Latest / Hospitality Daily Podcast / Hospitality Marketer of the Year: Jay Hubbs, BWH Hotels

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Hospitality Marketer of the Year: Jay Hubbs, BWH Hotels · Hospitality Daily Podcast

0:24
Josiah: Today, Jay Hubbs is being recognized by HSMAI's Marketing Professional of the Year And in this episode we're going one-on-one with him to learn what he's most proud of building the role of marketing in providing hospitality, what makes great advertising, the role of loyalty programs today, and much, much more.
0:40
Josiah: This episode is not just for marketers.
0:43
Josiah: Anyone who's interested in providing hospitality at scale is going to learn something from this conversation with Jay.
0:49
Josiah: Jay, Thank you so much for taking a little time to chat.
1:12
Josiah: You know we've known each other for a while.
1:15
Josiah: We actually worked together for a little stint.
1:17
Jay: We did, that's right.
1:19
Josiah: We've met you on your recognition as HSMAI's marketing professional of the year.
1:25
Josiah: Huge accomplishment, thank you, congratulations.
1:27
Jay: I appreciate it, Josiah.
1:28
Jay: It's very nice of you to say that.
1:30
Josiah: My question for you, jay, is why does marketing matter?
1:31
Josiah: We have, you know, we're in this environment where there is a lot of demand, A lot of people want to travel.
1:35
Josiah: It feels like there's new pockets of demand opening up.
1:38
Josiah: But I feel like there might be more to marketing than just customer acquisition.
1:42
Josiah: I want to get your take on it Why does marketing matter today, in 2023?
1:46
Jay: Yeah, i would say, Josiah, more so than ever.
1:49
Jay: you talk about whole pockets of whether it's acquisition or connecting with discrete customer segments, but I mean there's so many ways and so many channels and so many avenues to connect with whether it's your own guests or potential guests that it's such an exciting time, i'd say, in the industry overall.
2:10
Jay: Like I joke, we're going to probably touch on AI at some point here, but when there's so many different avenues to showcase your brand and to connect with all different spectrum of consumers or customers or potential guests or your existing guests we're trying to.
2:28
Jay: you know, here at BWH hotels and our competitors and everyone in the landscape, how do we craft that message directly to specific customer segments and go after customers through all kinds of different channels?
2:40
Jay: You know, josiah, i sort of laughed to myself when you asked me onto this podcast, because I'm going to exaggerate only slightly, but I think there were 18 different channels that you asked if I could put my contact information on.
2:55
Jay: Obviously all kinds of social channels that the usual suspects, but I'll admit, even as a pretty good marketer, a couple like I don't even know what that is.
3:03
Jay: So you know there's so many different ways to connect with people now and it's very exciting.
3:09
Jay: So I appreciate you asking that question and having me on the pod.
3:14
Josiah: Well, it's great to have you on and have a chance to chat with you, Jay.
3:17
Josiah: Again, congratulations on this recognition by HSMA.
3:19
Josiah: I mean, this is the premier body of hotel sales and marketing professionals.
3:24
Josiah: They're just the who's who right, and so to give you that recognition as market of the year is very exciting and a huge honor.
3:31
Josiah: I guess you know, as you look back on the past year, what are you most proud of building.
3:37
Jay: You know we've done a lot.
3:38
Jay: I've been here just in this role here at BWH Hotels.
3:41
Jay: You know our new, our new moniker for our company, best Western Hotels and Resorts and BWH Hotel groups And now we're BWH Hotels.
3:48
Jay: But I mean we've done a lot of different things but there's just a continued improvement in our award-winning loyalty program, bwr, and then our TV campaigns.
3:58
Jay: You know, for our loyalty program we're continually delivering improvements to the program to our loyal members.
4:05
Jay: We codified, making it easier to reach our most elite levels of diamond and diamond select.
4:09
Jay: We're giving them more access to free rooms.
4:12
Jay: We've done research that shows that that's what our members want most.
4:15
Jay: They want free nights.
