Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

*DISCLAIMER* Thank you for listening to the Suite Spot. During episode 104, you will hear slight audio distortion due to a disrupted signal connection at the time of recording. We apologize in advance and hope you enjoy the episode. Host and Marketing Director Ryan Embree and Tom Magnuson of Magnuson Hotels take time to reflect on and analyze the past of the hospitality industry while providing hopeful foresight for the future. They discuss many relevant topics for hoteliers, which means there is no shortage of content and information from this episode. Suite Spot Podcast · 104 - Hospitality Trailblazers: Thomas Magnuson 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. Okay. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, and we are today continuing our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. Very excited about the special guests that we have on today. For those that might be just listening for the first time. This is our second series 2021. We really highlighted hospitality heroes, those individual workers that were going above and beyond during the pandemic and sharing their stories on this podcast. In 2022, we're looking towards the future and we're talking with some of the best and brightest in our industry, the people that are paving the way forward and really trailblazing our industry as a whole. And with me today, I think I have a great guest that can speak to that because, he's got a global foot mark on his brand, Mr. Tom Magnuson, the co-founder and CEO of Magnuson Hotels Worldwide. Tom, welcome to the Suite Spot. Thomas Magnuson: Thank you, Ryan. It's great to be here and to, visit with all of our friends out there who are in the hotel industry. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And one of the questions that I love to ask, because we have such different answers, is everyone's journey through the hospitality industry. Now, it's not every day that I get to interview someone who founded a brand like Magnuson Hotels. So walk me through that journey, you know, where you started in the hotel industry and ultimately how you founded Magnuson Hotels Worldwide. Thomas Magnuson: Well, I'm gonna compress about 55 years into about, into about 30 seconds, Ryan. I have a very interesting background. I started working for my father and my grandfather in a small motel, in a little mining town, Wallace, Idaho, up on the Montana border when I was eight years old, I think I just said. So I got a really unique insight, hands on into running and living and breathing, small business ownership of an independent hotel. I spent many years, you know, in the family company, like many people do, you know, working every single job there is. You, do what has to be done, did every job in the house, you know, waited tables, cleaned rooms, front desk, grinded keys in the basement when you had actually actual keys in the old days. But quickly through that path, as the years went on, when I was in actually, in my forties, I came back to help my father retire and he had a handful of hotels still and asked me to kind of package these up for the next phase. And part of that was becoming a Best Western franchisee, a great global company, but it really articulated the struggle of a small, unique hotel to be heard in today's world. And what we found being a franchisee, a unique minded hotel, and a unique market being a franchisee is the struggle of maintaining your identity versus the weight of sameness. That's been perpetuated for, you know, 50 years since, you know, the big brand started coming out with Hilton in the 1950s. And it's also the difficulty of being heard and bein...

Travel Media Group’s Hospitality Trailblazers podcast series is going full speed ahead!  Marketing Director and Host of the Suite Spot Ryan Embree sits down with a very special guest, Chief Operating Officer of Davidson Hospitality Group, Pete Sams! In this episode, Pete really gives a breath of fresh air to the hospitality industry and provides a behind-the-curtains look at everything going on at Davidson Hospitality Group and what these initiatives mean for their business partners and guests. Suite Spot Podcast · 103 - Hospitality Trailblazers: Pete Sams 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 podcast. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. Got a great episode continuing our Hospitality Trailblazers series. This is the second episode of this series. For those listeners that might not know what this is, we are highlighting and showcasing some of the industry's best and brightest and people and the groups that we're gonna talk about today that are pushing our industry forward. Right? We did a similar series last year where we talked about some of those hospitality heroes, those going above and beyond during the pandemic. Now, as we have a little bit better news and outlook on the future for our industry, we're bringing some of those key members. And with me today, I've got a great guest. He's Chief Operating Officer at Davidson Hospitality Group, Pete Sams. Pete, this is your first time to the Suite Spot. Welcome in. Pete Sams: Yes. Yes. It's comfortable. Thanks for having me. Ryan Embree: Awesome. Well, let's jump right into it. And it's the first question. Sometimes my favorite, especially with our new guests, you know, we're such in a unique industry where people's stories, you know, really can come from anywhere, right? With hospitality backgrounds. So give us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up here at Davidson Hospitality Group. Pete Sams: Well, first and foremost, again, great to spend time with you, Ryan, and thanks for including me with such esteemed company. I don't know if Trailblazer is code for vintage or nice way of saying old, but, apparently, as you could see by the white in my beard, I've been around a little while. It's been an amazing journey to be sincere with you, Ryan. I wake up sometimes and just wonder how, how it all came together. But to give you a little bit of color on, on my background, my history, I've surpassed quarter century in the space, probably a little closer to almost 30 years at this point, which is, again, hard to fathom. Like many of my colleagues in our industry, I did not initially anticipate working in, in the hospitality space full-time. And, and as a career, my first role in hotels was I'd gone into the military out of school, served in the, in the US Army overseas, did a tour, drove an M1A1 tank, which I always say prepared me well for a life and hospitality, but getting aside, it's, you know, a spirit to serve. And I do believe in servant leadership and putting others above yourselves, being part of amazing teams. And I think it translates in, in a lot of ways. So, when I exited the military, I had gotten the GI Bill College Fund monies to put myself through school, and I was working as a server waiting tables. I was waiting tables as I was finishing my degree in finance at Corpus Christi, Texas. The first leg of my, my career kind of goes in thirds, first 10 years of my career were in the finance discipline. I got my degree in finance. And while I was finishing school, I actually became a part of the Leader in Development program ...

