, the atmosphere, or just to unwind, we strive to create moments, that are memorable and meaningful. And of course I encourage you to go to Instagram, find Hyde Midtown Miami and scroll through our feed. It’ll give you a taste of the dynamic lifestyle we are so proud to offer.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely, Henry. And yeah, check out Hyde’s Instagram, give you a great taste of some of that art that we were talking about today. Give you a really good look at the location, some of the award-winning amenities. So thank you so much Henry, for you and your team being so gracious and letting the Suite Spot showcase this incredible property here.</p> Henry Martinez :<br /> No, thank you. Thank you again. We hope that to see you again soon.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Thank you so much Henry, and thank you for listening to The Suite Spot. We’ll talk to you next time to join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>

00:13:47

148 – Suite Spot: Spotlight – Regent Santa Monica Beach

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The Suite Spot is spotlighting the beautiful and newly renovated Regent Santa Monica Beach with special guest and General Manager of the property, Younes Atallah! </span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">This episode covers all the exciting things travelers can look forward to from their stay at the property including dining, amenities, local attractions, and much more.</span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Tune in now! </span></p> </p> <em><strong>Episode Transcript</strong></em><br /> <em>Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.</em></p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, with another amazing episode for you today. Very excited to feature this episode. We are gonna be continuing our TMG Spotlight series, and if this is your first time hearing this, it’s one of my favorite series that we do on this podcast. It’s, it’s taken us all over the world at this point, right across the country, and today we are headed to beautiful Santa Monica Beach. With me today is my guest, Younes Atallah, General Manager of the Regent Santa Monica Beach. Younes, thank you so much for joining me on the Suite Spot.</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> Thank you, Ryan, for having me. Good to be here.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And this series, if this is your first time hearing, this is all about highlighting and showcasing some of the world’s most unique new properties that we’re gonna be talking about. Younes, your property over there, the region, Santa Monica Beach certainly fits the bill. But before we get talking about that, share with our audience a little bit about your hospitality background. We’d love to hear these stories and where we started, where we end up, and, which led you to becoming the first GM of the Regent Santa Monica Beach.</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> Again, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here and I was born into travel and hospitality. My family owned a travel agency growing up. And, I’ve told this story a few times. It was a rite of passage for all the kids to work at the travel agency as part of our indoctrination. It was about a 50/50 success rate and the kids sticking to hospitality and travel. But I certainly did and went the hotel route, went to hotel school in Florida. My first job was, picking up the phones at what was then the Orlando Marriott downtown. I don’t even know that hotel still exists. But that was probably 30 ish years ago. I kind of jumped in with both feet and never looked back. I’ve been very fortunate. My career has taken me to some amazing places in the country in North America, actually. I’ve lived in Florida and Texas. I lived in Canada for a few years. And then more recently I was in Hawaii, in Arizona and then landed in California just about four years ago. So not terrible places to live, overall. So it’s been, it’s been a fun ride.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, certainly. And that hospitality has taken you all over the country. We talk about all the time on this podcast how transferable, skills are, and I think that’s one of the beauties that is lost in our industry is that people serving people, you can do that in Florida, you could do that in California, Hawaii, even in different countries there. So to be able to take your talents across the country, I’m sure you have some incredible experiences in the hospitality and started your hospitality roots right here where we are just north of Orlando, Florida. So that’s, that’s incredible to hear. But before we start talking about your journey to the other side of the country, let’s talk about the Regent Hotel and Resorts brand. We got locations worldwide, but this is actually the first one in the Americas. Introduce our audience to this brand and what they can expect from it.</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> Absolutely. This is really, an exciting time for region. Some of your listeners, Ryan, may actually be familiar with the Regent brand, especially if you’ve watched one of the most iconic movies of our time, which is Pretty Woman, which was, filmed at Reach Beil the region, Beverly Wilshire at the time. And that was the last region in the Americas. It’s really not a new brand. It’s a brand that’s being reintroduced and reinvigorated as we speak. Region has been around since the early seventies and has gone through various iterations throughout its history, but most recently in 2018, IHG Hotels and Resorts added region to its luxury and lifestyle portfolio. And we’re very much in Regent 2.0 land, if you will, in the last few years, we’ve added and opened some amazing properties in, like the region of Hong Kong, the Carlton Khan in the south of France. The region in Shanghai just opened a few months ago. And so to bring back region to the Americas and to Los Angeles specifically, it’s a little bit romantic because the last Regent was left the Americas from Los Angeles. So to bring it back to the LA area is pretty great and lots of growth in the pipeline for Regent and what IHG is doing with the brand and really growing. It is pretty, pretty impressive and very exciting. So keep an eye on it.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It sounds like it, and it’s cool to have a history to a brand like that and then to reinvigorate, reintroduce it here like this in such a spectacular form with your property, which we’re gonna talk about in a minute. Have you had the chance to visit any of the other regions?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> I have. I’ve been fortunate in the last year to actually stay at the region, Hong Kong and the region, Carlton Kahn, and both pretty impressive properties, not just from a location and physical product, but really the heart and soul of what we do, which is the people in the service. The brick and mortar is a brick and mortar, pretty building is a pretty building wherever it might be, but the level of service and engagement is really quite special.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. And we’re gonna talk about that in a minute and kind of how you’re telling your story as you’re set to open here and invite your first guest into the property, to your incredible Regent Santa Monica Beach. You know, you talked about it, uh, as, as a romantic journey. I’ve learned with new build & renovations, it’s typically a labor of love, sometimes there’s those missteps along the way, but at the end, it, that’s what makes it special, right? So tell us the story about this project, what made it special and how it came to be.</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> Absolutely. So, this is a transformation. It’s not a new build. The, the building has been, really an anchor in Santa Monica for 30 years. I personally have been involved with this project and, and have been working in this building for the last four years. And so Santa Monica is one of those cities that is very close knit. People know people, people know each other. The community is very passionate about itself and about its iconicness. And so to have the support of the community is really kind of the first thing that was very important for us. As we embarked on this pretty lofty project, we closed the hotel in its previous form, if you will, in March of 2023. So about a year and a half ago, as you mentioned, we’re going to reopen in just a few weeks. The coolest thing about this transformation is that the vast, vast majority of the employee base who worked for many years in the building have stayed on, which is really great. Just so when we go back and we say, yeah, it’s an impressive project, and it’s a beautiful building and a beautiful location, but the heart and soul of of it is the people are all still here, which is great. But talking about it being a labor of love, we’re about to really bring luxury to Santa Monica for the first time in a long time, just to share a few stats with you. But the property is going to open with 167 keys, which includes 34 suites. It’s going to be the largest room offering in the market, really, probably in greater LA area at 720 square feet is our entry level rooms, which is a suite for a lot of our other friends and competitors. Not only will we have, obviously incredible views, which is very much a region brand distinction, if you will, as kind of these picturesque views and of the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Pier. But we’re gonna have an amazing food and beverage offering. We’ve collaborated with Chef Michael Mina to have one of his concepts in the hotel. It’s called Orla. I love saying this. It kind of goes back to the romance. It’s Michael’s love letter to Egypt, which is his roots. So it’s a Mediterranean eastern, middle Eastern cuisine, which is amazing. We have a really great collaboration with Ayesha Curry for Sweet July, which our cafe concept. And then last but not least, we also have a 10,000 square foot spa that we’re working with Urla, out of Paris to bring, to bring their first West coast flagship, if you will, as far as a spa and well wellness facility is concerned. So lots, lots on the go.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> I love the collaboration between where you started that conversation, talking about the community and the people, and the people that stayed on and, and that are gonna know the property and in and out. And then the new concepts that you’re blending that old in the new and staying local, but also looking for inspiration worldwide. I think is gonna make this, and correct me if I’m gonna make a really unique experience for anyone that goes there. Now, there’s a common expression in our industry, location is everything. It certainly helps when you’re right, the located right in the middle of the most, one of the world’s most famous beaches. But for those who haven’t been in that area, Younes, could you paint us a little picture of the location, what’s around the hotel? What really makes that location so prime?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> The first thing I would say is if you haven’t been, this is an open invitation to come and visit Santa Monica ’cause it truly is one of the most amazing places in the country and very iconic. And, whether you’ve watched, Beverly Hills 90210 or whether you’ve watched Arnold Schwartzenegger training. This is our backyard. It’s really, it’s really pretty cool. But the property itself, the resort itself is located right on the beach, toes in the sand, just south of the Santa Monica Pier. We are, if you were to, I always like to say Santa Monica is a city on its own. We are our own city. We’re surrounded by Los Angeles on three sides and the beautiful Pacific on the fourth side. So, you just have to look west, just look at, look at the ocean, don’t worry about what’s behind you. So, the most amazing sunsets are very much can be witnessed from our pool deck with the Santa Monica pier right in the forefront. And after the sunsets, that Ferris wheel, which is probably top three postcards out of the country is lit up. You can see the reflection of the light on the ocean water. It’s really pretty spectacular. Whether you’re coming to do a little bit of shopping or whether it is to do a little bit of body surfing, a little bit of tanning, it’s all right here, literally in, in front of the hotel.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, I was gonna say, I don’t think you’re gonna have many problems with getting some pituresque things for social media, which we’re gonna talk about here. Being a digital marketing podcast, we love to talk about, you know, sharing experiences, but it helps when, you know, your guests are doing the majority of the sharing, right. We can, as businesses try to put out photos and all these pictures and sometimes we pay a lot of money to have things framed up. But when your guests are sharing authentic experiences, sometimes that is the stuff that’s most powerful out there. So that sunset that you’re talking about by the pool, having hundreds of pictures out there on, on Instagram and, and social media, I’m sure is gonna help already just help propel the reach of this incredible property. And we’re gonna talk about that in a minute, but you mentioned some of the partnerships, renowned chefs, celebrities that you’re pairing with. What are you most excited about? You know as those doors are yet to open, right? I’m sure there’s a lot of anticipation, excitement. What do you want those first guests to feel and experience when they walk in through those doors?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> This is not rehearsed. This is truly how I feel. Being in an urban area, the one thing that I think you get out of your car, look, Los Angeles is a busy city. LAX is a busy airport. We are not necessarily the closest destination for a lot of people. So it’s a commitment to come out here and sometimes it takes a long time or have to deal with traffic. And so the one thing I’m most excited about, as soon as our guests walk through the doors or really get into the driveway, it’s this elevating them above the noise. It’s this feeling that they’ve arrived. They don’t have to worry about all the noise in the background. We wanna take all of their worries, all of their stresses, regardless of why they’re coming to visit us and really have them step into a haven of sorts.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> I absolutely love that. That’s the type of experience that you hope, again, talking about digital marketing, you know, you hope that shared and you see those feelings and sentiment shared on online reviews, feedback from your guests, whether it’s face to face through to your employees of just being like, feel like I’ve kind of escaped here. A really, really cool to hear, and, you know, you can’t, can’t really spell luxury anymore in hospitality without incredible food and beverage. I think that’s part of the experience and the escape. And you mentioned it before your Mediterranean cuisine style, Orla, I’ve been seeing a lot of it in the press and the news. Share some details of what guests can expect for this one of a kind dining experience.</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> Absolutely. And not only can I share it conceptually, but I actually have experienced Orla now twice in the last week because the Santa Monica location’s actually gonna be the second location for Chef Mina with Orla. The first one opened just a few months ago, in Las Vegas. And I happened to be there last week for work. And I got to, got to experience it twice. And I have to tell you, not only is the service on point, the cocktail programming is, is on point, but the food is very flavorful and very authentic. And I should know a thing or two about Mediterranean cuisine having grew up in, in that part of the world. That’s really such a wonderful takeaway. The restaurant itself, the outlet itself was designed by a roco and they really captured the essence of the beach, but also some of the aspects of that Mediterranean design that you would kind of imagine if you were to step into a restaurant in Egypt, for example. Or something like that. So when you take the design, you take the beverage, and then you take the flavorness and execution of the food, and you sprinkle it with Chef Mina’s love and passion. You just really can’t go wrong.