Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #316: What It Takes to Lead Luxury Resorts | with Robert Marusi of Hotel Del Coronado & Grand Wailea
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- The Modern Hotelier #316: What It Takes to Lead Luxury Resorts | with Robert Marusi of Hotel Del Coronado & Grand Wailea === David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Don't forget to follow, like, subscribe and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program today? Steve Carran: Yeah, David. We have on our good friend Robert Marusi, the commercial director at Hotel del Coronado and Grand Wailea in Maui, Hawaii. How we doing, Robert? Robert Marusi: Doing great. Steve Carran: Good. We're excited to have you. David Millili: All right, good. So Robert, we're gonna dive in. We're gonna go through a lightning round. We're gonna get to know your background, your career, and then dive into some thought leadership and industry topics. Sound good? Robert Marusi: Sounds great. David Millili: All right. So when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? Robert Marusi: A fireman. David Millili: Okay, that's good. What's something that you wish you were better at? Robert Marusi: Wow, that's a tricky one. Surfing. David Millili: What's a luxury you can't live without? Robert Marusi: Status on airlines and hotels. David Millili: Makes sense. So name a person, dead or alive, that you would like to take to lunch. Robert Marusi: Dead or alive to lunch. Geez. I don't know. That's a really good one. Probably... this is an interesting one. I'd probably like to go to lunch with my father again. David Millili: Okay. No, that's fair. That's good. Robert Marusi: Yeah. David Millili: So if you could have a superpower, what superpower would you like to have? Robert Marusi: I have it, and it's called agility. David Millili: Okay. That's a good answer. All right, so this is the last one. What's something that's on your bucket list? Robert Marusi: Japan. Going to Japan. Always had my sights set on Japan. Steve Carran: Yes, we are in the same boat on that one. So now we're gonna dive into your personal background, Robert. So you grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, and then you moved to Manhasset, New York. How did growing up in Bogotá and then moving to New York really shape you into who you are today? Robert Marusi: Well, listen, I spent an amazing amount of time in Bogotá, Colombia. One year. One year of my life. Then I went to Long Island, and I was raised on Long Island. Manhasset, Long Island. Yeah. I'm a New Yorker. David Millili: All right. That's good. It's a great area. So what inspired you to attend Syracuse University and pursue a degree in business economics? Robert Marusi: Lacrosse. I was a Division I lacrosse player. Came from a county championship, state championship lacrosse high school in Manhasset. Was tapped on the shoulder by the gentleman who got Jim Brown into Syracuse and said, "You're going to Syracuse." And back then I was like, "Let's go." So lacrosse for sure. Steve Carran: That's very cool. So one thing I found out about you is you've actually talked at the Salesforce event six times. Is there one talk or one moment from one of those six speeches that's really stood out to you? Robert Marusi: Probably Dreamforce. I was on the Dreamforce stage. It's quite an audience that's at Dreamforce. It's quite a span of different cohorts and techies and people who are just driven by technology and how do we use it and how does it change the world. I think that stage, more than anything, had an impact. It was really amazing. It was a milestone in my life, for sure. Steve Carran: What did you talk about? Robert Marusi: I talked about the power of technology and cloud environments that I put in and used at Turtle Bay Resort, impacting how we really understood everything about the customer likes. It's now termed as recognition, recognizing the client, right? Steve Carran: Great. Very cool. All right, so now we're gonna dive into your career, how you ended up at Hotel del Coronado and Grand Wailea. So you actually started on the food and beverage side of things, helping companies like Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel, and managing massive restaurant and food and beverage teams at Marriott hotels in San Diego and New York. What did those early days on the food and beverage side really teach you that you take with you today? Robert Marusi: Just, you know, grit, agility, large teams, typically either big metropolitan hotels or resorts, and taught me how to run teams and how to be open to change. David Millili: After nearly a decade with Marriott, you spent more than 20 years as vice president of Morici Brothers before returning to hospitality on the sales side. What led you to make that transition, and how did running a family business change the way you approach sales and commercial leadership? Robert Marusi: It was really an opportunity to pursue my interests, right? I'm an entrepreneur at heart, no matter what business I'm in. And I had the chance to really lead something on my own, and my brother and I