Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

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, doing things around the property and spend some time working behind the front desk, which was great. And, but I didn’t think that I’d be doing this. And so I thought that I’d be going down the theater route of all things. I was gonna be a theater major. That’s what I went to school for. And, and it’s interesting now, I talked to people that are in other business things and they actually take theater classes because there’s, there’s, some good lessons and, and things, a way to communicate and do things, because of theater. So anyway, as fate would have it, I was, I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was going to school in Western Maryland, and I saw a little ad for the Disney College program, and I said, Well, you know, I’ll sign up for this. And, and many people have done this. And what turned out to be six months turned into like five years of, of time in central Florida. And that&

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. And then we publish it. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And, that’s so critical. I mean, you think about the last couple years we had the international traveler all but disappeared here in the United States. And finally, I think, believe it was late last year when the international travel really opened back up, because you think people were looking for a level of comfort before they were making such a big trip, right. Even to another country. So if you start to see reviews written in your own language, even responded in your own language, that’s going to give you a sense of comfort that was not there and could encourage you could be that tipping point to actually make that trip. And when we talk about review response, it’s so critical to make that connection to your guests. So I think that real world situation that you just gave us of a Spanish speaking guest, leaving that review in their own language. And then if they were to see that response in,

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. And some of that also depends on where you’re located in the country, right? We saw some parts of the country, that were a lot slower getting back to quote unquote normal and had restrictions at their hotels. So it was harder for them to get back to that breakfast that guest have come to love. So if a traveler was traveling from one place of the country to another place, and they were expecting this because all the hotels in their area were back to normal that could lead to issues. So this was a great episode, super, super popular, again, kind of a surprise, but you know, when you actually sat down and think about it, really not that surprising because of the history of the last couple years, number two was episode 94 and this, it really speaks to what I talked about at the beginning of this episode, right? The evolution of things like social media technology, and how much that cha

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, to hit their numbers that maybe they’ve lost over the last couple years. And then on top of that, people are, you know, double vaccinated, maybe triple vaccinated. So everyone’s confidence level is starting to rise and, and it’s really great to see, and, and people are just really ready to get back at it. And it’s perfect timing for these hotels in these major markets to take advantage of that and, you know, update what they have to offer. Ryan Embree: Yeah. With all this search means a lot of competition, however, right. So they’re gonna be doing a lot of research on your hotel’s reputation. We know pricing is, is really important. That was a big factor that we’re gonna be talking about here in a second. So they want the most bang for their buck as they come back onto the road. They’re not afraid to pay for that vacation as we’ll find out, but

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. You’ve got not just yourself, Jackie, but an entire team of writers, professional writers based right here in Maitland, Florida at travel media group headquarters. So I think we get this question a lot from hoteliers with so many different types of hotels, big and small, brands and independents. How do you ensure that the response matches the hotel’s voice if you’re not physically on the property, if you’re here in Maitland responding to maybe a hotel on the west coast? Jackie Avery: Yeah, so we’ve got an extremely user friendly platform that allows our clients to update notes in real time. So for example, if an elevator goes out, they can share with us that it’s broken and ask us to take an apologetic tone and give us an estimated fix date. If they have common complaints, they can detail the situation for us and present us with how they’d like it addressed in reviews going

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 <laugh>. 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: <laugh> 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. So I love to hear stories of people going to school and then, but also jumping into the operation side. And I’m sure if you haven’t had the opportunity, we had a lot of people throughout the pandemic, maybe exploring some of those. You were talking about F&B, maybe exploring some of those departments that they’ve never had to do, kind of taking some, some duties and responsibilities for departments that they’ve never done before. Ryan Embree: So, well, let’s get into it. You know, I wanna talk about Aimbridge Hospitality and your role right now, obviously one of the most recognized hospitality groups in the industry, huge, huge portfolio, a very eclectic portfolio as well. Everything, as I, I mentioned before, brands, soft brands, independence, even now to economy scale. What I’m interested in, and I think our listeners might be in

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? Inflation now starting to hit home as well, but we’re starting to see things kind of slow down and hoteliers really finally checking things like their social media, their reviews, review responses. And a lot of the hoteliers I talked to when we took 15 minutes to actually sit down and take a look were really surprised with what they saw. They maybe had a front desk manager or a DOS that had left during these past two years that was in charge of this stuff. And now it’s kinda laid dormant there. So I would encourage you if you’re listening to this, check your Facebook, check your hotel’s Instagram, LinkedIn, hopefully you’re on these sites, but check and see when the last time you posted, because time has been flying by right now and before, you know, it, a lot of these posts that we were seeing were back in 2021 and travelers are looking now more than ever for relevant infor

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, right? A bride and groom that had a wedding experience in 2018 might not be relevant today in 2022. So you’ll definitely want to try to pick a story or create a story and tell a story that’s more recent and is going to really resonate with that bride and groom today. Ryan Embree: You know, you can search through your public reviews online. Obviously, a case study or testimonial, you’ll need some sort of permission in order to use that quote or tell that story. But with public reviews, their expressions and opinions are already out there publicly. So using your reputation data and online reviews, if you come across any of those good reviews, you can go ahead and use those. One thing that engaged couples will look for when looking for a hotel for their guests to stay in is how you’re treating your guests today, right? Your service says a lot about how the

Join host Ryan Embree and first-time Suite Spot guest Sammie Snapp, a social expert here at Travel Media Group, as they dive into the world of Instagram reels. Learn how hotels can leverage reels to expand their reach and boost engagement, as well as what kind of content hotels should be posting in order to stand out. Discover actionable ways to elevate your hotel’s social media strategy today! Suite Spot Podcast · 94 – Instagram Reels For Hotels 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. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you all for listening and joining me today, wherever you are listening to us from. Now, usually on the Suite Spot, we are talking about all the exciting updates and advancements that we have at Travel Media Group, but as social media experts, we are also in the know when it comes to new updates and features that happen across digital marketing platforms. And that’s exactly what this episode is all about. We are talking about Instagram reels today. So with me today to talk about this really exciting new feature from Instagram, I wanna welcome for the first time, Sammie Snapp. Now, Sammie is a social expert on our social media team. She’s a social media content analyst that works directly with our hotels, creating content and really helping our hotels effectively run their social media campaign. So Sammie, without further ado, let me welcome you to the Suite Spot. Sammie Snapp: Hi, I’m so excited to be here with you guys today and I’m excited to dive into it. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And so again, we’re talking about Instagram reels. Before we get off and running, because there’s a lot to this update, let’s first just answer the basic question, right? What are Instagram reels? Sammie Snapp: So Instagram reels are a new feature that has just been added to the platform pretty recently within the last year or so. And it’s basically a tool to utilize up to 60 second video content. Very, very similar to the TikTok app that has blown up in the past, I guess, two years since 2019-2020. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I think the stat on that, the incredible stat that we heard at the end of 2021, was almost that, I believe this is correct, where there were more people searching on TikTok or using TikTok than they were on Google. It surpassed Google as the most used site, which is just absolutely incredible to think. So it’s no wonder that Instagram kind of reached in and created this because of the popularity that TikTok has over the years. Sammie Snapp: Absolutely. Ryan Embree: Yeah. So what we’re here, obviously Suite Spot is a hotel, digital marketing podcast, all about hotels, for hotels. So let’s talk about how Instagram reels fit inside of our industry. Sammie Snapp: So reels have a ton of benefits. The biggest benefit for the hotel industry is gonna come from the explore page and the explore page, if you wanna equate it to TikTok, it’s very similar to the For You page. It’s gonna show just any random user on Instagram, things that they might like, things suggested to them. And for, for the hotel industry, they’re gonna show up on these explore pages for people that might not necessarily be following them. So the biggest thing for the hotel industry is that this is gonna bring in a lot more engagement and a lot more views. They might not otherwise have gotten to their hotel page from outside of just their following. Ryan Embree: Yeah, that’s absolutely critical. I, I don’t think we can stress that enough, right? Because right now we work with hotels to kind of build their following, their social following and anything that they post on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and on Twitter, typically that’s only going to reach your direct followers unless they share it or interact and engage with that post. But with an Instagram reel that little 60 second, 30 to 60 second video that you were talking about, now, all of a sudden it could fall on, not necessarily a stranger, but somebody else’s feed and they could become interested and maybe give you the opportunity for a follow or a mention or something like that, a comment. So this is a really cool opportunity for hotels to really expand their audience. So we’re always talking about with social media is what is our goal? What are our objectives, whether it be for a post or our strategy in general. So what goals or objectives should hoteliers keep in mind when they’re creating reels for their property? Sammie Snapp: So the big

Host Ryan Embree and Jason Lee, VP of Product and Development unveil TMG’s Social 2.0 platform for hoteliers. This re-designed, intuitive platform has new features that make creating and posting content, as well as analyzing engagement and reach, easier than ever before. Discover how you can leverage Social 2.0 to improve your hotel’s social media strategy. Listen now! Suite Spot Podcast · 93 – Social 2.0 Launch 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. We have a very frequent guest and this typically means one thing when he is on. And that means another Travel Media Group upgrade and innovation, but I will let Jason, our vice president of product development and technology, announce this super exciting new launch that Travel Media Group, I know, has been working so hard on. So, Jason, what have you got up your sleeve for us? Jason Lee: Well, thank you, Ryan. It’s always awesome to be on these podcasts and to talk about our solutions and social media is really what we’re talking about today. And we have relaunched our social media solution and suite and done it in a way that takes a lot of the items that have been discussed with hoteliers, like hopefully the people that are listening to this, and management companies, things that are missing from the suite, things that could make the solution more effective and we’ve added them into our brand new launch of social 2.0. So if you have our current social solution and you come back into OneView and access it, you’re gonna see some very different pages, some very different looks and, and a lot more functionality and transparency inside of our social process. So that’s, what’s here. Ryan Embree: Awesome. Awesome. And, and before we jump into all these really cool updates and innovation that we put into this, just to reiterate something that I think is super important is a lot of the things that you do on that development side is based upon feedback that we’re hearing from both hotel partners and large hotel groups out there. We know that that has become an insanely hard space to kind of manage, and groups are always looking for this type of consistency across their portfolio. Yet they have to juggle different sort of brands within a portfolio, maybe to different scales. So they’ve got so many variables, they’re looking for places of consistency. So when, when you and your team went about doing this, that’s exactly what you set out to do is create some consistency there. Can you speak a little bit more to that feedback that you’re hearing and maybe how you’re able to streamline it for those hotel groups specifically? Jason Lee: Yeah, I think what really, what it comes down to, I mean, we get feedback all along, you know, when, whenever we launch something or whenever we add a new group into our company and we’re able to kind of get their ideas, they see it for the first time and they’re like, oh, it’d be cool if it did this. Or I’d like it if it did that. And so a lot of things, I definitely, in those situations, I’ve got a notebook filled with stuff and it still actually has quite a few things that didn’t even make it into this release, but in this case, it was really about how can I take more control or how can I get my property, so if I’m at a management company and I want my individual hotels to take part in social media, what is it that they can do in a way where it’s like, they’re not spending their days posting all day long, but yet they can still be involved in the process. Jason Lee: They still can have visibility into things as they happen to make sure that it is on brand, to make sure that it’s speaking to the things that drive occupancy and the things that really make social media effective. So really the pieces of the suite that have really become more transparent and brought to the front are all of those things. It’s where the hotel can interact and on various levels to give us information so that our content creators create content that’s really super on point and, and on brand to, to their location. And then from that, have them be able to interact with that information. So after it’s been created, be able to see what’s been created and then interact with that, and we’ve done this. So this is the first time we’ve kind of, we’ve gone from single post. So I create a post. Jason Lee: You approve a post, I create a post, you approve p

Host Ryan Embree discusses ways hoteliers can help attract employees in the midst of the staffing shortage by focusing on their digital presence. From reputation management to social media to review responses, hoteliers need to make sure their hotel is giving the right impression not just to guests, but to future staff as well. Listen now to learn what you can do to help combat the staffing crisis at your hotel. Suite Spot Podcast · 92 – How Your Hotel’s Digital Presence Impacts Recruiting and Staffing 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. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you for joining me and listening in. We’ve got a great episode for you today. And today we’re gonna be talking about recruiting and hiring. Now I’m sure this is a conversation that you’ve had with a lot of your teams right now. I know we are hearing it all over the country. Where can I find employees? We are just looking for more and more hospitality professionals to fill our front desk staff, to fill our management teams. Management groups out there looking for people. We had just gotten over this just devastating pandemic to our industry, and now we have this staffing crisis. Hotels cannot find people right now to work. So what this episode is talking about is how your hotel’s presence impacts recruiting and hiring. Now I know that is a weird correlation. Ryan Embree: Your hotel’s digital presence, things like social media, reviews, even review response, but this has an impact. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. But first we’ll start off with a quick couple stats. Now, hospitality employment is still down 1.2 million jobs from where it was in February 2020. 1.2 million, which is so sad because this is a people-serving-people industry. So when we can’t find the people to give these great hotel experiences, we obviously see that impacted every single day and, and could impact vacations and, and the, just the overall guest experience. So call it the great resignation, call it whatever. The hotel industry is a loss of 7.2% of its workforce. Now that’s compared to 2% for the rest of U.S. jobs. So hospitality has been extremely impacted from this staffing shortage, and it’s just so difficult to get people again, to work for our hotels. Ryan Embree: So it’s an employee job market. As you can imagine, employees are getting to pick where they want to work. They’re going to do their due diligence before signing on, and that’s where your hotel digital presence comes into play. So today what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna discuss the way again, your digital presence impacts recruiting and the first place we’ll start is reputation management. Now just like Glassdoor, employees are going to check your hotel’s reviews to see where they’re gonna be working. They’re gonna ask the question, “What will my day in the life look like at this property?” Now, a really good exercise that I would suggest to you, the hotelier, is to go to your hotel’s reviews online. So think about Glassdoor, right? When someone’s looking to potentially sign on and become an employee, they go check reviews for that company on the website Glassdoor. Ryan Embree: So of course, employees are gonna do this for your hotel because there’s public reviews online about your hotel experience there. So the exercise would be, is read all of those reviews and imagine that instead of them being reviews, imagine being behind the front desk and hearing that feedback directly from your guests. How many times is that guest complimenting you? How many times are they excited to talk about their stay with you? How many times are they being yelled at? How many times are you being asked to solve problems? So your negative reviews, because that’s what’s going through a potential employee’s mind as they’re reading the reviews. No one wants to work at a hotel where they’re constantly having to solve issues or things are going wrong. They wanna work somewhere that’s fun, people are enjoying themselves and having really great experiences. So that is how your reputation management can impact hiring and recruiting for your hotel. Ryan Embree: We have heard so much about mental health over the past couple years. So that’s what these employees are gonna be thinking about. What type of toll is working at your property going to take on my mental health in comparison to maybe

In 2021’s edition of the Suite Spot, we welcome Travel Media Group’s President, Dana Singer, to the podcast. Host Ryan Embree reflects with Dana on the challenges and successes of this past year. Dana reviews some of the adjustments that Travel Media Group has continued to make in response to the changing landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the digital marketing landscape for hotels. Ryan and Dana discuss innovations launched by the Travel Media Group product development team and the role TMG played in hotel recovery. Dana also shares what she is most excited about and hopeful for in 2022 as the hotel industry continues to bounce back. Suite Spot Podcast · 91 – 2021 In Review with Dana Singer 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 the Suite Spot. This is Ryan Embree, your host, and happy new year. We’ve got a great first episode of 2022 for you. We’ve done this on an annual basis, and it’s one of my favorite episodes that we do every single year. As we enter a new year, we’re closing out 2021, but we’re excited for the prospects of what 2022 has to offer. We’ve seen a lot of great momentum going in after a busy, busy holiday, according to some of the STR data out there. And with me today, I wanna bring in the president of Travel Media Group, Dana Singer. Dana, welcome to the Suite Spot. Dana Singer: Thanks Ryan. It’s fantastic to be back with you. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and we’re bringing you on again because we did this last year, and we got such a great response from it. And I think it’s just so important as we move into this new year to not only, obviously, look towards the future in 2022 and, and what’s on the horizon for the, the hotel industry and Travel Media Group, but also reflect back on 2021 and look at everything that we’ve been able to overcome and accomplish. So that’s exactly what this episode is about. So I’m gonna kind of start us off in, in a very similar situation where we were last year, Dana, just to reset. You know, we started this, this episode last year, talking about adjustments that Travel Media Group made in response to the pandemic. Can you talk about how those adjustments kind of evolved in 2021? Dana Singer: You know, while 2020 was all about pivoting to respond to the pandemic, 2021 shifted to how we could best support our clients and partners in the recovery. We all know the pandemic hit the hospitality industry hard. Stay at home orders and the fear of the virus kept so many from, from traveling and it negatively impacted so many businesses that rely on travel, especially hotels. So in 2021, with the rollout of vaccines, optimism began to prevail. We began thinking in terms of both the recovery and innovation mindset and how we could help hoteliers transition and effectively capture the renewed travel demand that was building throughout the year. And one of the ways that we adjusted during this time was by hosting seasonal digital workshops. And our goal was to connect with hoteliers through these one-on-one sessions and provide insights on, on how they could capture market share faster than their competition by leveraging digital marketing tools to really put their best foot forward with their online reputation and social media. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I think that’s well said. I mean, any hotelier that’s listening to this podcast right now can probably agree with me in saying that from Travel Media Group to the hotel, this is not the same business or hotel that came into 2020. We’ve had to adapt and shift and really be versatile. And the industry has, has had to do that as well. And you see just how important hotels are stressing things like their online reputation and social media, because it is the key to capturing more market share. We’ve talked about it on this podcast before, the hotels that make the guests feel the most comfortable about traveling and coming to their property and providing them with a good and safe guest experience are the ones that really won the recovery and are continuing to win market share. So speaking of, Travel Media Group also took the time to recognize hoteliers that really went above and beyond during the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, right in the thick of it. Can you tell us a little bit more about that recognition? Dana Singer: We wanted to recognize all of the hard work that hoteliers had been putting in really into effectively managing their properties during these really challenging times. And so we decided to launch the hospitality hero award. And s