4:16
Jay: And similarly, about two years ago we launched our Pay With Points program, which has been a huge success for our members to defray the cost if it's an expensive room that I can use some of my points to pay for that, you know to take my family on a great vacation and stay at one of our fantastic hotels.
4:33
Jay: And so, additionally, like we are membership, we're kind of like a franchise but we're not.
4:37
Jay: So at the same time we're improving the value of these programs, of the BWH program, to our membership and to our hotels, and that's been key on what we've done over the last year.
4:47
Jay: And then just I'd say, on the TV and the digital side, we continue to iterate, working with our digital and creative agencies and constantly seeing what we can do differently to cut through the noise.
4:58
Jay: I mean, there's a lot more competition out there now, i'd say in digital and also on TV all the ads that you see out there.
5:06
Jay: So what is really a crowd of space?
5:09
Jay: We're looking at different measurement tools and different things that we can see.
5:12
Jay: Like are the ads that we're putting out there connecting with like we were talking about, you know different audiences out there.
5:18
Jay: So really proud of a lot we've done just in the last year.
5:21
Jay: To your question And since I've been here for a couple of years now, That's amazing And maybe we could talk a little bit about advertising.
5:30
Josiah: I've been reading about Ogilvy and just I've always, I think, been a really interested in what creates great ads.
5:36
Josiah: You know, going back to the bad men days all the way to today, And you know you've seen this from so many different angles, from your perspective, What makes great advertising?
5:47
Jay: Well, you have to.
5:47
Jay: It has to be memorable first and foremost.
5:50
Jay: So you know there's lots of people that say, you know, you'd rather be talked about than not talked about.
5:57
Jay: So even if it's maybe not memorable in a great way, but you know that it's something that people latch onto, we talk about.
6:05
Jay: Is it a great ad If you don't remember what the brand is or what the brand positioning is?
6:10
Jay: So then I would tie that with the memorable piece and the key components of that with.
6:16
Jay: For us, specifically in the travel space, i say there's got to be an aspirational component to it.
6:21
Jay: It's going to.
6:23
Jay: It wants you to get in the car or hop on a train or maybe get on a plane.
6:27
Jay: Sometimes that's a good experience, it's not, but it wants to incentivize and inspire people to go there, to go travel, to stay there, to experience it.
6:37
Jay: So i think for us in the hospitality industry, when you talk about what makes great advertising, it's about getting people excited about yes, i should take that next trip.
6:46
Jay: And whether it's an aspirational place to go stay, or whether it's like, oh, you know what i should, i should go back home and see mom or grandma or whatever.
6:53
Jay: You know what are the aspirational and inspirational components of that that i think, tie to a A great advertising campaign and, like i said, start like it's got to be memorable.
7:04
Jay: You know there too many ads out there, even whether you can skip them or not, that I don't even know what i watched half of the time, but i remember the ones that definitely stick with me.
7:14
Josiah: It's so funny because it's really really hard to create great advertising.
7:19
Josiah: It requires a lot of a lot of science.
7:21
Josiah: I'm curious what you've learned over your career around the process of creating great advertising.
7:26
Josiah: Weather, that's internal, external collaboration.
7:29
Josiah: What have you found are the kind of the ingredients of the building blocks of creating these campaigns?
7:34
Jay: minutes there's.
7:34
Jay: There's a lot of.
7:36
Jay: When you say process, that's a great work, is there's a lot of refinement, i would say Feedback that goes into it.
7:42
Jay: You know, i have one of my best friends from college, had his work for ogle v, as you mentioned, and start his own ad agency for a while And i love what he and his team would put out.
7:54
Jay: But we talked about how, you know, not every idea starts off as a great idea.
7:59
Jay: You know, and you put like a whole bunch of things together and For those you know in your audience that maybe you've taken some improvisational comedy classes or whatever.
8:09
Jay: It's all about the plus one like how can i refine this?
8:12
Jay: how it's it's.
8:12
Jay: Every one of us can be a critic and everyone say i don't like this or i don't like that or whatever.
