Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

The Suite Spot: Spotlight series is back with another one-of-a-kind episode that welcomes special guest, Christopher Calabrese, General Manager & VP of the Marriott Cancun Collection! Podcast host and TMG Marketing Director, Ryan Embree sits down with Christopher to showcase the newly renovated Marriott: Cancun, an All-Inclusive Resort, and what exciting new amenities, views, dining options, and activities hotel guests can look forward to from the astounding 450-room property. 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. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining me. We are continuing our Suite Spot: Spotlight series. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite series podcast series that we've done on The Suite Spot. Because of all the places we've traveled, we've gone up to New York, down to Miami Beach, and now we are going to beautiful sunny Mexico with a great guest, Christopher Calabrese, general manager and vice president of the Marriott Cancun Collection. Christopher, welcome to the Suite Spot. Christopher Calabrese: Thank you, Ryan. Good to be with you. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and we talked off screen how very jealous of where you're at. You've got a wonderful property over there, which we're gonna talk all about. But before we do that, I always love, we live and work in such a wonderful industry, Christopher, with tons of backgrounds and stories. Tell us a little bit about your journey, your hospitality journey, and what led you to the Marriott Cancun Collection. Christopher Calabrese: Well, I've been with Marriott for 52 years now, which a lot of people don't believe, but it's actually the truth. I've had the pleasure to work with all three of the generations of the Marriott family, starting with JW Marriott Sr., Bill Marriott, of course, who was our ex-chairman of the board, and now our David Marriott, who of course is the grandson of the founder and he is now our chairman, executive chairman, as they call it these days. So it's been an honor to work with all three generations. I started with the hot shops, which was our sort of founding company of restaurants. That's how Marriott got started in the business. And most of my background, or let's say half of my background to date so far has been food and beverage. I then became a regional director of operations in Mid-Atlantic. And I wanted to explore the world. I wanted to see international, I wanted to be a general manager. And so at that time I expressed an interest in Latin America and they said, well, you don't really speak Spanish, so we don't, we can't really put you there at this time. So I said, okay, well what might you have? They said, well, we have a job for you in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia as general manager. I said, I don't speak Arabic. And they said, yeah, but you know, your type of personality will fit in nicely in in that area, in that part of the world. So if you'd like it, let's do it. We can fly you in if you want to have a look. I said, no, that's okay. Let's just go do a one-way ticket and I'll work out there for a couple of years and hopefully one day get back to this part of the world. And, and sure enough, that's what happened. And so that's kind of my journey International. And then I moved to Puerto Vallarta as general manager of the Marriott there. And then I've been in Cancun the rest of my career, but I've moved 26 times with this company. So, um, I know what it's like to see different parts of the world or at least parts of the US for the short time that I was there, half of my career.