In this episode of Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree covers key insights and takeaways from Travel Media Group’s winter workshop. After talking with many hoteliers over the course of the workshop, Ryan has found some common themes and gives advice to other hoteliers out there on how they can prepare for 2022. Suite Spot Podcast · 90 – Winter 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, everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you all for joining me today for episode 90 of the Sweet Spot. This is a special edition of the Suite Spot. This is actually the second edition of what we call one-on-one digital marketing workshop takeaways. So for those that are not familiar, at Travel Media Group, we put on seasonal marketing workshops for hoteliers. We theme them every single season: spring, summer, fall, and of course, winter, which we just completed. So this workshop was called “Create an Occupancy Flurry”, and we’ve got some sort of takeaways and insights from the hotels and groups that I was speaking to during these workshops. So that’s what this episode is all about. I’ll give you some key insights and really just patterns and trends that we’ve uncovered during these digital one-on-one workshops. Ryan Embree: So the first trend that we’re gonna take a look at is, and I just love to see it, the optimism coming into 2022, especially around key groups like business and extended stays. Hoteliers are anticipating the return of these two segments, which have almost completely disappeared over the last couple years. We have been leaning so heavily on those leisure travelers as a crutch to kind of fill our rooms. In 2022, a lot of hoteliers that I talked to had the feeling that this business travel was going to return. These, these stays that might have just been maybe one or two nights might be into extended stays. And part of that is because of what we’ve talked about with bleisure happening. So business and leisure kind of blending together. Some people taking an extended vacation, maybe on a Thursday night, because they’re really able to work from anywhere. Ryan Embree: We’ve talked about that in this podcast, how that hybrid workspace is, is really gonna benefit hoteliers because it could extend someone’s vacation a couple extra nights. So with that optimism for business, a lot of the things that we talked about to hoteliers in these workshops were optimizing on places like LinkedIn. Think about how many weddings got canceled, rescheduled. Annual events that have been going on for decades had been canceled. This is your opportunity to promote your hotel, to try to capture some of that pent-up demand. LinkedIn is the channel for that. That’s where all of your event planners are going to be. That’s where your wedding planners are gonna be joining your local business associations. It, it could lead to a lot of revenue and a lot of bookings, one particular wedding block is not just one room, that’s going to relay into a whole mess of bookings. Ryan Embree: So LinkedIn and being active on that site is gonna absolutely be crucial in 2022. That’s where the decision-makers are, especially for these groups. So if you’re looking to see what type of trade shows and events are coming your way, LinkedIn is a great spot for that. And it’s gonna be the hoteliers are jumping on that trend that are really gonna take advantage as business travel starts to return. The second trend that we uncovered in this workshop really still had to do with staffing. Now, the last digital workshop that we had in the fall, we were in the thick of the staffing shortages, and it’s really almost taught hoteliers, how to adapt and change when it comes to certain things that they’re doing at the property. GMs owners, director of sales are wearing hats they’ve never had to do before. So what they’re doing is they’re actually getting a little bit more comfortable outsourcing some of their day-to-day activities, especially around digital marketing, which obviously Travel Media Group specializes in. Ryan Embree: So it’s, it’s not out of the question now to outsource your review responses, to make sure that you’re getting that task done. Outsourcing your social media, making sure that you’re consistent. I talked to a lot of groups of hotels that lost a lot of key positions, people that were managing and posting on their social media. And the funny thing is, is when I co

In this episode, host Ryan Embree takes a look at the types of compelling posts that you can create around the winter season in order to engage travelers who are traveling for the holidays. These valuable tips can help grow your hotel’s social media account and secure more bookings. If you’re interested in learning how Travel Media Group can help your hotel’s social media, click here: https://www.travelmediagroup.com/services/social-media/ Suite Spot Podcast · 89 – 12 Days of Social Tips for Hotels 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. Thank you for joining and listening wherever you are out there. We’ve got a really fun episode for you. I love this time of year. It is dubbed the most wonderful time of the year. For some hotels, this is actually where occupancy picks up a little bit. Obviously, winter is not our favorite season. That’s when that occupancy slows down, but around the holidays, you might be seeing a spike in occupancy and people traveling now, especially in comparison to last year, more and more people getting out there. So what we thought we’d do today, I’m sure a lot of people, if not everyone, has heard of the 12 days of Christmas, well, this episode, we’re going to be talking about the 12 ways to engage travelers on social media. So that was kind of the idea behind this. Ryan Embree: We’re going to give our listeners some social tips and ideas for this holiday season, and maybe some ways to kind of spice up your social media feed for your hotel, and hopefully get some new travelers to follow you during this time. It’s such a great time for hotels, especially to market and advertise themselves on social media. I tell hotels this all the time: it only takes that one second for someone to follow your page in order to really connect with them in perpetuity. So if you can just put one post together, that’s engaging, that they like, maybe even one of these ideas that we talked through today, when they click that follow button, every single time you post, whether it’s in the winter, the summer, the weekday, the weekend, they are going to be seeing that content. So it’s just so important to be creative, but also consistent because that’s when you’ll lose followers as well. If you have too little consistency and they don’t find your page interesting anymore. Ryan Embree: So let’s jump into it. We’ve got 12 to cover today. So the first one is really about posting about local community holiday events. Now, last year, we might’ve not been able to post about these events. They’ve been postponed. We had a spike in COVID cases around this time, but a lot of the time, what we’re seeing is these community holiday events are coming back. So tree lighting ceremonies, ice skating rinks, local Christmas light hotspots. So even if you are in a place where the restrictions might be a little tighter, you know there’s always those houses in the local area that really go big for this holiday season. So trying to figure where those are and sharing it on your social media. One of the things I would suggest, we’ve talked about it a couple of times on this podcast, is maybe going back a couple of years and looking at some of the events that you posted in the past. 2020 might not be the best base for you because, again, a lot of these events were canceled. Ryan Embree: So going back and figuring out which ones are returning and making a big deal of it. This could be the way that a traveler or follower finds out information about this, this type of event is via your social feed. If you bring them that value, that’s where you earn a follow, a like, a share, reposts, all that good stuff. What we love to see, that social engagement, which is at the core of our social media strategy. So number two, share an event your hotel recently hosted, or is going to host. So I’ve seen a lot of creative ideas. What we talk about in the summer about doing our dive in movies during the summer, I think the same can be said during the winter time and hosting a movie night, whether it’s the Grinch or the Polar Express, Elf, one of those classic movies out there. It doesn’t have to be in a movie, necessarily. If you’re a more upscale property and don’t have a lot of leisure or family travelers, providing hot cocoa or fresh baked cookies for the holiday season, this is this type of stuff that goes a long way. Ryan Embre

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree and Product Director Patrick O’Brien discuss the top 5 sentiment tags of 2021. With the end of the year drawing near, now is a great time for hoteliers to look back at the data so they can make informed decisions about their hotels going into the new year. Listen and discover as Ryan and Patrick break down the numbers and provide valuable insights. If you are interested in learning how Travel Media Group’s advanced sentiment reporting can help your hotel, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 88 – Top 5 Sentiment Tags 2021 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. This is one of my favorite episodes that we do every single year. I believe this is now the third year that we’ve done this with one of my favorite guests, as well. You’ve heard him on the Suite Spot before, but we’re going to welcome him back today, Patrick O’Brien, our Product Director at Travel Media Group. Patrick, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Patrick O’Brien: Thanks so much, Ryan. I’m glad to be here. Ryan Embree: So let’s talk a little bit about what we’re going to be doing today. As you’ve heard on this podcast, Travel Media Group, we are one of the leaders in reputation management, as well as responding to reviews all over the hospitality industry. And with that comes a lot of data. We are just so focused on helping hotels with their reviews that we read quite a number of them throughout the course of an entire year. We actually go the extra mile and looking at specific sentiment tags. So what we do on this episode is we give you, the listener, a really great idea about over the course of 2021, what are guests talking about? What are the top five tags that guests are mentioning in their reviews? And we go even further and dive into how they’re feeling. So to give you an idea of the sheer number of reviews that we’re talking about, Patrick, I always love to ask because I just think it’s so fascinating and pretty incredible to look over the course of a year. How many reviews is your team responding to just a month? Patrick O’Brien: So, yeah, so this year has been really interesting for our team as we have seen review flow pick back up as the year’s progressed to be really more in line with 2019. We had our highest month in July and we responded to right around 22,000 reviews that month. And it’s, it’s stayed pretty steady throughout the year. You know, the first couple of months were a little bit slower, but starting around March, everything really started to pick back up. But to put that in perspective in July of 2019, our hotels in the Respond and Resolve program, averaged 59 reviews for the month and in July of 2021, they averaged 57 reviews. So we are definitely starting to see a return to the pre-pandemic review flow. Ryan Embree: You know, it was so interesting as, obviously, the pandemic started to come across the country, to see all these different metrics engages to see how the industry was doing. Obviously, the important ones that hoteliers were looking for was occupancy and ADR and how that was impacting their just overall bottom line. But you also start to see that in review flow. So it’s a very, very comforting fact to know that not only are our guests coming back in this recovery, but they’re starting to leave more feedback. And we’ve talked about on this podcast before the importance of feedback and how that can lead to a blueprint and perfecting that guest experience. So part of perfecting that guest experience is to actually not just see the review and star rating of that review, but to really dig in to the sentiment and the tags. So you mentioned 22,000 reviews in July alone. How many total sentiment tags are you and your professional review response team running into in these reviews? Patrick O’Brien: Yeah, so it is, you know, we’ve definitely seen a big uptick, in the total sentiment tags and my product managers and I have spent, you know, several years now working with our analysts, really, to hand tag reviews for sentiment, which allows us to really continually refine and train our AI. And with all of that data and understanding over the years, this year, we were able to launch a major upgrade to our sentiment analysis system, which has allowed us to dive even deeper into guest sentiment and provide our hotel partners with a lot more data. But it’s also allowed us to extend our analysis to a la

In the second and final part of this special edition of the Suite Spot, we continue to help hotels fill their 2022 calendars and strategize social campaigns. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Client Success Team Lead, Aislynn Roberts, to cover the summer and fall seasons. Listen and learn as we discuss planning posts around: holidays, events, hotel amenities/features, and local stories. If you are interested in learning more about how Travel Media Group can help plan your hotel’s social calendar, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 87 – Planning Your Hotel’s 2022 Social Calendar Part II 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 part two of two of our episode: Planning Your Hotel’s Social Calendar for 2022. If you missed part one, we already reviewed the winter and spring seasons for the 2022 year. In this episode, we are going to continue the conversation with Aislynn for our summer and fall months. Enjoy. Let’s keep it rolling as we head into the summer. I know we’ve got a couple of major holidays. The kids are out of school. Let’s talk about holidays in the summer. Aislynn Roberts: Yeah. Great. So summer’s really great time. As you mentioned, kids are out of school, so there’s a little bit more time available for parents and families to do things. So when we’re talking about holidays, you have Father’s Day, 4th of July. So there’s always a really great opportunity where you can showcase those holidays to invite people to come in for an extended weekend or celebrate dad this year and book a stay with us, type of posts. A great way to highlight the holiday. So it’s easy to do, but also you can promote something about the property, a feature or an amenity in the same time. And then you have some smaller holidays. Like, for instance, in July, there’s an All-American pet photo day. Simple posts to share a photo of your pet or a pet and ask your followers to share photos of their own pets. Quick and easy to do and it could yield high activity because people love to share photos of their pets and they love to see photos of other people’s pets. So while you’re getting this really great fun, simple post out there, you also have the opportunity to promote your property being pet friendly and that all pets are welcome. And we can’t wait to see your four-legged family friends. Ryan Embree: Yes. If you ever want to get some quick engagement on a post, all you have to do is find the nearest pet and post that on social media, because I guarantee you are going to get a lot of likes and share. People, like you said, Aislynn, they are obsessed with their pets. But really summer just feels like an entire holiday in itself. You know, it is never a bad time to post about it being summer. This is when we are the busiest in our industry. So making sure that we are hosting, you know, encouraging and inspiring travel is so important and that kind of overflows into the event side. Right, Aislynn? Aislynn Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, there’s always something going on during the summer months. And in fact, a lot of artists who actually had concerts and tours booked for 2020 that they had to cancel, they’ve already rebooked either for the end of 2021 and leading into 2022. So there’s going to be so much more happening in the new year than we had in the last two years. So definitely take a look at what’s planned for your area. Sports venues are always really big. You have a lot going on with those teams that are either local, whether they’re professional or even sometimes we have, if I work with a small town, they even promote their own like league that they have. So it’s, it’s just like people who get together of the community and play baseball or whatever the sport may be. And that could just be really fun for people to enjoy, or if they have family coming into town for a visit, you know, that they’re coming for the game and then they can stay with your property as well. So there’s just a lot going on. You have different things at bars or festivals, or maybe there’s like a, a great little fun thing that’s going on just in like a farmer’s market that you might have. I think a lot of people love to peruse those things as they’re visiting town, just to see how different towns and different farmer’s markets change. So those are always really great things to highlight on social media. Ryan Embree: And don’t forget, 2022 is

In part 1 of 2 of this special edition of the Suite Spot, we help hotels start to fill their 2022 calendars and strategize social campaigns. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Client Success Team Lead, Aislynn Roberts to cover the winter and spring seasons. Listen and learn as we discuss planning posts around: holidays, events, hotel amenities/features, and local stories. Check out part 2 when Ryan and Aislynn cover the summer and fall months. If you are interested in learning more about how Travel Media Group can help plan your hotel’s social calendar, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 86 – Planning Your Hotel’s 2022 Social Media Calendar Part I 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, Ryan Embree. Thank you for listening, wherever you are listening from. Got a great episode, as always, for you today. I cannot believe it, but it is October of 2021, which means we are headed into the last quarter of this year and headed into a brand new 2022. We’ve had a rough couple years, but we are looking with some optimism and looking forward to next year. So with me today to talk about 2022, because we can never start planning early enough for next year, is Client Success Team Lead, Aislynn Roberts. Aislynn, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Aislynn Roberts: Thanks, Ryan. Happy to be back. Ryan Embree: As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve got a great episode, but what we’re going to be talking about today is helping our listeners plan their 2022 social calendar for their hotel. This is something that is extremely important to do at least at some point before going into the new year. Now we’re not going to go over every single specific post that you need to be doing for an entire year’s worth, but I thought it would be helpful to go ahead and roll through some of the seasons. We know how seasonal this industry is, and then we’ll share some tips and best practices to help fill your calendar and give you some tips along the way. That sound like a plan, Aislynn? Aislynn Roberts: Yeah. Sounds great. Ryan Embree: Awesome. Well, let’s start with the winter; somewhat of a slower month. Aislynn, where do we start when we’re, when we’re starting to plan that social calendar for winter 2022? Aislynn Roberts: Definitely, when you’re getting started with content, I like to recommend to my partners to start with the big stuff, the stuff that’s known, it’s pretty easy to talk about. So when we look at that, it’s always holidays, right? So what holidays are happening during the winter: New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, you got Christmas, Christmas Eve, Hanukkah is also during winter, and then you move into smaller holidays that are maybe like three-day weekends. You have President’s Day, Columbus day. Occasionally some people, some regions observe that and some don’t and then also Martin Luther King, Jr weekend. So when we’re talking about social content, it’s always great to post about those major holidays because it’s something everyone pretty much knows about. They might be planning an extended weekend trip or thinking about it. They get an extra day off of work or during those times. So it’s really easy to create content and plan for them. But you also want to think about some of the smaller days. There is a national day of calendar that you can just pull great inspiration from to always fill your social media content calendar up. So for instance, in January alone, you have National Trivia Day and Plan for Vacation Day is the last Tuesday in January. These are really great content ideas just to drive up activity, get people engaged with you, share information about the property, specifically Plan for a Vacation Day. You’re literally telling guests and prospective travelers to plan a vacation to your property and you’re showcasing and marketing all the great experiences that you have to offer. And then for like National Trivia Day, I’ve worked with a number of properties who are more of like a historical town or their property itself has been around for a while. There’s a great history with that property. So they use National Trivia Day to just post trivia questions about the town or property and get people to try to answer them. And they will engage with the comments on the posts, which drives up not only your engagement specifically on social media, but that activity will also enable the social media algorithm to have your posts and p