8:16
Jay: But it takes a much stronger team to say, all right, what can we build on off of that?
8:21
Jay: what is the?
8:22
Jay: what can we refine?
8:23
Jay: what can we add to what we?
8:25
Jay: plus one on where can we take this?
8:27
Jay: and a lot of times what you end up with is something Is either radically different than what you started or somewhat different.
8:35
Jay: But you get that kind of feedback user, some your gut feel user intuition a lot of times.
8:41
Jay: Ideally you're using some, you know, customer research or feedback there as well.
8:47
Jay: Some companies do a lot of that, some companies don't do so much.
8:49
Jay: There is a good example of a car company.
8:52
Jay: I put an ad out probably about a year and a half ago and there's one component that was terrible And for me as a consumer like i, don't have any affinity for this car brand.
9:03
Jay: But There's a component of the talent that was terrible.
9:08
Jay: Well, clearly they had done research and i wasn't the only one that set it, because then about two months later the next version came out And these two actors had a much different interaction, was much more positive.
9:20
Jay: So, rooted in that customer feedback and research i think is is key as well, but it's a process and There's no magic bullet to.
9:29
Jay: It's great to throw a lot of things on the wall and see what sticks and then iterate off of that, but you know it's fun.
9:35
Jay: It's a great time to be in our industry, that's for sure.
9:38
Josiah: Yeah, for sure, and i love that.
9:39
Josiah: Just a lot of testing, a lot of trying things, and that's where the art piece come.
9:42
Jay: Yes, yeah yeah, it is.
9:44
Jay: Ideally, it is an art and a science.
9:46
Jay: i like to think.
9:48
Jay: I watch a lot of sports, so therefore i get inundated with insurance company ads, so i see a lot of those That clearly, some of them work better than others.
9:58
Jay: But i would like to think it's rooted in research of identifying whether it's a, a guy in a red shirt or a guy with stitches, or a lizard or what not, like what's really gonna work, or the lady in the white smock and her team set.
10:14
Jay: They've all created these sort of like little niches of how they're going about and trying to get their message across.
10:20
Jay: But for companies as big as that, it is absolutely rooted in that research and that customer feedback.
10:26
Josiah: That's really cool because i you mentioned insurance and it feels like there's also a piece to this of looking in many different places for inspiration around what could be done, and I think research is key.
10:36
Josiah: you know, you and i worked at a company that was doing guest feedback analysis for a while and i think that's a piece of the puzzle, but there's also an imagination piece right, and, yeah, create from scratch.
10:47
Jay: you gotta get expose yourself to a lot of stuff right, that is true, there's a lot of put stuff out there.
10:52
Jay: Again, my, my good friend from college.
10:54
Jay: I mentioned like He came up with some great, i mean very creative guy and he would come up with some crazy stuff.
10:59
Jay: When i listen to, like, yeah, that's, that's never gonna see the light today.
11:02
Jay: But, like i said, that's where you start from, it's like okay, like i like aspects of this, let's work with that, etc.
11:08
Jay: So, yeah, that's a, that's an iteration piece that we have with our agency here and everyone else in the industry does.
11:14
Jay: But it's easy to be the critic, but when you got lots of different things to choose from, then it's great to cobble together.
11:22
Jay: What does our campaign look like?
11:24
Jay: Our campaign that we're running with right now I'm really happy with, i'm really proud of, kudos to our new CEO, larry Kukulik.
11:31
Jay: He's been in the position almost two years now but pushed us to do something different.
11:38
Jay: Our agency came back and we iterated on a few different things and recycled some great iconic music from the 90s which not everyone remembers.
11:47
Jay: There's some younger demographics out there but when we started running it last year, immediately got a lot of texts like I love that.
11:54
Jay: I love that you're using that music Sometimes it works.
11:58
Josiah: I feel like there's a lot of nostalgia right now.
11:59
Josiah: There's like this nostalgia thing going on.
