Latest / Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast / 164 – Suite Spot: Spotlight – Signia by Hilton Atlanta World Congress Center
Transcript
- 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, and we are here on our Suite Spot Spotlight series at the beautiful Signia by Hilton Atlanta. I'm so excited to be here. We just got a tour of this incredible property. I'm here with the Director of Sales, Julia Austin. Thank you so much for having us here and hosting us at the Signia by Hilton Atlanta. Julia Austin : Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. Ryan Embree: So before we get into this amazing property, and there's so much to cover, by the way, it is a history lesson just walking in, I love the term that was used during the tour of this is a love letter to the city. We're gonna talk all about this amazing property, but in hospitality, we know it's a big small world, right? We typically work for sometimes different brands. Sometimes we work for the same brand. I love hearing hospitality leaders and their journeys through their experience, and what led them to a new property like this. Julia Austin : Yeah, absolutely. So it is, it is such a small world and hospitality and, you know, I kind of came into the world by a dear friend of mine from college. I graduated and was trying to figure out what exactly to do next, and she introduced me to the world of hotels and I fell in love. And 15 years later, here I am miles away from home. I'm born and raised in Arizona, living in Atlanta, Georgia, and getting to be a part of this amazing signature hotel within the Hilton brand. It's been a wild journey, but I can now, looking back, can't imagine the last 15 years doing anything else other than working in such an amazing industry that the hospitality industry really is. Ryan Embree: Yeah. So many pieces of your stories echoed with industry leaders. I talked to first, sometimes a lot of hospitality industry people don't know what they're gonna do right outta college, fall into it, but fall in love to it and also heard that wild journey, to get you here at this incredible Signia by Hilton Atlanta. Let's talk about this for those, audience members that might not be familiar with Signia, because this is the first new build Signia, and for this brand. Talk to us a little bit about the characteristics, that make up what a Signia by Hilton is. Julia Austin : Yeah. You know, so when Hilton was really looking on how to expand the company and what we were going to do next, we really kind of reached out to the people, you know, what are you looking for when you travel? What are you looking for when you're planning meetings and events, when you're hosting galas or social events? And the resounding, you know, feedback that we as a company received was, we want something that is elevated, yet still approachable. So, you know, we wanna have these beautiful views, floor to ceiling, glass windows, you know, state-of-the-art meeting space and high level guest rooms. But we still wanna be able to feel like when we come to this hotel, even with just under a thousand rooms that we're family and that, you know, we belong here and, and we are really embracing ourselves not only in the brand and the hotel, but the community and the city that we're in at the time as well. So, and that's really kind of how Signia became to be. Ryan Embree: I mean, it again, it was a love letter to the city is how it is described, is so intentional here from the names of the, the rooms, to sometimes even down to the details of your food and beverage experiences, which we're gonna talk about in a second. But I wanna rewind, a year ago, you had a star-studded event here, right? Chris Nata, Danny Hughes, all here for the ribbon cutting and opening ceremony. This is still a flagship property for Hilton. It's exciting property being that first new build for Signia brand. I even heard rumors there was John Legend here for the opening. That is accurate. Talk to us about that experience of opening a new brand like this and all that excitement. Julia Austin : Yeah, so I was not fortunate enough to get to see John Legend. However, I joined the team a little bit after the pre-opening, but it is still something that people talk about to this day. I have met so many customers who tell me how they were here for that event. Got to be a part of the pre-opening of this amazing property. When speaking to other, hospitality leaders or people within Hilton, they talk about that event and really, you know, going into the, it's a love letter to the city. I think the opening of this hotel was a little bit of a love letter to Hilton as well and to the hospitality industry. You know, this city alone has not had a new build hotel in over 40 years. And Hilton had really not opened a new brand to this extreme extravagance in, I wanna say, over 10 years. And, you know, it really, I think just it allowed us to put our mark here in the city and showcase what we're really capable of doing and what we can do. And there was, I think high levels of emotion of just after all the hard work that went into getting this place open excitement for what's to come. And again, it really just kind of allowed us to put our mark on what we are bringing to Atlanta and what we are bringing to the Signia brand. So, while I did not get to participate, I've heard enough amazing stories about it and seen enough photos to know it was an amazing event and we have just continued to exceed and grow from that event and beyond. Ryan Embree: Well, a project like this certainly doesn't get done overnight. It's years and years of planning. You've kind of talked about the background of looking at what travelers and guests, where that hole was and what they were looking for, and being able to speak to it. And you really hit all the marks there. But even with a new build like this, I'm sure there was that level of anxiousness and being like, what type of feedback are we gonna get from guests? Maybe