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> This is why I love this series so much, Younes, because it, everything in these types of hotels are so purposeful from the design to the, the programming like you were talking about. And high praise is when you can come out of a food and beverage outlet and say the term authentic. That is what we are craving right now in a world that unfortunately, you know, AI is, we love it, technology is great, but it is also causing some inauthenticity. And so when people see authentic, they feel authentic, that little piece of home. And so really, really eager, excited. Thank you for sharing that. You’ve done a couple interviews that I’ve followed leading up to this grand opening and one recent interview you said, we’re eager to share this incredibly special property with the world and welcome guests to indulge in a modern evolution of traditional luxury. And that was the part that really stuck out to me, that modern evolution of traditional luxury. Can you speak what that means to you and how you’ve implemented it into the guest experience and operations at the region? Santa Monica Beach?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> Yeah, absolutely. This is what I love about these podcasts subtypes, that it’s, it becomes so natural because we did not rehearse this. And, and you just kind of gave me a perfect segue talking about AI and authenticity. I think, and I believe that these days are very dependent on technology. No one can argue that, obviously, whether it’s with our phones or whether it’s with but inherently, especially in for a luxury traveler, we still want to have those authentic moments with other humans. Technology, AI has to be in the background. It has to make things easier. It doesn’t have to be in the forefront. You know, it has to create conveniences, not stresses. You know, sometimes you are, you know, you’re trying to order something and there’s 16 buttons to push and there’s stand in this line and then pick up in this line and then do this, and you’re just like, oh my God, I just want a coffee.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. Trust me, I’ve been in front of my hotel door trying to open with that remote key, right. Which was so convenient, and now all of a sudden it’s not working for me.</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> No, exactly. Absolutely. So it’s really kind of understanding what the other thing is, the word luxury has evolved tremendously even in the time that I’ve beendoing this. And then more recently, even in the last 5-10 years, really, I think the pandemic has allowed a lot of people to experience luxury and want to experience luxury in a different way. And it’s no longer pinky out and tea with the Queen type of it still exists, and it’s still wonderful. It’s no longer just that. And with Regent, we take a lot of pride in saying that the way that we behave and the way that we execute on luxury is in a modern way, it’s modern luxury. It’s bespoke, it’s really not a one size fits all. You know, I mean, when you look at statistics and studies that tell you that Gen Z they’re going to be the biggest spenders on luxury in the next X number of years, well, you gotta pay attention because you can’t continue to cater to not even their parents, but their grandparents, which I think is the more traditional way.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> No, you’re, you’re absolutely right. And to your point about the AI and technology and we talked about this at the top of the episode of what you’re trying to cultivate over there at the Regent Santa Monica Beach, as you said, you wanna remove the noise, the outside noise. And sometimes that can be physical noise, and sometimes that can be digital noise. And sometimes when you elevate guests and customers above that digital noise, sometimes that’s when the authenticity really blooms and you create some really memorable experiences there. Now, all that to say we are a digital marketing podcast. And so I’m gonna talk about a little digital because as you mentioned, I mean Gen Z, and sometimes this is good and sometimes this helps. I mean, this was something that 20-30 years ago in hospitality, when you’d introduce a new property or brand like this, you didn’t have the benefits of social media or online digital marketing like you do today. And it can help propel and accelerate the pace. I look at your Instagram, I follow your Instagram, follow your social media. You guys already have 3000 followers on social media and you haven’t even opened, had that first guess yet. And that can do a lot of things for a property. And we talked about that. So how have you used social media or digital marketing to introduce the new Regent Santa Monica Beach to travelers?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> I mean, it goes without saying that it was probably one of the very first things that we did was to make sure that our handles were correct and we had the right ones and go through that process, both Instagram and Facebook. You know, the two big powerhouses that we’ve leaned into at the moment. It’s been incredibly instrumental for us to showcase the brand’s identity as the big brand, but also also the resort itself. We’ve been really sort of teasing for the last year and a half because to your point, we want to create excitement and that I want more so that you can continue to come back and see what we have coming. Social media is a way to, for a new brand, is to share really a visual story of what guests can anticipate when they arrive, whether it’s teasing through looking at the views or certain angles of the accommodation or the restaurant. You know, that being said, as our audience continues to grow across the various platforms, there’s gonna be a lot more to share. You know, you start having more user generated content, you start having more actual photography and more relatable programming that that is being executed. And that’s really what people want to dream. And social media, Instagram especially allows us to do that. It allows us to dream. I mean I’ll share something personal. I booked a trip for a year from now to somewhere that I’ve never been. And literally it’s like in August of next year, and I’m already looking at, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Oh my God, look at this. Oh my God, I wanted to, you know, heart this and favorite this and all of that because I’m already dreaming about it. And that’s really what people that’s the sense that we want people to feel before they get here.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely. And building anticipation, setting expectations. I love the way that you that you’ve used social media over there as a way to tease, we talk about it all the time, but that is a great strategy. It wasn’t just to throw everything out there give everyone, you wanna build that excitement, build that anticipation just like you’re doing for your own personal trip. And we continue to do so. Very cool to see. We’ll continue to follow. We’re getting closer to the end, but wanna do some rapid fire questions. This is always something we do for the Spotlight series to get to know you and the region. Santa Monica Beach a little bit better. Best view at the property?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> It’s the ocean front rooms with a fire pit and a big terrace.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Alright. Yeah. You can’t really argue with that one there. Yeah, fun fact about the property. I know you have already shared a couple, but any any fun facts?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> Funnest fact is our atrium suite used to be open air. It actually was two stories of nothing, two floors worth of literally air that we have now built into a two bedroom, two bathroom suite.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Whoa. I think that was probably some fun blueprinting and construction there for that. Most anticipated dish at the property? You mentioned you were at Orla in Vegas. Have you had the chance to try anything over there?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> I have. I will tell you, I’m gonna go with my favorite, which are the lamb chops, the harissa grilled lamb chops. They’re pretty delicious. I’m not gonna lie.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And then finally favorite piece of art at the property?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> That’s, that’s kind of an easy one. I’m gonna say probably an 800, maybe a 1000 square foot area in the restaurant. And the floor is a handcrafted mosaic piece of art, an ocean scene with an octopus being kind of the highlight of it that was constructed by 15 artisans in Italy and shipped to Santa Monica in pieces. And witnessing it being put together by hand was awesome. I didn’t my video, but then seeing it being put together on the floor has just been amazing. I can’t wait for people to see that something else.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> That’s so cool. Again, just to put this in perspective, if you’ve been counting or playing bingo at home, we’ve talked about artists, chefs, celebrities, designers, all a part of this, and we’re just talking about one property. So Absolutely fantastic. You know, I’ve, I’ve had the pleasure of, of interviewing a few GMs and leaders of brand new, new properties or introductions to properties like the region as they prepare for travelers for the first time. And you kind of walked us through today, but how you want people to feel as they walk in. Give me a sense of what you want travelers to feel as they check out. What, what is that as gm do you want them to say about their stay at the region, Santa Monica Beach?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> I want them to say that they want more. I think that’s, that’s the first thing I would want them to feel is when do I get to come back? I think we all hopefully have had chances, whether it’s at hotels, destinations, restaurants, any kind of experience to say, I can’t wait to go back. And so if someone says, if a guest says, I can’t wait to go back, I’ve done my job, my team’s done their job, we’ve arrived. Right? We’ve accomplished what we need to. And I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. We’re in the business of creating raving fans. We want people to our guests to become our biggest ambassadors. And you kind of touched this on this a little bit earlier. I can say whatever I want about myself, we can say whatever we want about our hotel, but until people, until others are really talking about us and are our ambassadors, that’s what we really would love to have happen.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, from today’s episode I certainly, do not see that being a problem for your property and your team over there. Younes, thank you so much for joining me. We covered a lot. Any final thoughts before we wrap up today?</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> You know, again, open invitation. Please come to Santa Monica, please come visit us. We’ve got an amazing destination. I’m incredibly passionate about this city. I’ve been coming here for many years before I moved here. It’s a wonderful place to come and visit year round. We’re opening here in just a few weeks, just under a month from now. And have an amazing introductory offer for our guests, sort of our opening offer that will be, available really for anyone who wants to book from now through the beginning of next year, like now, I encourage on, RegentSantaMonicaBeach.com. Follow us.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> There you go. It’s spirit of the today’s episode. Well, Younes thank you. I encourage all the listeners and audience, check out the Regent Santa Monica Beach. A wonderful addition to our incredible hospitality industry we have here. We’re very excited. Be sure to follow and hear all of those ambassadors praising their experience, that they had there. So congratulations to you and your team. Younes we will look for those doors to be open. Just a couple of short weeks. I’m sure you cannot wait to see those first guests arrive on property.</p> Younes Atallah :<br /> That’s right, that’s right. Thank you, Ryan, for the opportunity.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Thank you so much and we’ll talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>

00:26:47

147 – The Hospitality Show 2024 Preview

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Check out the latest Suite Spot episode where President – Hospitality, Travel, & Wellness at Questex, Alexi Khajavi, sits down on the podcast to discuss the highly anticipated Hospitality Show 2024 in San Antonio, Texas!</span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">This special episode will cover what attendees can expect this year from the event, some urgent issues facing the hospitality industry, and how this event is bringing all the major players of hospitality together in one room.</span></p> </p> <em><strong>Episode Transcript</strong></em><br /> <em>Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.</em></p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have another incredible episode continuing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series, but we have an original TMG Hospitality Trailblazers, one of the first. Joining me again for the second time. Alexi Khajavi, President, Hospitality Travel and Wellness at Questex. Alexi, thank you so much for joining me once again on the Suite Spot.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Great to see you, Ryan.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we’ve got a lot to cover. Lots change since we spoke just last year. We’ve got a very fast moving industry with travel, a lot of positive changes, and we’re gonna get to some of those a little bit later. But with this being the second time, we kicked off last episode talking about your hospitality and travel journey and what led you to Questex, but I wanna talk about mentor, right? We’re still kind of combating this staffing shortage right now, and we wanna talk about maybe some of the mentors or influences in your career, and then speak to maybe the importance of mentors right now as we try to combat this staffing shortage, especially in an industry like hospitality.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Yeah. I would love to. It’s an important topic.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> You wanna go ahead and share some of maybe the mentors in your hospitality career, or influences in your career?</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Yeah, you know, I’ve had a really diverse career in travel and hospitality. I mean, it started out in San Francisco in the sort of the “.com” era of 1997 to, you know, 2001, 2002. And I had the fortune of joining an early stage OTA. There was three OTAs that launched ironically in 1997. One was booking.com and one was Expedia. And I joined the third one. <laugh. But you know, it was filled with talented people from MIT and Stanford that were, and there was, I think there was about 40 of us in the beginning, and it was just explosive growth. And I at 25, 24 years old, just coming outta college was really given a seat at the table for which I was not, deserve it and was not prepared for, but it just gave me an incredible opportunity to sit amongst some of the most really intelligent, innovative and creative thinkers, that were applying that knowledge, which, you know, in our industry often, we don’t get that type of talent, particularly back then. And because it was this merging of technology with travel, one of the world’s largest in industries, it was just a really exciting time. And so there was a group of folks there that I had the pleasure of working with, and it really taught me, uh, some of the fundamentals that I, that I still carry with me today in my career. And one is just surrounding yourself with really great creative people, and there’s something special about all being tuned into and aligned around the same strategic goals and allowing for a sort of an idea meritocracy to take place. But as long as all of that energy and all of that thinking and all of that hard work is geared around the same northern star, bringing that diverse set of thinking and individuals or personalities to the table really does create magic. And it creates, I think a sense of belonging as well. So from a very young age, that was, that was really important. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of working with individuals like Paul, a lair who, you know, unfortunately has since passed away, but he was the former CEO of Xerox. He was the chairman of our board for a company I worked with down in Costa Rica, and who taught me, frankly, things that again, running a company like Xerox, a public company, which I haven’t had the pleasure of doing in my own career, was a really incredible experience for me to apply those fundamentals, understanding really the importance of being able to read, present, and understand the drivers of different financial statements, balance sheets and PnL’s, of course. But really the importance of cash. We were a travel company. It was an integrated travel company, an airline, hotel company in a tour operator. And we were profitable, but it was a very seasonal business. And so, we came very close to being, chapter 11, not because we were not profitable, because we just, we had a cashflow issue to based off cyclical. Yeah, which is very sort of travel related. But again, that was, I mean, it sounds simple now, and it sounds almost naive now when I when I say it, but, you know, I really didn’t, I didn’t understand the importance of cash and cash flow management at that point in my career. So I’ve had the real privilege and honor of working with some incredible leaders, certainly in travel and hospitality and in some other markets as well. We really have good people in hospitality. And I look at the CEOs of some of our hotel companies, some of the airlines, but also the associations, whether that be AHLA or USTA, I mean, there are some really incredible minds and thinkers that are not only just very intelligent, but are also very passionate and incredible advocates for the industry. So we’re really, I think, blessed in travel and hospitality that we’re now attracting, I think, more talent, to that. But at the lower level, to your point, or at the entry level, let’s say, we still do have a labor issue, and I still think we need to, per our conversation the last time around, we need to find a way to attract more talent into the industry. And you and I had a great vociferous, debate, if you will, on this. We need to mentor them, and we need to help them grow their careers within travel, not just treat it as a summer job or a way to make cash in between sort of two different careers. So it’s a challenge, but I fortunately, personally, have had the honor of working some really great minds.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And I think that’s where mentorship comes in, right? Is you can show a story to this younger generation of hospitality professionals and say, this is what a career could look like in hospitality 5, 10, 15, sometimes 25 plus years down the line, right? And, and there’s a path there, and it’s gonna also fall on our shoulders to make sure that there is a clear path there, because that’s what this younger generation or maybe even pools that we haven’t explored before, and going to them and saying, this is what hospitality looks like. This is what a career here is. And that’s why, again, I call on our audience. You might not think of yourself as a mentor, but there is someone, and, you know, doing 20 plus of these interviews with industry leaders in this TMG hospitality trailblazer series, one of the consistent thing other than saying, “Hey, I didn’t think I’d be in hospitality”, is there was an impactful mentor a part of their journey that led them to where they are. So you could have a severe impact on someone’s professional and just growth in general as a person. So thank you for sharing that. Another topic we covered last year around this time was the continued resurgence of business and group travel. Every post I see on LinkedIn or social media from Questex, it’s announcing another record breaking attendance at your events that your amazing events that you guys put on. So what’s your feeling on group travel, business travel? You can continue, it’s still bullish on it, still continuing to see this, and maybe how has it changed, right? The sentiment, the energy at these events changed then maybe five years ago, pre covid?</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Well, first of all, group and corporate travel is back, and it’s been back, it’s been somewhat, I think overshadowed by just the incredible growth on the leisure side, right? So, travel for recreation or for holiday that has come back, frankly quicker than anybody thought it would. I mean, people were traveling in the summer of 2020, and it’s just continued to soar as more and more markets open up. Certainly domestically in the US 2021 and 2022 were record breaking years. And then 2023 last summer, you know, Europe really felt the return particularly of the US traveler still incredibly, Asia is not back either from a leisure or a corporate side, meaning outbound from Asia. But corporate and groups have been really performing incredibly well. And they continue to, as we’ve seen in some markets, leisure has started to taper off and to, uh, sort of, uh, flatten in some markets, not down, but certainly sort of coming back down to sort of smaller growth year over year.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It’s hard to follow a Taylor Swift concert tour around the country.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> That did have a direct impact on RevPAR, as we saw some from some of the industry data, which is incredible in and of itself, and could warrant a show on its own that one individual drives an entire market’s RevPAR. So beyond Taylor Swift, and thank God we have Taylor in our industry, just speaking from what we see, we have seen both incredible pockets of high demand and high growth. And then we’ve seen pockets, where it’s been a little bit more challenging. Life sciences and healthcare and technology were absolutely booming from 2020 on through about 2022 & 2023. Life sciences and healthcare continue to do very well. And I’m, again, just speaking from a Questex perspective. Of the markets that we serve, technology has been frankly challenged job losses, you know, challenge in terms of stock prices, but also market demand. I mean, AI, as we have seen is an incredible trend and will change, our lives, but also the trajectory of those companies. But it hasn’t translated into profits for those companies yet. And so our events in those markets are a bit more, I would say normal, right? So, you know, still growing, but not seeing the explosive growth that we’re seeing in life sciences and healthcare. The markets that I have the privilege of running hospitality, travel and wellness, really since about 2021, 2022, have been on an explosive growth. And we returned back to really kind of 2019 levels, which is normal if you will, as early as in some cases, 2021. But certainly by 2022, we were higher than 2019 levels in all of those markets. One we’re fortunate in that each of those markets in our portfolio, in each of those markets has both events and media. And so focusing just on the events side, to your question, where it is a market leader, so it is the CES of that industry, you know, the consumer electronic show in Vegas. So it is a tier one or a tier two, so it is a must attend event. It’s already in people’s calendars, it’s already in people’s budgets. And so it just benefits off of being sort of built within the fabric of that sector. So we’re certainly benefiting from that. And as more people, there have been a flight to quality versus quantity. What we’ve seen to answer your second part of that question, is that because of the work from home or the hybrid working, so for example, today I am working from home, but some cases people are working from home full-time, or in many cases we’re seeing this sort of hybrid element, which means not everybody is in the office at the same time. Typically, the purpose that we serve as an information services company is we inform and we connect buyers and sellers in the five markets that we serve. Well, what we’ve seen is that our events have not only become platforms for connecting those buyers and sellers, but they’ve become platforms for connecting our own customers. Typically, an exhibitor or a sponsor that was coming to one of our events to meet clients that we would bring to that event, yes, they’re still coming for that. And yes, corporate travel’s absolutely rebounding because of that very same premise. I mean, if you just found out your competitor flew to Dallas to meet your top account, you better get on that plane and get to Dallas. And that is absolutely, zoom is great, this is incredible. It’s very practical. It does not build business. It does not strengthen, share of wallet, and it does not drive the bottom line. At the end of the day, you’ve got to build those relationships, and those relationships are built in human to human touch. So corporate travel is definitely benefiting from that. But we are seeing more and more this theme and this enthusiasm around bring the team, which is actually one of the mottos around the Hospitality Show. Which you joined us last year in Las Vegas, and we’re seeing our customers bring their team together. So using our event platforms as the opportunity to not just meet their clients and new clients, but meet each other. And so conduct their own incentive meetings or their own strategic meetings or their own cultural touch points around our own events. This effective model of sort of treating it as a multi-sided platform that we don’t just meet our clients, but we meet each other from a company perspective. It’s really interesting and we see a lot of opportunity for us to deliver more value to our communities and the sectors that we serve in that trend.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, I absolutely love that. I think it’s a win-win when you bring your team, right? Because not only are they able to participate in things like, if you’re a supplier exhibitor, but you also get some incredible insights that we’re gonna talk about some for some industry experts and leaders, and then you get that connection, right? And that’s where I was trying to pinpoint, because I feel like the events that I’ve been to post Covid, there’s a different energy, and I think you might have hit the nail on the head about talking about how the way we work now with it being hybrid or sometimes just working from home constantly, there just seems like there’s an energy to these events that wasn’t there. And, and it’s probably because what you’ve said, those misconnections of seeing everyone in the office every single day, now all of a sudden you’re traveling out for work, you get to see industry leaders, you get to connect with your teammates, exhibitors, suppliers, that energy and that connection is palpable. And again, speaking from personal experience at the Hospitality Show last year, which we’re gonna talk about. But before we get into that, I wanna talk about a topic that’s always brought up, no matter what event you go to technology, right? It’s certainly risen to the top of these agendas and seminar programs at these shows. Where do you see, I’m gonna put you on the spot here. I want to get your opinion. Where do you see the biggest opportunity for travel in its leveraging technology? Is it on the guest and experienced consumer side, or is it on the professional side, operations side to help maybe with combat staffing challenges and things? Where do you see the biggest opportunity right now?</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> That’s a great question, and I’m not going to cop out by saying both, but I’ll also step back and give a broader answer for a second. One, our transportation infrastructure is in disarray, whether that be the air control towers that helps power our airline, our aviation industry which is partly due to a labor issue as well, but also our visa and our immigration. I mean, to wait four years for a visa, and then when you just got off, after waiting four years and you just got off an 18 hour flight and you wait four hours to get through immigration, you’re not coming back to the US. You know, and other countries are competing for those same travelers, and they’re expediting those processes at every touch point. The visa maybe not the transportation, but you know, the wait times to get into the country. So technology, and look, let’s face it, most of the border patrol agents, that we’re bringing into that, that field are going at down to the southern border. I mean, that’s just where the, based off of the immigration and and so forth, that’s where they’re being sent, not to JFK, not to LAX, not to Atlanta. So technology is really the solution there, and biometrics, which we know works, or the global entry, which we know works that really needs to be improved because we are competing for travelers. I mean, I know that sounds odd, and I know that we’ve been very bullish and very confident that, hey, everybody wants to come to the US, that’s true. but a lot of people wanna go to France, and a lot of people wanna go to Spain, and a lot of people wanna go to Cambodia and other places around the world. And those countries are really improving their infrastructure, IE their technology in order to facilitate a better visa traveler entry and reentry experience. That’s one. And that affects us all. I know that, whether it’s in the hotel industry or the events in industry, we can sort of think about that as a tangential part of the ecosystem, but has a direct relationship. I mean, we are in markets that we need travelers and business people from Asia, from the Middle East, from Europe, from South America, from Central America. And if they can’t get here, then that is a, a real great on our ability to grow and our ability to sell hotel rooms and our ability to, to drive the industry forward. So that’s a real problem. To answer your question a little bit closer to home, is it guest facing or is it on the business side? Honestly, I think it’s on the business side, because the reality is, is that a tech enabled business ultimately provides the ability for us to deliver a more human powered experience. So I don’t think that that guests are traveling and making travel decisions because your app is better than their app, or your keyless entry is better than my keyless entry. Is it important? Yeah. But it’s really those intangible experiences that are human powered experiences, that is what travel and hospitality is all about. And really where I see technology having an indelible impact on our industry is when you’re tech enabled, it actually frees up time for your people to do other tasks. And if we think about what drives real enterprise value in hospitality, at least, and travel for that matter, it’s about someone having a human powered experience that is personalized, that’s authentic, that’s sincere. And they can only do that within the infrastructure if AI or tech in general is powering the infrastructure of that organization, the procurement, the ordering, the planning KPIs, the logistics, the data, manipulation. There’s a lot of stuff that tech obviously can play a part in. So I think that, not to say that, it’s a zero sum game, you can do both. And in fact, we have to do both. But tech has largely been a vendor to hospitality. It’s not been a strategic tool to drive change, but drive strategy, and to enable more human powered experiences in the industry. And I think we really, we are at a fulcrum point in the industry where CIOs or CTOs are at the executive board table, they are making decisions reporting directly to the CEO and that is a wholesale change in the industry. And we have hundreds, if not thousands of really strategic creative suppliers in tech that are running all throughout the various touch points back of house, front of house. It’s a great moment in the industry. We’re not there yet. But, again, to answer your question, I could say both, but I would say if you had to put it somewhere back of house, because it will free up your front of house to really deliver those truly memorable experiences for life.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, we’ve got a generation that’s on the way up and coming into our industry that’s gonna expect those things. And I heard this the other day, which I thought was absolutely brilliant talking about it, what an opportunity for the industry when we have new people, maybe outside of hospitality coming in to introduce some of these new technology. Because at the time, the way I used to check in guests is a whole heck of a lot different than it is today. And sometimes they’re digitally checking in themselves. So if you have this new cohort of employees, it’s gonna be easier to train than maybe the, the hospitality veteran that’s been doing it this way their entire 20 or 30 year career. So I definitely think it’s an opportunity, I guess if there’s any silver lining maybe with this staffing shortage, we are having new people come in, new voices, and they’re gonna tell you exactly what they want, where the inefficiencies are. And hopefully, like you said, leadership and travel kind of listens to that feedback and acts upon it. And that’s how change happens. So as you know, this is a digital marketing podcast at heart, even though we talk about other subjects, but we always are trying to educate hoteliers, just travel industry really in general, how important things like social media, having a strong digital presences online, we know your background, you have a strong background in marketing. Can you just speak to, give some advice maybe to our audience on, or preach maybe why it is just so critical, especially today to have that social media presence or online reputation?