Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #287: How Aimbridge is Preparing for Hospitality's A.I. Future | with Eric Ettlin
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #287: How Aimbridge is Preparing for Hospitality's A.I. Future | with Eric Ettlin === David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Don't forget to follow, like and 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, excited about this one. We have Eric Ettlin, the SVP of Brand Marketing and Digital from Aimbridge Hospitality. Welcome to the show, Eric. How we doing today? Eric Ettlin: Thank you, Steve. I'm doing great. Pleasure to be here David Millili: It's great to have you, Eric. So we're gonna jump in. We're gonna go through a lightning round, some quick questions. We're gonna get to know you better, your background, your career, and then we're gonna dive into some industry topics. Sound good? Eric Ettlin: Great. Let's go David Millili: All right. So when you were young, what did you wanna be when you grew up? Eric Ettlin: I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Ever since going to the big screen and seeing "Top Gun," I just had a passion for being out there on the aircraft carrier and flying. At the time it was the F-14 Tomcats at Mach 2 with my hair on fire. Sounded like a blast. David Millili: Yeah. Well, after we'll talk about how Steve shot me down in Colorado Springs on a flight simulator. But anyway, what's something that you wish you were better at? Eric Ettlin: Oh, there's a lot of things I wish I were better at. I've been a surfer my entire life. Now that the job consumes most of my time, balancing the job and my family, there's not as much time to get out to surf these days. But yeah, I would love to be a better surfer if I could David Millili: Okay. What's a luxury you can't live without? Eric Ettlin: Oh gosh. I would say my phone. Ever since the iPhone came out, if I don't have it on me, I have a panic attack David Millili: All right, got it. All right, so name a person dead or alive that you would like to take to lunch Eric Ettlin: Well, my grandmother was one of my best friends. She passed away about 30-plus years ago, and I miss her every day. So definitely my grandmother David Millili: That's good. So if you could have a superpower, what superpower would you like to have? Eric Ettlin: I would love to fly. I guess going back to that Top Gun theme, I would love to be able to fly and just enjoy it like a bird. David Millili: All right. Good answer. So what's something that's on your bucket list? Eric Ettlin: It's always travel related. I would say a trip to Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand. Thailand would probably be on my bucket list, but there's probably a dozen other spots, but I would start there Steve Carran: Very good. Very good. I'm a Top Gun fan myself, so we're on the same page on that one. So now we're gonna dive into your background, a little bit more about what makes you tick. So you grew up in San Juan Capistrano in California. How did that shape you into who you are today? Eric Ettlin: Well, back in those days growing up in San Juan, it was still a very much a small town environment for Southern California. And there was a lot of open space that as a young child, we got to go run up in the hills and play with the friends, come home when the streetlights came on type of feel. Eric Ettlin: So it was a very amazing childhood from that standpoint. There is a very Western theme here in South Orange County and San Juan Capistrano, so that kind of led into some of the hobbies I have today with horseback riding and playing cowboy on the weekends and also combining that with being near the beaches and growing up surfing every single day. So yeah, it was an amazing place to grow up. David Millili: Okay. And so what led you to pursue a degree in international relations at the University of California, Berkeley? Eric Ettlin: Yeah, that was one of those fork in the road moments. So in high school I played football and I wasn't big enough to play Division I, so I was looking at Ivy League schools, and West Point was on the top of my list to go play football at West Point Military Academy. And then at being an 18-year-old, not sure if I wanted to venture cross country to Upstate New York and also was not sure if military was quite my path. I chose to go to Cal and stay in California, stay closer to home. And then I eventually walked onto the crew team at Berkeley. And so had an amazing experience rowing for the Cal Bears, and didn't realize at the time how intense not only crew was, but how intense the Berkeley program was. They had been top rank in the nation for many years. So spent many early mornings out there training and yeah, it was a great experience. Steve Carran: That's awesome. And it seems like you enjoy being on the water or even on the mountains. You said you surf, you also water ski, wakeboard, fishing, and also enjoy snowboarding. Any one of those your favorites and any specific memories that really stand out from a great experience you had? Eric Ettlin: Oh it's tough to pick a favorite. They're all pretty seasonal for the most part. Fishing season down here in Southern California ramping up in the next month or so. I would say fishing during the season, which is generally summertime. My dad has a boat down here in Dana Point Harbor, and it's a special time for he and I to get out, spend the entire day out on the water. My dad is one of my best friends, and you don't have those opportunities very often. So when we're able to get out and enjoy that time out on the water catching fish, hopefully, it's really, really memorable. Steve Carran: That's awesome. You never want to take me fishing with you. You will not catch anything. I'm a curse when it comes to fishing. So but that's great. So now we're gonna dive into your career, how