In this special edition episode of Suite Spot, we recap the recent 2021 Lodging Conference, which took place at the beautiful JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort in Phoenix, AZ. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group’s Director of Enterprise Sales, Danielle Rummel, as they analyze the current state and future of the post-pandemic hotel industry. Listen and learn as they discuss shifting guest expectations, emerging trends, and how to overcome labor challenges. This episode is a great way to get insight into what the road to recovery for the hospitality industry looks like for hoteliers. Suite Spot Podcast · 85 – Lodging Conference 2021 Special Edition 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. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for listening. Today we’ve got a special edition of the Suite Spot and I am so excited. I’ve been waiting for a couple years to finally do one of these, episodes again. We used to do them all the time. As I’ve mentioned on this podcast before, Travel Media Group, we are at the forefront of digital marketing in the hotel industry. So we are trying to get to every single conference out there to try to figure out the trends, what is going on in the hotel industry. And one of the best conferences and events year after year continues to be the Lodging Conference out in Arizona. So 2021 gave us the opportunity to attend that conference. And with me today, I have Danielle Rummel. She is the Director of Enterprise Sales at Travel Media Group. Danielle, first off, welcome to the Suite Spot. Danielle Rummel: Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah. And this is your first time here on the Suite Spot, but not your first time to the Lodging Conference. So I want to go ahead and start off. We always love to do these kind of recap episodes with these live events, because we know hoteliers might not be able to make it out to all of these events that we’re going to. So let’s start off just from maybe a macro level, Danielle, and just talking about, maybe, what was the big theme? Cause there always seems to be this theme and topic from these events. What was this year’s theme? Danielle Rummel: Well, I think nobody’s going to be surprised by this, but the theme of this year’s conference was definitely resilience and our industry has been hit hard by the global pandemic with COVID and that is no surprise to anyone. We’ve also been hit hard in the past by the economy in 2008, when the economy fell, as well as in 9/11. And much to everybody’s surprise, we recovered then. And I think it’s safe to say that we are the only ones not surprised this time that we are on our way back and we are as resilient as ever. And it’s very exciting to be in this industry now, as we come back and look at all of the opportunities, how much everything has evolved, how we have been forced to change, but potentially make some changes for the better to improve guest experience and improve on everything that we are offering. So it was really exciting to be at the Lodging Conference, we had 1,900 attendees, so that was one of the largest conferences we’ve seen yet. And everybody was so excited to just see people face-to-face, in-person and really get out there and talk about what we’ve experienced, collaborate with each other on what we see moving forward and ways that we can really support not only each other, our owners management companies, vendors, but really support guests in this exciting time as they get back on the road. Ryan Embree: It’s so excellent to hear. It’s funny, I’m looking at my notes from the 2018 Lodging Conference, which was actually the last one that I personally attended. And I’m seeing some here of 100+ months of RevPAR growth. There was record travel at that time, but there was also this just sense of uneasiness because things were just going so well at that time. And I remember them mentioning some sort of Black Swan event could be a potential threat to this industry, but I guess no one really could have predicted, obviously, what happened. But you’re right, almost being on the other side of this, it was a sense of relief that this event, COVID-19, the pandemic, has really put hospitality to the bare bones, to the bare minimum of hotel rooms. Back in April 2020, where we only had a million room nights sold in the U.S., that was the lowest point. And from here, it’s just been this, this kind of excitement and growth and

In this episode of the Suite Spot, Host Ryan Embree discusses how hotels can market their breakfast offerings in order to set and exceed expectations for future guests. Hotel breakfast was one of the most impacted pieces of the guest experience during the pandemic and it’s critical for hoteliers to communicate accurate messaging and information surrounding breakfast offerings for travelers moving forward. Ryan shares some innovative ideas around how to market your hotel’s breakfast amenity on social media and how to leverage online review response as an effective communication tool. This episode is a great resource for hoteliers looking to relaunch and refresh their breakfast options for 2022 and beyond. If you are interested in learning more about how Travel Media Group can help market your hotel’s breakfast options or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 84 – How to Market Your Hotel’s Breakfast Options 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. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you so much for listening wherever you are listening from out there. We’ve got a great episode for you today. It’s just myself, but we’re going to be talking about really just a minor piece of the travelers’ hotel experience with some major, major implications. In fact, we do an annual episode counting down the top five sentiment tags that our professional review response team identifies and uncovers in guest reviews of all of our hotel partners’ reviews that we respond to. So we are talking more than a hundred thousand reviews that we are responding to annually. We take all of that data and we look at those sentiment tags and we uncover the top five. We’re actually going to be having our 2021 episode here within the next couple episodes. Ryan Embree: But back in 2020, one of those tags was breakfast. As I mentioned before, very small piece of the traveler experience, but such an impact on the entire stay. Breakfast has become almost this expectation for a lot of hotels; that free hot breakfast is such a feature and amenity that can’t be overstated to a guest. But an extremely popular tag, even in the times of 2020, where we didn’t see a lot of travelers come through, this was a hot subject because hotels really had to rethink the breakfast experience at their property. Now, prior to COVID, you know, you could have business travelers sitting there with a cup of coffee in the morning and newspaper, kind of taking their time, a family enjoying their breakfast, you know, pancakes, waffles, everything like that, breakfast buffets, all of that good stuff. But now the game has kind of changed there. Hotels had to go to breakfast on the go. Ryan Embree: They still had to provide breakfast to their guests, but in a different light. Now in 2021, as the Delta variant is making a huge impact on hospitality, and as we enter the fall and winter months, the expectations for breakfast has completely changed from traveler to traveler. We’ve mentioned this in multiple podcasts, a lot of the educational webinars that I’m doing right now, the spectrum of guest expectations are all over the place. It’s never been like this in the history of the industry before. You could have a traveler walk into your hotel lobby expecting that hot breakfast buffet like they had before, back in 2019 and prior. And they don’t want to change in that breakfast experience. And then you could have the guests right after come into your lobby and want a breakfast on the go. They don’t feel comfortable sitting in a breakfast area with multiple travelers that have traveled all over the country, congregated in a confined space. Ryan Embree: So hotels are trying to manage these expectations and figure out how to accommodate both of these types of guests. So today’s episode, as you can imagine, is really going to be about how to rethink and how to market your hotel breakfast options, whatever they are out there. So we are going to move throughout the spectrum because we know some parts of the country are experiencing different local restrictions and policies. So the first place, of course we love to start is social media. This is going to be the best place that you can communicate and start to set expectations for travelers that are going to be coming through your doors. As we enter the fall season, I think one of the things that really stands out about breakfast is the ability to offer seasonal breakfast items, ri

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we celebrate another exciting solution update launch with Host Ryan Embree and VP of Product & Technology, Jason Lee. Ryan and Jason roll out and explore the new advanced sentiment analysis and reporting for hotels. The episode starts with Jason defining what review sentiment is and what was behind his team’s initiative to enhance Travel Media Group’s sentiment analytics and reporting. Ryan and Jason then walk through several use cases for leveraging sentiment analysis and how hoteliers could use this data to make better operational and capital decisions for their property. They wrap up the episode talking about how this new update fits in TMG’s suite of reputation solutions and how much it will cost hotel partners. If you are interested in finding out more about Travel Media Group’s new advanced sentiment analytics or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 83 – Advanced Sentiment Analysis and Reporting 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: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you for listening, wherever you are listening from out there. We’ve got another jam-packed, exciting episode for you today. With me today, is a very familiar guest, you’ve heard his voice on here and with this guest typically comes some very cool, exciting new news. Jason Lee, Vice President of Product Development and Technology at Travel Media Group. Jason, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Jason Lee: All right. Thank you, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and we’ve got some exciting updates to announce on this episode and it all starts with sentiment analysis and a complete revamp and upgrade and advanced reporting for the sentiment analysis for reviews. So Jason, before we jump into these updates, I want to just start at a basic level. We’ve done it before, but I think it’s best to reset and explain to some of our listeners, what exactly is sentiment analysis when we’re talking about hotel’s online reviews? Jason Lee: Okay, so when you think about sentiment, you think about what is maybe the mood of the person writing the review, right? That could be part of sentiment, like, is this person satisfied? Is this person unhappy/happy? Are they a mix of emotions, right? So there’s that part of sentiment, but then there’s also the other parts of it, which detail what caused that emotion. So we use something that a lot of people use, especially in machine learning or AI, which is natural language processing. So it basically takes all of this text. So you have tons and tons of text that guests have given you over time. And we take that text and then we’re able to break that down into various layers. So one layer would be the sentiment of that text, which would be whether someone, whether someone was maybe generally happy or unhappy, but then we could then break it into elements. And then where there, they might be happy, neutral, or unhappy with those elements. So, so it kind of starts with natural language processing and then determining sentiment. Then it turns into clustering aspects or clustering topics. And these would be things like this happened in the room that had happened in the lobby. Did it, you know, what, where, where are we talking about? And then it, then it goes more into detail into what exactly happened in that space. So if it was something with cleanliness, what was not clean, and maybe there was more than one thing, but, but basically taking all that text and then pushing it into these like more digestible pieces of data and then, and then displaying that. So, so you can see over time if, from cleanliness, if it’s, if it’s something that is specific, like, let’s say, it’s your floors. If floors are having a cleanliness issue, is this something that’s been happening over time or is this something that’s recent? And if it is recent, then could it be something that as you fix it, you could see it being fixed through the semantic data that’s being pushed through our system. Ryan Embree: Yeah, it basically takes all of the noise surrounding reviews and really just gives you the meat and potatoes of what you need to make those operational decisions. You know, I think the best way to describe it is if you’re listening to this, and you are a hotelier that goes through and hopefully are reading your reviews, I want you to think of the longest review that you’ve read, and we’ve come across some novels. Travelers love to type kind of these long paragraphs about their experience. Now, imagine if that was almost taken as notes and just broken down into individual

In this special edition of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree discusses the recent Hotel Digital Marketing Workshop Event hosted by Travel Media Group. This season’s theme was titled “How to Keep Occupancy Hot this Fall” and focused on capturing occupancy as children return to school, beginning a slow drop in leisure travel. Ryan talks about the key takeaways and common themes that he uncovered in these 1-on-1 meetings with hoteliers. This episode keeps its finger on the pulse of the hotel industry and listeners will gain insights into the upcoming fall season. If you are looking for more information on TMG’s Hotel Digital Marketing Workshops or want to submit a topic for a future episode, reach out to us at 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 82 – 1 on 1 Hotel Workshop Takeaways & Insights 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 the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you for listening, no matter where you are coming from today, we’ve got a special episode and special edition of the Suite Spot. Really excited to share this episode with you all. Will be a little bit of a quicker episode, but super insightful. Now at Travel Media Group, to give you some background, obviously COVID-19 and the pandemic in 2020 impacted our business, just like the hotel industry as a whole. Travel Media Group, we’ve been in business for over 30 years and we only work with hotels. So seeing the impact that COVID-19 and this pandemic had on the industry as a whole was absolutely devastating. And, you know, we were having conversations with hoteliers throughout the entirety of the pandemic and were really feeling what they were feeling. Hotels made a lot of adaptions during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to meet the needs and expectations of guests during this health crisis. At Travel Media Group, we did the same to meet the needs and serve our customers. Ryan Embree: One of those really cool initiatives that we started here at Travel Media Group actually began as a virtual trade show, and we didn’t have the opportunity to meet face to face to our hoteliers like we’d done for so many years, really decades of going to these events and trade shows: AAHOA, Choice Hotels, Wyndham, Best Western, all of these that we typically will see. So one of the things that the pandemic forced us to do was adapt to this new normal setting. And with that, we did a virtual trade show where we would meet virtually with our hoteliers and get to talk to them about their properties, what they were experiencing and try to come up with creative ways and ideas to get more business to a property. So that kind of evolved in 2020 into now, 2021, where we do one-on-one workshops with hotels virtually to talk specifically about their property. Ryan Embree: Our educational webinars are awesome because they cover a specific subject, but for hoteliers that are looking for a tailored, specific approach for their location and their property, these workshops seem to be a really great channel and way to do that for hotels. So in saying that we have just completed our fall 2021 marketing workshop. And the episode today is actually going to be five distinct takeaways and insights that we were able to uncover in these workshop meetings and sessions with hoteliers. So let’s go ahead and jump right in the first takeaway from our hotel marketing workshops was that people are traveling now. It doesn’t sound like a very resounding takeaway, but when we did this back in the spring of 2021, people were just starting to begin to travel again, we weren’t seeing those occupancy bursts like we’re seeing right now. And like we did over the summer. Now, obviously with the Delta variant, we know that there could be some impacts on that for occupancy. Ryan Embree: We know during the fall time that historically even pre-pandemic have been a kind of slower time as children go back to school and we heavily rely on corporate and business travelers to be filling our rooms. But according to some STR data and hotel performance for July, 2021 occupancy as a whole was 69.6%. That’s only 5.5% down from 2019, just 5%. Last year, we were seeing double digits dips. In fact, the ADR was $143.30. That is 6% higher than July of 2019. Ryan Embree: So yes, people are traveling and hoteliers are excited, but that takes us to our second takeaway. And that is, although people are traveling, people are not necessarily working right now. Hotels are very understaffed and they can’t get the employees that they once had back into their hotel lobbies back to their housekeeping department. And it’s causing for a lot of the hoteliers that I’ve talked to on these workshops to sometimes stretch their employees very, very thin, or even have to jump into roles that they’d never h

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we take a trip down the traveler’s booking path and explore what role social media and reputation play in a guest’s decision-making. Host Ryan Embree and VP of Product & Technology, Jason Lee share how to improve your hotel’s chances of guest conversion. Jason and Ryan start in the research stage, where they discuss what travelers are looking for on social media and online reputation sites. They continue to the booking phase, where travelers start to get excited and form an idea of what to expect on their trip. Finally, they discuss post-stay, where travelers determine if those expectations fell short, were met, or exceeded, sharing their feedback on review sites that impact other travelers in different stages of the booking process. If you are interested in finding out how your hotel’s online presence is impacting traveler conversion or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 81 – How Social Media And Online Reviews Impact Conversion 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, Director of Marketing at Travel Media Group. Thank you for joining me today on this very exciting episode. And with me today, a familiar face, we haven’t heard from him in a while, but he’s back on the Suite Spot that is Mr. Jason Lee, Vice President of Product Development and Technology at Travel Media Group. Jason, it’s great to hear from you. Jason Lee: All right. It’s great to be back on, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Yeah. We’ve got a really exciting episode today, you know, as I was kind of looking at what is going on right now in the industry. You know, on the Suite Spot, we’re always trying to be at the forefront of trends, patterns, and what’s going on. You know, one of the topics that I just could not believe that we hadn’t covered yet – the traveler’s journey, but the way that social media reviews and review response are having an impact on booking conversion. And I think the interesting part was, is if we did this episode, when we started the Suite Spot years ago, I think this conversation today would be completely different because that social media and reputation side of things have really started to blend over the past couple years, but it’s having some real big impacts on purchasing decisions. And obviously you throw COVID-19 and the pandemic, it just complicates things even more because travelers are now looking at this stuff closer than ever. So, Jason, I’m glad you’re here with me on this episode. We’ll kind of bounce some ideas, but I think the best way to kind of go through this traveler’s booking journey is just to go step-by-step because most often than not as guests and as travelers do, we have one particular purchase path. Now that purchase path might be over the course of six months, or it could be over the course of six days, but typically it’s going to follow this path. So you, the listener follow along, we’re going to go through this purchasing path and figure out how social media and reviews impact booking conversion. Jason, let’s start with research. So obviously this is a huge place for reputation. Jason Lee: Yeah, I think, you know, I think there is the, I mean, whether you call it research or consideration, I think this is past the point of where you are considering, should I take a vacation or should I travel now? You’re in a spot where it’s like, you’re going to travel and now you’re really trying to find the best accommodation. And I think that’s where a lot of stuff starts to really take effect in terms of the value of your property, the value proposition in all of that available information. One thing that you see through all of that obviously is search. So search kind of dictates all of that stuff and it starts you off in terms of the consideration or research section you’re in your destination or destinations. And you’re looking through hotels at the price point or in the vicinity of that location that you want to be. And I think that’s where all of the necessary data or all relevant data about your hotel is on display. And it does begin in search and how people search. And so people can search through social media, but people just catching you, potential guests catching you on various outlets directly through a search. So let’s say they narrow it down to your property, searching for your property. They’re going to s

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group’s Content Manager, Marissa Kinzel, to discuss how to market a hotel property’s new renovations and updates. With some hotels seeing 2020 as an opportunity to make updates and changes to their property, this episode is a great roadmap for how to advertise them to travelers online. Marissa and Ryan brainstorm ideas for how to communicate important messaging about your new renovations on channels like social media and online reputation sites. They demonstrate how you can use review response as a renovation marketing tool and how to leverage guest sentiment in your hotel’s online reviews to make the most of your updates. To learn more about how Travel Media Group’s digital marketing solutions can help promote your hotel’s renovations online or to submit a question or topic for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 80 – How To Market Your New Hotel Renovations 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 with me today, a very familiar voice, she has been on the Suite Spot so much we should almost call her a co-host at this point, but I will welcome in Marissa Kinzel, Content Manager at Travel Media Group. Marissa, welcome back to the Suite Spot, once again. Marissa Kinzel: Thank you so much again for having me. Ryan Embree: We got a very exciting episode and topic for you all. We’re going to be talking about how to market your hotel’s renovations. You know, as bad as last year was for the hotel industry as a whole, some properties took 2020 as an opportunity to do some much needed renovations and updates to the property. Less travelers, meant less disruption for guests onsite, and hopefully that means quicker date of completions, of these updates. But finishing those renovations is only half the battle and it’s time to promote and market your new hotel updates and renovation to travelers. And that’s where this episode comes in. So today we’re going to walk through some different ways and channels that you can use to leverage your hotel’s renovations online. Let’s go ahead and get started Marissa with social media. One of the first things hotels need to do once renovations are complete is to update their online listings. Typically, hoteliers are quick to update places like their website and OTA booking sites because this is where travelers are making those booking and purchasing decisions, but they neglect to do so on social media: Facebook, Instagram. You know, I’ve done a handful of consultations when looking at a hote’s Facebook photos and heard the common phrase of, “Wait a second, that’s not what my room, what my lobby, what my pool looks like.” You know, it reminds me of a story that a hotelier told me once, really a metaphor when it comes to renovations, and it really is like purchasing a brand new car, but keeping that car in the garage so that no one can see it. That’s what doing renovations and not updating your sites like social media is doing. You’ve had this huge capital investment, all this time and money and effort spent, all this headaches into renovations. And yet you’re not sharing it with travelers that are probably most excited to see what you’ve done with the property. And another great place on social media to consider updating is your profile picture. It doesn’t have to be your permanent profile picture, but maybe a temporary one or the header where you can highlight and showcase these new renovations. You know, again, it’s important that after such a big capital and time investment, this renovation really needs to be the center of traveler’s attention for a period of time. But at the same time, don’t leave it on for too long. It’s not a new renovation when you redid your rooms, let’s say back in 2017. So make sure that the renovations that you’re highlighting and showcasing are very recent, brand new and your travelers will be excited about them. Marissa Kinzel: I agree. I think that taking the opportunity to share updates about your renovations, right as soon as they happen, really close to the beginning, right when they’re finished is the best way to go, because that way you will get the most excitement, both from your staff and the energy in your posts. And it will just radiate into the guest’s minds. And I think another great idea to help with this is sharing before an