It’s time to catch up on the state of the hotel industry with special guest Chip Rogers, President and CEO of the AHLA! Ryan and Chip have important conversations around some of the most pressing and relevant current events happening in hospitality and give hoteliers key insights into how staying in touch with these developments directly affects your businesses and travelers. Tune in now to discover how staffing, work flexibility, new trends, and hotel technology keep evolving and how you can stay one step ahead of the curve. 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. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining, watching us. If you're watching us from our YouTube channel or joining us from any of the streaming platforms that you're listening to, if you did find us, you know, we've got a great guest today, someone that really doesn't need any introduction. Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Chip, thank you so much for, being on the Suite Spot with me today. Chip Rogers: Hey, Ryan, it's so good to be with you. Thank you for having me. Ryan Embree: Really technically not your first time on the Suite Spot. Last time we were together, Chip, we were in Las Vegas on a busy trade show floor after a very successful hospitality show. About six months removed from that now, what type of feedback are you getting about that event and maybe give us some insights into what you're looking for from the next one in October in San Antonio? Chip Rogers: Well, first feedback was the opening party, seems to have taken on historic status. As folks who have been, at that property know that the nightclub TAO and we packed it out, there was a line that lasted, some estimates over two hours long to get into it. And so you, you almost created that, fear of missing out. But people absolutely loved the opening party. And from there it went to, an incredible lineup of keynote speakers. And what we tried to do is make sure that we are entertaining you, informing you yes, hitting on those things that are unique to the hotel industry, but also remembering that everyone's a person, they have outside interests too, and, and could we get speakers that are funny, inspiring, educational. And I, and I think we hit all that. In fact, the most popular speaker that we had, Admiral McCraven, it was interesting. I was at an event literally last night and it was a political event and people were talking about, oh, you know, these two candidates that this seemed to be the two candidates running for president. And someone said, if there's a third party candidate, why don't we just get Admiral McCraven? And I'm like, that would be great, because now I know the guy and if he became president, that would be kind of cool. But it's that type of level of speaker that we had that I think really set us apart from many of the other shows that you go to. And so from the trade show floor, that was just amazing. We sold it out in year one to the speakers. And again, starting with that incredible opening party, it, it was quite an event. And, you know, Las Vegas always has something special for everybody. We're gonna try to redo that again in San Antonio. San Antonio, a very unique place. One of the most visited cities in the United States for people that are going on a leisure trip. And so we wanna make sure we're capturing that, that you're coming to the event, you're going to have fun, you're going to be entertained, you're gonna learn something,

Join Suite Spot host, Ryan Embree as he welcomes TMG Hospitality Traiblazer, Oliver Winter, to the podcast. Oliver is the founder and CEO of a&o Hostels which is the largest independent hostel chain in Europe! These two discuss the hostel experience, a&o’s commitment to green initiatives and sustainability, and the resurgence of the solo traveler. Tune in now to see how Oliver and a&o are making a big difference in hospitality across the globe. 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. All right. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, thank you so much for joining us, for listening to us, to watching us wherever you are, finding us here. We are here at the Content Creation Studio for another episode of TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. I am so excited to bring in my next guest, certainly a trailblazer, and what Oliver and his group are doing right now. Certainly, fantastic. We're gonna get a lot to it. So, let me go ahead and bring him in. Oliver Winter, founder and CEO of a&o Hostels. Oliver, thank you so much for jumping on the Suite Spot with me. Oliver Winter: Yeah, thanks Ryan, for having me here. Thank you very much. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. And we're gonna have some fun today. We're gonna talk about a&o all the initiatives that you guys are doing and this incredible growth that you're seeing. I think you bring a really unique perspective, but for those that have not listened to this series before, this is our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers, where we spotlight those individuals and management companies, uh, groups like a&o that are really trailblazing the path forward. So we have the pleasure of speaking with Oliver today, but Oliver, before we get into everything that we're doing right now, or even what's in the future, I wanna start with the past because this is one of my favorite questions we've been doing this series, which is almost a year old now, is tell us a little bit about your hospitality background, because we have such unique stories in our industry that I feel like rarely get told. We all talk about the, the exciting things that are happening right now, and maybe in the future, but a lot of us in hospitality, you had some very unique backgrounds before we got to the place that we were. So tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to ultimately founding a&o. Oliver Winter: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, happy to do this. Uh, so yeah, as a, as a young man between school and university, I, I had time to travel around the world and, um, came in touch with this hostel concept in many different countries. And what I saw, I liked really much so affordable stay, uh, you have with a warm shower, safe bed, a kitchen to share, a place to hang around and, and, uh, a place even very easy to come in touch with other travelers. So back to Berlin. Then, in these days, I started to study to become a teacher so far away from hospitality background parallel. During my studies, I investigated the Berlin Hostel market, and there've been in this time just non-commercial providers, like Y-M-C-A-Y-J, et cetera. So no private independent hostel. So with, with a lot of patients. And, and little luck of course, as well. So, 23 years ago, then I founded, um, AO in Berlin, opened a a 164 beds hostel. That was the very beginning, 164 beds. And it was, uh, it was from the first moment, it was great success. And, um, so then I stopped my studies and, and focused to grow this company and, and adding more bets first in Berlin later than in other cities in Germany, and then in other European countries.