you got to Aimbridge. So you started your career in digital and e-commerce with GM Financial and OneWest Bank. What did you learn in those early days that you take with you today? Eric Ettlin: That's a great question. So in the early days, it was really the heyday of finance, right? Back in 2003, 2004, we had very large budgets, but it was still relatively in its infancy as it related to digital marketing. I remember learning search engine optimization early in my career, and figuring out what the Google algorithms were looking at and then learning all the digital paid media side of the business, website design. It was an amazing opportunity to be on that cutting edge of the digital side of marketing, which was really coming to be the way to reach consumers. Very different than what we're seeing today, but today, with the new age of AI coming in, it feels different, but very much similar from the standpoint of throwing away all your preconceived notions about the way things had been and really being open to pivoting. So it draws a very unique parallel to those times back in finance. David Millili: Yeah. And so you then spent more than a decade with Marriott leading e-commerce, brand marketing, digital strategy across hundreds of hotels. So kind of piggybacking off what you just said, what did that chapter teach you about scaling marketing across a large, complex hotel portfolio? Eric Ettlin: Well, it was exactly that. It was going from one brand, maybe a few websites, to multiple brands, many different websites, learning hospitality, which was definitely a learning curve for me, and understanding that each hotel type, each different hotel brand, appeals to different consumers. Your marketing strategies and tactics have to adjust accordingly, and really understanding not just the marketing side of the business, but also understanding all of the nuances of the hotel space. So learning how to work with and partner with our sales counterparts, revenue management, operations. I always say that the world of hotels and hospitality, it's not rocket science, but there sure are a lot of moving parts. So it's important to understand that you're one important piece of a very large puzzle. Steve Carran: That's great. And then you went to Irvine Company and I think it's Mavenfest. Now you're at Aimbridge where you're leading brand marketing and digital for one of the largest hotel portfolios in the industry. What's been the biggest shift in moving from the brand side of hospitality marketing to the third-party management side of it? Eric Ettlin: Yeah. So yeah, 11 or 12 years at Marriott, I thought I knew everything there was to know about hotel marketing until I came over to the third-party management space. And I learned very quickly that this is similar but very, very different. I remember the first couple of months being here at Aimbridge, we would be talking about hotels coming into the portfolio and hotels exiting the portfolio. At Marriott, especially on the Marriott-managed side of the business, we would have 25 plus year contracts. So having hotels leave the portfolio just was not a common thing. So it was eye-opening to say the least. And then, coupled with the fact that on the third-party management side of the business, we work very closely with owners. Our owners are our clients. And looking at the business and the strategy from their lens helped me really get a full picture of the way that hotels are run and operated. David Millili: That's great. And for those who aren't familiar with Aimbridge, can you tell us more about Aimbridge as a company and more about your role? Eric Ettlin: Yeah, so Aimbridge is the largest third-party manager of hotels. We have around 1,000 hotels under management currently. And it's a massive organization from the standpoint of we're not working with one brand or one brand company. We're working with Marriotts, Hiltons, Hyatts, IHGs, Wyndhams. We have Margaritavilles, all-inclusives. We have 60-some-odd independent hotels on top of all of that. So it's just the complexity of managing through so many different brands, brand types, hotel types, everything from extended stay hotels all the way up to big box resorts is quite complex to say the least. Steve Carran: That's great. That's great. So now we're going to dive into the industry thoughts and thought leadership section. And your answer played in perfectly to this next question. So like you said, Aimbridge has such a mix of brands and also independents. What are some of the biggest challenges in balancing brand standards, owner expectations, and also local market needs? Eric Ettlin: Yeah. So from a brand perspective, the big brands want consistency. The owners want performance for their hotels. And so for us, it's really managing between the brand standards and owner expectations, which oftentimes align but sometimes don't, which becomes quite challenging for us. And then the consumer expectations, which is they want a unique experience, especially the younger consumers that really enjoy travel and more of a lifestyle type of experience, right? And so managing across all of those brands really takes a lot of focus. Within Aimbridge, not just within the marketing team but across commercial, we have what we call brand champions, and these are individuals that are dedicated to Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and they partner very closely with the brands. That brand partnership is absolutely key for us. Not only is it key for us to make sure that we're pulling through the brand standards for our hotels and helping to support the owners, but also taking advantage of the vast resources and opportunities that would come to an Aimbridge type management company from the brands because of that close connectivity with them. Marketing to their loyalty programs, taking advantage of pilots that they have running, and