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Embedding Your Brand In The Community - Tom Luersen, CoralTree Hospitality · Hospitality Daily Podcast

• 0:24
  Josiah: Tom Luersen is the president of Coral Tree Hospitality Group and in this episode, you'll learn the power of embedding your brand in the community and how Tom and his teams have done this in some of the locations they operate in.
• 0:56
  Josiah: The company I was at a couple of years ago did an offsite at Terranea and I was really impressed by the sense of place that property has.
• 1:05
  Josiah: But also even leading up to the event, so the way that the whole company is about 300 people bought out the place and it was really positioned kind of within the company as this sense of place, this integration with the community, its surrounding area, is going to transform the week that we have there, and you talked about projects being indigenous to their local communities.
• 1:27
  Josiah: You've also spoken before about how you're not only stewarding a business but the community broadly.
• 1:32
  Josiah: So my question for you is how do you think about that in each of these diverse communities you're in, how do you think about stewarding the community and the community engagement for your businesses?
• 1:43
  Tom: I think the first thing you do is you think about it and then you go do something.
• 1:46
  Tom: You go ask the community what they're looking for.
• 1:48
  Tom: You study the community.
• 1:50
  Tom: It's no different than doing a thesis in your college you know writings or doing a research project, you know.
• 1:56
  Tom: Don't go in with an expectation of what the canvas, the empty canvas, should look like.
• 2:02
  Tom: Go in truly with an empty canvas.
• 2:04
  Tom: Gather information, find out what's available in the market.
• 2:08
  Tom: Find out what's not available in the market.
• 2:11
  Tom: Maybe there's a niche to fill.
• 2:12
  Tom: Ask questions, get people to be included in the process.
• 2:16
  Tom: There's hints of focus groups and surets that invite people to come in, but we just hosted yesterday, we brought in what we call our boot camp.
• 2:26
  Tom: These are all of our executives that have just joined the company in the last three months and we host them at a hotel here in Denver, in Golden Colorado, called Hotel Eddie the Eddie Taper.
• 2:37
  Tom: It's a small boutique hotel 49 keys, very, very unique.
• 2:42
  Tom: When you go in there you can get an Eddie beer.
• 2:45
  Tom: You can rent an e-bike.
• 2:47
  Tom: That's provided by the local provider.
• 2:49
  Tom: The art on the wall in the private dining room is a local artist.
• 2:54
  Tom: It's on a consignment wall that changes every three months and it's all from Golden.
• 2:58
  Tom: They have a story of Golden's famous for a beer called Coors and the Coors.
• 3:04
  Tom: The plan is right there.
• 3:05
  Tom: So there's a relationship and a storyboard about Coors at our hotel.
• 3:09
  Tom: We don't have a relationship with them, we're just telling them a story.
• 3:12
  Tom: So that is that sense of place.
• 3:15
  Tom: When you come to Hotel, eddie, you know you're in Golden Colorado.
• 3:18
  Tom: We have on the wall, when you walk in, a chalkboard of all the things going on in Golden Colorado not at our hotel in Golden Colorado, including the restaurants that we compete with, including some of the other services that we have at our hotel.
• 3:33
  Tom: But our attitude is we're going to tell you a story because you're in Golden Colorado.
• 3:37
  Tom: This is a special place and you should learn about it.
• 3:40
  Tom: When you go into your room, we don't have a do not disturb sign you know that's a little antiquated, right.
• 3:46
  Tom: We have here in Golden.
• 3:48
  Tom: We're right in the hills of the mountains.
• 3:51
  Tom: We basically have a little sign that says the bear is sleeping right now and there is the metaphor for the animal and wildlife of golden.
• 3:57
  Tom: Those are little stories.
• 3:59
  Tom: That creates the sense of place.
• 4:01
  Tom: We have a phrase we've used over years sense of place distinctive by design, so it's not just a sense of place.
• 4:07
  Tom: This hotel Eddie is built with brick that was harvested and curated in golden Colorado nearly 50 years ago and we brought the brick back to life so that it felt like it's been a part of this community for a long time, even though it's a new hotel.
• 4:22
  Tom: That's what we're trying to do, and every one of our properties we're telling a story.
• 4:26
  Tom: By the way, we design something we're connecting to the place.
• 4:31
  Tom: The name of the beer that we serve is Hotel Eddie.
• 4:34
  Tom: It's the Eddie beer.
• 4:35
  Tom: Right, the e-bikes are connected to the local vendor who's been in that marketplace for 40 years.
• 4:42
  Tom: Those are the stories that we tell about.
• 4:44
  Tom: So we research it, we use all of our creative skills, we talk to our ownership, we talk to the guests and we try to find that secret sauce.
• 4:52
  Tom: Terranea, there's a tree.
• 4:54
  Tom: If you maybe think about your arrival experience, there's a tree in the middle of the port of Cachir and the motor court and the arrival experience A tree.
• 5:05
  Tom: We built a $400 million resort around, we protected it, we brought it from a different spot and put it there and it's a story of this tree that's nearly over 100 years old and if you talk to our valet.
• 5:20
  Tom: They can tell you all about the indigenous part of this tree, what it used to be on this land, and we celebrated the tree In our restaurant.
• 5:28
  Tom: The salt doesn't come from a store.
• 5:31
  Tom: It's the salt that's been harvested out of the ocean that we do it on site.
• 5:35
  Tom: We use it to our sea and salt.
• 5:37
  Tom: It's a story about being.
• 5:39
  Tom: Terranea is on the ocean front.
• 5:41
  Tom: That's a big part of the story there.
• 5:43
  Tom: Those are simple things that we do.