The first installment of Hospitality Trailblazers on the Suite Spot podcast with Marketing Director/Host Ryan Embree, featuring President of Coakley & Williams and SVP of Business Development at Hotel Equities, Mark Williams! These two discuss everything from the origin story of Coakley & Williams, navigating the new landscape of the hospitality industry, and what is on the horizon for travel and tourism. Listen now. Suite Spot Podcast · 102 - TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Mark Williams 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. And today I teased it in our 100th episode. We are starting a brand new hospitality series called TMG Hospitality Trailblazers. And what this series is all about are those individuals and hotel groups that are really pushing forward our industry, getting some one-on-one insights and perspective on what they're experiencing now and what they see in the future. And I think we have just the embodiment of a hospitality trailblazer today with me, Mark Williams, president of Coakley and Williams, and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Hotel Equities. Mark, this is your first time on the Suite Spot. Welcome in. Mark Williams: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks so much, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. Now what we always like to do with new guests on this podcast, Mark, is ask 'em how they got started in the industry. I know for your personal background, you know, a lot of people just kind of find themselves in the industry, but you actually have hospitality through a couple generations. But tell us that journey that led you to Coakley and Williams and now Hotel Equities as well. Mark Williams: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Well, I'll go backwards a little bit and then we'll go forwards from there. So our company, started in 1961. We are a third generation business, which is kind of amazing. I think there's only about like 5%, I forget what the percentages are of businesses that actually make it to the third generation. So for me, that's very humbling and it's an honor to be a part of this, this company, and to work for, a group that's been, you know, started by my grandfather and his partner. They actually were in the construction business. They met, on a rainy day through a mutual acquaintance. They shook hands. They never signed a formal partnership agreement to start the business. It was all really initially based off that handshake, which is really awesome. And that kind of, that spirit of integrity, I feel like has carried itself through our business over the years. They built their first hotel in 1971. It was, it was right off the beltway. They got into the hotel management business because they were doing what they were doing very well. There's a lot of backstory and anytime you're opening things and you're in this business that we're in, there's always funny stories and challenges and there's a lot of funny, interesting stories that happened as they got that off the ground. And so as time went along, you know, we, we got into the hotel management business, and then kind of in the mid nineties, my father bought the management company and there was a construction company as well. There's still Coakley Williams Construction Company that was bought by one of the Coakley sons. And so, so things moved on and they progressed and growing up, I, I never thought that I would be in this business. I thought, yeah, I have, my dad had us working in the hotels, which was great. And I was, you know, doing odd jobs,

Join Suite Spot host Ryan Embree and Chief Technology Officer Jason Lee, as they announce the official launch of TMG OneView multi-language translation!  With this new function, hoteliers who partner with Travel Media Group will have instant access to its brand-new capabilities such as translating online guest reviews into various languages, responding to reviews in native languages, and delivering your hotel voice and tone for international travelers. Suite Spot Podcast · 101 - Introducing TMG Translations: Multi-Language Review Response 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. Hello, Bueno Dias, Bonjour, I think that is very, very telling for what we are about to talk about in this exciting episode with me today. Very familiar voice and face Jason Lee, our TMG Chief Technology Officer Jason, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Jason Lee: All right. Thanks for having me back, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Typically, when we hear Jason, this means that we've got an exciting new feature to announce and talk about, and that's exactly what we're doing today. We are introducing for the first time ever TMG translations multi-language function within our review response platform respond and resolve. Jason, this is so exciting. This is probably one of the most exciting features we've ever launched with this, this solution. But usually when you come on here, there's some sort of story, right? A lot of the feedback and updates that we do in development that you and your team do Jason, is based on feedback that we receive from hoteliers in real time. So I have to ask, is there some sort of story or reason why this upgrade was necessary and why your team decided to launch this now? Jason Lee: Yeah, so what's interesting about language and language translation is that there's a lot