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree partners up with Content Manager Marissa Kinzel to count down their Top 5 summer social media ideas for hotels. Ryan and Marissa discuss the type of social content that travelers are looking for – especially during the summer – and what impact these posts can have on guest conversion. They talk about how this summer is different from years’ past and how highlighting these differences using social media can instill confidence in travelers searching for a place to stay. This episode is a great blueprint on how to heat up your hotel’s social profiles this summer. If you’re looking to learn more information about how to get the most out of your hotel’s social strategy all year round or want to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 79 – Top 5 Summer Social Media Ideas For Hotels 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 and welcome everyone, this is your host, Ryan Embree, welcoming you to the Suite Spot for another episode today, episode number 79. I can’t believe it, we have done 79 of these podcast episodes. Thank you, first off, to everyone, all the hoteliers that are listening out there for all the support, we absolutely love doing this and sharing ideas, and we’ve got a great episode for you today. We are right in the thick of summer, one of the hottest times, no pun intended, for hotels when it comes to occupancy, we are in recovery mode from the COVID-19 pandemic. So today we are going to be talking about the top five summer social media ideas for hotels. And with me today, I brought in some backup who is becoming a very familiar voice here on the Suite Spot, that is the Content Manager at Travel Media Group, Marissa Kinzel. Marissa, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Marissa Kinzel: Thank you again for having me Ryan, happy to be back. Ryan Embree: Yes, and today we are going to talk about how to make the most of social media during this busy summer season. We’re going to make it easier for you, the listener to follow along, we’re going to go through the top five. Now, these aren’t necessarily in order, but they are some of the best tips and best practices that we have at Travel Media Group that we tell our hotel partners and implement in our social media strategies and solutions for our hotel partners. So Marissa let’s get started with number one. The number one summer social media idea we have for hotels is to be posting about your room and room types. Now, I know this doesn’t sound like a groundbreaking idea, but you’d be surprised on how many social profiles that we come across for hotels, where we have to scroll almost an entire month before we actually even see what a room looks like at the property. We know from having our website solutions and providing vanity websites for hotels, rooms is one of the most visited page on a property’s website. They want to know where they’re staying. We want to provide them with a lot of information on rooms. So Marissa, how can we take advantage of posting about our rooms on social media in the summer? Marissa Kinzel: So the best way to start when it comes to highlighting your rooms and your room types, so you’re going to want to highlight the versatility of your rooms and include features that are really good for summer travelers. So you want to talk about if you’ve got refrigerators available, whether to borrow or they’re already isn the rooms, have you got awesome bathrooms that help you clean off after a long fun day at the beach, and even something as simple as talking about your amazing AC to help people beat the heat. That can be something that is informative and great for travelers to know. And it’s also a good opportunity to share past guest reviews on social media, depending on your current review flow, you might have some really great recent ones to kind of make look really pretty and sneak in, that will be really irreplaceable testimonials for travelers who are browsing social media for a good place to stay. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I love the idea of promoting something as simple as your AC. I mean, we know how hot it gets in parts of the country, especially in the Northwest right now, that would be a huge opportunity for hoteliers to capitalize on. People are just looking for a cold place to cool down, rather. Summer, also typically means family vacations, so be mindful of the room types that you’re sharing during the summer season. In the fall and winter time, where you might see more business travel, maybe y

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group’s Content Manager, Marissa Kinzel, to discuss the cross-section of business and leisure in the travel industry. They define what “bleisure” travelers are, and share ideas about how hotels can market their properties to attract this type of traveler post-COVID. Marissa shares tips for posting to social media and deals hotels can offer that will catch a bleisure traveler’s attention. Ryan shares specific ideas for using LinkedIn to showcase business spaces and how to talk about your amenities to appeal to both the business and leisure parts of a travelers’ trip. To get more information about becoming a special guest on the Suite Spot or to submit a question or topic 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 everyone, and welcome. You are listening to the The Suite Spot a hospitality marketing podcast. Thank you for listening today. We have another amazing episode for you today. This one is centered all around a new traveler that we might not have known existed a couple years ago, but it is a trending topic in the industry. It’s becoming more prevalent and hotels are actually filling their properties with these types of travelers. And it’s actually a combination of two types of travelers that we’ve come to know and love. That’s our business traveler and our leisure traveler. So before we get started, with me today, I’m going to introduce our guest with me. That is the Content Manager at Travel Media Group, Marissa Kinzel, Marissa, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot. Marissa Kinzel: Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. I’m happy to be back. Ryan Embree: Yes. And very excited to get your insight and wealth of knowledge on this particular subject. We have spent over a year now talking about everything in the hotel industry that is being represented as a quote-unquote, “new normal,” what hoteliers can do to adapt and change their hotel marketing strategies. And we’ve got this new traveler, this bleisure traveler, business, leisure combined. So what we’re going to do today, Marissa, is we’re going to go back and forth. We’re going to do some brainstorming for listeners today and maybe share some ideas on how these hotels can attract this new bleisure traveler. What’s important to them? Why are they traveling? And if we can put a strategy and target them appropriately, that’s going to lead us to some more bookings and more business on that path to recovery. Let’s go ahead and get started. One of the main ways that we know travelers are now getting their information is through social media messaging, communication, trying to figure out as much information before actually booking. Ryan Embree: Once they’ve booked, they’re even going to places like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, to get that comfort level and confidence up before their actual trip. So when we’re talking about bleisure travel, one of the things that we want to keep in mind is: this is a dual-purpose trip. So promoting amenities like the pool, you know, if you have a beach or another onsite amenity, fitness center, that might be attractive to the leisure side of their trip, but they’re also going to be interested in things like Wi-Fi, business centers, meeting spaces. This is the place that they’re going to use for the business side of their trip and how they’re going to be working from your hotel. Marissa Kinzel: I agree completely. I think that trying to advertise both things that are attractive in a leisure sense and things that are attractive in a business sense for these bleisure travelers is going to be very, very important. And I also think timing is everything with social media, and we know this and hotels will want to aim their posts during, you know, conference seasons. You’re going to want to post frequently, but not too frequently. There’s sort of a sweet spot, I guess you could say, with how frequently you are going to be posting online and you don’t want to overlap other deals or campaigns that you want to run. Think about like your holiday seasons: spring break, Memorial day, weekend, labor day weekend, the 4th of July, all of those like hard-hitting tourist seasons. When you’re going to be focusing mostly on families, college students, kids that are not in school at the moment, you don’t want that to compete with the bleisure travelers. You want those business

In part 2 of 2 of this special edition of the Suite Spot, we take a moment to recognize stories of resilience and excellence in hospitality throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Host Ryan Embree highlights some incredible hospitality professionals across the country and what they did to make them a hospitality hero during this trying time for our industry. This a feel-good episode that showcases the qualities and values that are at the heart of the hotel industry. To get more information about becoming a special guest on the Suite Spot or to submit a question or topic 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 everyone, and welcome to the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Today’s episode is going to be part two of our Hospitality Heroes segment. Recognizing those hotel employees that went above and beyond during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enjoy. Ryan Embree: Our next Hospitality hero is Debra Roberts, Laundry, Houseman and Breakfast staff at Gibson Hotels. Debra is nominated by Brandy Crawford. Brandy writes, “Debra is truly a team player, always offering to pick up shifts. So we’re short staff. She’s also dedicated to making sure all of our guests are happy. She’ll bring in items for coworkers and our guests if they mentioned they liked something. I wish I could clone 10 of her because she is that amazing. Great attitude always reaches out to manager with follow-ups on items needed. And she’ll also tell me not to do something, as she can take care of it when she comes in for her shift. She goes above and beyond daily. She has been my go-to person for the last 15 years.” Wow. 15 years in the hospitality industry. A lot of hoteliers haven’t experienced anything like this before. Great job Debra, and very cool story to hear. Continue the great work. Ryan Embree: Our next Hospitality Hero is Scott McKay, general manager at the Capitol Hotel Hartford, Avalon Hospitality Group. Scott is nominated by Robin Grazioso. Robin writes, “Scott held down the fort. He made sure all the operation aspects, including housekeeping, were done, meaning doing it himself. Front desk: he pulled multiple shifts a day; sales: trying to find business in any organization that was traveling and continued to be GM reaching out to organizations that were helping the homeless or those less fortunate to see how we could assist during the pandemic. Not one time did Scott complain and absolutely stepped up to the plate going above and beyond. He was actually closing sales leads for 2022.” Wow. What a great story of a positive mindset. Scott, you’re doing some incredible work over there. Keep up the great work. Ryan Embree: Our next Hospitality Hero is Seth Kines, founder and CEO at Scarlet Boom. Seth is nominated by Drew Dunstan. Drew writes at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seth lost his hospitality job that he held for years. He decided to turn a negative into a positive and created Scarlet Boom: hotel sales and marketing firm. And less than a year, Scarlet boom has partnered with more than 30 hotels and hired five full-time hospitality professionals who were also laid off from their hotels during the pandemic. Seth and Scarlet have been able to create jobs in the middle of a pandemic that has devastated our industry, and we need to share his success story.” Well done, Seth, that’s an awesome story like Drew described there. Definitely turning a negative into a positive and reaching out and helping our hospitality brothers and sisters out there. Thank you so much for sharing Drew and congratulations Seth. Ryan Embree: Our next Hospitality Hero is Suzi Brady, General Manager at AD1 Global. Susie is nominated by Jon McMillain. Jon writes: “Opened two adjacent hotels, A-Loft and Element International Drive during a pandemic working six days a week, cleaning rooms as a general manager, because it needed to be done, continued to serve the community and the hospitality industry all while raising a family.” Wow, truly superhero work here, Suzi incredible job. So we’ve definitely heard some of these stories before people either starting right before or during a pandemic, but I can’t imagine opening two hotels during a pandemic. So great work, Suzi. Congratulations. And thank you for the nomination. Jon. Ryan Embree: Next up for our Hospitality Heroes is Jennifer Stalans Executive Housekeeper at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Alcoa. Jennifer was nominated by Emma Stone. Emma writes, “Jennifer has worked before, during, and as we

On this special edition of the Suite Spot, we are joined by AD1 Global’s Director of Marketing and e-Commerce, Jon McMillian. Host Ryan Embree interviews Jon and gets his thoughts on the state of the hotel industry today and where we are headed. Jon shares the start of his journey in hospitality and discusses his experience managing marketing and e-commerce through a global pandemic. He demonstrates how to distinguish properties in your hotel group portfolio from local competition and how to get buy-in from your hotel staff for new initiatives at the property level. Ryan and Jon wrap up the episode discussing the long-standing partnership between Travel Media Group and AD1 Global, showcasing how TMG’s digital solutions perfectly suited the needs of his group. To get more information about becoming a special guest on the Suite Spot or to submit a question or topic for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 76 – Moving Forward with AD1 Global's Jon McMillian 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, with me today, a very special guest, he is a first timer to the Suite Spot. That is Jon McMillian, Corporate Director of Marketing and E-commerce at AD1 Global. So John, welcome to the Suite Spot Jon McMillian: Thank you, Ryan. It’s a pleasure to be here. Ryan Embree: Awesome, and just a little bit about you. You are the Global Director of E-commerce and Marketing. Jon oversees the digital marketing, public relations, social media, and promotional activities for each of the AD1 Global properties. He’s responsible for developing and carrying out the company’s digital marketing plans, as well as ensuring that hotels stay up to date with technology. A senior marketing executive with more than 17 years of experience, his range of expertise includes e-commerce, advertising, public relations, SEO, SEM, social, and email marketing, branding, mobile, and big data and analytics. So John got a lot of experience there, very excited to pick your brain and get some insights to our listeners. I want to just start out, like we do with a lot of our guests on the Suite Spot, just asking how you got your start in hospitality and the journey that led you to AD1 Global. Jon McMillian: Well, I think my journey, you know, was, was interesting, at least to me, in terms of that I started off in the Air Force, in public relations that in the sense is related to hospitality. Part of my job was to sell the Air Force to the general public, inviting visitors to the base and conducting tours from the school children, US Senators, Russian Generals in the like. So that’s where I kind of got my start all be it into actual hospitality itself, happened many years later, after a stent in SEO industry, working for companies such as Tropicana, you may have heard of before and overwhelming resorts for them, and simply with email marketing, which quickly transitioned into corporate directors because it was at its infancy,SEO, SEM email marketing, things of that nature. You know, we’re talking many moons ago, not to date myself, but I started off with an Odyssey computer way, way, way, way back in the hot tub time machine doing programming. And so I’ve always had a love for computers and a love for people. So you put the two together that kind of makes it e-commerce and marketing. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. It’s a very perfect marriage there. And you know, we hear a lot of those stories. Hospitality is rooted in a bunch of industries. So, you know, sometimes its starting at the front desk or sometimes it’s the path less traveled from the Air Force. So super interesting to get to know that background on this podcast, Jon, you know, we’ve been talking about obviously the hot topic of the industry over the last year, this pandemic and the impacts and effects that it’s had on our industry. I’m sure even with all of the years of experience, you know, even the owners that we’ve had relationships with for 30 plus years at Travel Media Group, they’ve had maybe similar crises, somewhat parallel to it, but nothing like this. So I just want to get your perspective on what it was like to manage marketing and e-commerce for a portfolio of hotels through a global pandemic. What sort of adjustments did you and your teammates? Jon McMillian: Yes, well, you know, I’d like to say that we were prepared, but we certainly were not to the extent of what transpired, which is basically, you know, for lack of a better word, a

In part 1 of 2 of this special edition of the Suite Spot, we take a moment to recognize stories of resilience and excellence in hospitality throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Host Ryan Embree highlights some incredible hospitality professionals across the country and what they did to make them a hospitality hero during this trying time for our industry. This a feel-good episode that showcases the qualities and values that are at the heart of the hotel industry. Suite Spot Podcast · 75 – TMG Hospitality Heroes Part I 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 thank you for listening to Travel Media Group’s hotel marketing podcast, the Suite Spot. Today, we have an extremely cool episode: one of, if not the best episodes that we’ve had yet on this podcast, I’m extremely excited to share it with you all today. This is something that we’ve been working on here at Travel Media Group over the past month. And it was an idea brought up because of the difficult times that the hotel industry had in 2020. We have been on the other side of so many great stories from our customers about resiliency and their ability to adapt on the fly. And we thought that it would be so cool to take a moment and just recognize those hoteliers and hospitality professionals out there that just went above and beyond during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting these stories of resiliency and excellence in hospitality, even in the toughest of times. Ryan Embree: So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to name some of these Hospitality Heroes and tell their stories on this podcast. Like I said, I’m very excited and we’ve got a bunch of Hospitality Heroes out there. So let’s go ahead and get started. The first Hospitality Hero that we’re going to highlight today is Crystal Thompson, Assistant General Manager at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Alliance. Now Crystal was nominated by Jenna and Jenna writes: “Crystal Thompson was my sole employee during the beginning of the pandemic and has went above and beyond to help the hotel thrive throughout the entire ordeal. She has stepped in and covered any shifts that needed to be covered, changed her schedule completely around to accommodate the hotel and has done way more than is expected of her in all departments.” And this is a trend that we’re going to hear for almost all of these stories. Hoteliers, just getting out of their comfort zone, covering shifts, working late nights, doing extra things and wearing different hats around the property because essentially they were forced to during this time where staffing was really cut down to a minimum. Ryan Embree: Our next hospitality hero is Diane M. Saumell. She’s the General Manager at the Coakley and Williams La Quinta Inn and Suites by Wyndham Orlando IDrive Theme Parks. And Diana was nominated by Ken Shore. Ken writes, “Diana has been an amazing leader during the pandemic hospitality crisis. She’s managed guests’ expectations along with preserving associate jobs and managing cash flow to where we have not had to ask the owners for any additional working capital. Her guest’s comment scores were amazing during the pandemic where her property exceeded the brand averages.” So this is so impressive to see that brand scores and reputation was exceeded during this extremely difficult time. We’ve talked about the importance of getting reviews during the COVID-19 pandemic and how difficult it was and how the guest’s expectations were an all-time high, not just for a comfortable experience, but for their safety and health. Ryan Embree: Now Ken Shore also nominates another Hospitality Hero: Carla Selph, General Manager at Coakley and Williams Days Inn and Suites by Wyndham Lake Okeechobee. “Carla has been an amazing leader throughout the pandemic. She has supported her team working every position in the hotel, including housekeeping and laundry. She is first to ensure her team and guests have what is needed to ensure we exceed our guests’ expectations. This is an older property, which requires a lot of quote-unquote, tender love and care, but the team spirit never allows it to get in the way of ensuring the guests are happy. This is due to Carla’s leadership.” And it’s stories like this: this is what hospitality is all about. Helping travelers during a time of need. Ryan Embree: Our next Hospitality Hero is Michael Codianne, Director of Operations at Coakley and Williams, nominated by Ken Shore. Ken writes: “Michael took over the

