Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

In this episode of Suite Spot, we pick the brain of a true hotel review response expert. Kristeena Seckinger, who has responded to over 100,000 hotel reviews in her career, joins host Ryan Embree to talk about what it takes to be a successful hotel review response writer and shares some best practices for online review response. From the proper length of a review response to which sites are the most important to respond to, Kristeena covers it all regarding review response. Ryan and Kristeena also talk about how to manage brand expectations and standards when it comes to review response and the emotional toll responding to reviews can have on a hotelier. In the Q&A segment, Kristeena delivers some insightful do and don'ts to a hotelier who is looking to make review response a priority in 2019. To submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Episode Transcript 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. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello and thanks for listening. This is Ryan Embree, your host of the Suite Spot. Happy 2019 to all of our listeners. It's a new year, and we've got a new episode here of Suite Spot. Very excited about the episode we have today. It is going to be circled all around responding to reviews. So today in our What's News, we're going to be looking at a white paper on travelmediagroup.com, which is what makes a good review response writer. And in this white paper you're going to get some best practices, some tools and resources on how to respond to reviews. If you're delegating that to someone at your property, how to make sure that you're getting the most out of them. Or, if you're responding to reviews yourself, making sure you are doing everything you need to do in order to get those great responses out there. We know how the brains have really raised their expectations of hoteliers when it comes to review response. We know how important this is and the standards are getting stricter and stricter when it comes to review response. So with that being said, we've got a really special guest with us. She has actually been with us since the conception of our solution Respond & Resolve where we actually partner with hotels to respond to reviews, our Senior Reputation Analyst Kristeena Seckinger. So without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome in Kristeena. Good Morning Kristeena. How are you? Kristeena S.: Good morning, Ryan. I'm doing great. How are you doing? Ryan Embree: I'm excellent. I'm super excited that you had the opportunity to be with us live here on the Suite Spot, and I want to first start off with with kind of an easy question. You, you have, like I mentioned before, you were here at the very beginning of this solution, Respond & Resolve. So since that time, how many reviews have you personally responded to? Kristeena S.: Well, I have been here over three years now and so within that time I've probably responded to about 117,000 reviews. Ryan Embree: Wow. That is, that is an incredible number. I have to ask, you know, with so many review sites online today, and you know you being a expert in review response, what would you say your personal opinion is of which is the most important site to make sure your reviews are responded to? Kristeena S.: Well, there are a lot of factors to look at when thinking about the answer to that question. Previously, I would have said with confidence that maybe TripAdvisor might have been the most important just because they have that brand recognition and travelers are always going to TripAdvisor to look for reviews about the hotel. More and more now, we are seeing more content in Google.

In this episode of Suite Spot, we prepare hoteliers for the upcoming holiday season, which is historically slower for hotels. Ryan counts down the top 5 ways to market your hotel during this year’s winter months. We tackle everything from traditional advertising avenues to best practices on setting your hotel up for future success. This list will help you build a strategy to make sure that you are getting the most revenue out of your business in a time of low occupancy and ADR. We would love to hear your feedback to our list. What are you doing to optimize your hotel’s revenue during the “off-season”? You can reach us by either calling or texting us at 407-984-7455 or email us at [email protected]. Episode Transcript 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. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending and hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello everyone and thank you for listening. Happy holidays. This is your host, Ryan Ryan Embree, and you are listening to the Suite Spot. This is episode 15. We've got a great episode for you today, very excited about it. We felt that, uh, during this holiday season, unless you are in a winter destination, we know that this is typically considered in the industry a off season or slower period. You're starting to see occupancy maybe dipped down a little bit, causing her to come down as well. And hoteliers are constantly looking for ways to put heads in beds and fill their rooms during this slower winter season. And the spirit of that, we are going to have a top five list today of the ways that you can market your hotel during the slow off season. So let's go ahead and jump right in. Ryan Embree: We're going to start with number five and number five is for hoteliers to start thinking about traditional advertising avenues, some more out of the box, ways to market your hotel. For example, coupons or billboards, you know, 60 percent of travelers during the holiday seasons are searching for hotels and making booking decisions during the holiday season. These could be a travelers that are going on road trips across the country so they might not have a particular plan or do the research that they would for maybe a summer vacation they're making on the spot decisions and for those travelers we know best that places like coupon guides or billboards could really sway a last minute traveler to make that booking decision at your particular property. In saying that, if this is your first time implementing some of these traditional avenues of advertising, I would caution you to really have a system in place to be able to track your ROI. So if you're a have coupons out there, you know, track the number of calls that you're getting from the coupon. Collect those coupons at the front desk. Put in a rate code in your pms to make sure that you're getting a solid ROI. So you can know moving forward, whether that is a channel to market your hotel moving forward. Ryan Embree: So number four on our list of top ways to market your hotel in the slow season is to grow your guest database and the point of this would be to grow the information about your guests through email marketing so that you can really connect with those guests in the future. So if you haven't already, start collecting emails from your guests when they first arrive at your property. You can. You can use this information for feedback for their stay, but also in the future, in the slower times, like the winter months. You can reach out to them for holiday events or stay again and save packages. We know that a majority of of bookings are now coming from Ota or third party sites. Ryan Embree: Now that you've had the opportunity to host these guests,