really being on the cutting edge of everything that the brands are rolling out so that we can drive additional value to our owners and to our assets. David Millili: And so what was the strategy behind building Second Wave in-house, and how does it help solve marketing challenges for hotel owners? Eric Ettlin: Yeah, so Second Wave, the name Second Wave came from a luxury lifestyle vertical within Aimbridge called Evolution. And Evolution about 10 years ago wanted to rethink their marketing strategy and approach for their portfolio of hotels. And so therefore, Second Wave, the next wave of marketing, was born out of Evolution and has since been rolled out and adopted by all of Aimbridge Hotels as the largest in-house marketing team within a third-party management company. We have 65 marketers that are Aimbridge associates. We’re not a standalone agency. They work to support all of the hotels within Aimbridge from a marketing perspective. Now, the benefit of that is that we not only have subject matter experts that have come from some of the big brands and from other management companies with expertise in account management and digital marketing. We have in-house creative production support. We also have an in-house branding team that builds brands for soft-branded hotels such as Autograph, and we build brands for independent hotels as well. We also build brands for food and beverage outlets, spas, et cetera. So the level of sophistication within Second Wave is unparalleled. Because we’re Aimbridge associates and we work very closely with our commercial counterparts, it allows us to pivot and adapt to market conditions, demand, and pace very quickly. We have strong commercial connectivity that allows us to be the strongest commercial team in the industry. Steve Carran: That’s great. So we had to talk about AI at some point in this conversation. One thing we’ve talked about and are seeing is travelers are using AI more for finding hotels instead of using Google as much. So how is Aimbridge thinking about SEO and AI-ready hotel content? Eric Ettlin: Yeah. You’re not going to get through a podcast these days without talking about AI. David Millili: Impossible. Eric Ettlin: I’ll start with the foundation of our approach to AI. This goes back a few years ago. I was talking with Allison Handy, my boss, the chief commercial officer, about this new wave of AI and how we were going to set our strategy around it so we can be a first mover in the space. She said to me, “I think we need to start hiring folks that are AI experts within the marketing organization.” I thought that’s a great idea. Then I realized they’re very difficult to find, and I don’t know if we could afford to find an AI expert. So what we did is we started our own AI task force within Second Wave. We knew that while we didn’t have quote-unquote AI experts in the space, we had enough individuals within Second Wave who were testing and curious about AI. So we created a small group of individuals representing different facets of our marketing team. We included people from account management, digital, and the creative team. AI is nothing without data, so we also had our head of reporting and analytics as part of the task force. When we first set out, we didn’t know what we would accomplish. It was more idea sharing and bringing new thoughts to the table that we could test and pilot. Since then, it has completely changed the way we approach marketing. We have run different pilots. We’re using AI platforms to write ad copy. We’ve built a machine learning AI platform that helps with our budgeting process and changes the way we set marketing budgets for 800 to 900 hotels annually. In the past, the budgeting process was much more manual and set at the end of the year for the upcoming year. Now, with this in-house AI platform, it compiles past performance and produces recommendations. It also pulls in forward-looking pace data so we can adjust budgets in real time based on both historical performance and future demand. The AI space has completely changed the way we approach almost everything we do. You were asking about search, going back to my early days at GMAC and learning search engine optimization. Over the past year and a half, I’ve learned there’s a new SEO, which we call GEO, generative engine optimization. It takes a similar foundation to SEO but focuses on how large language models make recommendations. The landscape has changed from keyword search like “hotels in Nashville” to conversational intent like “I want to take a trip with friends to Nashville, play golf, go to a concert, and stay near a stadium.” We have to understand what large language models use to source and reference properties, and we also have to ensure our website content is structured so those models can access and trust it. At the moment, we’ve kicked off a GEO pilot in partnership with a major ownership group that is also curious about this space. We’re testing different platforms that specialize in this area and using their monitoring tools. They’re helping us update websites so they can be sourced by large language models, and they’re also tracking the visibility we’re gaining. We’re midstream in the pilot, but early results are promising. It’s one of our approaches: fail fast and pivot if needed. That’s the only way to stay ahead—constantly pushing ourselves to learn more. David Millili: You did a great job covering most of my next question. I’m going to tweak it a little. Where are you guys placing your biggest bets? We’re talking about AI, and everyone is trying to figure out customer behavior. How are you doing that as a third-party management company to continue reshaping hotel marketing? Eric Ettlin: I don't know if it's easy to say where we're putting our biggest bets, but really what we're trying to keep an eye on is what's going to move the needle in the near