12:02
Jay: Yeah, yeah, nostalgia plus or celebrities, right, those are two of the hallmarks.
12:10
Josiah: Two good building blocks there?
12:11
Josiah: Yes, 100%.
12:12
Josiah: Yeah, i love it.
12:13
Josiah: I love it.
12:14
Josiah: Talking to you, jay, it seems like you're having a lot of fun.
12:17
Josiah: I guess I'd be curious to hear what you enjoy most about your role, because you have teams across so many different disciplines.
12:22
Jay: Yeah, What's the?
12:23
Josiah: most fun about your job.
12:25
Jay: We have a great team here.
12:25
Jay: I can sort of small but mighty Sometimes we use the word scrappy et cetera but the team here is passionate, they're dedicated.
12:36
Jay: We have smart people that are focused on how we're going to drive impact to our hotels.
12:42
Jay: That's what you want in a marketing organization.
12:45
Jay: You want people who come into work and are excited every day about what they're focused on and what we're very clear about our corporate goals and the direction that we're going in and understanding every little bit that everyone's doing to row in the same direction so that we're achieving the business goals that we've set out for ourselves.
13:05
Jay: I take pride in making sure that everyone in our team understands what our vision is and what our goals are and what piece they play in it.
13:14
Jay: Similarly, we get a lot of support from our member hotels.
13:17
Jay: Like I said, we're kind of like a franchisee or a franchisor, but we're not a membership organization.
13:22
Jay: We get input from them on what's important and we can incorporate that into our strategies or our approach from a strategic basis that really tries to find those win-win what's exciting to a consumer but what else is going to put money in the pockets of our hotel years.
13:56
Jay: I've been here a little over two years now, and I love it.
14:00
Jay: I think it's a great organization and we're headed in the right direction.
14:04
Josiah: That's awesome.
14:04
Josiah: Looking back on your career, what experiences or factors have played the biggest role in helping you get where you are today?
14:12
Josiah: I think the reason I'm asking is you've worked across so many different areas, whether it's revenue and commercial marketing, some operational roles you work kind of inside, outside hospitality some tech roles.
14:23
Josiah: You have an MBA from Wharton.
14:24
Josiah: You have all these experiences that maybe are a little bit atypical.
14:29
Josiah: I'm curious, as you kind of think about you and your marketing leadership role today.
14:34
Josiah: Are some of those?
14:36
Josiah: have some of those been more valuable to you?
14:40
Jay: It's hard to pinpoint one specific thing or one or two specific roles.
14:44
Jay: The advice that I gave to my junior team here a few months ago is like taking advantage of the opportunities that were presented to me, especially early in my career, and then leaning on the advice of mentors.
14:55
Jay: It's so important, especially as you're earlier in your career, to understand what those opportunities are and lean into them.
15:03
Jay: When you and I worked together over 10 years ago, it was a huge opportunity.
15:07
Jay: It was a leap of faith.
15:09
Jay: I was given all kinds of opportunities and you're right.
15:12
Jay: I've come in and out of the industry working in hotels, working at OTAs, working at brands, working at management companies, et cetera, as well as companies that are outside of the direct travel industry.
15:23
Jay: I'm thankful for all these different steps that I've taken, because I learned so much each time and never been afraid to take on a new challenge or new responsibilities.
15:32
Jay: I guess the career advice I'd never be afraid to take on more responsibility and certainly ask for the support of your teammates and your peers and find those mentors to help you, because I think that's what's been key to me as I've gone up through my career.
15:47
Josiah: I love that.
15:48
Josiah: I wonder if you spoke to this a little bit before, but just talk a little bit more about the role of marketing in providing hospitality.
15:55
Josiah: What is that role of marketing, whether it's setting expectations or something else, but how do you think about that?
16:03
Jay: Yeah, i think there's a continued evolution towards a better user experience in marketing.
16:07
Jay: I joked about the insurance companies, but what is that user experience when it comes to insurance?