• 5:46
  Tom: We have a falconer that comes around on the weekends at Terranea and it's because there's little birds of prey all around the coast.
• 5:55
  Tom: You've been on there where you've seen the seagulls and all the other birds at fish from there.
• 6:00
  Tom: We're out there teaching the youngsters and the adults like me about what falcons do and you can pet and touch it.
• 6:06
  Tom: That's a story.
• 6:08
  Tom: It doesn't talk about the falcon.
• 6:10
  Tom: It talks more about how the falcons live on the coast.
• 6:13
  Tom: It's educational experiencing.
• 6:15
  Tom: Those are the types of things that we're trying to do at every one of our properties.
• 6:21
  Josiah: It's amazing, I think, to just briefly comment on those two so you can see what it's like.
• 6:25
  Josiah: On the other side, as a guest I saw the power of my company spending a week at Terranea.
• 6:30
  Josiah: In the stories that you mentioned A number of those I'm hearing from colleagues, I'm hearing from others it had this bonding moment.
• 6:37
  Josiah: It's a story that was retold.
• 6:39
  Josiah: I imagine there's many other companies out there that would benefit from hosting some sort of a thing at Terranea.
• 6:45
  Josiah: You have the individual connection to it.
• 6:47
  Josiah: You also have here's the organization that's visiting.
• 6:50
  Josiah: It's cool, I think.
• 6:51
  Josiah: Just on with Hotel Eddie and what you're doing in Golden, it stands out to me because my wife's from Denver and I'm from San Francisco.
• 6:59
  Josiah: I don't know Denver that that well.
• 7:01
  Josiah: I might be forgiven to roll up Golden with Denver and just call it all Denver.
• 7:06
  Josiah: I've actually had a number of people, a number of my closest friends, move from San Francisco to Golden, talk about the unique nature of why that community is so special.
• 7:16
  Josiah: I think if it wasn't for that, I might not appreciate that.
• 7:20
  Josiah: I think if I stay at this hotel, those differences are highlighted.
• 7:25
  Josiah: That's what makes travel really fun and special.
• 7:27
  Josiah: It's not just Metro Denver, no, it's Golden.
• 7:30
  Josiah: Golden has a really unique personality to it.
• 7:33
  Tom: We have a hotel in Denver, the Denver Magnolia.
• 7:36
  Tom: It's a great urban hotel.
• 7:37
  Tom: It used to be a bank.
• 7:38
  Tom: It's got its own story.
• 7:40
  Tom: There's a bank vault in the lobby that is to reminisce its history.
• 7:45
  Tom: But it's very different than Hotel Eddie that's 10 miles away in a subverb of Denver called golden.
• 7:51
  Tom: So we couldn't just do the same thing.
• 7:53
  Tom: Each place, each place has to have its own specialness.
• 7:57
  Tom: Then we have to learn how to tell the story and deliver it, what we call operationalizing the brand.
• 8:02
  Tom: We have to operationalize the brand.
• 8:04
  Tom: It's one thing.
• 8:04
  Tom: To tell the story and to have the brand, it's how do you operationalize it, how do you execute it every day?
• 8:09
  Tom: So that feeling of the brand, the ethos, is there.
• 8:13
  Josiah: Tell me a little bit about that.
• 8:14
  Josiah: I'm really interested in operations.
• 8:15
  Josiah: I started my career as a marketer but I've kind of realized there's a limit to that right.
• 8:19
  Josiah: You have to operationalize it.
• 8:21
  Josiah: So what is what's involved in that?
• 8:23
  Tom: A lot of training and a lot of implementation, a lot of detailing.
• 8:28
  Tom: We've got brand companies that are fabulous and created what they do.
• 8:31
  Tom: Whether it's your mark or it's the branding of the uniforms, All of those things create a brand.
• 8:38
  Tom: It's not just your logo, of course, or how your website looks.
• 8:42
  Tom: So when you come into Hotel Eddie, as a way of example, the staff at the front desk, they're not in uniforms to you you know disrespect to that firm.
• 8:51
  Tom: They're in blue jeans with a proper shirt that fits into the culture of Golden.
• 8:59
  Tom: Conversely, when you go into a wave hotel in Lake Nona, which is a high-end, lifestyle, award-winning restaurant, it's a much more sophisticated, savvy uniform.
• 9:13
  Tom: Operationalizing the brand is that kind of detail.
• 9:18
  Tom: What is the uniform?
• 9:19
  Tom: What's the music?
• 9:19
  Tom: The music in the wave is a little bit louder, a little bit more vibrant, a little bit more new wave music, While when you go into Golden it's got a little bit more of the mountain sound.
• 9:32
  Tom: You know a lot of acoustics.
• 9:34
  Tom: That's intentional, right.
• 9:36
  Tom: That's what we mean by operationalizing the brand.
• 9:40
  Tom: The language we don't talk about employees.
• 9:42
  Tom: I didn't use the word employee yet today.
• 9:44
  Tom: We talk about team members.
• 9:46
  Tom: That's our culture.
• 9:48
  Tom: We don't have employees.
• 9:49
  Tom: Employees feel like something that's back in the 40s on an assembly line.
• 9:53
  Tom: We have team members.
• 9:55
  Tom: That are part of our brand as a company, our culture.
• 9:58
  Tom: We don't have human resources in our company.
• 10:01
  Tom: We have people services.
• 10:02
  Tom: That's our nomenclature, Because human resources sounds like a department you go to when you're in trouble or you've got you know a benefit question.
• 10:12
  Tom: We have those issues, but people services is how do we serve the people that are leaving our company?
• 10:18
  Josiah: So that's branding.
• 10:19
  Tom: That's operationalizing your brand.