In this special edition episode of Suite Spot, we discuss the recent 2018 Phocuswright conference in Los Angeles.  Host Ryan Embree is joined by Patrick O’Brien, product manager and Phocuswright attendee veteran, who gives his take on the innovative technology conference. Hear from Patrick as he talks about the theme of this year’s conference and how it sets the stage for the future of the hotel industry. Learn what industry leaders from companies like Airbnb, TripAdvisor, and Expedia are saying about what they have in store for the future of their companies. This episode is an excellent glimpse of where the hotel industry is headed in 2019 and beyond. Episode Transcript 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. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Today we have a very special edition of the Suite Spot. As digital marketing leaders in the industry, it is always our job to make sure that we are at the forefront of all innovations and conferences that are going on around the industry and we have been busy over the past couple of months to give you that insight. Today our episode is going to be focused around Phocuswright Conference, which was in Los Angeles, California at the end of November. I'm here with a guest, Patrick O'Brien. He is our digital product manager. He's been on Suite Spot before, but he is back to give us his insights on the conference, which we both attended. So let me go ahead and first off, welcome Patrick to the show. Welcome. Patrick O'Brien: Thank you very much. Ryan Embree: So I want to first start off uh Phocuswright - this is not your first time going and attending. Um, and really this is a hospitality tech conference, correct? Patrick O'Brien: Yes. Ryan Embree: Like all conferences, every single year they have sort of a common theme that you would find for each year. And I'm curious what you felt was the theme of this year, 2018's, Phocuswright Conference. Patrick O'Brien: Yeah. So I think this is the fifth or sixth year that I have, I've gone to Phocuswright. And there always seems to be some type of new theme in the years past, uh, you know, it's been kind of around mobile and mobile booking and mobile technology around disruption in the sharing economy and what that's going to do to the travel industry. This year, I kind of felt like you had a collective cooling from the travel industry where it's like we've had all this disruption, all of this growth and everything's maturing a little bit more. And you know, you've had the consolidation of all of these OTA sites and the OTA is gobbling up other, other companies and kind of creating this bigger platform. You know, Airbnb is kind of starting to see their growth level out a little bit more. And so it's, it's obviously now, you know, one of the big players in the industry and so now I feel like you had everybody kind of sitting back and looking out and saying, okay, now we have these big companies out there. Um, travel, I think on the whole is, is increasing. What can we do now to continue to build wealth and sort of get a bigger share of the pie. One of the most interesting statistics that I saw year over year and I may get the year wrong, but I think since like 2014 that founding has gone down and funding has gone up. So what that means is that there are less and less startups coming into the industry. But there's more and more money being pumped into the industry. And I think that is kind of a direct result of what we were seeing is: So now you've had all these startups and all of this money go into the industry. They've sort of proven out the ideas that are going to work. Now they're pumping more money into trying to figure ...