where are they, you know, are they gonna like the food and beverage experiences? Do they like the art? Are they gonna interact with the art? And we're gonna talk about the art, which is such a huge piece of this property and how it's interactive throughout and how technology's implemented through that. But, what is some of the feedback that you've gotten from guests? Were there any surprises that you've heard or seen? Julia Austin : I don't think any big surprises, I think maybe more surprises on their end as to not fully knowing what to expect, until they've gotten here. And, you know, I think this hotel is so unique because we are 976 rooms. We're connected to our convention center. So in your traditional sense, we are a convention hotel. But then we still have the largest ballroom in the state of Georgia, 40,000 square feet and, you know, fine dining restaurant, multiple outlets for restaurants while you're here. So we have that resort feel as well. So I think that was really the biggest surprise that a lot of people experienced was, wow, you're kind of getting the best of both worlds. I can have my big convention of, you know, 11,000 to15,000 people here in the city of Atlanta that this hotel can help support. But then I can also come for like a smaller gathering for our board meeting of 20 to 30 people and sit in one of our state-of-the-art boardrooms overlooking Mercedes-Benz Stadium and still have that nice more intimate experience as well. Ryan Embree: Those are the types of surprises we like in hospitality are the good surprises. And yeah, I'm sure those meeting planners, we're gonna talk about that event space and how flexible that is. Again, this was built with extreme intentionality of being able to be adaptable and flexible in that space. I had the pleasure of living in Atlanta for a couple years. I know the area pretty well. If I could pick a hotel and a location to put a resort like Signia by Hilton at, it would be right here. For those who aren't familiar with this area, paint a picture of all there is to do just within a throw of where we're sitting right now. Julia Austin : So not being from Atlanta myself and having been here for about nine months, that actually the location of this and how I really determined where to live you know, played a big part into how much the city has to offer. So obviously right here at the hotel, as I mentioned before, we have Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United play. We also have State Farm Stadium where we have concerts and the Atlanta Hawks playing as well as I mentioned, our convention center, which is connected to us, and then right outside our doors, beyond all of the event venues, we have restaurants, we have the Marta within walking distance. There's new development being, developed right now coming up in the next couple years with new restaurants and more hotels to really add to the inventory downtown. But then really once you get out of the downtown market, you go 5 to 15 minutes outside of here and there's all these amazing little pockets of neighborhoods in Atlanta. And that's what I fell in love with because I live not too far from here where I feel like I can step away from work when I'm not here, but still really get to enjoy like the heart of Atlanta. And there's Midtown and old fourthward and lots of re-gentrified and re-reimagined neighborhoods. The Belt Line, oh my gosh, everybody talked to me about the Belt Line. But now living here and on beautiful Saturdays when the weather's nice, getting out there on my bike or just walking my dog, you can pop into coffee shops and restaurants and there's musicians playing music on the, on the side of the Belt Line. And it's just, it really, you can immerse yourself into the city. And in the short time I've been here, I feel like I've seen so much and there's still so much to see. Ryan Embree: So along with some of these amenities, Julia, you have a plate full of F&B experiences, no pun intended there. What are some of your favorites and what are guests really reacting to on social media? Julia Austin : I think there's a really a few different things that really set us apart from a food and beverage standpoint. Capolinea is our fine dining restaurant. It is open in the evenings for dinner only. It has fresh homemade pasta, pizza. We have a martini cart trolley that comes to your table and hand makes your martini right there for you. You get to kind of be a part of the craft cocktail experience with them. One of my favorite dishes at that restaurant is our duck ravioli. It's really just so unique to anything else that I've seen at any other Italian restaurants. It's a small plate, but it's perfect because you don't wanna skip on any of the other side dishes that you can get as well. And if you're looking for something heavier, I always tell people, try the bolognese, the homemade pasta, how long that bolognese is prepped by our chef is just amazing. But beyond that, if you're looking for something a little more simple, The Nest is our lunch and dinner restaurant. It kind of has a play on Mercedes-Benz Stadium with the TVs around the entire restaurant that shows whatever sports is happening at the time. Great Wings, kind of elevated bar food, again, cocktails and a great place to just kind of enjoy. We have a beautiful outdoor space patio, so on a nice day you can sit outside and enjoy your lunch, which again is great to experience when you're in a larger convention hotel. You have so many outdoor spaces that you can get that fresh air and enjoy that Atlanta weather that we have here. But you know, an elevated experience that we have here as well when it comes to culinary is our Club Signia. Which club Signia is actually just kind of a play on the traditional executive lounge that most travelers are aware of. And, you know, this is something that is an additional add-on to your stay. But the benefit of it is it actually includes all of your meals while you are here with us. It is