saw an opportunity to distribute concrete equipment in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, with a shortage of concrete, and we were like, "Let's jump in. We know nothing about it, but we can make this happen." And that's why I went there. But what it taught me was how do you really navigate through the years to really be a growth advocate, right? How do you become this growth champion to keep growing your business? And it was at the start of when computers came on and the internet was coming on, and I took the business and quickly we got into great projects of world trade. We got into rebuilding Boston Harbor Tunnel, and we were just booming. And then I took the business into e-commerce when e-commerce really blew up and started a parts business, and the parts business exploded worldwide right out of the get-go, supplying parts, which was much more profitable than supplying the big equipment. So it taught me what I stand for, just amazing agility, the ability to market and merchandise and grow business, and really be a growth champion, which is at the core of who I am. Steve Carran: That's great. And Robert, I think you have figured out how to work in hotels better than anybody we've had on this podcast, because you've worked in some of the best destinations in the world. You worked at Hamilton Princess in Bermuda, Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, Turtle Bay Resort in Hawaii. I gotta ask you this. You are tech-savvy, right? You talked about talking at Dreamforce. So how did your approach to commercial strategy evolve as data, personalization, and AI became bigger parts of the job? Robert Marusi: Yeah. I mean, it's evolvement, right? When you look at the decades of my journey, it came through the start of the internet, the start of desktop computers, and having the agility through all those segments in life. But at the end of the day, my target always is to personalize the journey and recognize the client. It's unacceptable today to have somebody walk into a four or five-star resort around the world and spend the kind of average daily rate they're spending and not know anything about their likes, interests, affinities, or what they want on their journey or how we can surprise and delight. We should know that information. Technology gives us that information. And if we harness the data, and we really put that data into one central place, it's amazing what you can do to segment the data and really understand the customer better, and that's been my drive throughout the whole thing. And it's really more profound now. We're just at this incredible, profound shift in the business. And there's gonna be laggers, and there's gonna be futurists who really lead the way. And it's not a choice anymore. It's not an option. You've got to deliver. When you look at why people travel, it's really about human connection. It's about recognition. It's about experience over status, and it's about AI complementing the journey, not taking the journey over. Humanization is still a major part of it. Steve Carran: Well said. David Millili: Yeah. So what inspired you to join Hotel del Coronado and Grand Wailea? Robert Marusi: Hotel Del Coronado has been on my radar for a long time. There's been quite a bit of development at that hotel. BRE and Blackstone, the owner of that hotel, have done an amazing amount, over $550 million of restoration and renovation, a six-year project, and I've always had my eye on it. I've been somebody who's been marked as somebody you want to lead your team coming out of renovation, restoration, or a brand change, right? And I mean brand voice and style and all those things. I'm the one you probably call to get that all commercially driven, to increase the average daily rate, to have a return on investment to the asset. I was at Turtle Bay, same owner, BRE Blackstone, for three and a half years, turned that hotel around, sold it at a great profit. And they asked me to go to Hotel Del Coronado, and without even hesitating, I said, "I'm on my way." And then Grand Wailea came on soon thereafter. Steve Carran: Sure. So for those that might not be familiar with Hotel del Coronado and Grand Wailea, can you tell us a little bit more about those two? Robert Marusi: Yeah, I would term them mega resorts, luxury-driven. They are resorts with multiple different neighborhoods that make up the entire campus. They are both some of the highest-producing hotels in the country in terms of top-line revenue, and we take a lot of pride in that. And they deliver a multitude of experiences, driven by sense of place and recognition to where they are. You know what I mean? Steve Carran: Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. So now we're gonna dive into the industry thought part of the podcast where we get to hear your thoughts on some thought leadership topics. So, hospitality and technology are changing so quickly. I feel like every month AI is just changing the world. How are you staying ahead of emerging trends and really building daily learning into the way you lead? Robert Marusi: Yeah, I've always been a futurist, and I would encourage