The Suite Spot visits Miami Beach in this episode to talk with Simon Sorpresi of the SLS South Beach Hotel to discuss its addition to the Suite Spot: Spotlight series and how the iconic property stands out from the competition with a unique guest experience, art style, and digital marketing strategy. Tune in to discover why the SLS South Beach is a one-of-a-kind hospitality experience that every type of traveler should mark as their next destination. 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. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. I am so excited for this episode. If you are watching us on Travel Media Group's, YouTube channel, you know that we are here live on location. This is the first time ever we've been live on location. We're very excited. We've got this brand new Suite Spot: Spotlight series. We just had our first episode, but the first time that we're doing it live on location, and we have such a great guest and property that we're gonna be showcasing on this Spotlight series. Without further ado, let me bring him in. Simon Sopresi of the SLS South Beach, Vice President of Ennismore - Miami, Mexico, and South America. Simon, welcome to the Suite Spot for the first time. Simon Sorpresi : Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure and it's great to host you and your team here at SLS South Beach. Ryan Embree: My breath was taken away when we came in through these doors. You have a beautiful property here at the SLS South Beach. It really truly embodies the spirit of this series. We are going around the country trying to find and showcase the hotel's most unique and historic in the nation. Yeah, and I think that SLS certainly fits the bill, but before we start talking about the property, it's always interesting to talk to another person in hospitality because, we know everyone's story's different, right? You could start as a Bellman at a hotel like myself. Some people are literally born into the industry. Some people just fall into it just by choice. So tell us a little bit about your story, and what led you to Ennismore? Simon Sorpresi : Whoa. Okay. Uh, let me try to keep it short. So first of all, it's a pleasure to have you here. As you can hear, I'm not originally from the States. I still have a very thick accent. I tried to get rid of it, which I'm clearly not mastering it, but was very interesting. I studied national construction architecture back in Europe and fell through an excursion from that architectural school in hotels, fell kind of in love with hotels. And I was like, oh my God, that's really kind of unique. There was a gentleman called Uli Prager. He was the founder of Mervin Pick, the brand. And he did the tour and he was very charismatic. He could speak about the thread counts of the linen to how to wash pots and pans. I mean, he knew it all. And as a young person, young professional, I was really, really, I think wowed by him. And said, I wanna become him. And so that's where, how it came about. Did the hotel management school in Switzerland, worked all different disciplines of the hotel. Worked very heavy in food and beverage, specialized myself in food and beverage, had my own company in Europe and said, I wanna learn English and ultimately move to New York City after a saltic business. Moved to New York City, had my own business in New York, mostly in nightlife and art galleries. And then did that for seven years and went back to the roots of hospitality in luxury segmentation in Los Angeles. And I came here at SLS South Beach is the reason why it was such a tempting thing for me,

Travel Media Group just launched its latest product innovation to its social media digital solution, Social Video for Hotels: TikTok & Instagram Reels! Tune in to this Suite Spot podcast episode to join TMG Marketing Director & Suite Spot host, Ryan Embree, and Social Media Product Manager, Brian Ross as these two digital marketing specialists share the capabilities of this exciting addition to the social media solution and the best video-making insights that will optimize your hotel’s unique social media strategy. 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. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you for joining, thank you for listening. If you're hearing us on any of the podcast streaming platforms that you can find the Suite Spot on, or thank you for seeing us on Travel Media Group's YouTube page where you can find all of our Suite Spot episodes, and we have a fantastic episode today. A first timer, a newbie to the podcast of the Suite Spot, Brian Ross, our Social Media Product Manager at Travel Media Group. Brian, welcome to the Suite Spot. Brian Ross: Thank you so much for having me. Ryan Embree: Yes, and we're, super excited today. We've got a great episode and we're here for another launch. I feel like we do these episodes, every other episode, Travel Media Group, continuing to innovate. We have launched an exciting social media innovation and addition to our already incredible solution, due in part to you and what your team has been doing over there on the social media side. But we are launching social video for hotels, Instagram Reels, and TikTok. I'm excited. How are you feeling? Brian Ross: It's been fantastic. It really is the next natural step to what we've been doing with custom posts for hoteliers. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And I wanna talk about that because I feel like I know, I joked about it, you know, this being, an episode we do all the time with the, all these innovations. But we were a couple months ago, a couple episodes ago, talking about video content creation, TMG giving you the ability to build social videos via OneView®. So, what's the difference between that announcement and what we're talking about today? Brian Ross: So internally, what we refer to the other launch as is our DIY product. And that is essentially a product where you can go in and use our system to create content that goes out across all of your platforms, and you can track your insights and the performance of all those posts. But what this is, is this is a product that we offer where we create the custom posts for you. When we onboard somebody, we get some property notes and even in the individual posts, they can give us some notes on what they like and, you know, they know their occupancy drivers and things like that. So if they just give us a little note, then we go in and we actually create the content. Ryan Embree: So this is now us doing that with the video which is just so powerful and it's the natural evolution. We were talking off screen, off mic about this, but you know, one of the things that I'm gonna continue to reference during this episode is the social hotel social media survey that we just conducted, went out to our entire database of over 40,000 hoteliers. And one of the questions we asked them, what was your biggest challenge? And we saw 62% of the time, not enough time. That is a hotelier's life, 365, 24/7. We wish there were more hours in the day, but even if there were, we'd be open for them, right? Because we're hoteliers, not enough time, unsure of what to post 60% and staffing someon...

Join Suite Spot host and TMG Director of Marketing, Ryan Embree as he talks with the Senior Vice President, Luxury Division, The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, Ashish Verma in our new TMG Spotlight series to give listeners a lavish perspective on hospitality and how the rich history of The Chatwal, New York sets the gold standard for luxury in the hospitality industry. 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. Hello everyone, my name is Ryan Embree, host of The Suite Spot. Thank you so much for joining us. We are having a brand new series here. I am so excited about this. So if you've been following the Suite Spot before, we've been doing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series, that's all about the people and hospitality management companies that are pushing our industry forward into the future, 2024 and beyond. But I am very excited about our new series that we just launched, and I think we have just the perfect guest and hotel part of this Suite Spot: Spotlight series. So to give you a little bit of background, this Suite Spot: Spotlight series are showcasing and highlight some of our industry's most unique and iconic hotels across the nation, across the globe. And I think we have such a fitting guest for our first ever edition of the Suite Spot: Spotlight series. Ashish Verma, Senior Vice President of the Luxury Division, Unbound Collection. Ashish, welcome to the Suite Spot. Ashish Verma: Thank you so much, Ryan. What an exciting introduction and, to be the first guest for the Suite Spot, which definitely hits a Sweet spot with me. Ryan Embree: Excellent. Yeah, we might steal that catch phrase, from you there, Ashish, but tell us where you're coming from because we know that the people make this industry, but this Suite Spot Spotlight series is all about, again, the most iconic hotels that we have. Where are you joining us from? Ashish Verma: I'm based in New York. It's my hometown and I'm in the heart of Manhattan. I was born and raised in India, so a great culture of hospitality. I drove my career with hotels, one of the finest in luxury hospitality. And then I moved to Hyatt International the very best, and I worked with them in India, in France, where I did my highest studies, my MBA in Paris and I worked with Hyatt again there and I moved to Phai, the original UN Plaza here in New York. Went on to work with a great hotel company Orient Express, as a GM down in New Orleans through hurricane Katrina and beyond. Returned to New York, my hometown, and it was a GM at the Luell and I've been in charge of the Chatwel, New York Luxury Division for a little over eight years. Ryan Embree: Your story is the true embodiment of hospitality is worldwide, right? And I'm sure you've seen just some incredible places, incredible hotels. So tell us a little bit about this iconic and historic hotel, The Chatwal. This fits the bill of being just a timeless property. Can you give us, you know, we shared your, hospitality experience, share a little bit of history of, of this specific property. Ashish Verma: Yes. global hospitality, hospitality being global goes hand in hand. There are some great hotels around the world and we all have a bucket list to experience and travel around the world. And the world has become a little microcosm of our own aspirations and luxury at the very finest embodies that, expresses that, offers that. And I'm fortunate between Asia, Europe and the US here in New York, having experienced some of the best. Where we are now in the heart of Manhattan, there's a lot of history where the Chatwal New York is,