</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Yeah, I mean, you’re right. I mean I’ve worked in advertising and creative agencies and been in sales and marketing, you know, the majority of my career. I mean, look, when we first got started, or I first got started for that matter, 25 years ago. I mean, there was five channels you could choose from, right? From marketing. And it was, it was as Hal days, I mean, you still didn’t know it was 50% of your advertising was working, but you knew it was working, right? And so, but you only had five channels to manage. Today you’ve got 500 channels to manage. So I really feel for marketers these days. I mean, I feel for them from a sort of a, it’s a difficult environment, but it’s also a really exciting environment. The one channel that is unquestionably critical to making and influencing travel decisions is social media. There’s no question that when you look at the demographics of who makes travel decisions, let’s separate leisure from corporate, or groups, but focusing on leisure, it’s typically the wife and increasingly the kids. I mean, it is in my family. I mean, my say is very minimal. It’s probably based off of what airline we’re gonna fly because I’ve got points. So where we go when we go and what we do is largely driven by, by the wife, spouse, and the kids. And increasingly kids are making purchasing decisions and influencing purchasing decisions based off of what they see on social media. So a common question in the Casa de khajavi is, what are your top five destinations you’d love to go to? And we’re a traveling family. All of that’s influenced by Instagram and by social media. So the ability to not only influence and really kind of manage all the way through that buyer’s journey. So dream, plan, purchase, experience, share, and then back around again, that is the buyer’s journey in travel and social media not only is a massive part of that because you’re posting whilst you’re on vacation, but it’s influencing the dream stage. It’s influencing the plan stage. You can even buy now through some of these social media channels. You can experience it hence the authenticity and the human power. Fortunately, I don’t think, your Apple goggles or your Oculus will replace that for some it will. I don’t get that. So social media is, um, is a critical part of the buyer’s journey, and that’s where marketers are trying to enter themselves, their brands, their products, into that buyer’s journey. And to be able to do it on one channel throughout that buyer’s journey, for the most part, is an incredible power that social media holds. The challenge with it is that it, there’s so much noise in these channels, and so it doesn’t replace the need one to be in other channels. It also really puts the onus on brands to try and capture first party data, as we’ve seen, if you don’t own your own customer, then somebody else does. And that’s where, again, we at Questex feel so privileged. I mean, we publish every day. We’ve got 5 million records across the five markets that we work in. And being able to know what John Doe reads when he reads it, what are the things that he’s searching for, and piece together a strategy around that is really what all brands should be doing. And again, that part of that can be done on social media, and part of that can be done through your website, through content marketing and even through advertising. So all of it still matters. It’s just where I think we’re at is that I see a lot of marketers these days, again, and it goes back to your question, Ryan, about labor. I see a lot of leadership in marketing that is still using a marketing playbook from 2002. And it’s not only ineffective in driving the business goals forward in achieving the KPIs of that business, but I think it’s, it’s frankly turning off a lot of these younger smart potential creative marketers that come in and go, this is not how I engage with brands, and these are not the channels that I believe in or that I’m in. And I think we’ve, when that shoe drops and this, some of this generation of, of marketing leadership exits, there’s gonna be a dynamic shift in the marketplace. And I think that’s a really interesting, we’re at this really interesting moment right now. And ironically not to throw too many elements into it, but I think it’s really interesting is that you’re starting to see CIOs or CTOs, in some cases, even in hospitality, take over the marketing function. We saw it at Wyndham where the CTO took over from the CMO, and it’s because you’ve got this massive blend of MarTech with marketing, with tech to create MarTech. And that, I don’t know how that plays out because despite MarTech and all of the marketing technology channels that you can use, and you need to be a data scientist, and you need to know data, you still need a strong brand. It doesn’t replace the importance of brand. A brand is a promise. And whether that’s in social media or that’s in a full page ad in the New York Times, if you don’t have a brand, it’s gonna cost you a lot of money to try and move that needle. But if you have a strong brand, but you don’t tactically execute well, it’s also very ineffective. And we’re seeing kind of both right now. So there’s just a lot of noise and transformation in the system, and I don’t think that’s played its course yet, but I think we’ll see that in the next five years.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, it’s super interesting to see how these big brands deal with this. Again, keep talking about this next generation coming up. You think about, especially, starting from I’ve got a couple toddlers myself, they’re seeing more ads than we’ve ever consumed by the age that they have purchasing power. So they will have seen, I mean, you think about when the only ads we might’ve seen might’ve been on the tv, talk about YouTube, talk about social media. They are seeing ads constantly all over the place in this visual video form. So if your content is not attractive, engaging to them, they will ignore it very, very quickly. And you have to be, have your ear to the floor to see if they’re listening and what they’re telling you, because I think you are absolutely right, Alexi, you look at some of that data, they will tell you exactly what they’re engaging with, and it’s all in the data, but you gotta be able to keep your ear to the floor and listen and, and look for those patterns and trends. So let’s dive and get into the Hospitality Show, right? This is also talking about this incredible event. I do not envy you in having to top what you did last year, but looking at the agenda, looking at the press releases, some of the speakers events that are gonna happen there, I’m very excited about this. So talk to us a little bit about what attendees can expect for the 2024 Hospitality Show.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Yeah. Year one was top five launch around the world in terms of new launches. It just got nominated for the best new show in 2023 by Trade Show Executive. So we’re very proud of that with our partners, AHLA, but more importantly than the accolades and the success of year one is the purpose of the hospitality show. We launched it with our partners, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, because running hotels and all of the amenities, whether that be the spa, food and beverage, the gym within a hotels is becoming much more complex and much more challenging. And despite the fact that, as we said a few moments ago, we’ve been operating in this really growing top line, RevPAR, ADRs, occupancy coming along with it, environment, profit margins have been challenged. And that’s because one inflation labor and then just the complexity, running all of that under one roof and paying for the utilities and all that, it is really, really challenging. You have issues like insurance. You’re seeing investors sell portfolios of hotels, not because they’re not performing well, but because the insurance premiums from climate change largely is making it unsustainable. Forgive the pun, to run those hotels profitably. So we’ve got this really challenging environment in which owners of which own a small branded or independent hotel in on the side of the road are challenged, as well as some of the largest REITs and private equity and sovereign wealth funds that own blocks of hotels around the world. So that’s why we launched the Hospitality Show, because there wasn’t one show that brought the entire industry together to look at all of the levers for growth with a focus on profitability and optimization of hotel assets. And that can be revenue and that can be costs. And it can be all of the things in between on that classic P&I. So this year we are seeing incredible growth. I’m really pleased to say, and I’m really, the teams at Questex and the teams at AHLA, I mean, they are doing yeoman’s work. They’re doing an incredible job of working with our advisory board, which contains some of the sharpest minds across the industry. Owners like Mitch Patel, Vinne Patel, big funds like M-C-R-K-S-L, capital operators, like as I said, Scott Strickland from Wyndham Asset Managers like Chad Sorenson, and then suppliers from Oracle to Honeywell to Encore to Worldview. So I mean, this is like, this is the ecosystem that really is, why this is AHLA’s show as much as it is ours, because it is truly where we’re collecting the industry. So this year, San Antonio, October 28th to October 30th, and we’re projecting over 5,000 attendees. We’ve expanded our general manager or our GM awards. That was one of the sort of most exciting, enthusiastic parts of last year to truly celebrate the backbone of our industry those GMs that will be followed by the age and a GM summit, which is content specifically tailored for GMs to discover those innovative ways, again, to drive profitability at their properties. The expo floor, we had so many, we had over 300 exhibitors last year. Were now over 400 exhibitors this year. So that’s grown as well. We’ve got interactive showcases on the show floor for our attendees. So the smart outdoors, the outdoor sort of element really became kind of almost an accelerant from Covid, and it’s really continued. So how do you activate those areas outdoors to make them one, you know, enjoyable, but second tournament into profit centers, interim hotel entertainment sponsored by DirecTV. And then also how do we activate the lobbies with our meet me in the lobby activation. We’ve got a lenders alley as we know, debt has been expensive in this environment, but it’s critical to the capital stack for hotel owners. So that’s designed specifically for our owners that are attending, again, per that advisory board feedback that we’ve got on helping owners find the right debt partners. We’re also now partnering with Clean the World, which is our partners on our sustainability initiative. And that’s helping our attendees build these hygiene kits made from recycled soap, donated to a local homeless shelter. And all that comes from hotels. So, last year I think we built 500 kits and our goal this year is a thousand. So a sustainability and a goodwill component as always. I mean, this is part of the fabric of our industry. And then the networking we’ve got, last year, I think everyone came out of Vegas saying we had the best party that the industry has ever seen, sort of a James Bond theme, which was very popular. This year we’re coming back with a block party on the river walk, a VIP owner’s reception. And then DirecTV is back with that opening reception this year at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio, which is a beautiful venue. And they’ve got a surprise announcement coming up. I won’t steal their thunder on that. So, really there’s a lot of excitement on the expo floor in the networking, just in the leadership that that attends. But also the educational sessions are some of the best in the industry. I mean, we’ve got marquee speakers this year from Jose Andress, which is, you know, world Kitchen and the world famous chef to Aaron Andrews and many others that are on our website. And we continue to announce, so senior leadership as well as CEOs from the companies, which are really dealing with some of the biggest issues facing not just the industry, but the global and the US economy. It is an election year, so there’s a lot of stuff going on in the space. And it should just be, again, most industries have their marquee event, whether it be CES in Las Vegas, or you know, the concrete show for the construction industry or the automotive show. Hospitality hasn’t had its own show. And that’s why, again, it’s so important for the industry to be there. And it’s important for us to be able to learn, network and be inspired around how do we drive profits and a better marketplace and industry for hotel owners, operators and suppliers.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, you got me fired up about this year’s show. That’s for sure. And I think I can say this ’cause I am a Texan, but everything’s bigger in Texas, Hospitality Show, right? We’re excited to hear it, Alexi. And I love the education. It’s so insightful, so informative, so many great takeaways. I mean, we dedicate a whole episode after the hospitality show to talk about the takeaways, the trends, the patterns, things that we’re hearing. But I wanna focus in on the networking. ’cause you were here at the ground floor when this thing was built last year, and you have a really amazing chance opportunity to network at the hospitality show. And I wanna know kind of the thought process behind the thinking and why it was such a priority to make sure that there were these networking opportunities for hospitality professionals at this show.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Well, because it is a people powered industry, I mean, at the end of the day, with all the infrastructure and all the technology there are that are infinitely more important to us, deals are done based off the relationships we have. I mean, that’s just this industry and we’re not gonna change it. In fact, we celebrate it and we build momentum into those relationships. So, that’s really a core component of the hospitality show is to continue to foster those relationships, bring the right buyers and sellers there. And we’re using intelligent meetings to connect specific buyers and sellers that are selling a product versus looking for that same product. But the other really exciting thing about the hospitality show is the extemporaneous or spontaneous connections that are made. And just off the top of my head, somewhat anecdotal, but you know, last year I remember walking through the show floor and I saw Mark Hian, walking around with Kevin Carey, CEO of AHLA. And you know, here you have one of the CEOs of the largest hotel companies in the world going around booth to booth and talking to owners and talking to suppliers and trying to understand what is the thinking and what is the purpose, various products or services that were there. And it wasn’t just Mark who’s, you know, one of the nicest guys in the business. It was also Jeff Baloti was front row of our GM awards and GM Summit and sitting there clapping vibrantly. Yeah, it was so cool to see, again, the CEO of the largest franchise company in the industry celebrating GMs of other brands properties because again, this is the bedrock. So that really is, and it’s not just those two, but it was many, many others which I can. And so it was that real opportunity where the industry, which is, it’s one of the most fragmented industries in the world. So it is a challenge sometimes. And that’s again, that is the purpose of the Hospitality Show. We’ve got investment shows. We have NYU, we have IHIF in in Europe, we’ve got Asia, we’ve got Alice in Lodging Conference and Hunter, great shows. We’ve got the design shows, BDNY, the hospitality design. We’ve got operational shows, we’ve got law, hospitality, law shows. So, there’s plenty of these events in the industry, including our own, but none of them brought the ecosystem together and in order to really understand, but more importantly solve the challenges that we have as an industry, the only way to do that is to do it as one industry, as one voice. And so the privilege, and we really see it as a privilege of being able to do that with our partners, AHLA and bring this industry together from the senior leadership of some of the largest hotel companies or suppliers with a single owner or a new provider to the space is just a, it’s a real honor, but it is critical to the overall success of hospitality in the hotel industry. And therefore I really encourage everyone to make that trip. It’s good for your business, it’s good for your career, but more importantly, it’s good for the industry. And if we’re all together on this, then we will advance our needs and we’ll continue to see the industry grow.