anyone in the business, or any business, to have a futurist mindset. And the future is here now. The future is changing so rapidly, it's here now. It's not really about the future. It's like, you know, we're in it, right? And to me, the greatest thing I've done in my career is micro-learn, and micro-learn every day. The first 30 to 40 minutes of my day is spent micro-learning into the topics I want to learn about, and a lot of that is technology and AI, and how do we put that into hospitality. And I have my go-tos. I have my go-to apps that I open every day, and they're tailored to my feed. Apps like McKinsey and Accenture and Gartner—you can tailor them to your feed and be direct. And in 30 minutes, you can be pretty wise on something that you didn't know, or be informed about something that is a tectonic shift that you need to know in the future. And that's really how I do it. I do it by micro-learning every day. David Millili: So as guest expectations in the business continue to evolve, how have you had to rethink your leadership playbook to drive growth? Robert Marusi: Yeah. You've heard me say growth champion. I recognize myself as a growth champion. I recognize anybody in business has the need to be a growth champion. We can't stay stagnant. We've gotta grow the business. So the first thing today is how do you rewire your playbook for today, right? We have all these scud missiles coming in going, "Put AI in. Do AI. AI everywhere," blah, blah, blah. The truth of the matter is the majority of AI out there is not producing profitability, right? It's enhancing operations, which in turn should deliver some profitability and efficiency, but we're not seeing yet the actual aha moments of, "I got it. That was a win. I get it." So it's rewiring your playbook to that. It's developing your AI strategy for workflows and impact journeys, and how do you really separate that out to focus on the customer journey. It's really all about that in my business. It's the customer journey and recognition, and having a tech stack that really drives that. That's what the guest wants. That's what the guest expects. Steve Carran: Absolutely. And where do you see AI having the greatest impact on hotels, and how should hoteliers approach the change and the transformation that's gonna come with it? Robert Marusi: Great question, right? And when I used a lot of Salesforce products and I was on stage talking at Salesforce and all that growth, it's really about developing your use cases, right? Really understand your use cases on where you wanna put that automation in and how it will develop your business and really enhance the customer stay. I mean, that's ultimately what you're trying to do. So it's really like, understand the LLMs. Understand what the large language models are, right? Be able to bring your team through change and transformation because so many people have this expectation that everybody just picks up AI and learns AI. The truth of the matter is, a lot of people are scared about it. They don't know how to put it in. They don't know where to start. So what does that AI playbook look like in your business? And really be able to put that in and have some breakout growth. Where's it gonna give you the breakout growth and really big impact moments? David Millili: So Hotel del Coronado has such a rich history. How do you preserve what makes an iconic hotel special while continuing to evolve for that next generation of guests and this technology wave? Robert Marusi: That's a great question. I think it's about giving clients what they want. I think it's about serving up to the client what they're actually looking for today, right? And what they're looking for today is human connection and recognition and experience. Experience is such a big part of it, but experience over status almost. So how do you really bring those into play, and how do you enrich the client journey to the point where they become fans for the rest of their life? They're gonna bring their family back there, and there are people coming back year after year, and we have that in places like Hotel Del. So how do you keep upping that game? How do you recognize them as a traveler and a client? And how do you really put that in play for better optimization on their journey? That's really what it is. Steve Carran: Yeah, absolutely. Well said. So Robert, you've had a pretty impressive career in hotels and hospitality. What advice do you have to the younger generation out there that might be looking to travel down a similar path? Robert Marusi: I think it's where I roam. I think I roam at awareness, gratitude, and respect, right? And if you follow that, then you get trust out of your teams. And when you get trust out of your teams, then you gain the superpower of agility. People come with you and listen to you and want to understand more about what your journey is. So I think it starts with awareness, gratitude, and respect, to be honest with you, and gaining the trust, and then really bringing the people along with the journey. I've been really blessed in that regard. I hire the smartest people around me. I don't wanna be