Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #306: A Better Way For Hotel Marketing | with Evan Saunders
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #306: A Better Way For Hotel Marketing | with Evan Saunders === David Millili: Welcome to a special HITEC Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. We are here with Evan Saunders: Evan Saunders of Azira. David Millili: What is your role at Azira? Evan Saunders: Yeah. At Azira, we're on a mission to bring our incredible data lake to the hotel industry. I've been at the company for about eight years. Yes... and I lead our work with global partnerships in multiple verticals. We operate in the tourism industry. Over 600 tourism boards around the world use our services. In the retail world, QSR, commercial real estate, and now hotel world, where we launched about two years ago to take our solutions on location intelligence and help hotels understand their guests. Yeah, understand who stays at their concept, and drive actionable marketing outcomes for their properties. David Millili: Okay. So how is Azira helping hotels by using AI in operations and marketing to work smarter? Evan Saunders: Yeah. Azira's laser-focused on driving incremental business to hotels. Yeah. So we looked at the hotel landscape and we saw marketing agencies providing these properties 10X, 15X returns on ad spend. Yeah. We looked at that and felt it was an injustice. The only way to drive that type of revenue returns for a hotel is to target people who are already going to stay at the hotel. That's not real returns, that's kind of vanity metrics at the end of the day. Yeah. And we saw properties paying high commissions in order to drive essentially bookings that they were already going to get. Right. Like, who let that happen? Right. That's not fair to hotels. Yeah. So we took a different approach to the hospitality landscape. We realized with our data we can understand who's staying at your property, who's loyal to you already. We understand who's staying at your competitors and are loyal to your competitors. We understand who's playing the field. Maybe they stay with you, maybe they stay with competitors, maybe they're shopping around for the best experience, maybe they stay at different types of properties in different types of markets. Yeah. So we can deduce who that traveler is and focus on them as someone we can capture who might be staying at our competitors, and drive them to your hotel. And so our ability to take our data and focus on that incremental traveler. Right... focus on real prospecting to convert someone who wasn't gonna stay with you. Yeah... to now be a hotel guest and be loyal to your brand, or give you the opportunity for them to be. Yeah... loyal to your brand, is something we're actually able to do and prove, and live and breathe. So we've launched our hotel division two years ago. We work with a couple hundred properties now, management companies, marketing agencies, to be essentially another tool that allows them to not, again, nurture who's already gonna stay at their property, but really drive that net new visitor, which is real net new dollars to that hotel. David Millili: Okay. So explain how you're driving incremental dollars to the hotel. Evan Saunders: Yeah. AI plays a huge role in our ability to take location intelligence. Yeah. So for 14 years we specialized in leveraging mobile location data, which is people who opt in to share their location on their cell phones, where they're going and what they're doing. Right. We're able to take that rich data and process it now through AI, which allows us to help hotels understand who stays at their competitors. Right... as well as who stays at their own properties. So the incremental dollars play a huge role in understanding who's staying at your hotel, who's not, and how we're able to then drive that person to be a net new guest, right? Your guests, sometimes it should be in many ways more expensive to get a net new guest to stay with you. To bring in that lead, to convert them to a loyal guest who will drive revenue for years to come is what we like to specialize in at our company. David Millili: Okay. Great. So how are your clients measuring success by using kind of the foot traffic attributions? Evan Saunders: Well, one thing we recognize as a huge gaping hole in the hotel industry. Right... of marketing is attribution. It is table stakes to be able to understand, did someone see an ad and then book in your booking engine? Right. Right? That's table stakes. But today we live in a world where people have a diverse amount of ways to book your hotel. So we work with a lot of luxury four and five-star properties. Amex Travel, Chase Travel are both crushing it to drive conversions on that. That doesn't mean you can't advertise to those people. In fact, they need advertising. They need nurturing. They need to be told your property has an incredible experience in order to go on and book your property. What we're seeing a lot in the four and five-star space too is really strong average daily rates. Right. And the difference sometimes between a $700 a night hotel and a $800 a night hotel is minimal. So at that moment, the guest is really looking for a prime experience to be had. And so we're able to take an understanding of attribution, which is did someone see ads, did your ads impact people, and booking channel agnostic show that they actually converted into a check-in and multiple room nights. The way we do that is all through the power of mobile location data. So we're able to tie ads to mobile phones, and then see if those mobile phones showed up. So if you advertise a great property to my wife, my wife tells me we should book and stay at that property. I did the booking. She got the advertisement. Right now there's no way to attribute the success of that advertisement campaign. David Millili: Right. Evan Saunders: Come to Azira, we have the ability to actually attribute that to a booking and multiple room nights and a length of stay. We're also able to apply this to the food and beverage and spa outlets at a hotel. Yeah. We work with a lot of properties that want to promote their restaurants, want to promote. Yeah... the spa experience, want to do that with locals, want to do that with tourists. We're able to show, did advertisements connect with people's phones, and did those phones actually end up showing up