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It is really, again, personal experience. It is really inspiring and cool to see rival brands rally around really important topics, human trafficking, that was still an issue that we’re battling right now. But to see everyone in lockstep together, and rallying around a cause like that, sustainability, another one to see that it’s very inspirational. You’re right, Alexi. And it is great for our industry. It gives you that hope that our industry is moving in the right direction. So, very, very cool. So with this being the second year, I’m sure you have some goals after year one, but when all said and done, that final attendee walks outta the Hospitality Show, what’s that one thing, that one goal where you can sit back and say, mission accomplished, second year, 2024 hospitality show was a success?</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> Well, first of all, there’s a cold beer in my hand.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> <laugh>. Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> It really, I mean, the first thing is just looking around at the team and really feeling a sense of accomplishment for what we’ve done. And we truly, truly are immersed in this industry, and we’re deeply connected with our own personal relationships as well as just our professional relationships in the space. We hear a lot of feedback and some of it glowing and some of it all around how to make it better. But it’s a symbiotic relationship where our customers and our attendees are that are there, they’re invested in it, right? They’ve spent their time, their money, their resources. So we’re in it together. And there is an accretive or an iterative process to make it better. And we get the feedback and we work with our advisory boards, and it’s, I mean, we work on this thing 365 days a year. I mean, there are dedicated resources that work on this show, 365 days a year, that’s all they think about. But in that moment where, the last attendee walks out and the lights are going down, it really is just looking around at the team and the folks that made it happen, which are hand on heart. It’s not me. It’s, it’s a lot of people that are doing much more work and better work than than I could ever do. And it’s seeing that gratitude in being able to do something that’s impactful in an industry that we love, that’s a real gift. And it’s a real pleasure to have that opportunity. And we don’t forget that. So that’s a real nice thing. Yeah.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And then I’m sure right shortly after it, its start planning for the next year, but maybe you could take that moment to enjoy it.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> That’s what the beer’s for.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Exactly, exactly. Well, as we wrap up today, Alexi, in our industry, we’re always trying to predict the future, right? Just a little bit. We’re looking at occupancy, we’re looking at airlines, we’re looking at how many seats filled up, you know, 60, 90 days from now. So we’re at a really unique time right now. We’ve got a lot of external factors. You mentioned some inflation interest rates, rising construction costs. And by the way, we’ve got an election coming up. What’s your kind of feeling sentiment on the outlook of our industry over the next couple years?</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> I’m wildly optimistic. I’m bullish all the way on travel and hospitality. I do think, however, that the industry needs to look at its carrying capacity to demand, particularly in those areas of high demand or sensitive biodiverse environments, whether it’s Venice or Paris or, you know, Ancor Watt. We haven’t even gotten back to global outbound travel in 2019 levels. And we’re, again, seeing destinations really struggle with the impact of tourism and hospitality. And so we are going to have to really get some critical thinking around that. And it will need to be managed. I mean, we need to manage demand. And I know that sounds strange because we typically focus on managing capacity and letting the demand just hopefully go and rise, rise, rise. But we’re gonna have to look at that demand and manage that demand more effectively. Because look, the new generations are absolutely looking at are completely invested in the experience economy. Tourism and hospitality will continue to grow, whether it’s in the Western world where it’s experiences over things. You’re seeing it, the data does not lie. They don’t want to own a car. They want to go travel. Digital nomads aren’t a thing. It is a generation. And that’s not even including new markets opening up again. China is at 10% of its outbound travel to what it was pre pandemic levels, throw that into the mix and then throw more countries, developing countries. I mean, as people, as middle classes emerge, the first thing they want to do is go travel international. It is the way it is, and we’re very blessed by that. But some destinations are struggling with that demand, and we’re gonna need to manage that effectively. And the positive thing is that we can, we can spread that demand out. So it’s not about tapping the brakes, but it’s about managing it effectively. And I think that that’s, uh, that’s something that we can do. We’ve got enough smart people around and the importance on local economies, but the global economy of travel and hospitality, 10% of global economy, 11% global employment, we have to fix it. So, I think that’s I think I’m very confident and very optimistic of our future. We just have to make sure we don’t kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It’s great observation. And I’m sure some of those creative thoughts and ideas we’ll certainly be brewing at the Hospitality Show in San Antonio in October. So, Alexi, thank you so much for joining me once again on the Suite Spot. We’re very happy to announce it. I don’t think we’ve announced it yet on social media or anything that the Suite Spot is returning to the Hospitality Show in 2024 in San Antonio. We are so excited. Hopefully we’ll run into you along with, it’s a who’s who, as you mentioned at that show, so you never know who we’re gonna be running into interviewing, but thank you again for taking the time outta your day, your busy schedule as we lead up to this incredible show to share with us a little bit about your insights and thoughts about this upcoming hospitality show. So thank you, Alexi.</p> Alexi Khajavi :<br /> No, Ryan, thank you. Thank you for your support and love your show. It’s fabulous, I listen to it all the time, so thanks again.</p> Alexi Khajavi:<br /> I appreciate it. And thank you all for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on The Suite Spot to join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host, Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>

00:44:54

146 – Check In with Kevin Carey

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Join the Suite Spot in this quarterly series to hear from American Hotel & Lodging Association President & CEO, Kevin Carey, on the state of the hospitality industry and recent developments being made by the AHLA to move the industry forward. </span></p> </p> <em><strong>Episode Transcript</strong></em><br /> <em>Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.</em></p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. As always, thank you for listening. We’ve got a fantastic episode for you today. Another industry check-in with Kevin Carey, interim president and CEO at the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Kevin, thank you so much for taking the time and joining me today.</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Hi, Ryan. Good day. It’s good to see you as well.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, we’re excited to have you. You know, we’re gonna jump right into it. We spoke last in the spring season, right before a busy summer travel season. Listen, the travelers have been busy traveling to hotels. Hotels have been busy hosting, but AHLA has been busy as well, advocating for hoteliers and everything that you guys do for our industry. Let’s catch up with some of those big accomplishments and some of the most pressing issues right now. We know we, there’s always those issues that rise up. What are some of those that hotels should be most aware of right now?</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Oh as you said, it’s been an incredibly busy period of time. Certainly first and foremost for the industry. The support and the service our member companies provide for guests and the environment they create for our associates and workers is certainly first and foremost, our team here, both in AHLA and, uh, the foundation have been incredibly busy as well. Um, over the first half of the year, it’s been, uh, a, a peak period of activity at a state and local level with state legislators and legislatures in session, uh, and certainly in Washington here, uh, as, uh, the Congress starts to look towards end of the year in the election. So, we’ve been advancing our work, uh, at a state level on short-term rental sets of issues in Washington here around the passage in the house, uh, of the Hotel Fees Transparency Act. Um, and, and also work to ensure that we defeated the, the joint employer rule as well. There’s just a number of areas that we feel proud about as a team and that are really meaningful on behalf of the industry as well.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely. And but there’s still with all those wins, and congratulations to your team, there’s always work to do as you know, and some of those pressing issues that are at the forefront right now for our hoteliers. What, what are some of those that, again, hoteliers, even though it might be something regional, they still should be aware of because it has, it’s gonna have an impact on the entire industry.</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Absolutely. And really to identify two that are certainly getting a lot of our team’s attention and the industry attention. So first and foremost, in New York City, a bill was introduced in the city council several weeks ago, approaching about a month ago at this point. And this bill, the so-called Safe Hotels Act, has been positioned by his proponents as a simple licensing bill. And the bill sponsors have represented that hotels are unregulated, and that there’s an increase in crime occurring in hotels. This bill would do grave damage, not only to the hotel industry, to travelers, to workers, who represent and are employed by the industry and the city economy and the tourism economy itself. So this is bad for everyone. And we’ve been very actively involved in New York several times, meeting with members of the city council organizing the industry to have a strong voice in pushing back, on this ill conceived and flawed legislation. So we’re still working very actively on that and trying to underscore the grave damage that this would represent for the industry.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, and sometimes, you know, these to hoteliers, everyday hoteliers, this might seem like, you know, some complicated issues and things of that nature, but you’ve got some great explainer videos on your social media on AHLA.com where hoteliers can get information to be more educated about this issue because, and show some of the effects that you were talking about there, Kevin, and learn a little bit more about, what this legislation can mean for everyday hoteliers. But, another win that I saw recently trending on ALA’s website was the hospitality law database, which was launched. Could you share with our hotel audience kind of the idea behind this, why there was a need to do this, and how hoteliers everyday hoteliers can leverage this?</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Sure. You think about ALA’s role where we promote the industry, we advocate on its behalf, and we also play an important role as the convening entity for the industry and all segments of the industry is how our membership model is designed within that. We provide services around the advocacy that we conduct on behalf of our member companies, whether here in Washington at a state and local level, or even increasingly on cross border set of issues. But we also provide a membership value proposition. And alongside the advocacy work we do, we felt rolling out this hospitality law database would give our members access to the laws that impact their operations on a nationwide basis. So this is a resource for our members. Obviously, it aligns with the work that we do on the advocacy front and felt that this was a natural extension in enhancing our value to our member companies, but also obviously very germane and linked to the work we do on a public policy advocacy basis as well.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. And the more educated you can get hotels about, again, the issues that are at the forefront of our industry right now the more support you can get on your end, they’re gonna be able to reach out to their representatives to advocate for themselves as well with the help of such a strong arm, like AHLA. So, fantastic. You’ve talked about the advocacy work, the resource and educational piece that AHLA provides to hoteliers as well, especially around one of the issues we’ve been talking about, which is staffing shortages. And I wanna talk about this. We’ve actually been busy. The Suite Spot has been on a hospitality campus crawl across the state of Florida talking to some of those educators that are getting the next generation of professional hoteliers and hospitality workers out there. But I think one of the ways, small ways we can combat this is creating opportunities like internships, hospitality internships. We have hospitality marketing internship at Travel Media Group. We just wrapped up. I’ve seen a couple social media posts of your summer internship program at AHLA and thanking those interns in the work they’re doing. Can you discuss the importance of creating opportunities like for young professionals to do hospitality and hotel internships and the role of hospitality mentors in our industries could help us combat with staffing shortages?</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Certainly, kudos to you and your efforts on that front as well. But we’ve had a intern program here for a number of years. We’ve got a class of nine interns, who are still in their roles as we speak here. I think they’re preparing their, their final capstone presentations for their team, but they’re embedded in each of our key teams from the government affairs team to our membership team, our foundation team, our HR department. So they’re learning about the role of an industry association, learning about the hospitality and the lodging industry structure overall. And they just brought a great energy as well as enhancement to our culture. And they’re doing great work. I’m always so impressed with their poise and maturity, and they really just blended right into the team, and it’s been great to have them around the office. And, and we’re really proud about the program. And internship programs are always something personal level, that I’ve had a lot of time for. I started my career in two internships that were very foundational and exposing me to the business community and creating a pathway to the first full-time job, that I had many years ago. So it’s been great to see our team embrace that and also the response we’ve received from our, from our intern class. And they’ve had some opportunities to play a leadership role actually where they’ve reached out and helped to convene interns from other trade associations and even from some of our member companies, and forged a joint session that was hosted here in our office where they’ve built a rapport and some networking that they’re doing with fellow interns across a number of different organizations. So, we’ll be sad to see them go, but also, really proud about the accomplishments they’ve had and what they’ve contributed to our organization.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It’s so cool to see, and I can’t tell you how many times Kevin, I’ve been across interviewing a industry leader, and you know, how, how they have a very similar path. You know, they started either in an internship or they started as a summer job in college and fell in love with our industry or have a mentor that really guided them to say, “Hey, listen, you’ve got a career in this.” And, it’s always great to hear those stories, and it’s about creating those stories so that young professionals can be exposed to everything that our, our incredible industry has to offer. As, as you already know. And, you know, we had Alexi Khajavi from Questex on the podcast recently, he really set the stage for this year’s Hospitality Show in San Antonio, which the Suite Spot will be there and covering live, which we’re really excited about AHLA partners with Questex to put on this incredible show we’re both gonna be attending. What are you most looking forward to and why is this the must attend event for hoteliers this season?