16:15
Jay: I'm dealing with it right now with my insurance company, which is a whole other podcast or discussion, whether it's online or if it's all those different social media channels that we're touching on, whether it's linear or connected TV.
16:27
Jay: I want to compete for the right customers and speak directly to the people that are interested in my brand and then my elite customers in the way that they want.
16:36
Jay: Marketing is getting there.
16:38
Jay: I think your question around great hospitality, you're right.
16:44
Jay: I want to set that right expectation.
16:45
Jay: We have a very wide range of hotels.
16:48
Jay: We have our Sure Stay brands.
16:50
Jay: We have our Core Best Western plus, our premieres.
16:52
Jay: We have our collections hotels.
16:55
Jay: We have our boutique properties.
16:56
Jay: We have our luxury world hotels.
16:59
Jay: We've got all these different brands that speak to different audiences.
17:04
Jay: I need to leverage the right message, target that to the right consumer at the right place at the right time all those sort of things.
17:11
Jay: But My lens when you turn into hospitality, so that I'm I'm making that match for them and I think a younger, the younger demographics now are, they're all about that.
17:22
Jay: They're all about getting that kind of content Directly to them, whether it's, you know, in a paid format or a native format, or through an influencer or organically, trying to find out what is right for me as a consumer and as a marketer.
17:37
Jay: I want to be able to speak to you when you're coming to visit Phoenix, because I got just about everything under the sun no pun intended value the sun Here in Phoenix with regards to a great hotel here in Phoenix, whether it's a best Western or collection, or you are a dinner or or new vibe brands, etc.
17:55
Jay: So I think when it's providing that real hospitality from a marketing standpoint, it's an opportunity for us as marketers to To get to a point where there really is one to one marketing through a lot of these different channels.
18:06
Jay: And it's so exciting that I think that For anybody that's listening your pod, who's thinking about getting into it or starting to, or wants to learn more or whatever, like You know, i've got folks my team that you know are super passionate about social media.
18:20
Jay: You know, and they know more about social media than I can never know.
18:23
Jay: But that's like that's what they want to do and that's fantastic, and if that's What somebody wants to do, then take that passion and run with it, because there's opportunities that we've been open position here at best Western at which hotels right now for social media manager, in case anyone's interested.
18:37
Jay: But We didn't.
18:41
Jay: We didn't plan that, actually I didn't plan that.
18:44
Jay: But there's so many different opportunities and I was just meeting right for this with our Page search or a meta search team and I got a team that's passionate about that.
18:52
Jay: I've got a whole brand marketing team that's passionate about what they do.
18:54
Jay: So It's so exciting.
18:57
Jay: But when you talk about the role of marketing, there's so many different roles that marketing plays in in us, in helping us as a hospitality Industry.
19:06
Jay: So there's never a dearth of things to work on, that's for sure.
19:09
Josiah: Yeah, and what's interesting to me because you touched earlier on the inspiration, aspirational role of advertising, yeah, and then I think, on things like social media, i'm almost engaging with the brand of the property before I arrived there.
19:20
Josiah: Right, it's interesting to me because, you know, when I was growing up, my family would go to this best Western hotel in Michigan and it was my favorite hotel and it was just beautiful and it was very different from all the other branded hotels, and so there was there's kind of that unique aspect.
19:34
Josiah: But for me, you know, being an American, there's a certain sense of, you know, best Western has this American affiliation but your global company and growing rapidly internationally, and I imagine that same curiosity applies as you think about international growth, or what are these Opportunities here?
19:52
Jay: it doesn't.
19:52
Jay: And I'm glad you brought that up because, yeah, we were in over a hundred countries.
19:55
Jay: We have Over forty three hundred hotels worldwide, about twenty four hundred here in the US and Canada, so call it almost two thousand worldwide.
20:05
Jay: And we were all, we all got together in in London just a few few months ago and talked about You know how we are marketing in our different regions and the quality of product, and we have some amazing, amazing hotels in in Germany and Great Britain, in Sweden, in France, in Italy and Greece, in Asia.