In this special edition of Suite Spot, we discuss a hospitality keynote presented at the 2018 Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco. The keynote, "The Future of Travel and Hospitality," was a fireside chat with Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson. In this podcast episode, host Ryan Embree is joined by Anne Sandoval, Travel Media Group’s Marketing Director who attended the keynote. We discuss the key takeaways from Arne's insights on Marriott’s relationship with technology. Resources Watch the full Dreamforce keynote, The Future of Travel & Hospitality: https://youtu.be/EgDD5hBrkNU Episode Transcript 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. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello and welcome everyone. This is episode 13 and today we are going to have another special edition of Suite Spot. We do this from time to time being leaders and experts in the hospitality field. We travel across the nation to conferences, trade shows that have to pertain with the hospitality industry. And today we are going to be talking about an annual conference of Dreamforce which is hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco. Now, Salesforce isn't necessarily a hospitality-only vertical. Uh, they work across verticals, but there were some really great insights when it came to the hospitality industry. Just to give you a little background on this conference, this year's conference drew over 170,000 attendees. So it's a very popular conference, people traveling from all over the world to experience this week. And today we'll be talking about the hospitality keynote by Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson. The title of this keynote was the Future of Travel and Hospitality and obviously being in the digital marketing space, we have to be at the forefront of knowing the new technology and future of travel. Ryan Embree: So we're always interested in talking about that. I have the pleasure to be joined today by our director of marketing, Anne Sandoval, and she had the opportunity to attend this keynote and she is here with me today to share some insights with us. So first and foremost, let me go ahead and welcome you to the Suite Spot, Anne. Anne Sandoval: Hey Ryan, it's great to be here. Ryan Embree: So this was a, obviously very popular conference that you attended and you know, as I mentioned, it's not all about the hospitality vertical, but this particular keynote was. It's super interesting, especially when you get to hear firsthand from executives of such a large worldwide global brand like Marriott. And I wondered to first start out, this was kind of something fun that they did. Uh, Arme had mentioned that he traveled anywhere from 200 to 225 nights of the year and they first started off the uh speech by giving his three travel tips. I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on those tips. Anne Sandoval: Yeah, it was really interesting to hear from someone who spends just so much time in hotels and across time zones and all of his tips really had one thing in common, which I know is a theme that's familiar to the Suite Spot, which is to go local. So his first tip was to get on local time and exercise to help keep your routine. Second, to eat the local food and go sightseeing and third was don't let yourself live as if you're still at home. And I think these are really great takeaways for travelers, but I think it's also helpful for hoteliers to know these tips. Ryan Embree: Yeah. You know, it's it – at the end of the day, we're all travelers, right? And when we talk to hoteliers, it's almost putting themselves in the shoes of your guest and I think that was such an interesting perspective that he took and to get ins...