of dependencies and those dependencies are on the property itself, right? The language that they speak, the person who wrote the review and the language that they speak, the person who is reading the review and the responses on the live site. So there's all of those elements that are out there. And on a lot of the live sites like TripAdvisor and Google, you can actually select language and only see reviews in your language. So you could just read if you were from France and you just wanted to see French reviews about a property, you could actually see that. So being able to credibly translate reviews, create responses and make it all end to end was really important. And so we had elements of that already done, but to make it truly end to end where I pick up the review in the foreign language, I know the properties preference of language to be translated into. I know their preference for the actual review response. So I know that they want it to be either native or I know that they want to have it responded to maybe in English, if that's what their preference was. So let's say it's a scenario like this. The property is an English speaking property. We get a Spanish speaking review. Their response preference is review native meaning respond in the language that the review is written in. Now we respond to that review. Part of our review response process is that the hotel also picks up that response and can approve it and edit it. So we also needed a way for the hotel to be able to edit in the language of the review. So that is what I'm talking about. End to end. We pick up the review, we respond to it in the language preference that the property has. And then we allow the property also to edit that response in that same preference.

Join Suite Spot podcast host Ryan Embree, and listen in to the celebratory 100th episode where we take you, the listener, down memory lane and reflect on all the fascinating content we have covered on the podcast over the last four years, as well as discuss upcoming new content that listeners can look forward to this fall. Suite Spot Podcast · 100 - Travel Media Group's Suite Spot 100th Episode Celebration 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 in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. And welcome to the 100th episode of the Suite Spot. Thank you all for joining me. This is your host for the hundredth time, Ryan Embree I'm just so happy that we finally made it to this episode. This is a very humbling experience. You know, we started this podcast, this digital marketing podcast back in 2018. It's just so much support from Travel Media Group and, my teammates over the years. I remember the first episode when we were trying to decide on the name. We had, a couple different names. We landed on the Suite Spot and here we are at episode 100 four years later, just some quick facts before we get started. And we certainly are gonna share some content today, but this podcast is, streamed over SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify. Now over this past, back in 2021 and Stitcher as well, we've got over 50,000 plays and 600 followers from those sites. So again, just so humbled and thankful for all of our listeners out there, wherever you are listening from. So today with episode 100, such a celebratory milestone, I figured what we do today is maybe actually count down some of my favorite and really the most played and popular tracks that we've had over these past a hundred episodes. We covered a lot of topics when it comes to hotel digital marketing. And it's funny to listen back to some of the first couple episodes. The subject matter in which we talk about on the Suite Spot is technology is social media is reputation management for, for hotels, and this technology evolved so quickly. So interesting to go back to those first couple episodes, to see what we were talking about and, and how that really bridges to today and see how much things change. So let's start the countdown, the number one. So we're not gonna work backwards. We're gonna start at number one and work our way down. Number one, actually episode 84, how to market your hotel's breakfast options. And we did not anticipate for this episode to be so popular, but it makes sense, right? One of the things I know I've talked about on this podcast, one of the things that really changed the most during these, these last couple years with the pandemic is how a hotel serves breakfast to his guests. It's a staple. It's something that we're all used to as travelers coming to the property, seeing that breakfast buffet, seeing that waffle maker, sometimes that hot breakfast, that continental breakfast and how that's really changed, right? And obviously it started with the pandemic of a health and safety issue of trying to minimize close contact between your guests and your staff. But then it's kind of also in 2021, 2022 has become a staffing issue, right? A lot of hotels still are struggling with this, and they're not able to staff their breakfast area. They're not able to keep up with the guests that are coming in and out cleaning after them making sure that the food is being refreshed. So, you know, this episode, we took a deep dive into saying not only how to market your breakfast options, but how to set the right expectations of what your breakfast offerings are currently, because there's just such a big spectrum there of where hotels are at.