the smartest guy in the room. I'm just not interested, right? So if I can get smarter people in the room than me, then I learn at the same time, and we all learn together. And I think that's really a key ingredient to bringing a team and an organization together and achieving just phenomenal results. Steve Carran: That's great. That's great. So Robert, we're done asking you questions, well, David and I at least. This is the part of the podcast where we turn the tables and let you ask David and me a question. Robert Marusi: Yeah. I mean, you spend a lot of your time in the hospitality space. What are some of the biggest struggles that you're seeing out there today? And what are people telling you? Steve Carran: I was just having a conversation—I'll take this one first, Dave. I don't know if it's a struggle. Obviously, we have a labor shortage. That's been an issue. But one of the things I think is really funny is people are scared of AI taking their jobs in hotels. We've had a labor shortage for how many years? I don't think AI is gonna take anybody's job in a hotel, but what I do think it is gonna do is help hoteliers free up more time, automate those mundane tasks. I called a Michelin Key hotel, and I never got the phone picked up. I was on the phone for eight minutes and nobody ever picked up. AI can handle that. AI can have that phone be picked up and have somebody answer it. And if it needs to be escalated to a hotelier, it can do that. But I think AI is gonna really help hoteliers focus on the guest experience. So I don't know if that's a problem, but it's always something I kind of laugh at when I hear people from hotels saying, "AI's gonna take my job." Robert Marusi: Yeah. That's so true. David Millili: Yeah, and I think I've been at this a long time. I've been on the tech side after leaving the hotel side, and it was the same thing when the internet came out. Everybody was nervous and scared. What's gonna happen here? And all these things. The famous line we've used probably 100 times is when I built one of the first booking engines and a friend of mine said, "Are you crazy? Nobody's ever gonna put their credit card on the internet." And I think it's just if the industry will embrace it. You've done a great job—well said throughout this podcast. The technology is there to enable and help the staff and the guest in the right places if you pick and choose. And I think it is also just a question of the on-property hoteliers, the management companies, and the ownership groups not getting in the way of that happening. I feel like that happens a lot, where there are some pretty no-brainer solutions, like Steve just mentioned, if you have a problem that you can use, and we still, in a lot of cases, don't adopt the technology. So I would love us to just embrace technology more in the right places and not be scared of it. Robert Marusi: Yeah, not be scared of it, right? It's not gonna take our job away. In fact, it's evolving so quickly. I wrote this stat down. Sixty percent of travel doesn't start or end with a click anymore. So that's a complete transformation from where we were to where we're going, right? Fifty-six percent of internet traffic now is bots. Steve Carran: Wow. Robert Marusi: Bots have overtaken humans on internet traffic. So how are we adapting, right? We've got to change and change fast. Things are gonna become obsolete really quickly that were revenue drivers for us in the past 15 years. They're just gonna go away. So who's ready for that? Who's agile enough to catch that? Those are going to be the leaders in the future. Steve Carran: So I have a question for you, Robert. One thing I was having a discussion about yesterday is how not only the guest experience is changing, but the search for hotels is changing. People are using AI and LLMs to search for hotels, and they're really searching for more specific features of hotels. "I want a pet-friendly hotel. I want an Olympic-sized pool for swimming. I want a great restaurant." We just talked about how food and beverage is a driving factor. How are you staying ahead of that trend—this new style of hotel search—at Hotel Del and Grand Wailea? Robert Marusi: Yeah, it's a great question. A lot of it comes down to the gateway—the website, right? How are you answering the most common questions that could be picked up by an LLM to really understand who you are and deliver it back to the consumer, right? You want to be found at the top of the LLM search. So you've got to set up the information on your website to be LLM-ready. And I think that's one of the biggest switches, right? Especially when you're talking about a Grand Wailea or a Hotel del Coronado, you're talking about significant website traffic. The LLMs are scraping and searching that all day, every day. So how are you coming up in that search? That has all to do with chunkable language—how your language is portrayed, how you're writing that language. There's a lot to it. It's not that hard, though. You just have to be able to answer the questions that the LLM search is asking and be able to give it in digestible chunks for the machine. And so that's