at those properties? And we're not just doing this hotels. We're doing this across retail, across tourism on a global basis. It's just a newer technology for hotels, and what we've really been able to build our business on is not trying to over-innovate in the hospitality industry. Yeah... but take what's working in other industries, best practices on a global basis, and apply them to a hotel industry that's not currently leveraging these types of technologies, and foot traffic attribution is a huge component of that. David Millili: So I think for our audience, mostly hoteliers, they're listening to you and they're basically, I think their wheels are spinning in their head saying. Yeah... this is great. But take us through the guest journey. Like, what is that like for the guest? Like how the process and how you guys are, you know, impacting that through the guest journey? Evan Saunders: Yeah. So choosing a hotel is a considered process. David Millili: Right... Evan Saunders: Especially if it's a four or five-star luxury hotel. Yeah... and it's many months out before booking. David Millili: Right. Evan Saunders: So the notion that a marketing agency could convert your marketing dollars at a 10 or 15X return on ad spend. Yeah... to such a considered purchase is ludicrous. Right. Right? That guest is not seeing an ad and booking immediately. That guest needs to be nurtured. That guest needs to be educated, and there's a combination between the advertisements that excite them and the website that they land on for. Right... their research process. They might go to an OTA, even look at photos, do some rate shopping. Sure... look at reviews. But the advertisement needs to capture that person that wasn't gonna stay at your property. If you're spending money advertising to people who are already gonna stay at your property, who are already familiar with your property. Right. Yeah... you're wasting your money. Sure. And that's what most agencies do because it essentially drives a really great vanity metric of return. Right... on ad spend. So the guest journey that we like to pride ourselves on is really focused on finding those people who are not familiar with your property. Right. Sure, they're familiar with the market, they're familiar with their competitors, but they don't stay with you. Right. Let's get your property in front of them. Let's get them excited about the experience they can have. Let's not try to offer them great, you know, stay two nights, get a third night free. Yeah. If I get another one of those offers, my mind's gonna, like, explode. Yeah. Every hotel is stay two nights, get a third night free or $100 spa credit. David Millili: Right. Exactly. Evan Saunders: Let's show them the experience that they can have through powerful, impactful advertisements that drive them to your website, where you can educate them on experiences, guest rooms, good video content, and convert them into someone who didn't really consider your property before. Yeah... and now is really excited about the experience they and/or their family can have staying with you. So that guest journey is one that really requires filling the top of your funnel that prospecting, essentially, top tier of the funnel, and driving them to the consideration phase. Your website's gonna do a great job. Your social media's gonna do an excellent job. Your OTA listing, whether you like it or not, is gonna do a great job. So you've gotta fill the top of that funnel on the prospecting. Yeah... side, and focus on the metrics that are really gonna actually move the revenue needle at your property. David Millili: No, that makes a lot of sense. So what are you seeing happening right now with the World Cup? Evan Saunders: Oh. David Millili: And what would you advise operators to do to capture revenue? I mean, it's already. Yeah... started, but what should they... Maybe what they should have gotten done. Evan Saunders: It literally just kicked off, right? And so we work with a lot of properties trying to engage World Cup travelers. Right. And this started six, seven months ago, when we saw properties try to put in really high ADRs and have elongated length of stay minimums at their properties. Yeah... in order to capture what they thought would be massive demand. And unfortunately, it really ostracized the normal leisure traveler, right? We have to remember that the hotel rooms are not gonna be filled 100% with World Cup fans. That's just not how it works. It's June, right? It's like a major tourism season. There's a lot of people traveling to be tourists. So what we found was shifting to a much more focused strategy depending on the market they come from, and depending on the games that are playing, are pretty critical. So international is a big, big market for the World Cup, right? We see it on TV. They come in, right? They have short length of stays. And what we see is OTAs are a powerful driver for the World Cup on an international landscape. So we tell hotels, and we ask them, "What is your OTA strategy? How are you educating tourists that they should even be considering your property?" Right. "How are you doing this more last-minute?" Because sometimes people don't know they're gonna go to a game. Right... until more last-minute. People don't know who's even playing in the next round. So having a much more nimble, focused strategy we've seen a lot more successful. But again, if you're looking for a hotel next week. Yeah... you definitely don't wanna leave it to chance, right? You just spent $1,000 on your plane ticket. You just spent $1,500 on World Cup tickets. Like, the difference between a hotel room that's $600, $700 a night is minimal. Right... compared to all of your other expenses. Yeah. So you really care about the experience. You want a concierge that's gonna help you explore the city, a concierge that's gonna get you to the game. You wanna be able to make sure you check in, and your room's there, and it's clean, and it's beautiful. You really want maybe a good food and beverage program at the hotel. These are critical things, and so getting your hotel in front of these potential guests in a more last-minute type of opportunity is critical. Now, we've seen games where certain games are not driving strong ADRs and occupancy. Right. And other games, really the teams are driving a lot of great, great revenue for these properties. So we look at it being nimble, being