Join host Ryan Embree and TMG’s Sales Director, Diane Elderkin, as they look at the summer trends we uncovered on our summer virtual roadshow for the hotel industry. From hotel markets in Orlando, Atlanta, and even Dallas, there are some very astounding discoveries we found that will benefit every market across North America. Suite Spot Podcast · 99 - TMG Virtual Roadshow Summer Travel Trends 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 episode 99. We are one episode away from Suite Spot, 100. Thank you so much for listening. We've got a great show for you. Diane Elderkin is with me today. She's the sales director at travel media group. This episode is titled a TMG virtual road show summer travel trend. So just to give a little bit of background, what we've been doing this summer is our very own virtual road show. So we've, we're headed to five different major markets across the us, and we're gonna look at some things to really help hoteliers grow occupancy and maximize revenue during the busiest travel season of the year. So, first we start out with looking at Google search trends. We look at reputation trends and then dive into the specific, sentiment that guests are leaving on those review sites. And then we talk through how we can use some of that information for social media and marketing and advertising our property to those that are searching to stay in our area. So we are about halfway through. As of right now, we visited major markets like Orlando, which is where our headquarters are located just north of Maitland, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, and Dallas. So we've done three and we're headed out to San Diego virtually as well as Washington DC. So again, we're at this halfway point and up to this point, we really have uncovered some really, really cool trends in patterns that we're seeing, not just in one market, but across all three. We've got Diane on. We're gonna talk through some of these trends and patterns. I think you're a great guest to bring on Diane because you and your team, you're having conversations with these hotels across the country. So you can really give some really cool insights in commentary on what this means for the hotels and the conversations that you're having on a day to day basis. So let's jump right into it. The first piece and pattern that we were seeing in these virtual road shows should be really, really excellent news for hotels. And I labeled this pattern, revenge travel pent up demand, whatever you wanna call it. It is certainly here. Orlando had 165,000 searches for hotels in Orlando per month. That's 49% year over year Atlanta, 110,000, 50% up year over year and Dallas, 90,000 a month. And that's up 82% year over year. So huge, huge numbers when it comes to travelers searching to get into these markets. Diane Elderkin: Yeah, it's so crazy to see these, major markets like Orlando, Atlanta, Dallas, start to see these type of numbers because really over the last couple of years, these are the markets that traditionally weren't seeing this, these type of numbers. And, in our experience, what we've been seeing is a lot of the secondary markets get a lot of attention. So a lot of those remote destinations people wanna get a different experience. And so, again, not necessarily these major markets, however, with the summer, you know, we know kids are outta school. People are looking to travel and not only that business travel is starting to come back and companies are starting to send their people out to meet, to network,

Join host Ryan Embree and our very own Respond & Resolve™ Product Manager, Jackie Avery as they celebrate reaching the 1 million guest reviews responded to milestone! This episode details the journey to 1 million, explains how hoteliers can get involved in the next milestone, gives a little sneak peek at a brand new upcoming Respond & Resolve™ upgrade, and so much more! This episode is jammed-packed with exciting information for hoteliers worldwide. Suite Spot Podcast · 98 - Travel Media Group Celebrates 1 Million Guest Reviews Responded To 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 all for listening. We've got a very celebratory episode, very excited to share with you. Episode 98, we are counting down to episode 100. So again, thank you all for listening, wherever you're listening from. And today of the 98 episodes that we've done so far, we've got a first time guest. So it is my pleasure to introduce Jackie Avery. She's our product manager for our TMG respond and resolve, which is our review response solution for our hotels. Jackie, welcome to the Suite Spot. Jackie Avery: Thank you. Happy to be here. Ryan Embree: And I am happy that you are here because we are celebrating some amazing humongous news for you and your team have hit the 1 million mark when it comes to guest reviews responded to online. This is fantastic. Congratulations. Jackie Avery: Thank you. Yeah, we're so excited over here. It was a huge milestone. Definitely feeling good about it. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. 1 million guest reviews. It's really hard to fathom to think about that. I know we've been keeping people updated on this podcast as we talk about review response and how important it is on the numbers, but now we've hit that incredible milestone. 1 million. Now this is your first time on here. So why don't you go ahead and kind of talk about your role as product manager for this really important solution for hotels? Jackie Avery: Of course. So I oversee all of our writers and manager day to day operations. When a new client comes on, I help work with our other departments to ensure a seamless start and a really important part of my job is keeping up to date with industry trends and updates to platforms to ensure that everyone on my team is informed and is up to date as we can be. Ryan Embree: And you have to, right. I mean, you, you and your team respond to so many online sites across the industry from OTAs, trip advisor, Google, even some social media as well. You've hit a million, that's a lot, I'm sure you know, you've come across your positive and your negative ones that you respond to. What would you say is your favorite part about responding to reviews? Jackie Avery: I love getting to tell the other side of the story, especially when our clients really involved in this situation, they convey what happened to us. And then I get to take that information and present it in a way that their future guests can understand and relate to. And many hoteliers struggle responding to something, especially when they feel frustrated. And I just really enjoy helping 'em with that part. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. This is a huge emotional toll and cost that it takes to respond to these reviews, especially if it's a negative one after maybe an eight hour, twelve hour shift that you've done. And someone's essentially calling you out publicly online. So it's not just hard for, for hotels, but anyone to really keep a calm mind when you're responding to these reviews.