available for, you know, 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM for you, and you can pop in and grab a coffee, grab a water. We have a chef in there curating breakfast and dinner. We have lunch available for you and you can really have your own kind of custom experience right there in the lounge without even making it up to the fourth floor to the rest of our restaurants. Ryan Embree: It's such an intimate feeling in that Club Signia, and it's such a really cool way to have an add-on to your, your guest experience here. If you're looking for just a little bit more, like I said, private or intimate setting but so many F&B experiences here, like you said, from Grab-N-Go all the way up to the fine dining. Very cool to experience that, that Nest, was awesome to see because it's literally a path straight to Mercedes-Benz and straight to the arena. So it's the ultimate tailgate spot to get you started for some really cool events. We forgot even to mention Taylor Swift here. Julia Austin : Oh, I know. Ryan Embree: We got the World Cup coming here in 2026. Which is really exciting. I'm sure that'll be a hot commodity to be here. Julia Austin : We have a lot of exciting concerts just this year alone. We have Post Malone coming up here soon and Beyonce as well, which I know is very exciting 'cause she's not seeing a lot of cities, but she's making her way to Atlanta. Ryan Embree: So awesome to hear. So I'm sure Julia, one of, if not the first phone calls that you received were from this project when it was first announced was from event planners, wedding planners, companies trying to get to Atlanta and utilize your space. And again, we talked about the intentionality of the design of this property really makes it where you can be a small company all the way up to a large company hosting an entire conference here. What have you seen the dynamic space and how groups have used this and kinda walk us through maybe what that process looks like. Julia Austin : Yeah, it's funny because we opened just this last year, but what people don't realize is that we had a sales team here booking events into this hotel starting three, four years ago. Oh, wow. So it's been a long process and a long journey and we had a lot of planners and a lot of associations and organizations that were trusting us while they were just watching a building come up and trusting what we were saying was gonna be in here, was gonna be in here. But, some of the things that I've really loved about this hotel coming in and seeing it now that it's, you know, in its actuality is just the seamless transition that our groups can have. So if you have an event here in the hotel exclusively, again, we have the largest ballroom in the state of Georgia at 40,000 square feet, it divides into 12 individual rooms. So you can open it up into one large room and have really extravagant general session set ups. But then you can also break it into smaller rooms if you wanna have breakouts and meals and kind of utilize the space and the functionality. Our third floor space has multiple breakouts, most of which actually have floor to ceiling windows giving you that natural light and view of our outside. And then as I mentioned before, we have state-of-the-art board rooms, and then we also have our dream ballroom, which you got to see earlier, which is right here on the first floor and opens up to our outdoor space of Magnolia Green. So you can have a couple different groups in here that are on different levels of space and really feel like they've taken over the hotel themselves exclusively, not even realizing there's another group on another floor, which is fantastic. But beyond that, being that we are a part of the citywide business that comes here to the Atlanta and being connected to the convention center, some of the feedback that I've received is just how seamless the transition is going from our hotel and our meeting space into the Georgia World Congress center's meeting space. So you are up in our ballroom, you're walking from one ballroom, you're cutting across the hall to the next, and you don't even realize it until you look down and you see that the carpet changed a little bit, that you're actually now in a completely different building. And it was a two minute walk. I have been lucky enough to be here for a meeting and got to kind of experience that transition myself. And I've also received that feedback that, you know, there's just the transitions and the way you can flow throughout this hotel, are really quite seamless and gives people that experience of buying out a hotel for a thousand people or being that smaller group that just takes over a small boardroom. Ryan Embree: Well, seamless and connected are two terms that I'm sure event planners love to hear, especially about their events if they're getting that feedback. And I'm sure that feedback was crucial as you're talking with those event planners and groups when you're building this and hearing what are we looking for? And I think, again, this design and the adaptability of your meeting space and convention space really opens up opportunities that maybe, you know, they're not pigeonholed into. You have to have this type of meaning there are certainly a lot of areas that you can capitalize on here at the Signia. Julia Austin : Yeah, absolutely. You know, we've really, especially with the local market, there's a lot of amazing organizations right here in our backyard. And they have come to us whether for their large annual, maybe sales kickoff meeting to a smaller social event that they're looking to have or a celebratory event to celebrate their team members that they wanna host here at the hotel with us. And going back to our culinary and our food and beverage, we've really taken the time to make sure that we've curated amazing banquet food for those group attendees as well that maybe don't have the chance to experience our restaurants, but still get to experience the amazing culinary that we have