Join Suite Spot Host, Ryan Embree, as he and Chief Technology Officer,Jason Lee, break down the insights and data collected in the 2nd edition of our TMG Summer Guest Sentiment Report on the podcast. This episode contains valuable information for hoteliers looking to make better operational and strategic decisions for their hotels as the end of the year approaches while closing out the year strong. Ryan Embree: This is your host, Ryan Embree here, coming from the content creation studio in Maitland, Florida at the headquarters of Travel Media Group. Got another great episode for you today with a very special guest, but a guest that has been with us a lot of times on these episode. Jason Lee, Chief Technology Officer at Travel Media Group. Jason, thanks again for joining the Suite Spot. Jason Lee: All right, thanks for having me, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and this has become a little bit of a tradition here with these episodes that we're doing. We're gonna talk about summer guest sentiment. Now, for those listeners or viewers, if you're watching us on YouTube here, give us a little background about guest sentiment, how we're pulling it and what the trends and insights we're gonna be talking about today. Jason Lee: Okay, so here at Travel Media Group, we process all reviews received by hotels in the United States. So meaning we, we bring them into our system. We use natural language processing to kind of pull out specific keywords, and then we use that same kind of processing in an AI that actually decides whether this is positive or negative. So taking all of that information and sort of splicing it and dicing it. But then we call it sentence chunks, but it's looking at little chunks of sentences that basically would determine whether or not those key words are positive or negative. So that's where all of this comes from. So it, so you could have, in one single review, you could have five or six sentiment points, and you know, that review could be rated positively, but the actual language could have positive and negative pieces to it. So we do not take rating into account. It is all based on the actual language in the review. Ryan Embree: Well, that's important because we've talked about before a four or five star rating could still have some negative elements to it. Right? Absolutely. You know, everything was great in my stay, but you know, I felt like the parking was a little expensive, or there might be some positive sentiment with the negative reviews where, you know, everything seemed to go wrong, except the staff was just super nice and friendly the entire time. So that's why it's so important to kind of break down these patterns and trends. And when he says every single review, we're talking big numbers, 1.6 million reviews, that is 100,000 more than we got when we did this in the spring, which is expected. Summer still continues to be our busiest travel season, but within that 1.6 million reviews, over 7 million pieces of guest sentiment. So subjects, topics, elements of a review that people are talking about having sentiment towards, that's all broken down in these insights and data. Jason Lee: Yeah, we use the kind of bigger categories. So the main categories we have are the room, the service experience, and the facility experience. So we use those sort of as the bigger category, and then we have a bunch of tags and aspects inside of each one of those categories. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And what we're gonna do today on this episode, Jason, is we're gonna give some of our key takeaways and insights to all of this data, right? Me and you, we absolutely love this data. We could probably spend hours talking about it, dissecting it and putting it, you know, into categories. But we're just gonna have five key takeaways today. We're gonna express, you know, maybe why that is. Seasonality has a lot to do with it, right? I mean, again, busy season. This is when our hotels get the most stressed,