term, and where do we need to be exploring for the inevitable future of hotel booking. So I think I touched a lot on the near term with generative engine optimization and making sure that our websites are visible. But in the longer term, it's still to be determined if websites being referenced directly is going to be the play in and of itself, right? Because we know that it's a matter of time until a new distribution source for hospitality, for anything that you book a reservation for, is going to come into our space. So we have a 23-year-old on my team, and her name is Jessica. She took a trip last year to Bali, and we asked her, “How did you plan your trip? What websites did you research? You’d never been to Bali before. I know it was a surf trip, but what did you use as your source of truth?” And she says, “You’re not going to believe this. I used ChatGPT to set my entire itinerary for this 10-day surf trip to Bali.” And I said, “That was it?” She said, “Yeah, but the only thing I had to do was go to the hotel website it referenced to book my reservation and go to the airline to book my flight, but everything else was mapped out for me.” And it dawned on me at that point that if large language models, in this case ChatGPT, were set up with a model context protocol that scraped rates and availability and let Jessica book directly through ChatGPT in this direct-connect world, she never would’ve even gone to the hotel websites. She wouldn’t have gone to the airlines. She would’ve just had her AI agent book the entire trip for her, and she would’ve thought it was the easiest process known to man. So that is an example of what we’re really looking at in the future. Now, the big question is, for a portfolio the size of Aimbridge with all of the different branded hotels, independent hotels, who is going to be leading that charge? Well, we know the brands are leaning into that. The Marriotts of the world are leaning into structuring themselves so they can be first movers in this space, and we’ll continue to partner with them on this. But when it comes to the independents, we’re really leaning into partnerships with booking engines that are on the cutting edge of setting up model context protocol so that we can be first movers in this space. Steve Carran: That’s great. That’s great. And kind of like you just mentioned, you do have such a large portfolio. How do you decide on where to invest your marketing dollars? You have OTAs, paid search, content, brand campaigns, and also things on the property level as well. Eric Ettlin: Yeah. Coming from the finance world, it starts with the data, right? It starts with understanding hotel by hotel, brand by brand, the performance of the asset both backward looking and forward looking. And you take the data, you break it down by segment, break it down by channel, understand the demand that’s coming to the market. Are we getting our fair share? Are we slipping on our fair share? If we’re slipping, where is that coming from? Is it coming from group? Is it coming from transient? And then really taking an individualized approach at setting up the right campaigns and strategies to drive success. So if you talk to the brands, it’s all about driving direct. Well, in the third-party management space, yes, we want to drive direct as much as possible, but if we have a short-term group fallout and turning on those direct channels is not going to move the needle as quickly as the OTAs, we’ll certainly lean into Expedia Travel Ads, Booking.com to help us backfill some of that lost business. So it’s really a balancing act. As the head of Second Wave, I can’t be reading all the reports for all 800 hotels simultaneously, obviously. So what we do as a leadership team within Second Wave is we take all the knowledge that we have and spend a ton of time with our teams helping them understand the process and how to read and interpret reports and set strategies accordingly. So it really resonates throughout the team, and I think that we are the best in the business at doing that. David Millili: That’s great. And so what advice would you have for the younger generation that is looking to get into or make hospitality their career? Eric Ettlin: First of all, I would say that it is one of the most fun industries to be a part of, right? I mean, who doesn’t love travel? And just the popularity of travel with the younger generations is one of the most important things to them, right? So being a part of that and being able to come to work every day and know that you are working in an industry where people are passionate about it, both from a consumer standpoint and the folks that are in third-party management and the brands, et cetera. I would say to the younger generation getting into a career if they choose travel, that not only is it an exciting place to be, you get to go see some amazing places, but if that’s your passion, especially with what is happening in the world of AI right now, stay curious, number one, and really be open-minded to learning and pivoting quickly. But also don’t forget that it’s all about the fundamentals, right? So Craig Smith, our CEO, joined the company nearly two years ago, and when he joined, yes, he’s incredibly curious, but he rooted us in the fundamentals of the business. We manage by a balanced scorecard, and the balanced scorecard has the key fundamental KPIs that any owner, any hotelier needs to know to drive success for an asset. And we review those balanced scorecards every single week so that we have a pulse check on which hotels are performing and which ones need help. But not just which ones are underperforming—where are they underperforming? Is it guest satisfaction? Is it RevPAR index? So the fundamentals is something that cannot be ignored. So for somebody that’s young coming into the industry, really spending the time to understand the industry, but