20:23
Jay: There's a hotel in Frankfurt where you can park your car on your balcony.
20:27
Jay: Pull up, your car goes up.
20:31
Jay: It's there next year, i mean.
20:33
Jay: So it's, it's really cool stuff.
20:35
Jay: And and when we're talking earlier about how you, how you, i do Identify the right customers and speak to them to the right way, yo, that is not the right hotel or the right message for every best western rewards or every bwh hotels customer right.
20:52
Jay: And it's our challenge to to incentivize the people that that is a cool hotel to go check out.
20:58
Jay: Who i know are traveling internationally, who i know maybe are in the cars, maybe they, maybe they're going over to germany to test out the autobahn or get their new car from the buyer, motor works, etc.
21:11
Jay: Like.
21:11
Jay: Those are the customers that i need to, i need to hone in on, and then they can test out the hotel in frankfort where they could park their new car out there on the balcony.
21:22
Jay: So you know i'm gonna go look that up after this, that's for sure, yeah yeah, it's the be mine hotel, be and then mine, just like it sounds, in frankfort.
21:32
Jay: It's pretty cool.
21:33
Jay: So you know so many different opportunities for us.
21:35
Jay: But again, i recognize that our customer base here in the us, you know a lot of them are going to the hotel in michigan.
21:41
Jay: Or you know i live in dallas, texas, and we've got, i think, over 400 hotels in in the texas area.
21:48
Jay: You know texas region clean the neighboring states and so some people just want to stay in texas or they just want to go in the gulf.
21:55
Jay: Or you know, with a lot of hotels in california or in florida, very focused on that local road trip, but then we also have road warriors who are out there every week and accumulating our beta.
22:06
Jay: We are points and want to go stay somewhere exotic, whether it's the hotel in frankfort or the hotel we've hotel that's on a canal in venice that i'm like i need to go there hundred percent.
22:17
Jay: So lots of great opportunities for us for, as marketers, to try to incentivize travel when you mentioned points and i'm really curious.
22:25
Josiah: I was listening to an interview did with loyalty 360 and i want to link to that.
22:29
Josiah: I think it was recorded a couple of years ago and i think, as you were recording, that you know we're coming out of the pandemic thinking about recovery.
22:35
Josiah: I'm curious now you know, a couple of years later, what's the importance or opportunity of a rewards program today and how's that evolved?
22:43
Jay: over the past couple years we all took a hit through coven right and and budgets and staff and marketing budgets, etc.
22:51
Jay: And you know a lot of us took an opportunity then to hit a reset button and for us there's a huge opportunity and we're still refining what our our future for bwr looks like.
23:04
Jay: Again, we have world hotels.
23:05
Jay: We actually bought that collection of hotels and that affiliate group about a year before 2020, so in 2019 or late 2018.
23:14
Jay: So we're still figuring out how that weaves into the bwr ecosystem because they have their own world hotels rewards.
23:21
Jay: But you know, whether it's relaunches or mergers or our good friends at expedia and what they're doing with their their new loyalty program, you know there's so many different opportunities for us to identify what's what's gonna be important to our customer base and what are the things.
23:38
Jay: As i mentioned, access to free rooms or discounted rooms, like that's that's their number one, number one one.
23:44
Jay: So that's what we've been working on.
23:46
Jay: But it's a hyper competitive market and the crazy thing is, you know we all talk about the millions and millions of members in in each of our loyalty programs, which tells me that there's plenty of opportunity.
23:58
Jay: Each of us has our cream of the crop.
24:00
Jay: You know, the top 10, 15%, that will only stay at a best western or marriott or hilton or an igh property.
24:08
Jay: But after that we've got lots of people who have everyone of our cards in our wall in their wallets, and so how do I make sure that, whether it's a promotional offer or again talking about a hotel that really inspires them to travel to, to frankfurter, to venice, and that's an opportunity for me to convert that customer to stay with us more often.
24:27
Jay: That is a hallmark of what we want to do with the bwr program that's super exciting and I feel you know an underlying theme underneath.