what we've done in our hotels, in our websites, and in our automation. It's really setting yourself up for LLM search. Steve Carran: Yeah, and what advice would you have—we have a lot of hoteliers that listen to this. What advice would you have to hoteliers who maybe haven't done that yet? What is that first step they should take and the process that they should follow? Robert Marusi: Yeah, it's answering the questions that the LLMs are looking for in chunkable language so it can digest, deliver, and serve it up. You've got to understand that first. It's not a hard process to go through a website, do an audit, and learn where the increase in automation and answer generation really needs to take place. It's pretty calculated. We can look at a website and say, "Oh man, you're missing like 400 questions that you really need to be delivering on to give that chunkable language." That's where I would start first. And listen, there's a bunch of firms out there that are doing business in that regard right now that you could go get consultation from, understand that, and make those changes. The other part is, is your website's infrastructure ready for that kind of language and language delivery? That's a whole other thing, right? Because automation today and the infrastructure of websites have been built and layered over years and years, and that technology for serving up content is completely different now. So one, do you have the right technology and drivers? And two, are you writing it in chunkable language that can be digested by the LLM to serve it up? Steve Carran: Sure. Well said. Well said. So our producer Jon has been listening this whole time. We're gonna kick it over to him for one final question before we get you out of here. Jon Bumhoffer: This conversation about technology is really interesting, but as I'm listening, we're talking a lot about the backend, under-the-hood systems. I'm curious from your perspective, because we don't get a lot of people who work with resorts of this size that often. I'm curious, what are you seeing from the guest perspective and their interaction with technology? When people go to a resort like that and are on vacation, are you seeing any trends or habits with people having to engage with this technology in their daily work life? When they go on vacation, are they wanting more of a disconnection? What do you see trending in that kind of technology interaction on property? Robert Marusi: I think a little bit of both, right? It depends what product they're staying in within our resorts. But generally, they are tech-savvy. They want the answer now. They don't want to spend time on a phone. They don't want to walk across campus and talk to a concierge. Their expectation is that it's automated and in the palm of their hand. And so we have to deliver on that expectation, but also have a checkpoint where, "Hey, if you want to walk across campus and talk to somebody, we'll give you that feature," right? Because we do deal with quite a number of different cohorts. For the first time in travel and marketing, we're dealing with five different cohorts. Never before has that been out there. So you've got to understand your addressable audience. You've got to give them the answer quickly. Oftentimes that's the answer in the palm of their hand. And you have to answer it clearly and concisely, and automation comes into that. Simple things like, "I need an iron in my room," right? I don't need to wait on hold and talk to somebody. That's one of the 25 questions that probably gets answered all the time, and the repetition of that is something I can have a bot answer really well with great voice inflection. The whole thing's changed. It's not as rigid as it used to be. It's very human-like. So put in those little junctures that give people the ability to get what they want now, because that's what the traveler wants. They want answers now. Hopefully that answered some of the question. Jon Bumhoffer: No, yeah, definitely did. I think that's important because we've had a lot of conversations where there's a trend of people really wanting complete disconnection, but that's a different type of stay, potentially. I think the point that people want the answer now, and not only that, but how they want the answer or how they're gonna ask for the answer might be different depending on whichever cohort or audience that you spoke about. So I think those are all definitely things to consider. Robert Marusi: Yeah, truly. Absolutely. David Millili: All right. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Robert, this is where you get to let people know how they can get in touch with you and how they can find out more about your properties. Robert Marusi: You can reach me by email, or better yet, you can just take a look at our websites. My information is there, all the information is there, and you can see what we have to offer. We appreciate anybody traveling, and we look to make people repeat guests. That's our mission. David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thanks for joining us, Robert. Robert Marusi: Thank you. Steve Carran: Thank you.