</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Well, we just had a joint working team session, earlier this week. And again, the enthusiasm, and the focus on just delivering, an outstanding offering for the attendees from the content that’ll be on main stage, to the breadth and the range of exhibitors will be on the trade show floor. And importantly the experience that’s gonna be created around the entire trade show and conference, including the evening social events, the ability to network, to interact with industry leaders and to really have that deep, meaningful content, that really differentiates the hospitality show. We were thrilled with the year one results that we delivered together as a partnership, and I’m confident you’re gonna see even further strides this year when we gather in San Antonio on October 28th to the 30th. So we’re thrilled to have you there, Ryan, and what we hope is thousands and expect to be thousands of other industry leaders and industry influencers who are gonna be on site to do business and connect with one another.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. It looks and sounds to be, record breaking attendance. You know, I challenge, my audience, if you’re a hotelier, out there, check out the seminar and program and agenda that they have set for the, The Hospitality Show full of hospitality leaders, influencers, celebrities, some, it’s gonna be a really, really great show. We’re excited. But, you know, one of my favorite things about The Hospitality Show is you get all the brands together, right? All the industry leaders not just the sector. And you get to see, how some issues kind of rise to the top and you get to see a rallying cry around some really important issues, one of them being human trafficking, right? And the fight against that. And I know AHLA and the foundation and there are no Room for Human Trafficking Campaign, do a fantastic job and work, talk to us for those in our audience who aren’t familiar with this initiative and why is it, so important and should be at the top priority for hoteliers out there.</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Yeah, so thank you for that setup. The AHLA has been playing a leadership role, on this effort to prevent, and to combat human trafficking since 2019. We just recently, our AHLA foundation hosted the third annual No Room for Trafficking Summit, bringing together organizations, our industry organizations who were providing funding for via our new survivors fund. All focused around elevating the training, the awareness, and the efforts to support survivors of human trafficking. It’s such a, a powerful event and program. I believe we’re approaching close to 1.8 million hotel industry employees who’ve been trained in just the exponential impact and ripple effect in a positive way that that has a elevating awareness for people who can spot the signs and take action. The Survivors Fund, we announced at the event awards totaling up to a million dollars, for organizations who are on the front lines, of supporting the survivors of human trafficking. So this brings the entire industry together, not only the hotel brands, but owners, the management companies, but also the vendor community is active in this effort as well. So it’s an important and a serious issue, but also one where you can see that this industry making a difference.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> No, absolutely. And if you ever have any doubt or want to be inspired to support this cause, I challenge you just listen to one of these incredible stories and the difference that it is making right now. So, again, thank you to you and your organization for all the work that you do. It’s such an important cause for the hotel industry. Kevin, we know you’re boots on the ground, right? You’re traveling all over the country, talking to industry leaders, hotel brands, hotel management companies, and individual hoteliers at these regional hospitality events. We talked about at the top. We’ve got a lot of external factors right now. We’ve got inflation, rising interest rates, construction costs, and all that with an election year at the end of the year. So what’s your general sentiment? You know, when you put your ear to the ground, you talk to these everyday hoteliers out there, I mean, we just came off a great summer. But what’s the general sentiment out there about our industry and what to look forward to in 2025?</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Yeah, you touched on it Ryan. I think a number of factors that people would recognize, as creating some degree of uncertainty or some headwinds, and profitability is a challenge right now in the industry because of those factors, interest rates, the consumer health of the consumer, operating costs, even some of the public policy issues that we talked about in New York and Boston, those can create uncertainty as well as translate into real operating cost implications for the industry. So all those things are certainly present, and certainly the conversations I have with our members, acknowledge those. But from a medium and a long-term perspective, there’s still great recognition of this industry’s vitality that the sector of travel and tourism, will grow over time that people value those experiences, whether it’s individual ones for leisure, the group, and meeting events that they attend as well as for business travel. So you still see that long-term opportunity set, and I think that’s reflected through the investments industry is making in new brands, new concept development, investments in key markets. So that balancing between short term challenges, but also this long term growth trajectory is really front and center, in almost all the conversations I have with our industry leaders.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, that’s a great point. I mean, no longer can anyone question the resiliency of this industry after the last few years, but there is, you know, we’ve got the rise in business travel still surging. Fantastic to see, as you said, exciting announcements with new brands, new projects. We talked to some of them on the podcast here. There’s still so much hope on our industry and the consumers they’re still traveling. At the end of the day, we’re all travelers and we love to see it. So thank you again for all the awareness and education that, that your team do. And again for my audience, I really encourage you, visit AHLA.com, get educated on some of these issues that Kevin and his team are really fighting and advocating so much for everyday hoteliers. So, coming up on it now, but wanted to see if you had any final thoughts before we wrap up today, Kevin?</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Well, thank you again, for inviting me to join you. We will absolutely look forward to seeing you in San Antonio, the end of October for The Hospitality Show. And also as always just a sincere thank you on behalf of our team on the AHLA and the foundation side for our member companies investment, in AHLA and their leadership involvement and thought leadership involvement in driving the industry forward on the issues we’re active on. So thank you.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely. Well, we appreciate it as well. Thank you to all of our hoteliers listening out there, and hopefully we will see you at The Hospitality show here in a couple months. We’ll check in with you as well next quarter. Kevin, thank you so much for joining me on the Suite Spot, and we’ll talk to you next time.</p> Kevin Carey :<br /> Great. Thanks, Ryan.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>

00:16:56

145 – TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl: UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In the grand finale of the TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl, we visit one of the top-ranked hospitality programs in the country at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management. The Dean of the college, Dr. Cynthia Mejia, joins the Suite Spot to discuss the hospitality school and why it is one of the most successful in the world! </span></p> Check out the conversation with topics, including:</p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">🎓How UCF Rosen Is Shaping Hospitality Leaders</span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">🤝The Importance of Employer Partnerships </span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">📉Navigating Current Industry Challenges</span></p> <span style="font-weight: 400;">And much more. Tune in now! </span></p> </p> <em><strong>Episode Transcript</strong></em><br /> <em>Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.</em></p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree and we are here with our TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl, and I am so excited for this episode. We are here at my alma mater, UCF, and who’s joining me today is the Dean, Dr. Cynthia Mejia, UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management, the award-winning UCF Rosen College. Thank you so much Dr. Mejia, for being with me today.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> Wonderful. Thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure to join you.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It’s so exciting because like I said, this is my alma mater. This is where hospitality was ingrained. We always talk about DNA, but since this is your first time on the Suite Spot, we would love to hear about your hospitality journey and the path that led you to UCF Rosen.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> Wonderful. So, I was recently appointed as the new dean recently in June. And prior to that, I served as the interim dean since October of 2023. But I’ve been a faculty member here since 2013. When I first joined the college, and this is actually my second career, my first career for over 20 years, I ran food and beverage, and I was an executive chef out in the industry, mainly in the lodging side. And I ran banquets, large hotel restaurants, catering and events and operations. And then slowly moved up into operations within the hotel sector, small hotels and such. And so there, there came a point as people tend to know about our industry, that it’s a lot of work. It can take a good number of hours. And after doing that for about 20 years, I took a little break. And I just, I decided to get married and start a family. And then that’s when I began my journey into, to higher ed, getting my master’s and then my PhD, and then thinking about the ways that I love this industry. I have a lot of passion for this industry, and, you know, how can I give back? How can I be part of the industry and help the future leaders of our industry thrive with what I’ve learned, good and bad things that I’ve learned along the way. And then the best practices, of course, that we teach in higher ed. So that’s how it sort of all came together and came in as a faculty teaching food and beverage operations, facilities management, supply chain management. And then I moved into administration as an interim chair of my department, and then finally as the interim dean and now the dean.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> And it’s quite a journey. And, it’s the same mission that we have in this series is we’re trying to get more and more people involved in this industry that you can tell by your journey you’re extremely passionate about. I’m extremely passionate about, we’re going through a staffing shortage. We’ll talk about that a little bit in our industry, but 20 years celebrating 20 years at UCF Rosen and this college of Hospitality Management. For those who aren’t aware, give us a little bit of history about this college and where it started to where it is literally one of the preeminent hospitality programs in the world right now.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> So in 2024, this whole year, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary. And of course, I didn’t join until 2013, but I hear all the stories and know all the lore and there’s so many faculty who are here who came from way back then. We even have somebody here who’s worked 38 years in our college. So the school or the program came out of the College of Business a long, long time ago. And at the time Mr. Harris Rosen, who is our namesake and our largest donor and philanthropist, he donated 20, approximately at the time, $20 million and 20 acres in front of Rosen Shingle Creek, which is his large resort to start this college. And Dr. Abe Pza, who was our founding dean, worked on that project, you know, converted everything over from College of business to start our program. So that occurred in 2004 when this campus opened. And by the end of 2004, we had around a thousand students already. So it went from a, a couple hundred to a thousand at that time, very, very fast, because in this area, of course, our proximity to I Drive and the center of hospitality, Disney, universal, SeaWorld, you know, all of this area and hotels there was a need, of course to train the future leaders who would serve in these businesses. And then in 2008, we established a couple more degrees. So we started out with hospitality management. Another very, very popular approach degree program was event management, which at one time had around 1200 students in it at its peak. In 2012, we established our PhD in hospitality management in 2016. This was, as I was coming in, and this sort of happened as I was a faculty member, we received a very large donation to start our entertainment management degree, which is in collaboration with the College of Arts and Humanities, a very popular degree. And at around, uh, 2016, we had 3000 students here at the college. Yeah. So there’s just really fast growth and hiring fa yeah. Hiring faculty, hiring staff. Of course, in 2017 or so, our founding dean stepped down, remained on our faculty, and we had a new dean, Dr. Wong, and then Covid. It was at 2020. And it was, it was a really interesting time. I was a chair at that time and just devastating for our industry, devastating for higher education. And I will say, kind of looking back, UCF will say, and I want to brag a little bit, I think leads the nation in online learning with our center for Distributed Learning. And so, because all faculty at UCF are really trained on teaching online, incentivized to do so and supported to do so, our conversion to moving online, our programs online was seamless. And so, you know, that, that occurred and what happened, of course, the industry had layoffs and furloughs at the time. And what happens when the economy goes down a little bit or of course, in this time of covid, people want to do something during those times. They want to show that they’re progressing forward and they’ll take the time. So we actually had a bump in enrollments in both the undergraduates and the graduate degree programs. And at the peak we’re at 3,300 students. That’s the most we’ve ever had. And then of course, as Covid waned, everybody rushed to go back to work. So we right sized it down to around 2,900 or so. And, and as with industry, and we’ll talk about that talent shortage and labor and the labor pool, as with that we saw a little bit of that decline, which is consistent with programs across the world, actually, hospitality and tourism management programs across the world. So currently we have 72 faculty across three departments. We have six undergraduate degree programs, seven undergraduate certificate programs, four master’s degree programs. I believe we have more than three master’s certificate programs. I believe we have four or five, actually. And then of course, we have a PhD program. And so that brings us to today.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> With a beautiful campus right here in the center of everything. And that’s why I want to talk about next, because location, you know, Orlando, obviously known as the theme park of the world. Passed a couple on my commute when I was a student up here. But it’s gotta be great for students to kind of be immersed in hospitality at this school. So can you talk a little bit about the role of location, where this college is situated and how it sets students up for success as they progress in their careers?