Our latest and greatest TMG Hospitality Trailblazers episode features the President and CEO of AD1 Global, Daniel Berman! Join Suite Spot host, Ryan Embree, as he and Daniel discuss some very eye-opening hospitality subjects prevailing in the industry and give insights into how hoteliers can effectively navigate the landscape. And so much more! Suite Spot Podcast · 117 - TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Daniel Berman 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. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree, thank you for joining me. It's been a minute. We are going to be continuing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. I am so excited for the next guest that we have today in our trailblazers series. If this is the first time you're hearing this, we've been doing this series almost for a year now. We've had almost a dozen hospitality leaders and trailblazers in our industry, and this series is all about the people and the groups that are pushing our industry forward. So very excited with that set up to invite our next Hospitality Trailblazers, Daniel Berman, president and CEO of AD1 Global. Daniel, thank you so much, for joining the Suite Spot today. Daniel Berman: Thank you for having me here. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and this is your first time here. So what we do with all of our first time guests is we live in an industry or work in an industry rather, where we've got all types of stories of how people end up where they are. So, give us a little bit of background on your hospitality journey and what led you to AD1 Global. Daniel Berman: Yes, perfect. So thank you again for having me here. I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, move to United States in 2001. And while deciding what to do here and, I learned how to do invest in real estate. Started in 2008, and then I got into the hospitality by mistake. We bought, we bought, and my partners and me, Ari and Alex and me, we bought, almost 500 room hotel, thinking there was a real estate investment. Didn't understood there was a business within the real estate and we almost lost everything. It took us about two years, almost three years to get that project, on a positive numbers, decided that we love the business. It was very hard, but we learned the hard way and thank God, that's how AD1 was born. Ryan Embree: Wow. You didn't really start off small huh? When it was straight for the 500 Room hotel. That's pretty amazing. And you know what, I was talking to Daniel before this episode started because the VP of HR over there in AD1 Global Bertha Cordovis actually gave me my first job in hospitality, which was a bellman, at a resort here in Orlando. So, it's funny how, you know, we talk about these journeys and hospitality and you, I've heard the mistake one before. I've heard, you know, the journey of, of saying, Hey, I'm just going to school. This was a side gig. That might be a first for me of hearing, you know, purchasing a 500 room hotel and kind of falling into the industry. But we're so happy that we found this, you know, and we'll kind of talk about this love for our industry and transition. Ryan Embree: You know, before we start really talking about where we are today, where we've kind of gone with this series has kind of started with this rocky road that we've been on the past couple years, right. Obviously the pandemic in 2020. We've now had some time to kind of time to reflect on that recovery which is nice, but still, you know, battling some headwinds with staffing shortages here and there. Tell me a little bit about,

Podcast host Ryan Embree welcomes the newest addition to the TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series, Mauri Berry, Vice President of Marketing & Digital Strategy at Remington Hospitality!  During this episode, listeners can expect to learn a plethora of valuable and exciting insights and takeaways that encompass current trends in the hotel industry, such as technology advancement, effective digital touchpoints for guests, and hotel rebranding. Suite Spot Podcast · 116 - TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Mauri Berry 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. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is Travel Media Group Marketing Director and host of the Suite Spot, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are continuing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazer series. We're heating up a very, very busy summer season, but I am very excited about our guest because she's got some exciting news about a chapter for definitely a hospitality trailblazer management company out there, Remington Hospitality. So, without further ado, I will go ahead and bring in Mauri Berry, Vice President of Marketing and Digital Strategy at Remington Hospitality. Welcome to the Suite Spot, Mauri, this is your first time. Mauri Berry: Yeah, thanks Ryan. So happy to be here. I'm honored to have been invited and talk a little bit more about what we've got going on. Ryan Embree: Yeah, certainly have a lot going on, but we always like to start these episodes, just because our industry is so unique in the sense of, you know, some people find hospitality just through maybe a side job or gig here and there. Some people were born into it, some people went to school for it now, we're seeing that more and more often. So with every new guest we kind of like to ask your hospitality journey and tell us a little bit about your background. What led your hospitality path to Remington. Mauri Berry: Yeah, sure. So I've been around longer than I care to admit, primarily in our industry from even before I graduated from college. You know, I've been around