Join host Ryan Embree and Aimbridge Hospitality's VP of Digital Marketing, Michael Curran, as they talk all things digital marketing for hotels. They discuss how to keep consistency within a portfolio while still giving each hotel a distinct voice on social media, how to balance "traditional vs. new" social media platforms, how to leverage guest feedback and generate more positive reviews, and more! Suite Spot Podcast · 97 - Thinking Digitally with Aimbridge Hospitality's Michael Curran 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 everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, a special edition of the Suite Spot. We've got a great guest with us today that I'm gonna be introducing here, but first wanna thank everyone for taking the time to join us on the Suite Spot and listening wherever you are across the country. With me today, I have the vice president of digital marketing for Aimbridge Hospitality, Michael Curran. He has over 27 years of experience in the hospitality digital marketing industry, including names like Walt Disney Parks and Resorts online, Hilton hotels, and for Aimbridge, he works with independent hotel brands, IHG, Hilton, and Marriot, which we're gonna talk about here. He's got extensive background in operations, website and content development, and online media strategy and execution. And I just found out he's one heck of a pinball player as well. So Michael, hello and welcome to the Suite Spot. Michael Curran: Good morning, Ryan. Happy to be here. Ryan Embree: Awesome. Well, as we do with all of our new guests on the Suite Spot, tell us a little bit about your background in the industry and maybe the journey that led you to Aimbridge hospitality. Michael Curran: So I think I'm one of the few people that went to school for this and has made a lifelong career out of it. There are folks that meander in and out of the industry, but I started back in the nineties going to school for this and 27 years later, I'm still here. So yeah, I actually picked up the major on a whim. I started out in broadcasting, found out the people in broadcasting are not the type of people I enjoyed being around . So I dropped that major and I happened to have lunch with the head of the department for hospitality and parks at our university. And he sold me on it. I started with Hilton hotels, property operations. I came up through front desk reservations, revenue management sales. I have tremendous respect for F&B people, but that's the one area I've never worked in because that an incredibly difficult division. But that part didn't do. But I jumped into the online world in 1998 and I'll never forget at the meeting I was in, the regional VP for Hilton was sitting at the end of the table in our daily standup meeting, and picture it in my mind right now, he raised a piece of paper. "Hilton sent me something about this worldwide web. Does anybody want to deal with this?" Ryan Embree: Michael Curran: Nobody raised their hand. I'm like, yeah, sure. Why not? So that was it. I never turned back. From that point on I've been on the online part of the industry. Ryan Embree: Well, that was a good bet to say that that little worldwide web was, was gonna take off and have somewhat of an impact. And yeah, as far as your broadcasting, I mean, here, you do a little broadcasting here, so you're able to kind of do that, but yep. That's something else we have in common. Both of us went to school for hospitality. You rarely hear that though in our industry, you know, it's usually, I just found myself here and kind of jumped into it.