</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> So, Central Florida is the most visited destination in the United States and Orlando, and I would dare say all of Florida is unparalleled in our, in our, um, infrastructure to welcome guests and the things that there are to do and to see and experience here. So we have a quite an amazing draw of students, you know, both locally and nationally and internationally to come here, because we are so embedded with industry, we are so supported by industry. You know, guests speak in our classes. They speak right here in our stage. They table, we have the highest job placement rate nearing around 98%. When students are in their senior year, they come and they table here, and there’s not enough students to fulfill the roles, the leadership roles that they need. So it’s an amazing draw. We have them on our advisory boards. They tell us new things that are happening 5-10 years from now, how we should ready our students. We ask them to help shape our curriculum. Our theme park and attractions management degree program was assisted by Universal Orlando and Disney and SeaWorld and many others. We have the iDrive Chamber of Commerce, which is part of this region, and who we and who we belong to and serve right here. And the hotels up and down, I-drive that they’re just, we call them up, we text them, they text us, Hey, we have a role. Who do you know? It’s really, really embedded. And that’s, I think is our success, is to be able to bring that to students.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, that’s what I was gonna say, is that it’s not just about location, it’s about forging those partnerships. And on the way into this auditorium, first of all, I got my first job in hospitality right out there in that courtyard at a Rosen career fair. So, you know, I am a testament to those relationships that you have with those partners, but it is about more than location. You have to be able to have networking events, you have to have alumni be involved in coming back. And helping the university. So, talk to us a little bit about, I saw UCF Marriott Day, the second annual is taking place. Talk to us about how some of those relationships have formed with employers and how that really gives a fast track to starting a career in hospitality.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> So our students are some of the most sought after in the nationwhen we have career fairs. We have over 100 companies now coming. Maybe when you were here, it wasn’t that many, but now we don’t have enough room to put all of the companies. And we have around 800 students coming to those career fairs seeking internships. All of our students have to complete two well, actually three internships. One is a sort of a leadership formation, but the other two are actually work experience, that are all paid in different types of roles. I wanna give a shout out to a particular one, which kind of talks about how we are meshed with industry. We have a progressive internship with the Lowes Hotel Corporation. And so similar to how an accounting major will go and work with an Ernstand Young or whoever. And then they get a job after that. We’ve established that with Lowe’s Hotel Corporation. And so what happens is, students in their last two semesters in our program, the first semester, they’ll go and work and they’ll work two weeks at every single Lowe’s hotel. There’s five right now in the chain, and there’s more coming with Universal. They’ll work facilities, they’ll work front of the house, they’ll work food and beverage, they’ll work security reservations, and they’ll do these two weeks just to understand. And then once they select kind of an area that they wanna work on in the second semester, they will become supervisors and work towards more managerial positions. And upon successful completion of that, and the agreement between the student and the organization, they have direct job placement. So this kind of starting your career in college is something we are embarking upon. And our new students, our Gen Z students, this is a very different generation from when I went to school, probably from when you went to school. They want to see a career path. They wanna see ways for continual learning. They don’t wanna be told about it. They wanna feel it. They wanna see it. And so these are the kinds of things that we co-create with partners like Marriott, like Lowe’s, and like many others. Special things that we do that tailor to the organization’s needs. And also understanding how our students want to see themselves, and they’re gonna be the future leaders. So all of us have to work together. We can’t be in silos. We all have to work together, forging these relationships, creating new ways to be in industry, thinking about now inclusion of technology and how that’s gonna look. That’s our next frontier. But all of these things are very dynamic conversations that we have with super open, lovely people in our industry.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well one of the best things about our industry is the skills are so transferrable, right? So you can be an assistant general manager here in sunny Florida, but wanna move out to the mountains and you can become an GM or AGM out there for food and beverage or in hospitality. It all is rooted in people serving people. And I think, you know, it’s so cool to be a part of an industry like that. But it also creates so many opportunities. And we’re gonna talk about some stories. Which I think is, is really the best way to share that career path that you were talking about. But we’ve got the location, we’ve got the partnerships, but you guys are also doing a fantastic job of the curriculum that you’ve put together. Recognize number one in the nation by Shanghai rankings. First of all, congratulations to you and your staff on this achievement. But one of the things is how do you keep this top spot? You’ve said some of the ways so far, what does this mean to you, and how can you leverage that ranking for prospective students that might be uneasy of about whether hospitality is a career for them, or if they do know hospitality that UCF Rosen is the right college for them?</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> That’s a good question. So the Shanghai rankings follows a research ranking. So, we have faculty members here who are research faculty, and then also who are instructors, research faculty. You know, 40% of their job is to conduct research on, on whatever topics they find of interest, whether it’s, you know, consumer behavior or it’s economics or, you know, marketing or employee experience. So there’s a wide range of topics. And our faculty who are engaged in research are among the finest in the world, for not only the quality of research that they conduct, but for the numbers of papers and grants and things that they’re going after to produce. And, and it’s called knowledge dissemination. So when you have faculty who say, are teaching a class and they’re teaching a group of students, and they’re also conducting some research, and they are having findings because they have to go to industry to collect data or they do panel data, or they work with consumers, they, they might, you know, look at something they did in the morning, and then in they’re in their class and they’ll say, this is what I’m seeing this morning. Some of the findings in my research. And to go a step further, faculty also engage students to help collect data, especially in master’s program and the PhD program. So they are not only learning about the context, but they’re learning about the how and the process behind it. And that I will share an interesting story about one of our graduates who utilize some research techniques to get herself a really, really good job in the industry. So when, when we say the Shanghai ranking, that establishes sort of a research profile and a knowledge dissemination. And that is actually advantageous at an international level to bring lots of talents to UCF Rosen College. It’s also helpful on the recruitment side because people wanna be on a winning team. Right. And they wanna be part of that culture. And we have so much collaboration with our faculty, not only internal, but also internationally. And so when we talk about it, it’s more of a function of that research side. But students gain and industry gains knowledge, they gain knowing the latest trends, they can help make different types of decisions. Our students can then go work in these companies and understand something they learned in class that was based in facts and research, and bring those findings, you know, to how they want to do their jobs, how they want to lead, or making decisions and such. So we do talk about it in that way and students gain the benefits of that. But it’s also can be recognized that, that in our PhD program, many of our students, well all of ’em in their PhD program, go to work in other universities. So they take a skillset, they take a knowledge base, and it just goes on and on and on. They teach others who are gonna teach others who are gonna teach others, both for industry, but also on the research side.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, absolutely. It keeps you ahead of the curve as far as any trends. You are right there knowing what guests are saying, people that are going to restaurants, trends, technology, a new technology in the way that travelers, the way that guests are receiving that technology sentiment about it. So, absolutely. And obviously, has some very positive benefits on both the education side, but also the real world side. And we’re gonna talk about one of those rows and research focus when it comes to staffing. We talked about it, we alluded to it. There’s a staffing shortage right now in our industry. How are programs like this kind of helping create, as you’ve put it, Dr. Mia the leaders of hospitality for the future?</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> Yeah. So, as we talked about sort of post COVID, we had something called the Great Resignation. There was, prior to COVID, there was challenges in the industry around benefits or pay or hours. And there, there’s always been kind of those, you know, issues. But during COVID, when all of society, we had collectively figured out how much we need people who make food, who will serve food, who will deliver food, anyone in the service industries. We figured that out. And after those furloughs and layoffs, there was a little bit of disheartening, people who worked in the services industry, we won’t just call it hospitality, but in the services industries more broadly, they left because they were valued so much, but they wanted pay, they wanted benefits and all of those things that they wanted. And we’ve seen an increase in benefits, an increase in salaries.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Flexible pay, flexible schedules.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> All of that we’ve seen. So what’s happened was, after the Great Resignation, there was something called the Great Reshuffling. So what I call them are people, those of us who love people, those of us who love service in this industry we’re people. People. And so, if in the great resignation, they all moved to other types of jobs where they weren’t around people, then came the great reshuffle where they started to move into other related services industries to work with people again in the service industry. And what’s really interesting, I hear this anecdotally from large companies that we work with, a lot of them ultimately came home. They came back because they missed their hospitality or their service work family. And so we’re trying to understand that. We’re trying to understand those dynamics. We’re doing a lot of research around it. And again, gen Z wants something else. So we’re all coming to this nexus right now and trying to understand. And one of the things I’ve said before is, you know, we can’t continue to work in silos and think we’re gonna figure this out individually. We have to work with industry, we have to work with high schools, we have to work with parents, high school counselors, and even go into middle schools to reeducate people to listen to their needs, how they want to work, where they want to work. And we have to be more responsive. And so we’re kind of coming into this reckoning. We’re seeing that there was some disengagement, of course during COVID right. This certain last four years. I have a daughter who was also behind a camera for two years in high school. So I saw this at home and coming back and ramping up opportunities to engage with each other, or asking students or supporting students to figure out the ways they want to engage. And so we can’t do things the way we used to do. We have to listen, be still, be empathetic. Mental health is also something we pay a lot more attention to wellbeing. We’re paying more attention to taking the stigmas away from not feeling so great sometimes and needing help and putting more resources there. UCF has done an amazing job on that. And so, you know, it has to be a full force effort among many stakeholders to understand how to better serve our student, how to create more opportunities for them to engage. And industry is right there waiting to do it. They are supporting, they are funding, they’re creating those things within their own businesses. And so we’re kind of going hand in hand right now to understand and kind of recreate what this is gonna look like. But we always have those theoretical perspectives of human behavior that are tested through research. So we understand best practices. We’re kind of at this point where we’re, we’re listening, we’re applying best practices, we’re changing how we teach. We’re including a little more technology. But at the same time, we’re also going back to some old school face-to-face meetings. Going to office hours, bringing dogs to come and pet in the middle of classes. Like for the wellbeing and water balloon throwing or whatever it is. So we’re trying to find the right fit of both ways to go after being responsive to students and also supporting their learning journey. Because they’re gonna be the leaders. They’re gonna be the future leaders.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> No, absolutely. It’s super commendable on the versatility and the way that you’re adapting to that. Because I do think you’re right, this staffing shortage has forced our industry to make changes a lot quicker than maybe our industry was ready for. But I think there is any silver lining, there’s gonna be a lot of great things that come out of this.Because there were a lot of stigmas to the hospitality industry. Long hours, sometimes not the greatest pay, always working on site versus remote.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> And that’s, that’s a tough one. Because, you know if you’re HR, marketing, or accounting or whatever, yeah. You can have your two or three remote days or even work from home. You can’t do that when you’re customer facing. So something you had mentioned before about alternative, work arrangements or giving employees more flexibility to create their own schedule. You know, do I wanna work morning, night? Can I switch? And those with families, we’re seeing companies bring more support for daycare and different things like that or continuous education and tuition reimbursement. So it’s changing out there. It must change. And there’s some top companies here in this region that are leading the way and doing that.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It’s really cool to see, ’cause again, it’s going to present opportunities that I don’t think were there in hospitality before. And ultimately it’s gonna do what we want, which is bring in a bigger pool of talent. And we’ve really had to dip into different pools that we haven’t really historically gone to the, well, I mean, think about every time that you’ve talked to someone, whether it’s a hospitality industry leader where they said, I started in this and now I’m here. And we want to try to create paths where its, I started in hospitality and this is where I want to end my career because I love people so much and I love what I do. So, but that’s a story to tell. And that’s where I want to ask you today. I’m sure we live in an industry full of stories, feel good stories. Any recent ones that you’ve come across, whether it’s somebody landing that dream job or just feel good story about our industry.