last-minute, and honestly, taking a playbook from this and applying it to future sporting events. It's really, really important we don't forget what happened. No, it is... for a future opportunity. David Millili: No, that makes perfect sense. So how do, and hoteliers hate this, but how do the OTAs play into your ecosystem, what you do? Evan Saunders: Yeah. OTAs spend over $20 billion a year on marketing. You as a hotel owner, small management company, or a large management company. Yeah... can't compete with that type of marketing spend to drive top-level revenue, top-level prospecting, right? And OTAs are an important avenue. So you need to educate people that your property is the one to choose when the guest goes on an OTA and selects they're going to a certain city, where should they stay? David Millili: Mm-hmm... Evan Saunders: So you need to work essentially in tandem with an OTA to get your listing beautiful, and then to spend money advertising outside the OTA. Right... to drive awareness and fill the top of that funnel. If they end up booking on an OTA, so be it. Your job is to drive revenue to your property, and unfortunately, OTAs are a big part of that strategy. They take a large commission, but they do a good job at it. What's critical to us is not just the education side on people staying at or wanting to stay at your property, but also the attribution. So did you advertise to them successfully? Did they convert on an OTA? And then can we actually measure if that guest shows up? And of course, we can do that. Right. And that's a really important aspect. OTAs do play a critical role. You need to be able to measure the effectiveness of your advertising in conjunction with an OTA to drive that revenue to your hotel. David Millili: Okay. So we're here in San Antonio, HITEC, HSMAI, the commercial strategy. What's the energy been like for you? How's the experience been so far for you here? Evan Saunders: Experience has been amazing. I want to give a big shout-out to the Hotel Emma. Their restaurant is incredible, and I highly recommend anyone go there. David Millili: We'll tag you. Evan Saunders: Yeah. Fantastic food. I was blown away with that experience. Yeah. And that's the beauty about being in San Antonio, is I'm looking for a more local experience. Sure... applied to an international crowd that's here, and that's what you can get from San Antonio. From the experience inside the convention halls, there's been a lot of strong energy here. AI is a massive topic. Right. Every conference I go to, AI is a massive topic, but it's not just a topic, there's also a huge appetite for that content. Yeah. So it's a nice match between people presenting newfound expertise in this with people hungry to understand what's real and what's not real. I like the concept of a lot of these properties focusing more on direct bookings. Yeah. I like the concept of new, innovative marketing campaigns. What we've found is oftentimes the hotel industry lags a little bit behind others when it comes to innovative ways to do marketing, but that's changing. As a testament to the hundreds of hotels that we work with, it's changing pretty rapidly, and we're very much in the right place at the right time to showcase the ability to be innovative, to drive real revenue, to not focus on vanity metrics, and to make sure that we're captivating as strong of an ADR as we can because the reality is the middle of the P&L is being squeezed right now. Yeah. It is hard to be a hotel. You have a lot of costs. You can't increase your rates too much. The guest isn't demanding that while your costs are going up. And so to be able to find the guests that are willing to pay more for your property, have longer lengths of stays, and aren't just booking because, you know, "I'll just book, I'll get that stay two nights, get a third night free," right? That's not necessarily the guest you want, and it's awesome to be able to showcase ways to engage that guest that is gonna drive that. David Millili: Is anyone doing stay two nights, get a third night free and a spa credit? Evan Saunders: Yeah. Right. Maybe that would convince me, right? Yeah, right. But you see, those hotels are hungry. Yeah. Right? They want people to elongate their stay. Yeah. Right? Unfortunately, most of my life, I can only stay two nights. Right. The third night becomes useless for me. Yeah. Right? So I think we see the repetitiveness of these types of marketing tactics. Right... I think the guest is tired of being exposed to them. Sure... and then sometimes is expecting them. Yeah. Where's my credit? Where's my resort credit? Why do I have to pay this resort fee? I want a food and beverage credit. Do I get a free upgrade? You know. Right... we're training the guest to have expectations which really shouldn't align with what our industry is offering, and that is also about the type of guest we're engaging too. Yeah. So innovative ways, engaging the right guest to drive those incremental bookings can really help move the needle for the hotel, not just in the short term, but actually in the long term. Building that loyalty. David Millili: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where, Evan, you get to talk about how people can get in touch with you, find out more about the company. Yeah. So plug away. Evan Saunders: Yeah. Our company's Azira, A-Z-I-R-A, azira.com. We have a wealth of publications about what we do both locally, I mean, domestically, internationally. Right. We're passionate, as you can see. Yeah... about our work in this space of location intelligence across multiple industries. And I would say if you're a hotel eager to embark on an innovative way to drive real revenue, to really move the needle and not rely on vanity metrics about a 10X return on ad spend, we're your company that's really gonna help get you there. David Millili: Okay. Well, that does it for this special HITEC Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. So whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you. I don't say this often, but I highly recommend that hotels should reach out to you because this is some really cool stuff. Evan Saunders: So it works. You know, the proof is in the pudding at the end of the day, David. David Millili: All right. Thank you so much for being here. Evan Saunders: Yeah, awesome. David Millili: All right. Evan Saunders: Appreciate it. David Millili: Great. Thank you.