here. Ryan Embree: Yeah. It's so great. Because I think where we are right now in 2025, you might have a lot more teams that are working from home that are looking for that quarterly or annual space to meet up. So something like this can be reimagined. They can use this space as a really checkpoint for their team and incorporate all the programming that you have here and offer in your expertise also to help them kind of guide them, hold their hand through this process, which sometimes can be daunting, with a larger group. But you've got the experience that I wanna transition to, the art. A huge part of this property, was very impressed how you curated all this art. You even have a whole space dedicated it to it on your website. If you haven't, make sure you check that out but one of the cool pieces that I love is, when you have art inside of a hotel, most hotels or properties do, if you're not told the story behind that art, you really miss a crucial part. You could have some great local artists that you've featured, but if your guests aren't really resonating with that or know or have the knowledge about that, it might not hit the mark. Whereas this property, every single piece of art I notice has a QR code by it. Teaches you about the art, the artist, a lot of those being local artists. It's a huge part of this experience. Kind of give us the background of why that was chosen like that and maybe some of your personal favorite pieces. Julia Austin : Yeah, I mean, I think you kind of nailed it right there is that, we put beautiful artwork into hotels or buildings, when you're visiting restaurants and you don't always know where that came from or what's the story behind it. And that's really where the mindset came from with having these QR codes. You can walk anywhere throughout our hotel and if you're admiring a piece of art, you're like, oh, that's so unique. You know, where on earth did this come from? You can right then and there scan it and get the history and get the background of the piece of art, which, I think really just kind of again, plays into the experiences that you can have while you're here with us. So, you can eat at a great restaurant and go to the spa and then get an art lesson as well while you're here with us. So who doesn't love that? Ryan Embree: It's a whole history lesson here. Julia Austin : Exactly. Ryan Embree: It was very cool to see on the tour actually, one of the guests utilizing that QR code. So it's so cool to see more and more guests adapting that technology because again, that can make a guest experience. You know, you don't put the onus on your employees to say, Hey, really explain this piece of art. It's really that story's told throughout the guest experience and journey here, which is really, really cool. So Julia, just over a year, the property's been open, but already the recognition and industry's award starting to pour in, saw that you were recently given that prestigious AAA four diamond designation, which is awesome, recognized by Wine designator and Eater, which is unusual for a hotel and resort because again, these are restaurants that even locals can come and experience here, which is great. We've talked about the food and beverage experiences, but what do these recognitions as director of sales mean for you? I'm sure it makes your job easier, right? Julia Austin : Yeah, you know, I think some of the culinary awards that we've received, is really a testament to how a hotel restaurant can still stand out, and be a go-to restaurant that the local community wants to come to. So to me that's a huge testament, for the AAA award. I mean, to have received that within our first year, I have been a part of hotels where it's taken years to be able to get to that award. So that is a huge testament because that is really, you know, you have your AAA travelers that are specifically looking for hotels that are within the AAA recognition. Our meeting planners are looking for that when they're selecting hotels and cities and it really does just go to show the the passion that has gone behind this project and the building and the opening of this hotel, and what our team members are putting into this every single day with the service that they're providing and the experience that they're wanting every guest to walk away from. So, it is something that we are very proud of to have received so quickly and it is something that we will continue to strive to elevate and just exceed all expectations for every guest that comes through the door. Ryan Embree: Well, congratulations to you and your team on that award. You've got the service, we got the art, we talked about the culinary experience, just the design here and all the event planning. Certainly seems like it has it all here by the Signia, by Hilton Atlanta. Thank you so much for taking the time. Any final thoughts before we wrap up? Julia Austin : You know, the only thing I would say is, being new to Atlanta myself, I've met a lot of planners and a lot of people that have come here and looked at the city and I've heard a lot, oh, I haven't been to Atlanta in 15 years, 20 years. I would urge you whether you are just traveling through or coming to look for a meeting or coming to a sporting event, come check out the city, come check out Signia by Hilton Atlanta. I really do think it'll exceed all of your expectations and really just give you a new taste of what the city has to offer. Ryan Embree: Well, thoroughly impressed. To all of our Suite Spot audience. Make sure you come to the Signia by Hilton Atlanta. Visit them on social media. Follow them on social media. Visit the website. You have an incredible property here. Julia, thank you for sitting down and hosting the Suite Spot here. Julia Austin : Thank you. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. Thank you so much. And we'll talk to you next time on the Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I'm your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.