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> Absolutely. I first want to give a shout out to our internships team, and I call them the job whisperers. So they are actually very closely working with industry partners all over the nation and even internationally to understand what organizations want, what kinds of jobs out there, all the different levels, the personality of someone who could work there. And so, you know, they have this very large pool, but they also really help students organize their resumes to be a match. They listen to students about what are your goals? What are your strengths? Because it’s interesting in the hospitality or the services industries, not everyone wants to be in front of a customer or a person. Some people love the industry, but they’re creative in the background. And so they learn all of these details and then they kind of do these job matches and industry trusts us and that’s why they call us, who can you send for X, y, z position? So with that said, I have a couple of success stories that we recently were able to marry together. There is Cory Clancy graduate of 2021, who is the project coordinator with Walt Disney Imagineering, he was on the team that converted splash mountain at Magic Kingdom to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. So that’s a great story and a little dream job. I guess that, that sounds like a cool job. Right? Absolutely. This person, Emily Broker, so Emily Broker was actually my student, she was a master’s student and she and I did a lot of research together. And my research is qualitative in nature. So worked with her on collecting focus group data and interview data, and she would code things. And she was really good at it. She had a background in psychology. So she was in the Department of Psychology, but she loved people and she worked in a bar. So she came over to get her master’s degree with us. And then we got connected and did, you know, several papers together and a lot of research. Well, she loves people, but she has a very creative skillset and she loves the qualitative work. So she got together with Dr. Jessica Wiki, who leads our internship program. And Dr. Wiki knew someone at Experience Kissimmee, which is a very large destination, marketing organization, management organization, and connected Emily to that company. So now she’s an a research analyst for experienced Kissimmee. There’s several students who are undergraduates who are currently doing summer internships at Okinawa Japan on a multi rotational hotel operations internship. There’s Taylor Armstrong, who is gonna be completing his master’s degree in 2024. He’s the assistant director of safety and security at the Ritz Carlton Hotel here in Grand Lakes. So, different types of people and different types of jobs.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> All loving the hospitality industry. What’s especially lovely to me is when they get out into industry and then we have really strong connections with alumni, and then they call us and say, I need this person or that person. Because they trusted not only what they learn, but they trusted the shepherding process towards their job and the care that we gave them to a right match. And so they believe in us. And so we do the same thing, and it just goes on and on. And in fact, when I spoke with some graduates, we just had a master’s hooting ceremony here, a fancy hooting ceremony on this stage last week, Friday. And I told a couple of them, okay, hurry up, move up in your company so that you come back and, you know, get some of our graduates. And it’s just, this is a trust and an understanding of the quality of, of people that we work with and the care that we have, um, in helping people to find their, their dream jobs.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> It’s so cool. I love hearing those stories. And it’s cool to know that there’s a UCF Rosen footprint on a lot of the major hospitality brands out there, and it is a snowball effect. And like you said, when you’ve experienced it, you know what you’ve learned, then you can trust to call back and say, yes, I know what type of program, extensive program, what type of education that they’re getting, and they’re gonna be a valuable resource for my organization. Such a cool story. Obviously UCF Rosen, this is our final college for this particular series and the campus crawl. But we’ve visited several others, FIU and FAU.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> All good colleagues of ours.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely. That’s what I wanna talk about, because earlier in this year, Rosen hosted the inaugural Florida Deans and Director Hospitality and Tourism Summit. So super interested in this. Obviously Florida, tourism is the name of the game for this state. How did this idea of coming of getting together all these deans and directors, and where do you see it moving forward?</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> So I was the interim dean at the time, and because I wasn’t in that deans and directors position very long, I didn’t know any of them. So I went to a conference and I was being introduced and then, we’re drinking coffee and we’re talking about our same challenges and same hopes and dreams. And I would ask, have you ever gotten together? All of you? ’cause they all seem to know each other. There’s eight of us. There’s eight institutions in the state of Florida, and none of them had ever gotten together to meet. They sort of knew each other. Some texted each other. I said, I think we should meet. Like, do you wanna meet? Would that be a good thing to do? And so they said, you know, okay. And they were all over it. And I thought, well, you wanna meet with us because we’re in the middle. Wanna come over? Central Florida. It’s like when you’re a kid, like you wanna come over. So I was like, you wanna come over? And you know, we said, okay, so we set up a first meeting, but we had some conversations about what is it that we wanna meet about? What, why are we doing this? And there is, in the state of Florida, there’s a list of classes and discipline, not classes, but disciplines and majors that are called the strategic programs of interest. And they’re things that the governor and the legislature deems as very important programs to advance the economy in the state of Florida. Things like aerospace is in there, nursing, engineering, those types of tech jobs because that’s something of emphasis, strategic program of emphasis. And I had often looked at this list and I never saw hospitality or tourism. Yeah. And I thought, why don’t they think that’s important? And maybe there’s reasons, there’s probably lots of reasons that they didn’t think. So as we got to talking amongst ourselves, we learned that that was something that’s important to us because what you had mentioned about staffing and industry, and we are the pass throughs for all of this talent that goes out into industry. And so we all decided, well if we are those programs, how can we be supported at, you know, a legislature level with high schools, with all the other institutions? We can put this up as a program of prominence that is recognized. And there’s some ancillary benefits. Nothing major, but it’s mostly this is of emphasis. And it gets talked about. It gets marketed in this way. Parents hear about it, high schools hear about it. There’s potential grant fundings for it to help with scholarship, I’m told. But what it is, is all of us, the eight institutions of directors and deans, we decided let’s work on getting hospitality and tourism management on that list. And so we worked through some of those things. We’re all gonna be meeting again. We email and talk a lot whenever we see each other at conferences. We actually have the governor’s conferences coming up in Tampa pretty soon. And we decided to get really organized to kind of, you know, get all, all of our efforts and lobby for this. And we’ve, we kind of planted some seeds and asked some associations and dmo, you know, would you be interested in coming? And they’re like, yes. Because they need people to work in the industry. And so we all, it turns out that this kind of snowballed. So it’s been very exciting. Yeah. And the other thing is, is they’re just the nicest people. Yeah. They’re just, they’re kind and nice. There’s nobody showing off or anything like this. Right. We’re all interested in students in our programs, so they go out into the industry and they make it change for the better. That’s what we all want.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Absolutely, and hospitality, so people serving people, that sounds like a great cause. And you know, I’m sure there were a lot of people shocked when they heard that.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> That we never met before or that it wasnt on the list?</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah. That it wasn’t on the list. But it’s so cool to hear that. And again, you know, we’ve had the pleasure of visiting some of these campuses and interviewing some of these directors and deans. So, really exciting to see how that progresses. As we wrap up today, we’re gonna lean on some of your advice and wisdom to a couple different maybe segments of people. So, you know, I was here just over a decade ago in this auditorium about to graduate, about to start my hospitality career, not really knowing what was out there, what advice, you know, we just got done with, with graduating some, some students. What advice are you sharing with them right now as they enter the workforce here in 2024?</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> So, couple of things. One is we, all of us have this idea of how something’s gonna look right. You know, for all us. And I don’t know about you, but for me it didn’t look at all like that. Right? But we have to be open to the opportunities that come. So plan B, plan C, right? To not be disappointed or the world falls apart because it doesn’t go this way. And to understand what our gifts, each of us have certain gifts and our skill sets and how to either leverage those or take positions when they become open. That can build new skill sets or we can meet new people who can help us. So, you know, I had this advice a long time ago. If you can’t, if you can’t go up, up, up, then go lateral. Don’t go down. Go laterals. So, and there’s so many jobs out there now.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Great advice.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> There’s just so many jobs out there right now. So get in somewhere. Do your very best. Stay as long as you can. Be honest and forthright with your expectations. Also know that when you graduate, you, it depends if you come in, there’s, we have a lot of non-traditional students who’ve been managers for seven or 10 years. They’re gonna go out and be general managers or directors. But a lot of students, you know, are sort of entering in lower mid-level supervisory or managerial roles. And it takes some time, it takes some savvy and some emotional intelligence to build, to understand the people side of it and how to advance yourself through the levels. And so rather than seeing this position that you think is yours, or could be yours or should be yours, you gotta understand there’s process and entering into an organization, there’s all these other people who also want that thing. So kind of a good awareness of where you sit and informally how you can advance through the channels. That’s a really important skillset to have. But I would also say that, I always tell people, don’t look, compare yourself to all others. That’s not good for us. That’s not good for our mental health. Look down work, work harder than everybody else, but stay in your lane. Understand your skillset. Maybe you have to go do a little bit of, you know, online training or different kinds of education, or maybe go onto a master’s if you want, get an MBA or whatever it is to build other skill sets. So it’s always learning. And that’s what I love about our industry, especially the food and beverage side, where I come from. It’s always learning. There’s always something to learn. And I recently heard this wonderful advice that if you, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. The graduation speaker said that at our last commencement. I like that. Which means to me is go where you can learn something. And if the opportunity presents itself, do that. And if you think that you’re supposed to be somewhere and an opportunity comes and it wasn’t what you thought, is it something where you can learn something to at least advance? You know, so taking that perspective of being open, constant learning, willingness, I think those are are helpful things for people going out into the industry. And for me, you know, any of us for me too.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> I was gonna say it’s great advice and, you know, being that sponge. And just, you know, there’s a lot of things after interviewing a lot of industry leaders, a lot of things we hear is one, the journey is not always the same. You know, you can start in one place and end up in a completely different place than you ever thought. And also look for mentors. Our industry is filled with them and, and they’re willing to help. They’re willing to usher in, you know, that, that next generation. So looking for those mentors and being a mentor.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> And being a mentor is really important. I think that, you know, and that’s what I also try to do personally, but I know we all do this at the college, is we’re always asking others or identifying in others. And even when people look like they don’t need help, but they’re doing well get to know ’em a little bit more because there’s something mutually beneficial that we could teach each other. We could show each other. But you’re right about, about the mentors. And I didn’t think of it ’cause we’re always teaching, so I just assume that. But there’s faculty here who are still in contact with people two decades ago who help and answer questions and, and ask advice. I ask certain faculty here for advice all the time and that’s wonderful. I have many mentors here at this college.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well let’s go to another stage in life. So those students that are about to start their education journey, those incoming freshmen into the UCF Rosen Hospitality Program, what advice are you giving them day one as they step on campus?</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> Get involved, leave your dorm room, leave your apartment, get involved, join clubs, meet people, make friends, get yourself in environments. Getting a study group if you’re more quiet, find the quiet people if you like band and, you know, color guard and all those things. I’ve heard a lot of students who like that recently. I mean UCF has 68,000 students. There’s hundreds of clubs. There’s too many things for them to do. So go and do those things. Be with people, learn the people skills, practice your soft skills. Take some risks, make mistakes, fail a little bit, but keep going and trying to build your network of friends. It’s really important for the hospitality industry and just life in general. And the other thing I would say is have fun. College should also be fun. We forget that sometimes. I mean, we have a 99% graduation rate and a 98% placement rate. So students are working all the time, 30 to 40 hours. They’re taking four, five classes. Sometimes they’re working in summer, taking class in summer, joining a couple of clubs and such. And so we also have to think about this pressure to go, go, go, go. You know, you’re supposed to have fun too, you know, so carve out sometimes to have some fun. Make time.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Your students are just steps away from theme parks, restaurant. World class restaurants. So you’re right. Easy. Lift your head up and maybe take a walk and you’ll run into something. Well, as we wrap up with the final question, as Dean, what is your vision for UCF Rosen College for the next 5-10 years?</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> It’s a pretty broad vision and I’m about to share it with our faculty and invite them in to think about it, because I don’t, I do think it’s important for a leader to have a vision, but I also think it’s should be inclusive and should be adaptable. But I think very broadly, I want for us to be the pioneer in transforming the way that hospitality and tourism education and research is conducted. And I want in 5 or 10 years for industry, for our alumni, for other institutions to say, you know, in 2024, 2025, Rosen College changed the way that this field is taught and that research is conducted. They were the ones who changed it, made the 2.0 and that’s broadly what I hope to see. We’ll see. Because we must do this. We must make these changes.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Well, thank you so much. Absolutely. Inspired again, as an alumni of this university is, it’s so cool to be able to come here a decade after I graduated and to be back on this stage where I was watching hospitality leaders inspire me to be a part of the industry. So thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Mejia and for all the work that you and your team do here.</p> Dr. Cynthia Mejia :<br /> Thank you. And it is a pleasure to have you here and I hope you’ll come back and maybe do a leadership seminar.</p> Ryan Embree:<br /> Yeah, it’d be my pleasure. Well thank you so much. Thank you for the UCF Rosen College for hosting us here at the Suite Spot. Thank you for listening to us, and we’ll talk to you next time on The Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embry, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.</p>

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