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we dig into the archives to unveil a never-before-heard episode on how hotels can prep for the busy summer season. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Director of Marketing, Anne Sandoval, to share tips and tricks on how to get the most out of this exciting time of year. Ryan and Anne start off by talking about why it’s critical for hotels to maintain their online presence – especially as recovery and travel ramp up for the summer. They share social media strategies to capture guest interest, like promoting local events and attractions. Anne talks about the relationship between guests and review opportunities. They finish the episode by stressing the importance of organization and consistency during such a crucial period for hotels. If you are interested in learning more about optimizing your hotel’s digital marketing for the busy season, you can reach us by calling or texting us at 407-984-7455 or email us at [email protected]. Suite Spot Podcast · 74 – Prepping Your Hotel For The Busy Season 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. Hello everyone, this is Ryan Embree, host of the Suite Spot, what you’re about to listen to today was actually an episode that we had prepped over a year ago. Like many things, this episode was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but we felt with the hotel industry really starting to recover and starting to see some strong numbers heading into the spring and summer seasons, a lot of these tips and best practices that we shared in this episode really can be applied to right now. So with that being said, we hope you enjoy and learn some really great tips on how to prep your hotel for the busy season. 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, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree working on a great episode for you today. I think hoteliers, around the country, are getting really excited. We’re coming out of the winter into the spring and summer season soon. So today’s episode is actually a follow up from a topic that we covered all the way back in October 2019, where we were really prepping our hotels for the slow season, things that we could do with our social media, our reputation – to just get geared up and ready for kind of a slower time for hotels around the country. Today we’re going to talk about the other side of that, an extension of that episode. We’re going to look at how hoteliers can really prep their properties for the busiest time of the year. So with me today, to share some insights, is a very frequent guest of the Suite Spot and that is our Director of Marketing, Anne Sandoval. So Anne, welcome again to the Suite Spot. Anne Sandoval: Hey Ryan, thanks for having me back. Ryan Embree: As I mentioned, I’m excited. Hoteliers are excited, we’re starting to get geared up, travelers are starting to plan their vacations, road trips. We’re excited. How can we start prepping our hotels for this busy, busy season? So I wanted to first start with the question of why. We know time is of the essence in a hotelier’s world, so why should hoteliers even spend the time or prep their digital presence for this season, if they know they’re already going to be busy? Anne Sandoval: That’s a great question and I think a lot of hoteliers are probably asking it, but we know that no matter what time of year it is, travelers are using a variety of channels to help make their booking decisions, but during and leading up to those busy summer months, we’ve got an influx of travelers looking at Google listings, online review websites, OTA search results, and on social media. And it’s really crucial that you get your share of those travelers. But to do that, you need to have updated hotel information, positive guest experiences showcased, and really just do anything you can do to stand out from the competition. When everything else is equal, let’s say your location, your average lifetime review score, the price range, and your amenities are really similar to your closest competition, the only way to gain more share is through compelling content and that really comes through positive guest’s reviews and enticing social media posts. Ryan Embree: I think a lot of hoteliers forget that fact and we work and partner with hotels that are hungry for more. They know, and they’ve been in the hotel industry for years, sometimes even decades, and they know that this spring and summer season is their bread and butter. This is when most travelers are walking through their door, but they also are

In this special edition of the Suite Spot, we announce the launch of a brand new YouTube segment – the TMG Concierge Desk. Host Ryan Embree introduces the new segment and explains how it will serve as a valuable resource for hoteliers. Ryan shares some of the very first episodes of the TMG Concierge Desk, including topics such as improving a hotel’s reputation, responding to reviews when COVID-19 is mentioned, and increasing occupancy and ADR. This episode is an exciting sneak peek into a new innovative initiative produced by the Travel Media Group team. If you are interested in learning more about Travel Media Group’s hotel digital marketing solutions, you can reach us by calling or texting us at 407-984-7455 or email us at [email protected]. Suite Spot Podcast · 73 – Hotel Industry Q & A on TMG's Concierge Desk 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 joining me today, we’ve got a very exciting episode for you. On this podcast, we are known to have some really exciting announcements when it comes to our solutions, updates, upgrades, and today is going to be one of those episodes. We have just recently launched a brand new YouTube segment called the TMG Concierge Desk. And it is a segment where we answer some of the industry top questions and discuss some of the current events. So what we thought we’d do today, to introduce you to this brand new segment is we are going to actually roll through some of the questions and videos from this new TMG Concierge Desk and discuss why we felt that this question was important and relevant to today’s hotelier. We’re going to start with our Product Director at Travel Media Group, Patrick O’Brien, who answers the question, what is the fastest way to improve your hotel’s reputation? So let’s hear from Patrick on his answer. Patrick O’Brien: The fastest way to improve your hotel’s reputation is actually very easy. The first thing you want to do as a hotel is just actively engage in your online reputation. Now, the way that you go about that is going to be a little different, but I would say probably the best places to start, first and foremost, if you are taking every guest that checks in and checks out of your hotel and simply asking them to leave a review and making it very easy for them to do that, whether it be sending them links to your TripAdvisor page, Google, sending them surveys, giving them a number to contact the general manager of the property, somehow make it very easy for them to leave that feedback. The second thing that you want to do, to actively engage in your online reputation, is to really understand and analyze what each of those reviews is saying about your property. And when you’re pulling in all of that information, I would start with looking at the areas where maybe there has been a miscommunication of expectations, and that’s really why people will leave bad reviews. So if you can identify those, then you can approach that by updating your website, you know, using social media, using review response, to clear up those expectations and communicate that better. You can also work with your front desk to make sure when people are checking in, that they understand what to expect while they’re on property. Now, the next step in there is to use all that information and understand really any operational improvements that you may need to make at your property. And some of those can be very minor, some of those may be, you know, major operational improvements, but you can then start to kind of prioritize those by timing impact to the overall guest experience obviously costs, but you start doing those things and you’re going to organically improve your online reputation. You also get a lot of good information in your online reviews, so identifying those aspects and then making sure that you make those the cornerstone of your marketing efforts on your website and social media and any advertising you do out there, make sure that those are the things that you highlight to potential guests. Ryan Embree: So a really great answer there with some action items that hoteliers can follow when they’re trying to improve their reputation. And I think it’s funny the way that this question is phrased, because it’s almost an oxymoron, what is the fastest way to improve your hotel’s reputation? A hotel’s reputation is something that is ever moving. And sometimes it’s not just a quick fix.

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we share all the exciting, positive signs of recovery in the hotel industry. Brand Ambassador and Host of the Suite Spot Ryan Embree shares factors inside and outside of the hotel industry that all point towards positive signs for travel moving forward. Ryan examines some travel industry data including occupancy levels, hotel rooms sold, and TSA numbers: all of which have been trending positively for hoteliers. He looks at outside factors that bode well for the hotel industry like vaccine distribution, slowly-lifting COVID restrictions, and overall traveler sentiment. He also looks at some positive internal data collected by Travel Media Group, such as review response numbers and hotelier sentiment. This is a feel-good episode that should get hotels excited about the industry’s future as we move into the busy spring and summer months. If you are looking for digital marketing recommendations for your hotel this upcoming spring and summer season, call or text us at 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 72 – Positive Signs of Hotel Industry Recovery 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, this is Ryan Embree, Brand Ambassador at Travel Media Group and host of the Suite Spot. Got a very exciting episode for you today – been looking forward to this episode – what feels like for a very, very long time. As we’ve done episodes of the Suite Spot, we’ve always been trying to look for the positives during and following this COVID-19 pandemic, because it has had such an impact on the hospitality, and hotel industry specifically. So what I thought we do today is – we are starting to see now more than just a glimmer of hope – we’re starting to see multiple positive signs of recovery within the hotel industry, which I’m super excited about, I’m sure you, the hotel listener, is very excited about today. This episode is going to be circled all around, identifying those positive signs and potentially looking at some factors that might give us kind of a trail map or blueprint of where this recovery is headed and some ways to maybe gain some competitive advantages. But really at the heart of this episode, is just going to be talking about these signs of recovery and really should, hopefully, launch us into the spring and summer of really, really great numbers and just somewhat back to normal, you know, for some hotels, it’s been a year since we’ve seen some of these. Ryan Embree: So we’re going to start with some outside, industry factors. And the first thing that we look at, when we look at signs of hotel recovery, are the numbers. Now STR does an incredible job – if you haven’t checked it out already, please do str.com – they provide some incredible analytics for the hotel and hospitality industry, and they’re constantly putting out new information and data. So the most recent data that we saw, was more than 21 million rooms sold. I remember when we had an episode last April in 2020, that mark was only a million. To see that exceed 21 million rooms is a huge, huge indicator that we’re gaining momentum, which is what we like to see, including some top 25 markets, including Tampa, which had an occupancy most recently at 81.8% and Phoenix at 77.1%. So those are top 25 markets all at 75% occupied or higher. Tampa obviously benefiting from spring break, but we expect those numbers, with the warmer temperatures, right around the corner to start to increase. Now, looking back at historical data, we are only 83% of occupancy regained from that 2019 benchmark. So although we’d have some great numbers to look at, some encouraging numbers, we’re not really there yet as far as full recovery, but we’re trending in the right direction. And seeing these numbers over time, almost tells the story that the worst is behind us, and we’re going to talk about some of these outside factors. But we don’t get to these numbers, you know, 21 million rooms sold, 75% plus occupied for some markets – we don’t get to these numbers without consumers and travelers in the right mindset about traveling again. Ryan Embree: And that all comes in a matter of safety. That is one thing that I’ve preached on this podcast, is the difference between this COVID-19 pandemic and maybe other industry crisis, like the great recession of 2008 or even post-September 11th – is price is not the ultimate determining factor for these travelers. There is not a number for some travelers whe

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we explore the importance of post-stay surveys for hotels. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Product Director and head of Travel Media Group’s reputation solutions, Patrick O’Brien, to discuss why the feedback uncovered in these surveys is critical to a hotel’s success. Patrick and Ryan start the episode by explaining the difference between guest reviews and guest surveys. They walk through each question included in Travel Media Group’s post-stay survey and what insights the property can gain from the guest’s feedback. Finally, Patrick shares some creative ideas for other questions that our partners have included in their hotels’ post-stay surveys. If you are interested in learning more about Travel Media Group’s post-stay survey solution, you can reach us by calling or texting us at 407-984-7455 or email us at [email protected] Suite Spot Podcast · 71 – Why Post-Stay Guest Surveys Are Essential 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 the Suite Spot. This is your host Ryan Embree. We’ve got a jam packed episode for you today. I am very excited about it. I’m very excited about our guest. He is our Product Director at Travel Media Group and head of our reputation solutions, Patrick O’Brien. Patrick, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Patrick O’Brien: Well, thank you very much for having me. Ryan Embree: And this episode is going to be all about guest surveys – why they’re critical and essential to your hotel’s success, how we can leverage our guest’s responses to these surveys, and we’re even going to include some of the questions from our very own Travel Media Group post-stay survey that we provide for our hotel partners. So let’s go ahead and get started Patrick. We know that guest surveys is a major part of Travel Media Group’s reputation management solution, I want to start today’s episode, because when I say guest surveys, there’s a pretty distinct difference there between a guest survey and a guest review. Can you first explain that? And then we’ll get into the guest surveys a little bit. Patrick O’Brien: Sure, so Ryan, a guest review really will be any feedback left publicly online on sites like Google, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, etc, so while some could argue that not all public feedback is really fair or even sometimes legitimate, it is typically one of the most used resources that prospective travelers will turn to before making a booking decision, so it really kind of impacts the prospective traveler view of your hotel. And while the hotel can typically take part in that conversation via review responses, they don’t have any influence necessarily on whether or not that conversation and feedback takes place. Surveys, on the other hand are typically feedback solicited directly from a hotel’s guests, with the goal to provide the hotel insights into what is working and what is not, but really keeping that conversation one-to-one and offline. So you really can think of, you know, the online reviews being that tool that prospective guests are using to look at your hotel, and the online surveys, really being a tool kept internally to help the hotel understand what’s going on at their business, but just because the surveys are kept offline, it doesn’t mean that someone who fills out a survey can’t then go back and leave a review as well. So that can be really good, if the feedback in the survey was positive, it may not be quite as good if the feedback was negative. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I feel like the hotel industry has gone through this love-hate relationship with any type of guest feedback, whether it be reviews that are posted publicly that influence traveler’s booking decisions or surveys, which are just one-to-one internal conversations, but both are giving hoteliers kind of a blueprint on how to improve your business and what things are working, what things people like and what keeps guests coming back. It’s interesting to note what you said about surveys being more of a one-to-one and offline conversation. When you’re writing a review online and publicly, you might say things that you wouldn’t say directly to someone because you know that other travelers are listening. Versus a survey, they know that they might be only directly speaking to the property. Think of it as a conversation that you have at the front desk, when you’re talking to someone, they’re not talking to you as if the entire lobby’s listening

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we share a beginner’s guide for hoteliers live streaming on social media. Host Ryan Embree gives some ideas for topics hotels can use when going live, and best practices to keep in mind when recording. Ryan talks through some of the different objectives for live streaming, such as educating, showcasing, or entertaining. He reveals some of the most creative live streaming ideas that he has seen in the industry and ways that you can tailor them to fit your hotel. He also discusses the best way to leverage the different audiences on each social media platform to secure bookings. This episode is a great blueprint for hoteliers looking to incorporate live streaming into their social media strategy. If you are looking for more social media tips or learning about Travel Media Group’s social media solutions call or text us at 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 70 – Tips and Ideas for Hotels Going LIVE on Social Media 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, welcome to the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Welcome to episode number 70. We have a great episode, very excited to share this with you all today, we are going to be talking all about a – somewhat newer feature to the social media realm – but we know this has really picked up since the pandemic, so I thought it was important to have an episode on this and share for some of you out there – some hoteliers out there – that might be looking for some creative ways to connect and communicate to their travelers. So what we’re going to be talking about today is live streaming. Now this is just a beginner course on really how to get started. We’re going to have some tips and some ideas specific to the hotel industry and hotel world out there, that you might be able to adapt at your property. Ryan Embree: Let’s talk about, first of all, what is live streaming, for those that are not familiar? The book definition is going live or live streaming refers to transmitting or receiving live video and audio coverage over the internet. As I mentioned, it has become increasingly popular with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and now even LinkedIn, is adding that feature to its platform. As COVID-19 began to take hold live streaming became even more popular and businesses, including hotels, started to utilize it as a way to connect and communicate to consumers. So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about some best practices for going live and even share some ideas that you might be able to adapt for your own at the property. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you’re prepared and have a plan for your live stream. Once you press that start live button there is no turning back, so make sure you are prepared. First thing you want to consider is where am I going to record? Well, the ideal spot is a place with really strong internet connection. You don’t want any sort of frozen or lagging in your video, that’s definitely not going to help with engagement and follower views. The other thing is lighting, making sure that it’s not too dark, not too bright. Making sure you’re in a place with good sound quality, so an echo-y hotel lobby or a windy day outside might not be the ideal place to live stream. So definitely take some practice videos before actually going live to figure out what that video looks like and sounds like. If you really, really want to take your live stream to the next level, you could even look up some lapel microphones to help with that sound quality. Ryan Embree: You also want to consider the video angle. Some live streams might be better for kind of a short selfie video, while others might require a fixed stand or another employee to hold. Now, the best thing about doing live stream is it really doesn’t require a big investment. You certainly can, if you want get some professional lighting, get some really good sound quality microphones, but a lot of hoteliers might be just jumping into this feature using some of the tips that we’re going to talk about today. Now also something to consider with the video angle is how you’re going to engage with your followers and viewers, if you’re doing a selfie video style, travelers might be talking to you or asking questions and if there’s a lot of them, you might not be able to catch every single one of them. So it might be better for another employee to help you with the engagement or even to hold the camera for you. Ryan Embree: Another type of video, you might actu