Host Ryan Embree discusses insights and takeaways from Travel Media Group's recent Spring Workshops where he talked one-on-one with hoteliers about their hotel's digital presence. Discover trends in hospitality and learn how you can position your property for success through review response, social media, and reputation management. Suite Spot Podcast · 96 - Spring Workshop 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. Ryan Embree: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree, Director of Marketing at Travel Media Group. And we've got a great episode for you today. We do these episodes four times a year because we actually conduct four occupancy workshops for hoteliers. And this season's workshop is titled "Business is Blooming: How to Grow Occupancy this Spring." So this is our spring occupancy workshop. It's one of my favorites because we are coming out of the winter, which is typically a slower time for the industry. And we're finally starting to see that growth and occupancy. Now the springs the past couple years have obviously been a little bit different with the pandemic and coming out of that. But with these workshops, we are talking about positioning your hotel digitally for success when travelers are searching and they're doing quite a bit of searching, which we'll talk about here in second. Ryan Embree: So again, these are occupancy workshops where we meet one-on-one with hoteliers in about a 15 to 20 minute session talking about the hotel's digital presence. How are they positioning themselves coming into the season of spring break, holidays, May, Memorial day, a lot of great things in the spring and really setting ourselves up also for the summer where occupancy really heats up. So with these episodes, what we like to do is, typically when I conduct these workshops, we get some really good takeaways and insights from the hoteliers that we talk about some common themes and threads. So in the past, obviously we've talked about the staffing shortage right now, which has been hurting a lot of people. This is our third time doing a spring occupancy workshop. Again in 2020 and 2021, there were very different conversations, which leads me to our first trend that we noticed this workshop versus others, which was the positivity of the hoteliers that we were talking to. The optimism that was out there, that travel is returning. Ryan Embree: And as I talk about these travelers doing searches, you know, I've got a really amazing stat that we came across, where it says U.S. organic Google search visit growth by industry in Q4 of 2021 versus Q4 in 2020. And the percentage change for travel was at 41%. So that is a lot of eyes looking and planning and being inspired to travel once again. But as I caution the hoteliers that I spoke to on this workshop, they're gonna be looking at your hotel's digital presence a lot differently than they did pre-COVID-19 and pre-pandemic. But trend number one, occupancy is growing. It's here. Whether we like it or not, transient leisure has always been there the past couple years and has been leading the pack in recovery, but we're also seeing business, weddings come back. So we'll talk a little bit about that later, but the second trend that I noticed on these conversations that I was having is, you know, we have been as an industry running around, it feels like, trying to figure out what to do to adjust to this pandemic, this new normal that COVID has kind of ushered into our industry. Ryan Embree: And then on top of that, you have this staffing shortage, right?

After years of postponing, couples are eager to tie the knot and the demand for weddings is skyrocketing. Host Ryan Embree discusses how hotels can position themselves to capture market share and secure bookings from both engaged couples and wedding guests. Listen now! Suite Spot Podcast · 95 - How to Attract Weddings to Your Hotel 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, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host Ryan Embree, and we've got a great episode for you today. For a subject matter that hoteliers have really been missing out on the past two years, and I'm sure guests and travelers have as well. And that's weddings. The pandemic obviously had a huge impact on group business and that included weddings. We saw a lot of couples postpone their weddings to later in the year or later down the line. And it's having a huge impact on occupancy. But now as we see ourselves getting further and further through this pandemic and see that kind of light at the end of the tunnel, we see more and more people now reaching out. And those couples that postponed, they're ready to get married and we're seeing those guests now feel more and more comfortable coming and staying at our hotel. Ryan Embree: So that's what this episode is all about: how to attract more weddings to your hotel and how to leverage your digital marketing and doing it. So before we get started in this episode, a couple quick stats on what we're seeing with weddings. So this is according to the Knot, "wedding venues near me," search terms are up 200% since the thick of the pandemic and there are forecasted to be 2.6 million weddings in 2022. I am sure the hoteliers listening to this are very, very happy to hear that news and those statistics. And that means a lot of occupancy opportunity. But again, these guests, these brides, these grooms, when they decide to potentially make a wedding block or even pick your hotel as their wedding venue, they're going to be doing more research than ever. They're gonna be doing their due diligence, especially when the stakes are this high, when it's your wedding day, you know, you think about it. Ryan Embree: So, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna kind of break this episode up into two unique sections. The first would be to how to actually use digital marketing to attract the happy couple, right? The brides and grooms that are looking to potentially either again, pick your hotel as the wedding venue itself if you have location and venue space for them, or even if they're looking for a wedding block, but there's also the other side to it, of our wedding guests and what guests that might not have traveled over the past two years are gonna be looking for in order to make them feel comfortable. Because as we'll talk about later, if, if they do not feel comfortable, there is no wedding block discount that's going to make them stay at your hotel versus picking a competitor. No discount offered there that, again, is gonna give you the upper hand. Ryan Embree: So we're gonna talk about those two ways and we're gonna kind of break it down into what our digital marketing expertise here at Travel Media Group is: social media, reputation management, and responding to reviews. So we'll start with reputation management when it comes to attracting brides and grooms, and the best way that we can do that is through word of mouth. Through case studies, testimonials from past couples that maybe have used our hotel as a wedding venue and are very, very happy with the experience that they received. The more recent, obviously, the better,