for a while. My background, I started in PR as a PR major straight out of college and worked for a major attraction in Atlanta. And then sort of over the course of the years evolved and adapt my career all within the hospitality space. You know, I've worked in agency environments in PR and integrated marketing for hospitality and tourism companies. I've worked at Lakeside Resorts, I worked for Marriott where I spent most of my career is in field marketing at Marriott International for about 14 years. So, have really, like I said, been around longer than I care to admit. I did leave Marriott after almost 14 years and went to a hotel management company. I knew that in order to really grow and expand my career, I needed to maybe step outside of the Marriott bubble, expand my horizons a bit into other brands, other hotel types, other ways of doing business. So jumped into hotel management space and have never looked back. I've been, as you mentioned, with Remington Hospitality for about two years and you know, it's been nonstop adventure from day one with a number of different updates and corporate and company pivots and new exciting updates. So, you know, I don't see myself going anywhere for a while, if the excitement continues the way it has since I've been here. Ryan Embree: Yeah, certainly a lot of exciting things to share, some of which we're gonna talk about on this episode a little bit later, but it's just so fascinating to hear. I love in this Hospitality Trailblazer series kind of hearing where people jump from,

Join Suite Spot Host, Ryan Embree, as he covers the top 5 takeaways from the inaugural event of The Hospitality Show presented by Questex and the AHLA. Suite Spot Podcast · 115 - The Hospitality Show: 5 Key Takeaways 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. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embry for a special edition of the Suite Spot. We teased it on social media. Hopefully you are tuning in. But we are here for our five key takeaways from the Hospitality Show, which just happened here at the end of June, 2023 at the Beautiful Venetian. This was an inaugural event. We had been talking about this for a while. We had the opportunity to show up to the hospitality show as press and media interview some of the industry's top influencers. So if you get the opportunity, head to our YouTube page, follow us on social media. We're gonna be posting all of those great interviews, insights, and data. Everyone we talk to at the Hospitality Show over in Vegas to our YouTube page. So check that out. But today we are going to be talking about the top five takeaways from the event. This was filled with some incredible panelists and guest speakers at this event. That's why I love these industry events so much. And I was interviewing someone at the hospitality show, and I know we always talk about this pent up demand for travel, but it certainly feels like there's been some pent up demand for these industry events. It's so industry to get these blend of industry leaders cuz you get just such different perspectives that sometimes we get siloed in, uh, for a brand show or other industry events. So this hospitality show was certainly special because it had a lot of point of views, but even though there were some competitors at this show, there was a lot that we agreed on here. And one of the biggest things, and my first key takeaway is staffing continues to plague our industry right now. A H l A did that study recently that found 82% of hotels are still struggling with staffing shortage. That's just an absolutely crazy number to think of where we started and during the pandemic, we were furloughing so many and that's, that's really where the panelists kind of started. And, and it's such a u unique perspective cuz we talked about the millions that went into furlough during the pandemic and how there could be some that have left our industry for good. We've never had and experienced a wave of hospitality professionals leave our industry and choose not to come back. So what's happening now is this, uh, very unique opportunity for people that have never been in our industry before. Right? If I'm switching from one hotel to another, I'm familiar with the whole check-in checkout process. Property management systems might be different here and there, but I understand all the complexities of working in a hotel as a hospitality professional. Now, the people that are coming into our industry, they might not understand those at first. So we've gotta do a better job of kind of simplifying these processes for people new to our industry. And that's a big challenge that they talked about at the Hospitality show, is figuring out ways that we can make our processes more efficient. So someone that might have not worked in the hotel industry but before can come in and seamlessly really get into a groove into their role because that first 90 days is absolutely critical to retention for our employees. That's why things like TMGs respond and resolve and responding to reviews and taking that off the plate of our employees is so important because that could be someth...