In this episode of Suite Spot, we focus on marketing branded and franchised hotels. Host Ryan Embree teams up with the leaders of Travel Media Group’s sales team, Diane Elderkin and Edwin Pomales, to discuss. In the What's News segment, Ryan shares an article that highlights the 7 latest ways big brands are using content today. The article breaks down the different strategies and methods the brands are using to capitalize on content online. In The Suite Spot, Ryan, Diane, and Edwin share their thoughts on how branded hotels can provide customers with a unique and local experience. Diane and Edwin share what advantages and disadvantages franchised hoteliers and branded hotels face in comparison to independent hotels and home rentals. Resources: https://www.todayshotelier.com/2016/08/01/7-of-the-latest-ways-big-brands-are-using-content/   Episode Transcript 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. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending and hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello and thank you all for listening. This is Ryan Embree, host of the Suite Spot. This is episode 12 and I'm very excited for this episode today. We are going to be actually piggybacking on an episode that we did earlier this year, episode five, which was a marketing tips for independent hotels. So we got a lot of great feedback from that episode and we wanted to kind of follow up and get the same sort of resources and additional education for maybe those hoteliers out there that have a brand, you know, they also need some help with marketing and give them some kind of tips and best practices on how to best market their branded hotels. So that's going to be our episode today. As we jump into the What's News we're going to be looking at an article from Today's Hotelier. This article, which you can find in our show notes, is, uh, titled the seven of the latest ways big brands are using content. Ryan Embree: And I found this article absolutely fascinating. What it did is actually seven of the major brands: IHG, Best Western, Motel 6, Choice – even Marriott, and it looked at different ways that they were using content, uh, to really market their hotels. I'll go ahead and give a few examples - I won't give them all. Again, this article is in our show notes today, but the first one I wanted to bring up was a hashtag contest that IHG did. Where they use the #joyoftravel and they use it on all their social media platforms to promote both their own content and posts. But more importantly it was to capture traveler content engagement. Using hashtags for these campaigns can really draw a lot of engagement and can draw a lot of people together for a common purpose. So that is one of the ways that IHG or Holiday Inn was uh using content to market their brands across the board. Ryan Embree: Another one which I found absolutely interesting was Marriott and Under Armour teaming up and they teamed up to provide running routes for guests that were staying at its Residence Inn properties. So this is two major corporations and businesses teaming up again to draw awareness to the brands and to market. So again, those were just a few examples. It's a really great example of how brands are perceiving content though - they're seeing the value in this content that's out there and noting that if they utilize it in the right way, it can help promote their brand. That's more of a high level, um, you know, bird's eye view when it comes to marketing for a brand. But as we know, we know that there are tons of individual properties and franchisees within that brand. So today's Suite Spot, we're going to bring in two of our experts to talk to us about how you can utilize your brand,

In this special edition episode of Suite Spot, we recap the recent 2018 Lodging Conference. It took place at the beautiful Arizona Biltmore resort in Phoenix, AZ. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group’s Senior Director of Product, Jason Lee as they discuss the current state and future of the hotel industry.  Listen and learn, as they analyze the opportunities and threats to the current prosperous era for hoteliers. This episode is a great way to get insight into what the power players and brand leaders are saying about the hotel business today. Episode Transcript 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. Ryan Embree: Welcome to the Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending and hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello and welcome everyone. You are listening to the Suite Spot. This is Ryan Embree, your host. Thank you for listening today. We've got a very special and exciting episode of Suite Spot where we are going to be reflecting on the most recent 2018 Lodging Conference which happened here at the end of September of 2018. I had the pleasure and was fortunate enough to attend the conference myself as well as our guest that we're going to be having on today and we're going to give you a couple of takeaways and get a good grasp on some of the key points. So today let's go ahead and welcome Jason Lee. He's our senior director of product and technology. I was fortunate enough to travel with Jason to the Lodging Conference. He has been to the conference multiple times, so he's going to have a some different insight on what the differences might have been in the past versus this year. So let's go ahead and welcome Jason in. Jason, welcome back to the show. Jason Lee: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me back. After my last performance, I was hoping that you would invite me back. I didn't know for sure. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. So today, as mentioned, we're gonna be talking about the Lodging Conference and this isn't the first time you've been, you've been a number of years now. I wanted to get your impression of, you know, this year's overall sentiment and how maybe this year's Lodging Conference has been different than years past. Jason Lee: Yeah I think like in terms of different from years past, you know, I remember going to the Lodging Conference right after the recession, you know, the 2010 / 2011 times and, and I think there was a lot of like, hey, you know, or we do see some trends going the right way, but are we ever going to get back to 2007 / 2006 levels of occupancy and revenue? Um, and I think, you know, over the last few years we've seen a lot of optimism and a lot of like, hey, the state of the industry. It looks really great and it's really awesome and I think this year you're seeing the same numbers as the previous probably five years of like, Hey, this is good, good growth. Um, but now it's a little more like, how long is this growth gonna go? Can we keep this going? Um, some people, they're feeling very optimistic and thinking that we're, we're, you know, the, that the, uh, the hotel supply line is correct. We're not overbuilding. The influx of travel seems to be going well. Millennial travelers and baby boomer travel seems to be, you know, on the rise. So you're looking at good segmentation and solid revenue projections. Um, but then at the same time it's like, or there could be some sort of economic collapse or there could be some kind of other thing that could happen that could cause a derailment that everything right now looks very, very positive. Ryan Embree: Right. And we heard "cautious optimism" a lot throughout the conference and you're right, you know, we've been hearing it from brands, we heard it from management groups that,