also be curious about what’s coming around the corner because this is an exciting time with AI. Steve Carran: Great advice, great advice. So Eric, this is where we turn the tables and let you ask David and I a question. Eric Ettlin: Oh, wow. So you speak with countless individuals in this space. What are some of the most exciting topics that have come up over the past several months that you guys take back after a podcast and keep talking through? Steve Carran: David, do you want to take this one first, or do you want me to? David Millili: Sure. I mean, we just, it seems like what is happening now in the space is that, and I think AI is driving a lot of it, is that now I'm seeing actual AI solutions rather than talk. So I'm seeing people that are actually using AI in their solution, which is then forcing a lot of hoteliers to leverage AI and leverage technologies they weren’t adopting before. And I think what we're seeing now is things that we've talked about for decades, at least in my career, personalization, things of that nature, they're now actually coming through where everyone's talked about personalization for 25 years, but nobody was actually doing it. Nobody was fine-tuning it when it came to email marketing or the guest journey and things of that nature. So for me, I think AI is pushing the industry to adopting technology, which is a great thing to see. Steve Carran: Yeah, and I won't use the AI one, but I think it's really cool to see how hotels and hospitality is adjusting to the new types of travel. People are focused more on experiences now than ever. So seeing how hotels are incorporating these experiences into travel. We just had Ayesha Molino, the COO of MGM, come on, and she was talking about how for a couple of their hotels, with the changes that have been happening in Las Vegas, they now offer all-inclusive packages. So I think seeing how hotels are creating local experiences, local partnerships with the cities they're in, and really playing up the experiences, I think it's really exciting to watch. Eric Ettlin: I completely agree. Steve Carran: Awesome. Well, this has been great, Eric. Our producer Jon has been listening the entire time, so we're going to kick it over to him for one more question before we get you out of here. Jon Bumhoffer: So I've got a pretty focused question, and that is based on what you see all the time. What are you seeing on the video side of things? How are you guys leveraging video now in this new AI space? What are you seeing as trends? And then what are you seeing on polished video versus more user-generated or behind-the-scenes stuff? Do you have any insights there that could help hoteliers out? Eric Ettlin: It's a great question. Video has been and only continues to get more and more important. And it's kind of a tricky space, right? Because user-generated video content is critical, especially in the world of social media, right? TikTok is a big mover, especially with the younger generation and TikTok’s recent announcements with direct bookings and things of that nature. It's becoming ever more important. We put together video content for our high-profile resort properties. It’s incredibly important to have that polished video on the websites and in our media. But it costs money—you have to really make that investment as an owner to create that high-quality video content. So it's definitely a balancing act, and it depends on the medium you're putting that video in. But going back to my earlier point, I think video is becoming ever more important, especially with how short-term focused people have become with social media and the internet in general. People are not sitting there reading columns of information and content. They're being captured by video content, which tells an emotional story without requiring a long time to read through content. Jon Bumhoffer: Yeah, just one follow-up. What are you seeing any impact with AI and AI scraping of video or anything that you're changing the way you do video for AI versus maybe a way you've done it in the past? Have you seen anything like that? Eric Ettlin: I think there are probably a lot of folks that are starting to adopt and embrace that, and we're looking into that as well. I think that AI is potentially going to lower the cost for marketers in any space by putting AI models into a photograph, a still photograph that never had talent in those photos before. But it really depends on how quickly AI is able to improve the quality and the perceived reality, if you will, of that. But I certainly see that becoming a big game changer for us, and it's something that we're looking into. We haven't cracked the code yet on that, but I think there's an opportunity in the near future for us to really lean into that space. So I think that's a fabulous question. You're thinking in the right direction. But I don't know that it's quite there yet for us from a quality standpoint, but I'm sure it's just a short matter of time. Jon Bumhoffer: Interesting. David Millili: That does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is the part, Eric, where you get to let people know how they can get in touch with you and how they can find out more about Aimbridge. Eric Ettlin: Yeah. So we have a website, secondwavemarketing.com, that has information about all things Second Wave. Feel free to reach out, and we'd love to chat. Our team—I talked about the brand building earlier in this conversation—we have moved our brand building team from exclusively brand building for Aimbridge to now building brands outside of Aimbridge. So if there's anybody that has an independent soft-branded hotel that's looking for a branding team, we'd be happy to talk. David Millili: That's great. 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, Eric. Eric Ettlin: Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Steve Carran: Thank you.