In follow up to an episode produced in early 2020, this episode of the Suite Spot discusses the relationship with Travel Media Group’s Client Success Team and Hotel Recovery Post- COVID-19. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Client Success Team Lead Aislynn Roberts to update us on how hotelier sentiment has changed since the beginning of the pandemic. Ryan and Aislynn talk about the crucial role that hotel digital marketing plays in a hotel’s recovery, and the creative ways hoteliers are connecting with guests to accelerate their recovery pace. Aislynn shares some innovative stories from Travel Media Group hotel partners and includes best practices for hoteliers not yet seeing the revenue bounceback expected. This episode is a great tool for hoteliers looking to spark ideas for targeting and capturing occupancy. If you are looking for help or more information from Aislynn and her client success team call or text us at 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 69 – Client Success & Hotel Recovery Post-COVID-19 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, thank you all for listening today. We’re getting to a very exciting time – depending on where you’re at right now – it could be frigid, frigid cold, but we see just on the horizon, the warm spring and summer seasons are coming just around the corner, which typically means for the hotel industry, a little bit of a boost in occupancy, which we could all use right now. So we are going to continue our theme of just recovery and accelerating speed towards getting that occupancy and ADR to “normal levels.” We’re seeing a lot of good news outside with vaccines that continues to see progress, were starting to see more and more people travel. We know that interest in travel is at an all time high. There’s just so much pent up demand out there. So today what we’re going to be talking about is one of the differentiators of Travel Media Group and partnering with us. And that is, not only do we provide you with the digital marketing solutions, you know, top of class solutions, but we also supply you with a team dedicated to our hotel partners. And we’re going to really talk through the role of what we call client success team and where they fit in, in hotel recovery. So with me today, I have Aislynn Roberts, she is our client success team lead. Aislynn, it’s been a while since you’ve been on the Suite Spot, but I want to welcome you again for coming on with me. Aislynn Roberts: Thanks Ryan. It’s great to be here. Ryan Embree: And we’ve got a great episode for you today, but I want to start before we roll into it, with just for those who might be unfamiliar with the client success team, so I kind of gave a high level definition of what your team does, but just walk us through your role and the relationship that client success team has with Travel Media Group hotel partners. Aislynn Roberts: Yeah, sure, so the client success team works alongside our hotel partners throughout their customer journey with Travel Media Group. When a hotelier begins a partnership with us, they are assigned a dedicated client success representative that walks them through the program on boarding seamlessly to ensure their program gets off to a good start right away. We provide training to all team members before the start and ongoing as needed in times of turnover. And we stay regularly connected throughout The first 60 days of the program to ensure all team members are comfortable with the system and new processes, providing encouragement to them, and answer any questions when needed. After that initial start, we proactively remain connected monthly to review progress, strategize for the coming months, and be a resource to our partners. We like to think of ourselves as an extension of the team at the hotel itself. Ryan Embree: And I think that’s key, and again, differentiating Travel Media Group from other vendors out there that your team isn’t just representative of a onboard and then, you know, here are the tools go ahead and kind of work with it. You know, your team actually stays engaged with the hotel, during COVID wee saw a lot of adaptation, quick changes that needed to be implemented at the property and your team was a big part of that. We had an episode on how your team was helping during the pandemic in the spring. Now in 2021, how have those conversations kind of evolved since then? Aislynn Roberts: Well, last spring, it really felt like we were all collectively hol

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we take a look at what it will take for hotels to accelerate their speed of recovery in 2021. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group’s Marketing Coordinator, Marissa Kinzel, to discuss and share ideas. Ryan and Marissa start the episode by talking about how hoteliers can utilize social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin to gain an edge over local competition. Next, they explain the role a hotel’s online reputation plays in recovery speed and how a strong online reputation impacts traveler booking decisions. They wrap up by discussing direct bookings and how TMG’s OneView™ can help manage and organize all guest content online. To learn more about boosting your hotel’s pace of revenue recovery or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 68 – Boosting Your Hotel’s Speed to Recovery 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, this is Ryan Embree, host of the Suite Spot. Welcome to another episode and thank you for listening today. We have a excellent episode for you, themed all around boosting your hotel’s speed to recovery. So right now, as we’ve turned the page to 2021, we are all looking for those little ways to gain advantage over our competitors and ways that we can really pick up the pace and accelerate our pace towards recovery. Now, there are a lot of factors out there, obviously, that are going to be presented as unknown to us: COVID vaccinations, COVID variants, but we are going to go ahead and make some positive assumptions today that we are on the right track to recovery. So I want to bring in our guest with me today to kind of talk through some of this stuff, Marissa Kinzel, Marketing Coordinator. You’ve been with us before on the Suite Spot, but I’m going to welcome you again to the Suite Spot. Marissa Kinzel: Thank you very much, Ryan. I’m glad to be back. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and we’ve got a great episode for you today. Obviously, at Travel Media Group, our expertise is in the hotel digital marketing space, that is the only vertical that we work with is hotels. So I thought what we do today, Marissa is really take it step-by-step and talk about a hotel’s digital marketing strategy, and maybe ways that they can gain that competitive edge and again, boost speed to recovery. So let’s go ahead and get started with social media. And I think the first thing that we really need to do as a hotelier is set some SMART social media goals for 2021. So obviously at the end of the day, social media, we have learned during this past year has been a great channel for us to communicate and connect with guests. The end goal, we always want to obviously see that revenue come from platforms and streams, like social media, but I think what hoteliers tend to forget is kind of that in between space there. So you’ve got social media and then you’ve got generating revenue. What do you need to do in between there? And I think in order to kind of boost that speed to recovery, the first thing you need to do is really set some SMART social media goals, because there’s actually quite a number of things that you can set out to accomplish on your Facebook, your Instagram, your LinkedIn. One of those is follower count, maybe getting people to start following you and expanding that reach and audience. Another one is engagement, growth, we’ve all seen those posts on our feeds that say, “like and share this post” and see how many likes we can get, see how many shares that we can get, so there’s different social media goals. Marissa Kinzel: Yeah, and I think that it’s important for hoteliers to also understand that if your profile is new, especially, you should give yourself around a month to see what your performance is like with your posts online and just adjust your goals regularly to match your changing expectations for how your hotel’s posts are performing. Because at first, unless you get lucky, you won’t be having posts that like go incredibly viral right away. You still have to focus on building up your initial following. You have to build up those initial amounts of engagement. So it’s also important when you’re setting up your SMART goals to keep your expectations manageable and reachable at first, and then try to steadily dream bigger as you go. Ryan Embree: Yeah, absolutely. It makes sense. It’s a snowball effect, right? The other thing that we have to keep in mind too, is if you haven’t been active on social media, yo

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree is once again joined by Vice President of Product and Technology, Jason Lee. This time, they’re talking about the importance of social listening. Jason and Ryan start the episode by defining social listening and what it means to hoteliers and their business. Jason walks through different social media platforms – like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – and the unique ways guests interact with hotels on each. Jason and Ryan discuss the benefits and drawbacks of using social listening as a guest relations tool. And finally, Jason shares how the TMG development team has prioritized social listening with updates to the TMG OneView® Feed. To learn more about how Travel Media Group is helping hoteliers connect with their guests using social listening or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 67 – Social Listening 101 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, this is your host, Ryan Embree. Another great episode today, with a very frequent guest of the show. I’ve said it before, when we have him on, usually this means new innovations and updates. So I, once again, will welcome Jason Lee, Vice President of Product Development and Technology at Travel Media Group. Jason, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Jason Lee: Ryan, thank you for having me, again. Ryan Embree: I’m super excited to have you on today because we have a really cool subject that I think has just become more and more prevalent, not just in hotels, but just business in general, as social media has really evolved throughout the last couple years and now businesses are kind of catching up to the curve and they’re learning how to listen to – in this case, for hotels – travelers online, but just really consumers in general. So what we’re going to talk about is social listening. So right off the bat, Jason, let’s go ahead and define what social listening is in regards to this episode and what it means to you. Jason Lee: Well, social listening is – it’s a little bit different than reputation and it’s a little bit different than what we have talked about before, which would be that traditional outbound social media or even responses to social media. So social listening really is about detection and capturing information that past guests or future guests are saying about your location, but they’re not saying it to everyone, they’re saying it to their audience. So this would be when you’re mentioned – so your business is mentioned or your hotel is mentioned in a post or in a tweet or your tagged – and so it could be something as simple as, “I just checked into my room – you know, and then they mention the name of your hotel – and everything looks awesome #greatweekend” or something. So something like that goes out to that person’s audience, it is not put on your page. You wouldn’t really ever see that if it wasn’t for bringing that data to light. So the fact that you were mentioned or tagged is how we pull that information in, but it becomes really valuable information and it’s surprising how much of that is out there. How often hotels are mentioned, you know, it positively and negatively. Ryan Embree: Yeah, it’s interesting to see, you know, as I talk about the evolution again of social media, where this all stemmed from, obviously social media from the very beginning was supposed to be a person to person interaction, but then all of a sudden users started to realize and businesses alike, at the same time, I can start having a conversation with a business, not necessarily someone that works at the business, but a business itself. And now businesses have started to take on personalities and as users of social media, they’re trying to always personalize their posts and experiences. So that is a great example of what you said, “checking into @hotel and this is a great upgraded room.” Now, all of a sudden you’ve brought that business into the conversation and you have the opportunity to respond to that guest and potentially make an impact on their followers as well as just a broader audience. So it’s super, super exciting because again, I think it’s just a shift in mindset about who you can talk to on social media. Jason Lee: Yeah, I totally agree. And I do feel like in some ways – this is where the definition of we talk about reputation management – but, so if you l

In the first Suite Spot episode of 2021, host Ryan Embree identifies five unique ways hotels can attract groups using LinkedIn. Ryan shares tips on how to optimize your hotel’s LinkedIn and get your employees at the property involved. He talks about the importance of making the right connections on LinkedIn, including the best groups and associations to join to capture group business. This episode is a great guide on how to leverage LinkedIn post-COVID-19 to impact group occupancy and revenue at your hotel. If you’re looking to learn more information about how Travel Media Group can help with your hotel’s Linkedin strategy or want to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 66 – 5 Ways To Attract Groups Using LinkedIn 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, the first Suite Spot episode of 2021. I want to thank all of our listeners out there – yes, we’ve made it and we’re super excited – 2021, a year of hope and recovery hopefully for our industry. Today, we’ve got a great episode, we’re going to continue talking about LinkedIn, and specifically what we’re going to do today is review the five ways to attract groups using LinkedIn, because we know one of the biggest impacts that COVID-19 has had on the hotel industry is its effect on group business and occupancy. So some of the creative ways hoteliers are combating this occupancy loss is by leveraging social media sites, especially LinkedIn for groups. When we look at the demographics overall for LinkedIn, we’re looking at professionals, tech savvy travelers. It’s a place of positivity, so businesses are sharing updates, they’re sharing exciting news that people can get positive around and excited around. And it’s a really great way to attract and market groups. So let’s go ahead and talk through five ways to attract groups using LinkedIn. Ryan Embree: And the first, is really one of the tips and best practices that we talk about for all of our social media, that’s optimizing your profile. Now, for some of you out there that might not have a business or even a personal LinkedIn account, that might mean – optimizing your profile – just building it. But once you build that, there are a multitude of things that you can do to optimize that profile. Some of the things include: industry – obviously hospitality or hotel – your company size, your website URL – so you want to place that direct booking link in there so that we can funnel traffic to those booking sites – groups and individual travelers, descriptions – now, description is very important, we’re going to kind of talk about that in a second – logo – that logo could be for your brand, if you’re an independent property, a really nice shot of the property, or if you have a logo for the property itself – making sure you’re updating things like your street address, and then LinkedIn actually has the opportunity for you to fill in a custom button – so for most hotels out there, that’s going to be a “book now” button like we put on other social media sites, like Facebook. Now, going back to description, description is very important because you really want to highlight what makes your property unique and what could appeal to individuals that are responsible for booking groups. So when we’re talking about group travel, you know, an example could be in your description, “upgraded four star hotel, with first-class amenities and spacious meeting space, great for groups, events, and weddings.” When we’re also talking about optimizing our profile, we’re also want to get our employees involved at the property. So unlike other social media forums, maybe like Facebook or Instagram, for example, your employees should really feel comfortable and proud to connect with their business on LinkedIn. You can update your title and position, including your specific property and every employee that connects to your business really is going to be expanding the reach and audience of your hotel on LinkedIn and your posts. So again, this is something that your employees should feel a bit of pride in connecting to the business, since they are connected. Sometimes we might not feel as comfortable to put our personal Facebook and connect that with our business. This is a professional social media forum, where that is kind of the norm. So you want to ask your employees if they feel comfo

On this year-end edition of the Suite Spot, we welcome Travel Media Group’s Vice President and General Manager, Dana Singer to the podcast. Host Ryan Embree reflects with Dana on the events of this crazy 2020 calendar year. Dana reviews some of the adjustments that Travel Media Group has made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the digital marketing landscape for hotels. Ryan and Dana discuss both accomplishments and products launched in 2020 by the Travel Media Group product development team. Dana also shares what she is most excited about and hopeful for in 2021 as the hotel industry transitions into recovery. To get more information about partnering with Travel Media Group in 2021 or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 65 – 2020 In Review With Dana Singer 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. Today’s episode is number 65 and it is actually the last Suite Spot episode of 2020. Yes, folks, we made it. I want to thank everyone out there for taking the time to support the Suite Spot and listening. It’s hard to believe, but we’ve been doing this now for two years and I’m very, very excited about this episode. We have a very special guest – second time on the Suite Spot with us – Dana Singer Vice President and General Manager of Travel Media Group. Dana, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Dana Singer: Thank you, Ryan. It’s great to be here. Ryan Embree: And we’ve got a great episode for you today. We actually had you on last time around this time a year ago, just to kind of talk about the history and culture at Travel Media Group, but since that time it’s almost felt like a lifetime with 2020, and that’s going to be exactly what this episode is today. 2020 has been a very stressful year, especially for our industry, and it’s really forced a lot of businesses to kind of change the way that things are “normally” done. I’m curious what adjustments did Travel Media Group make in response to the pandemic, Dana? Dana Singer: Yeah, well Ryan, it’s certainly an understatement to say that it’s been an unprecedented year in the hospitality industry as a whole. And as we look back, as COVID-19 swept the nation earlier in the year, in the spring, it presented both challenges and opportunities for us at Travel Media Group to overcome right alongside our hotel partners. And through continuous innovation and just really an unwavering commitment to providing exceptional results for our clients, we launched several exciting updates throughout the year while also delivering crucial support during the pandemic. When I think about when the first stay at home orders were issued across the United States and hotels began temporary closures or staff reductions, we knew that we had an important role to play in helping our partners manage through these really far reaching impacts and offer our support at the highest level possible. And our dedicated client success team and our product specialists, all worked tirelessly to ensure that we could assist our clients with timely updates to their websites, social media, and review response guidelines. And as part of our COVID-19 response, we hosted a three-part webinar series to help hoteliers identify ways to maximize revenue in the midst of everything that was going on. And our webinars focused on managing communication strategies, optimizing market share, and offsetting group travel loss to ensure that we covered major industry areas that were negatively impacted by the pandemic. And we continued to support our clients in their unique needs throughout the summer, offering advice through our blog, podcast, and additional webinars. And our dedicated product team continued drafting and scheduling social media content and writing expert review responses, just to ensure that all of our clients could put their full focus on the needs of their hotel at the property level. Ryan Embree: Absolutely and I think what made this year so challenging for hoteliers to kind of combat this, was it really took away what the foundation of the hotel and hospitality industry is all about, and that’s customer service, face-to-face interaction, creating connections with guests. So hotels had to turn to other forms of communication using the digital landscape and digital marketing to reach out and connect with customers during this time. So I’m curious to get your opinion on how COVID-19 has really shaped the digital marketing lands

In this episode of Suite Spot, we announce another exciting update for 2020: the addition of LinkedIn to Travel Media Group’s social media solution. Host Ryan Embree is joined by the leader of the product development team, Jason Lee to discuss this powerful B2B social platform. Jason shares what makes LinkedIn unique from other social platforms and how hoteliers can leverage LinkedIn for lead generation and potential revenue streams. Ryan and Jason talk about the evolution of LinkedIn since the beginning of the pandemic and the role it will play in corporate and group travel recovery in 2021. This episode is a great starting point for developing a successful LinkedIn strategy for any type of hotel. If you are looking to learn more information about Travel Media Group’s social media solution, now featuring Linkedin, or want to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 64 – Marketing Your Hotel on Linkedin 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, got a great episode for you today. Very familiar guest and voice on the Suite Spot with me, Jason Lee, Vice President of Product Development and Technology. And when you hear Jason with me, it typically means an exciting announcement, and we have one for you today. We’re going to center our entire episode around this topic and that is the new addition to Travel Media Group’s social media solution, Linkedin. Jason, welcome to the Suite Spot, tell us a little bit about this new update. Jason Lee: Awesome. Thanks for having me Ryan, and you know LinkedIn it’s such an interesting outlet from a social media perspective because I think you have this sort of grouping of social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, that are really designed for sort of – I hate to say leisure purpose because there’s advertising other things that happen on there – but it really is sort of like, I flip through my feed, I maybe get news on there, I get updates from friends, and I see images, and I kind of go down that road. When I go to LinkedIn, it’s something different. This is business to business contacts. This is me maybe reading pieces about the industry that I’m involved in, that I know recruiting happens there. There’s all sorts of things that happen on LinkedIn that don’t happen really anywhere else. And yet it is very similar to other social media outlets in that you can create content and you can do things and interact with an audience that might have interest in the thing that you are talking about or the business that you belong to. So I think that’s what makes LinkedIn really special and really unique and extremely important to hotels right now, as we’re hopefully going into the post-COVID time and hotels are starting to look at what sort of market segment is corporate today, at my hotel. What is it and how is it going to happen? Where am I going to get it from? Are people going to come back and start traveling again? Are there going to be meetings again? How soon does that happen? And what are things that I can do at a local level utilizing tools like LinkedIn to maybe spearhead that effort. So that’s what I think the importance of LinkedIn is. I know it’s kind of like a bigger umbrella kind of statement about it, but I believe that’s where a really interesting strategy can develop going after corporate and group business using LinkedIn as a platform. Ryan Embree: Yeah and I want to talk about that strategy a little bit, because I think, for me, when I think of LinkedIn, the way that LinkedIn really started was for Individual professionals to really put their resume out there, potentially businesses looking for people that are seeking jobs and positions. But it’s interesting to look at it through the lens of how can a business bring more business. So a hotel bring in corporate travel or bring in group travel. You know, I think a lot of our hoteliers that might be listening to this, they might be familiar with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and that might make sense for them to have their hotel on those platforms. Why do you think it makes sense for them to also have their hotel on LinkedIn? Jason Lee: Well, I think different than the other platforms, what LinkedIn does is it puts the person front and center. So if I’m a hotel manager, for example, my association with my business on LinkedIn is what’s important. People connect with me as a general manager, way m