In this special edition episode of Suite Spot, we recap the recent 2018 Lodging Conference. It took place at the beautiful Arizona Biltmore resort in Phoenix, AZ. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group’s Senior Director of Product, Jason Lee as they discuss the current state and future of the hotel industry.  Listen and learn, as they analyze the opportunities and threats to the current prosperous era for hoteliers. This episode is a great way to get insight into what the power players and brand leaders are saying about the hotel business today. Episode Transcript 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. Ryan Embree: Welcome to the Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending and hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello and welcome everyone. You are listening to the Suite Spot. This is Ryan Embree, your host. Thank you for listening today. We've got a very special and exciting episode of Suite Spot where we are going to be reflecting on the most recent 2018 Lodging Conference which happened here at the end of September of 2018. I had the pleasure and was fortunate enough to attend the conference myself as well as our guest that we're going to be having on today and we're going to give you a couple of takeaways and get a good grasp on some of the key points. So today let's go ahead and welcome Jason Lee. He's our senior director of product and technology. I was fortunate enough to travel with Jason to the Lodging Conference. He has been to the conference multiple times, so he's going to have a some different insight on what the differences might have been in the past versus this year. So let's go ahead and welcome Jason in. Jason, welcome back to the show. Jason Lee: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me back. After my last performance, I was hoping that you would invite me back. I didn't know for sure. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. So today, as mentioned, we're gonna be talking about the Lodging Conference and this isn't the first time you've been, you've been a number of years now. I wanted to get your impression of, you know, this year's overall sentiment and how maybe this year's Lodging Conference has been different than years past. Jason Lee: Yeah I think like in terms of different from years past, you know, I remember going to the Lodging Conference right after the recession, you know, the 2010 / 2011 times and, and I think there was a lot of like, hey, you know, or we do see some trends going the right way, but are we ever going to get back to 2007 / 2006 levels of occupancy and revenue? Um, and I think, you know, over the last few years we've seen a lot of optimism and a lot of like, hey, the state of the industry. It looks really great and it's really awesome and I think this year you're seeing the same numbers as the previous probably five years of like, Hey, this is good, good growth. Um, but now it's a little more like, how long is this growth gonna go? Can we keep this going? Um, some people, they're feeling very optimistic and thinking that we're, we're, you know, the, that the, uh, the hotel supply line is correct. We're not overbuilding. The influx of travel seems to be going well. Millennial travelers and baby boomer travel seems to be, you know, on the rise. So you're looking at good segmentation and solid revenue projections. Um, but then at the same time it's like, or there could be some sort of economic collapse or there could be some kind of other thing that could happen that could cause a derailment that everything right now looks very, very positive. Ryan Embree: Right. And we heard "cautious optimism" a lot throughout the conference and you're right, you know, we've been hearing it from brands, we heard it from management groups that,

In this episode of Suite Spot, we take a look at the state of the hotel industry. With an incredible streak of 100+ months of RevPAR growth, it's a great time to reinvest in your hotel. Here are 5 ways you can reinvest in your property for a prosperous future.

In this episode of Suite Spot, we take a look at the state of the hotel industry. With an incredible streak of 100+ months of RevPAR growth, it's a great time to reinvest in your hotel. Here are 5 ways you can reinvest in your property for a prosperous future.

In this episode of Suite Spot, we take a look at what it takes to manage and run a successful social media marketing strategy in today’s hotel industry. Priscilla Osorio, Social Media Analyst at Travel Media Group, joins host Ryan Embree to give advice to hoteliers on how to tailor social media content to create an engaging and effective social media campaign.