In this special edition of the Suite Spot, our review response team at Travel Media Group analyzes and identifies the Top 5 sentiment tags of 2020. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Product Director, Patrick O’Brien to discuss COVID-19’s impact on traveler reviews and each of the most popular sentiment tags. Patrick also shares some best practices on how to respond to online reviews when these tags are mentioned and ways to get creative and provide a unique hotel experience for guests during this time. If you are interested in learning more about Travel Media Group’s Respond & Resolve™ program, you can reach us by calling or texting us at 407-984-7455 or email us at [email protected]. Suite Spot Podcast · 63 – Top 5 Sentiment Tags in 2020 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host Ryan Embree, we have a very special episode for you today, been looking forward to this episode for a very long time. It’s actually one of the most popular episodes that we’ve done since we’ve started the Suite Spot and with me today is our special guest, Product Director at Travel Media Group, Patrick O’Brien. Patrick, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Patrick O’Brien: Thank you very much for having me glad to be here. Ryan Embree: Yeah and we’re excited today because Patrick and I, what we’re doing, is that we are going to look at the top five sentiment tags of 2020. So it’s been an absolutely crazy year: COVID-19, election year, all these significant things going on in our industry, yet customers still leaving reviews. And at Travel Media Group, obviously we have our Respond and Resolve solution, which responds to reviews – but we don’t necessarily just respond. Patrick, your team actually goes in and provides insights to hoteliers. Before we get started, could you explain just a little bit behind what this sentiment analysis is and how your team actually pulls that out of the guest feedback? Patrick O’Brien: So, you know, with every review that comes in our team is obviously reading the review in advance so that we can respond to it, but we’re actually going through and looking at various elements within the review and we score those based on, you know, positive, negative and neutral sentiment. And where it’s a little bit different, sometimes I think there’s some AI engines out there that do it and sometimes they basically do it based off of the star rating of the review, and I think that’s fast and efficient. However, what it misses is the ability to really identify when maybe negative sentiment is left within the positive review or there are positive attributes to a negative review. And having, you know, human interaction within there, we’re able to sort of elicit those meanings a bit more accurately in the review so that we can really understand, you know, not every positive review is, you know, all roses and not every negative review is all bad. So we can start to dissect when things are maybe not good with a specific experience, what elements were things that the hotel could market on capitalize on, and you know, what elements do they need to work better at improving? So we really go in and each review is hand scored by someone on our team. Ryan Embree: And it’s fascinating to take a look at all of that data, all that sentiment and analytics, put together like something we’re going to do today – but just to put in perspective Patrick, how many reviews is your team responding to? Let’s just talk about reviews first. Patrick O’Brien: Sure yeah. So, you know, this year, the number of responses has varied significantly due to COVID-19. You know, we’ve had a very active storm season, a contentious election year, and everything else that 2020 has brought to the table. I think at the beginning of the year, things were definitely on target and then right as, you know, the typical spring break surge would be coming in, you know, the country went to shut down and although shelter in place kind of began around March 13th, we still saw an influx of reviews in the beginning of April, having a lot to do with people, kind of finishing those last minute or trying to squeeze those last minute trips in and then also having to do with people canceling and rebooking. However, in May that number dropped significantly. We saw about an 87.5% loss in review flow for the month of May. And we actually, you know, responded to less than 9,000 reviews for the month. That’s obviously

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree helps hoteliers prepare for the upcoming 2020 winter season and shares his thoughts on what to expect. Ryan takes a look at two major factors impacting travelers’ booking decisions this winter: the weather and area-specific COVID-19 restrictions. He walks through multiple examples of social posts and marketing strategies that properties can implement to give them the best opportunity to attract and capture leisure travelers. This episode is an excellent blueprint for hoteliers looking for a place to start when creating a winter marketing strategy for their property. If you are looking to learn more information about how Travel Media Group can help your hotel increase winter occupancy or want to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 62 – Capturing Leisure Travel This Winter 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, this is your host Ryan Embree. Welcome to episode number 62. We are getting to that time of year, the winter season, typically a slower season. We’ve done many episodes in the past talking about how occupancy slows this time of year. We have the holidays, which gives us a nice little bump, but what can we expect this year? You know, it’s a bunch of question marks that we’ve seen since the resurgence of COVID-19. There’s a bunch of question marks. So what’s this winter season going to bring for our industry? And is it something that we’re going to be looking forward to? And are there things that we can do on our end, on the operations and the sales and marketing side, to help maybe put some more heads and beds and help that occupancy grow during this, again typical, slower time of year. Ryan Embree: So that is what this episode is all about. Very excited to share this with you, actually goes hand in hand with our educational webinars, which we do every month at Travel Media Group. If you haven’t checked those out, I encourage you to do so on our YouTube page. This webinar was titled, “There’s No Place Like Hotels for the Holidays: Targeting Leisure Travelers this Winter.” So that’s what we’re going to be talking about in today’s episode is attracting and capturing those leisure travelers during the winter season. And I want to start by really kind of having you envision a grid, a grid split into four distinct quadrants and where your property is really located on this grid is really going to be based off of two key factors. The first is weather, now for most of the country, when I say winter, that means cold weather. It drives people indoors and typically again, slows our occupancy numbers, but there’s also places in the country that stay relatively warm where cold travelers travel to and flock to this time of year. So that’s where our headquarters are in Orlando, Florida. Now the next major factor is new and it’s 2020 driven, but it has an enormous impact on guests as they’re considering whether to book and go on vacation this winter, and that’s going to be the level of COVID restrictions in your area. So again, in some parts of the country, there are still some highly restrictive requirements put in by local cities and regions. But in other locations, restrictions have really begun to ease and loosen as time has passed. Ryan Embree: So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to travel from quadrant for quadrant, whether you’re warm weather, cold weather, you have high restrictions or low restrictions, and we’re going to come up and create a custom marketing and advertising plan specifically geared around social media and what you can do to kind of leverage those factors in order to impact bookings for your property. Ryan Embree: So let’s start for those properties out there that have low restrictions, low COVID restrictions and warm weather. So this could be somewhere like in the Southeast, right, Florida, very low restrictions and lots of warm weather during the winter season. The first thing that we’re going to have the opportunity to do using our marketing and advertising is outdoor activities. So we’ve got beaches, nature trails, hiking, state parks, national parks. People in the winter time, that’s why they come down to warmer places. They want to get out of that cold and they want to get out and enjoy the mild winter weather. So you definitely want to be marketing those outdoor activities, but with the low restrictions for yo

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we highlight the launch of Travel Media Group’s OneView® Feed 2.0. Jason Lee, VP of Product & Technology, joins host Ryan Embree to talk about this exciting update and what it means for TMG’s hotel partners. Jason shares how social media and online reputation have evolved since the initial launch of TMG OneView® back in 2018. He showcases some of the feed’s newest features like improved sorting, expanded sentiment analytics, and new multi-property reporting. Ryan and Jason walk through some real-world examples of how both individuals and groups can take advantage of this innovative OneView® update. If you are interested in learning more about Travel Media Group’s new OneView® Feed 2.0 or want to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 61 – TMG OneView Feed 2.0 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you for listening to the Suite Spot. We have an exciting update to announce, a great episode with a guest that has been with me quite a few times this year, but we’re here to invite him back. That is TMG’s Vice President of Product Development and Technology, Jason Lee. Jason, thanks again for being on the Suite Spot. Jason Lee: Thanks for having me once again, Ryan. Obviously, I did not offend you in previous episodes, so you’ve allowed me back. So I appreciate it. Ryan Embree: No, you’ve actually been given us some clues and been alluding to this episode’s topic, which is an exciting update with TMG’s OneView™ and that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about today, so just recently we have launched TMG’s OneView Feed 2.0. So I know you and your team have been hard at work on this, I want to start by asking Jason, when did you and your team decide to kind of make this update to TMG’s OneView™ feed and why did you feel it necessary? Jason Lee: Well, you know, when we launched OneView™, as you know, you were there during the early days when we launched it. We launched it with sort of a different purpose than what it is today. We launched it to be kind of an autonomous feed. So you’d have reputation and social media for hoteliers to just be able to use. You know, so we kind of envisioned it as this like sort of additional tool that a hotelier could jump into, respond to reviews, respond to social media comments, and we didn’t see it in the early stages as something that could be a lot more in terms of driving backend engine to a lot of our other solutions. So the original structure of the feed and the original structure of OneView™ was really – I wouldn’t say one dimensional because it had quite a few little pieces to it – but it definitely didn’t fit the model that is what we’re doing today with reputation and social media. Ryan Embree: And it’s incredibly versatile now, and you’re right, we launched this back in 2018. So that’s two years ago and just the amount of change that has happened in the user generated content space, when it comes to how reputation sites are performing right now, how they’re trying to attract more travelers to their sites – like TripAdvisor, almost creating accounts and feeds like a social media platform – and then even Facebook, while they don’t necessarily call it reviews, they’ve changed it to recommendations, but now they have an intense focus on getting more and more recommendations. So just in the span of two years, there’s been kind of this evolution of those outside spaces, which OneView™ does such a great job of pulling in. So how was your team able to evolve this solution to kind of match what was happening in the industry? Jason Lee: So where we started with OneView™ and where we’re at today, I think a lot of the evolution has to do with the environment, as you said, a lot of changes with the sites, but I think a lot of what we changed has to do with the changing workflow. So when you look at what a hotel is doing today, or even I think the emphasis that is placed on reviews, specifically negative reviews, but I think at the same time also comments and tweets – all of these things that are coming in simultaneously – that workflow I think has really changed. So having everything together in one spot is obviously this great thing, but you have to have a workflow and that workflow is different for reputation, than it is for social media, that it would be for internal feedback. So taking all those things into account, we took a bunch of these pieces, put them together and made it a better, modern workflow for what hoteliers are doing today. And a lot of the stuff ww got – and I know we’re go

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group’s Marketing Coordinator, Marissa Kinzel, to discuss marketing your hotel to Generation Z post-COVID-19. Ryan and Marissa break down key characteristics and traits of Generation Z and explore how hoteliers can appeal to them by using online communication channels like websites and social media. Marissa shares her thoughts on how Gen Z will adapt to the “new normal” in regards to the hotel experience, and how they will shape the industry in the next 5-10 years. As more members of this young generation start traveling again, this episode serves as a great guide to help attract and capture more of their business. To get more information about reaching Generation Z online or submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 60 – Marketing Your Hotel To Gen Z Post-COVID-19 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, this is Ryan Embree, your host of the Suite Spot. Thank you all for listening. We’ve got a great episode, episode number 60. Can’t believe I’m actually saying that. It’s been a heck of a ride, but happy and hope you are enjoying it out there. We are having a lot of fun on our end producing these. So with me today, even though we’ve had 60 episodes, this is actually her first time joining us today, that is Travel Media Group’s Marketing Coordinator, Marissa Kinzel. Marissa, thank you so much for joining me on the Suite Spot today. Marissa Kinzel: Of course, I’m glad to be here. Ryan Embree: So we’ve got some very important topics to discuss, over the past couple several episodes we’ve been talking about post-pandemic recovery, but today what we’re going to do is actually hone in on Generation Z and how we can market our hotel to Generation Z in this post-COVID era. So I wanted to start today’s episode Marissa, just by defining Generation Z and sharing some of their characteristics and traits. Marissa Kinzel: Sure thing, as someone who is on the line between younger millennial and Gen Z myself, I think this definition is a really important one to make since businesses will often conflate millennials and Gen Z into one like conglomerate entity. So for Gen Z, we’re looking at a group of people who were born as early as 1995, Pew research will say 1997 and as late as 2012 or 2014, depending on where you look. So for the most part, Gen Z refers to those who are currently around 14 to 25 years old and surprisingly, they make up 40% of the consumer population. One of their most significant characteristics is that they’re considered digital natives. This is a term that means most Gen Zer’s will have had either the internet, a computer, or a smartphone for the majority of their living memory. These individuals also value truth and honesty, and they have an incredible capacity for filtering information shown to them as they grew up in the information age. Ryan Embree: Yeah, that’s very true. Like you said, they’ve had those smartphones, computers ,and internet all at the palm of their hands. So they’ve had so much information given to them, that they are better than maybe other Generations and deciphering and filtering that information like you said. So when we’re marketing to them, it’s really, really important that we’re strategic with our marketing and advertising for them. You know, what we’re talking about is kind of, again, how COVID-19 will impact the way they use technology in their everyday lives. Can you kind of talk to that a little bit? Marissa Kinzel: Sure. Gen Z is already really used to integrating technology into their daily lives and I think that COVID-19 just pushed a lot of them even further into that corner. Now, I think there’s like a new flood of users and with the new flood of users comes more information than ever before for Gen Zer’s to filter through, to find the information they need and the content they want to consume. Technology for Gen Z serves as a means of communication among friends and family, a way to learn skills, to keep up with the news, and it’s a source of entertainment. So now we see people doing more zoom calls or using other robust messaging platforms to keep in touch with their loved ones from a distance. And Gen Zer’s are also great at finding and integrating new services into their lives like grocery delivery and other such platforms like that. That’s one benefit of growing up with the internet, I think it gives you a really keen ability

In this special edition of the Suite Spot, we discuss the recent 2020 Skift Global Forum. Host Ryan Embree had the opportunity to virtually attend the event, which brought together some of the biggest names and brands in the travel industry. In this episode, Ryan shares his five biggest takeaways from the 3-day forum. Listen as he reveals the thoughts of CEOs from major hotel brands and OTAs as they navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Their insights guide the discussion on what the future of the hotel industry will look like moving forward and when we can expect to see full industry recovery. Suite Spot Podcast · 59 – 2020 Skift Global Forum Special Edition 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. Today’s episode is a special edition, as you’ve heard before at Travel Media Group, we like to attend all hospitality trade shows and events across the country. We’ve had some special episodes and special additions of the Suite Spot where we’ve talked about HITEC and we’ve talked about Lodging Conference. So, you know, we are at the forefront of all of these industry events and trying to share it with you, the listener, some of our insights and takeaways. So with 2020, there’s been a slew of adjustments that these events have needed to taken, but fortunately, I have had the opportunity to attend Skift’s Global Forum, which took place September 21st to the 23rd, 2020. Like most events across the country, this was done virtually, but it was a great event. There was a ton of industry leaders, guest speakers that were there, CEOs of major brands like IHG and Marriott, major players in OTAs: Booking.com, Expedia. Ryan Embree: So it was really just a great session on industry leaders kind of coming together and taking a look at where we’re headed and what challenges hotels are facing right now in 2020 and going into 2021. So today what we’re going to do for this episode is we are going to talk about five main takeaways that I got, the five themes really of the forum and kind of speak to some of what the guest speakers were talking about, to give you again, the listener, a good idea of where everyone’s mindsets are, because that’s what it is right now in 2020, is there is a lot of uncertainty out there and it takes events like this to really get us together to kind of paint a path forward. So the first big topic we’re going to talk about that was brought up by nearly everyone on the panels and sessions that were presented was recovery. Ryan Embree: It was very interesting to hear everyone’s input on what they thought about industry recovery timeline. They even would actually do polls during sessions to kind of figure out what the audience and attendees’ thoughts were on some of these, and one of those was based around recovery. And the majority of people answered, what is the timeline for recovery, as saying that no one knows and it’s not realistic to kind of guess right now. And I think that was the overall sentiment with the industry leaders that were talking during this. They were obviously very hopeful. You always have had that sentiment of hospitality strong. We’re gonna come back stronger. Things are going to get better. We’re going to recover. And you could hear that in some of the CEOs and brands that were speaking, but there was also that tone of it’s going to take a long time. This is a recovery. I mean, we shut down, not only our countries, our states, our cities, we completely shut down our industry for an entire month. So it’s not going to be something that we can just kind of jump back into right away. I loved what Keith Barr, CEO of IHG said, he actually had a really great analogy when it came to recovery, he talked about being on a diet and losing the first five pounds. He says, “When you get on that diet, the first five pounds is super easy to lose. And you look and say, Hey, this, this is easy. You know I’m going to lose so much weight. You know, I’ve been doing the right things, but then after those first five pounds, it gets harder and harder.” And then maybe the next two weeks, it’s only half a pound or a pound. So that’s what he compared this recovery to. He said, “Over the summer, you know, we saw a huge, huge growth in occupancy and demand, which we’ve seen through STR reports, but we’re also starting to see that level out a little bit, which might be signaling that we’re in this for the long haul.” Ryan Embree: You know

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we talk to Client Success Representative and social media enthusiast Jessica Pickering. Jessica joins host Ryan Embree to share inventive ways to spark creativity and engagement on your hotel’s social media. Ryan and Jessica cover how different social platforms can be leveraged uniquely to achieve property objectives and goals. Jessica shares what a typical call sounds like with a hotel partnered with Travel Media Group’s social solutions, and her strategic planning efforts for every client. Jessica also touches on influencer marketing and shares a few examples of successful social campaigns and posts. If you are looking for more information about Travel Media Group’s social media solutions or want to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 58 – Social Media Tips And Tricks 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 welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. Thank you all for listening and joining me today. Got a great episode. It’s been a while since we’ve kind of touched on this subject, but we are going to be talking about Social Media. It seems to – when we get feedback from our listeners, even from our current partners, and prospects that we talk to at Travel Media Group – this seems to just be such a hot topic right now with the pandemic. So with me today we’ve got a first time guest, but I’m super excited to have her on the Suite Spot with me today, that is Client Success Representative Jessica Pickering. Jessica, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot. Jessica Pickering: Thanks Ryan. Thank you so much for having me. Ryan Embree: Yeah, and we’re excited to have you, like I said, this is a hot topic right now. I think hoteliers have really stepped back since the beginning of this pandemic and taken a look at their Social Media, the way that they’re communicating, and connecting with guests. And one of the most apparent ways that they can do that is by using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. So that is what we’re going to focus on today. I wanted to start since you are a new guest, let’s go ahead and start by explaining your role at Travel Media Group with us, Jessica. Jessica Pickering: Yeah, so I am a Client Success Representative with Travel Media Group and my team’s daily focus is on our client’s experience and really making sure that we’re available to support them in any way that we can. We take a proactive approach in reaching out to our clients regularly to train, educate, and provide them with tips on how to reach their goals. But we also provide reporting and help track results and performance so that our hoteliers have a good understanding of areas they are performing well in, as well as areas that may have an opportunity for improvement. Ryan Embree: So when a hotel or group of hotels, partners with Travel Media Group Jessica and the Client Success team are the ones that are reaching out on a monthly, sometimes bimonthly basis, depending on the partner and really talking through them like solutions like Social Media, coming up with some innovative ideas. I brought you on specifically because I know Social Media is a passion of yours, we’ve talked off air about this, can you kind of explain why? Jessica Pickering: Yeah, so for me personally, Social Media has always been an outlet for my photography and just my favorite way to stay connected with the people that I care about. It’s also a really awesome way to get emmersed into things that I’m interested in. So I love art and travel content. And I found that by following people and accounts who are interested in the same type of things, it just really helps fuel my creativity. And I also just find Social Media extremely interesting. Like if you think about it, Social Media has literally connected the entire world and this is the first time in history that humans have ever had this type of instant access to other cultures, art, and information, just really anything. And I don’t know, I just think it’s really cool. Ryan Embree: It absolutely is and that’s why Social Media is so popular and that’s why businesses like hotels are using it and leveraging it as a way to get guests through their doors. So let’s talk about – I brought it up at the beginning of this episode – but talk about the pandemic and how hoteliers are now thinking about and looking at Social Media completely different. Why do you think it’s important for hoteliers to have a s

This episode of Suite Spot is all about the multi-property functionality of Travel Media Group’s user-generated content management system: TMG OneView®. Host Ryan Embree is joined by VP of Product Development & Technology Jason Lee to review how management groups and multi-property owners are leveraging this tool to streamline and optimize hotel operations. Jason shares why it was critical to incorporate multi-property reporting and capabilities within TMG’s OneView® feed. He trades ideas with Ryan on how he would utilize OneView® as a multi-property content management tool. Since TMG’s OneView® feed is a versatile tool for multi-property environments, Jason also showcases how different positions within a management group organization’s hierarchy might use it uniquely. If you are interested in learning more about accessing your management group’s TMG OneView® feed or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 57 – Multi Property Reporting & Capabilities with TMG’s OneView™ 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 what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is Ryan Embree coming to you live from my home office here in Orlando, Florida. With me today, we have another familiar guest and a familiar voice, Jason Lee. He is our Vice President of Product development and Technology. Jason, you probably have been with us the most in 2020, so far, so we’ll have to come up with some sort of award, but I appreciate you being on with us, Jason. Jason Lee: Alright, thank you very much. Ryan Embree: You know, you’ve been on the Suite Spot before to talk about the awesomeness of TMG’s OneView platform, but today we’re going to focus on OneView’s multi-property capabilities, reporting, and functionality. So before we dive too deep into the subject, let’s start by briefly describing what OneView is and what the purpose behind it was? Jason Lee: Okay. Yeah, so OneView, the name kind of gives away some of it, but basically it’s a place where you can interact with all of your user-generated content and that user-generated content could be content that is interacted by users. So a typical example, probably the biggest example of user-generated content in our industry or in the hotel industry is reviews. So that’s not to say that people can’t leave comments, right? They leave comments on social media, they could write on your wall. There’s lots of places where feedback can be given or where comments can be given, but what OneView does is it actually combines all of these into a centralized place and it allows the hotel to be able to interact with that data. So you can not only interact with the individual pieces of data, like the individual reviews or the individual social comments, or even instant messages from social media, but you’re also able then to look at like deeper sets of analytics, like what is the history of this type of review or what’s the history of this site? Where do I stand in terms of how I look online? How does this affecting possibly my booking? And so all of these things play together, but that’s where OneView brings it into one place. It makes it very easy for you to take a look at it. Also providing alerts and daily updates on what’s been going on inside of the realm of feedback. Ryan Embree: Yeah, I think it’s such an important tool for a hotelier, where over the past decade it feels like there have been opening up lines of communication between the hotel and the guests. So you can leave different reviews on OTAs, more and more social media places and actions where people are trying to reach you, as a hotelier. This OneView feed is essentially your one stop shop to see all of that in real time, which is super important and super cool that you and your product team came up with this. So let’s shift our attention to multi-property, so if you’re a hotelier out there – it doesn’t matter if you’re part of a management group and you’ve got a hundred plus hotels, if you’ve just got two hotels, or if you’re a hotelier looking in the future to say, “Hey, I want to know what’s out there when I do start expanding my portfolio, maybe getting another property here or there.” Let’s talk about multi-property functionality, why was it important to integrate that into this tool? Jason Lee: Well, you know, I think you get different types of ownership sets, right? So I could be that one owner that has two or three hotels and I might be

In another special edition of the Suite Spot, Senior Vice President of Lodging Insights at STR, Jan Freitag returns to the podcast for an insightful conversation. Jan and his team at STR are continuing to closely monitor industry data and trends post-COVID-19. Jan and Ryan discuss changes in the industry since they last spoke in June (You can hear that conversation by listening to Episode 51). In this episode, Jan talks about the health of the US hotel pipeline and predicts what we can expect to see in new build growth moving forward. Jan shares which markets are experiencing an increase in occupancy and which types of travelers are filling rooms right now. Ryan and Jan also talk about the impact that back-to-school will have on travel, and they speculate about what the rest of 2020 could look like for hoteliers. For more information and insights from the STR team, visit their COVID-19 resource center at STR.com. To submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 56 – COVID Hotel Industry Trends With Jan Freitag Pt. II 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host Ryan Embree, but you are in for quite a treat. We have once again, a special guest that joined us a couple episodes ago. He has been the calming presence in these turbulent times that we’re going through right now and that is Senior Vice President of Lodging Insights at STR, Jan Freitag. So Jan welcome back to the Suite Spot. Jan Freitag: Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you, to be back with you. I’m not sure that I’m such a calming influence. The data that we’re putting out, is getting better, I guess, you know, it’s not that great, but yeah, it’s been quite a ride since the beginning, quite a ride since we last talked. So I’m happy to chat more about what we’re seeing in the industry today. Ryan Embree: Absolutely and that’s what this episode is completely about. I felt like the last episode was just a couple of days ago, but it also feels like it’s been months in between – kind of like our lives are feeling right now in this pandemic. So, you know, speaking of that last time, we were starting to see those early signs of recovery. We were seeing some encouraging signs out there. You and your team were sharing some great information, then all of a sudden, not so fast, the rises in cases in the United States came in the month of July. How has that impacted the industry’s recovery and STR future projections? Jan Freitag: Yeah, so it is nice to see that the U S occupancy for the week ending August the 15th actually hit 50%, 50.2%. Now it’s true, that that is only for the hotels that are open, you know, and so just under 5% of rooms are still temporarily closed. That is totally skewed towards the upper end, right? Full service, luxury, ana upper upscale hotels are more likely closed than economy properties, where we are basically completely open again. But so occupancy, 50%, half the rooms are occupied, great. Leisure travel continues to dominate, weekend travel, weekend occupancies, you know, 57% continue to be very, very healthy, and extended stay continues to outperform, lower end continues to outperform. All of that, all of those are good signs. And I think we’ve seen that through July and I think we’re probably gonna see that little bit more through August. The big question, the hundred billion dollar question is, “What happens after Labor Day, right?” When kids are back in school virtual or real, whatever, but we’re not as eager to get back out on the road, we were just on vacation, so you’re just going to stay home a lot more often. And then is there corporate transient demand? We expect to be either none or very little corporate group demand. And so are their corporate transient travelers where their travel department says, “Yes, you may travel. We feel comfortable with you being on the road, and yes you have the budget to do so.” That’s really the question. Can the corporate transient demand pick up what the corporate leisure demand is leaving behind? And I’m not sure. So stay tuned. I guess we have to meet again, you know, call me in October. Ryan Embree: Yeah, there’s a lot of “what ifs” right now. I feel like as we spoke at the beginning of that summer season, you know, we were at a fork in the road there and that 50% milestone that you mentioned, that is an awesome, awesome sign. I know that’s someth

In this episode of Suite Spot, we talk about the adaptations hoteliers are making to their property websites in the midst of this pandemic. Travel Media Group Senior Website Product Analyst, Stephanie Courtois, joins host Ryan Embree to share how she, alongside the Travel Media Group product team, prepared our hotel partners’ websites for COVID-19 and after. Stephanie and Ryan discuss the different options hoteliers can utilize to communicate important information pertaining to COVID-19 through their hotel’s vanity site. For franchised hotels, Stephanie stresses the importance of highlighting changes specific to the individual property while aligning with overall brand messaging. She also shares search results analytics about COVID-19 landing pages created by the Travel Media Group team and the high impact it has on a traveler’s impression and expectations of a property. To learn more information about upgrading and updating your hotel’s vanity website or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 55 – Adapting Your Hotels Website During COVID – 19 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is episode #55 and we have another great episode for you today, packed with information on hotel marketing. Today, we are actually going to dive into a subject that at Travel Media Group we specialize in among other things, but something we probably haven’t talked about in awhile, but it’s super, super important, and that is your hotel’s website. And we’re going to talk about your hotel’s website during this time of COVID-19, some of the adaptations that we’ve been seeing that hoteliers are making, and really how you can evolve your website to make it work best for you in this post COVID recovery stage that the hotel industry is going through right now. So with me today, I thought I’d bring on one of our Travel Media Group experts and senior product analyst, Stephanie Courtois. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot today. Stephanie Courtois: Thank you for having me. Ryan Embree: And we’re going to be talking all about websites and again, that is your specialty. So you’ve had a lot of conversations through every phase of this pandemic, from the very beginning, to the shutdown in April and May, and now as we get into the summer part of that recovery stages. So the way I’d like to look at it from a high level is this pandemic has really given hoteliers a unique opportunity and reason to evaluate the way that they’re communicating to travelers and guests online. So almost the silver lining to reevaluate how you’re using those communication tools. How has the COVID-19 crisis highlighted the importance of using a hotel vanity site as a communication tool? Stephanie Courtois: So with the ever evolving nature of the pandemic, it’s super important that hoteliers communicate to guests the active measures they’re taking for their safety, whether that be mask mandates, enhanced cleaning protocols, social distancing markers, amenity limitations, or even closures, guests need to be aware of the changes your making at the property. So for a franchised property, they have the brand initiatives for guidance, and those are usually displayed as travel advisories on the brand page. But generally they’re pretty broad. They kind of go over their entire hotel suite and collections as a whole and don’t really hone in to what you’re doing specifically at the property. And that even goes for independent properties, they are just thrown into the thick of it and need to come up with a strategy to effectively communicate what they’re doing to their guests. So in sum, they need to make sure that they are posting that information, guests won’t feel comfortable booking with you if they think that you’re tone deaf to the situation and that you’re not taking it seriously, even if you are, they would just have no idea. So it’s just so important. Ryan Embree: That’s such a great point. You could be implementing all of these changes at the property: operational changes, mask mandates, you could have plexiglass at your front desk, cleaning protocols all changed, but at the end of the day, if you’re not communicating that to your guest online, they have no idea that those changes are being made. So it’s a very, very unique situation that we’ve been in. We’ve talked about using social media, using review response

In this episode of Suite Spot, Ryan Embree reflects on some of the post-pandemic effects of our everyday lives when it comes to travel. Ryan recounts the significant changes to the traveler experience of a hotel stay in summer 2019 versus summer 2020. He talks about how hoteliers have adapted their websites, social media, and online reputation to meet the needs and expectations of travelers in the midst of a global pandemic. Learn about various guest touchpoints like check-in and check out and how they have been impacted by COVID-19. This episode provides perspective on all that has changed in the past several months while appreciating those things that within the hotel experience have stayed the same. If you have any questions or need assistance during this time please feel free to reach out to us by either calling or texting us at 407-984-7455 or email us at [email protected]. Suite Spot Podcast · 54 – The Changing Traveler Experience: 2019 vs 2020 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. Thank you all for listening today. You’ve heard us talk about over the past couple of podcast episodes about the new normal. You’ve probably read articles about it, you’ve heard industry experts talk about, what can travelers expect in this new normal? What is our world going to look like in this new normal, after the pandemic? And as we start to see recovery that new normal is going to drop that “new” part and it’s just going to become normal for us. And I think one of the best ways to reflect on this “new normal” is to really take a look at where we’ve come from. It’s been a very, very long, but also short four months into this pandemic. So what we’re going to do on today’s episode – and this might sting for a couple hoteliers out there – but I think it’s important to do, is really walk through the entire traveler’s journey and experience and compare summer 2020 to summer 2019, so just one year ago. Ryan Embree: I challenge you to kind of listen for all of the changes, because day to day, as we’re kind of living and going through the operations, we might not see as many changes as we notice when we reflect back on just one year ago. So let’s go ahead and get started. And we’re going to start where a lot of travelers start, in that traveler’s journey, the way that travelers and guests are looking to book and make a purchase decision, when it comes about a hotel stay. Now in summer 2019, as hoteliers we were excited, the summer, you’ve got the kids out of school, this means family vacations, this is our busiest time of year. We’re expecting all ages to be traveling, so maybe some older generations, as well as younger and families. Events that were going on, that we paid very, very close attention to summer events, whether that be concerts, sporting events, conventions, our travel was coming from all over the world, really nationwide travel and people were flying and we had our typical walk-ins people that would go ahead and just walk through our door, kind of check what our rates were for the night without maybe doing that much research, but we were still getting those travelers. Ryan Embree: We fast forward to 2020. You know, all of a sudden our travelers are going to be skewed a little bit younger. We’ve talked about this as we start to recover those younger travelers are going to be the first ones to feel more comfortable and safe starting to get into the travel world. We know that a lot of events have been canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic. Sporting events, we’re starting to see them kind of come back, but not something where they’re allowing spectators in. So we’re gonna kind of probably have to wait for that to impact our occupancy numbers there. And instead of that nationwide travel, we’re seeing a lot more travelers within driving distances. That gives us a really key indicator on how we can market and target these travelers. You know, when we look at our website, when travelers are looking at our website, maybe in 2019, we were putting out some really good summer specials out there. Ryan Embree: We were trying to market our property and fill our rooms up with these specials. Now in 2020, we’re actually notating the special changes that we’ve made at the property to ensure guest safety. So protocols that we’ve put in, these are the type of information that travelers are looking for in summe

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we discuss what to do when your hotel receives an online review related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Host, Ryan Embree, is joined by review response expert and Respond & Resolve™ Product Manager, Kristeena Seckinger, who walks us through which COVID-19 red flags to watch out for in your hotel’s online reviews and how to handle them effectively and appropriately. Ryan and Kristeena describe how traveler sentiment and tone in online reviews have evolved since the beginning of the pandemic and the role that setting proper expectations plays in generating positive reviews online. They also share best practices on how to best prepare for the increase of online reviews as the industry begins its recovery. If you have any additional questions about your responding COVID-19 reviews online or would like more information on Travel Media Group”s Respond & Resolve™ solution, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 53 – Responding To COVID – 19 Online Reviews 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, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, this is your host Ryan Embree here for Episode #53. Very excited about this episode, we are going to be talking about responding to online reviews. So I know we’ve kind of had some of these episodes in the past. We’ve talked about COVID-19 and the impact that it’s had on some of our other digital marketing channels: online reputation, social media, but we really haven’t got into responding to online reviews. It’s one of those things that this pandemic has changed so many aspects of the hotel experience, that new normal, that we’re always talking about and hearing about. But one of the things that has stayed consistent is the importance of responding to your reviews professionally and in a timely manner, because this is the type of information that travelers are looking at more than ever when they’re determining whether they’re going to book with your property, or another property, or even necessarily book in general and take a vacation. So with me today, I brought on the expert of review response, she’s joined me before on the Suite Spot, but this is her first time joining me from her remote office, so I will welcome in Kristeena Seckinger, she is our Respond and Resolve™ Product Manager. Kristeena, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot. Kristeena Seckinger: Hi Ryan and thanks for having me again. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. So let’s start with how you and your review response team have adjusted since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kristeena Seckinger: Well, there’s definitely been a lot of adjusting for everyone since the beginning of the pandemic and my team is no exception to that. I would say back in March, when all of this started, the review flow really slowed down drastically, which was definitely an adjustment for the fast pace that we were used to before. But since then, as the states began opening and everything started returning to almost normal, we have seen a huge increase in review flow again. And with that increase of reviews and everything that’s going on, our team has continued to craft those customized responses that really represent the hotel’s voice and message that they want to deliver to their guests right now. And one of the great things about our program, the Respond & Resolve™, is that our team understands that now it’s more important than ever to make sure our responses are meeting those client needs and delivering that specific information to all of our guests and travelers. Ryan Embree: Absolutely, your team was on a roll with responding to reviews. Our review response solution is so custom, we’re talking in the same hotel voice as the business wants to be putting out there for guests and travelers. You know, we know how critical it is not to just respond to COVID-19 reviews, but respond professionally, accurately and timely. How are you and your team getting the hotel information and voice necessary to appropriately respond to these types of reviews? Kristeena Seckinger: Well, like you said, now more than ever, it’s important to be responding to reviews with accurate information and luckily for us, we’ve largely been using the help of our client success representative team. They’ve been reaching out to clients and filling out answers to a questionnaire we designed to gather relevant information and all these answers are then input into our response guidelines section, which is available to each of our writers, as