24:36
Josiah: Whether it's that or some of the segmented personalized communication that you mentioned earlier, data is the underlying yes, thread here and I'm curious here in 2023?
24:45
Josiah: what are the the challenges our industry faces with with regards to data and how are you thinking of working through those?
24:51
Jay: we're.
24:51
Jay: We're constantly having discussions about it.
24:55
Jay: You know whether it's when.
24:56
Jay: When did GDPR come out in Europe?
24:59
Jay: that?
25:00
Jay: five years ago.
25:01
Jay: That was a big thing.
25:02
Jay: And now California has their Consumer Protection Act and more states are enacting things and and our, our external legal counsel says it's only a matter of time before there is a nationwide.
25:14
Jay: But you know laws and acts enacted on this but on this front.
25:20
Jay: But you know, at the end of the day, those of us that are marketers who play by the book, let's just put it that way.
25:27
Jay: We want to keep customer data safe.
25:30
Jay: We want to market people in the way that they want to be connected.
25:35
Jay: And if someone raises their hand and say I don't want to see that ad on Facebook, or I don't want to be targeted on YouTube, et cetera, most of us are like fine, i'll take you off the list, i'll try to suppress that for you.
25:46
Jay: But I would say, for every one of those again, we talk about the demographic shifts that we're seeing in our country For every one of those, there's a legion of people who want this sort of content fed to them.
25:59
Jay: And again, like I said earlier in the pot, if it's paid, if it's organic, if it's native, it's an influencer.
26:05
Jay: There's all kinds of different channels where people are consuming this media and recognizing that it is marketing content that's being fed to them, a lot of times through a paid channel, but a lot of people are fine with it.
26:16
Jay: And so, with regards to the data, if I'm understanding you as a consumer better, that's great.
26:22
Jay: If it's gone to a point where now it's crossed the line and someone raises their hand and say now I feel like I'm being targeted, then that's an opportunity for us to hone our algorithms and be better as marketers, but it will continue to be a challenge 100%.
26:38
Josiah: And I'm curious as you look to the years ahead.
26:40
Josiah: We could take this in an AI direction or not, but I'm curious as you see the media data communication landscape evolving.
26:48
Josiah: What are some of the interesting opportunities emerging that are on your radar?
26:53
Jay: I mean.
26:53
Jay: Ai presents a lot of different great opportunities.
26:56
Jay: It also presents some challenges.
26:59
Jay: There's potential for bad actors out there And, while I'm less concerned for us as a brand per se, if I were to sit amongst my peers, as I will do, in Toronto for the HSMAI commercial strategy week, i'm sure we'll talk about that.
27:16
Jay: For those of us with big brands it'll be a concern how people may manipulate that.
27:23
Jay: But I look at things more glass half full, that there's plenty of opportunities for us.
27:29
Jay: I'm of the lens and certainly as a hospitality marketer and a hotelier at heart from my upbringing, i want people to stay in a hotel.
27:39
Jay: I want people to experience that.
27:41
Jay: I want people to stay at our hotels worldwide And there's nothing that can change that without getting in the car or in a train or an Uber or whatever to get to a hotel and get to a new destination.
27:53
Jay: So if I have to use AI or if I have to use VR, i have to use things to get you to be inspired to go to Greece, rather than just putting on goggles and say, okay, i went to Santorini and now I've been there It's very different.
28:06
Jay: So that's what I think our goal is marketers to do.
28:12
Jay: We're joking about my twins, which are 12 and a half years old, who are very addicted to their Apple devices and their video games, et cetera.
28:21
Jay: So I have aspirations.
28:23
Jay: They love to travel.
28:24
Jay: We took them to New York for the first time, new York City a couple of weeks ago, and experiencing that with them.
28:31
Jay: I mean, they love to travel, but recognizing like you don't get this.
28:34
Jay: If you're just looking at videos of New York on your phone, right, you can look all kinds of great content and YouTube videos and TikToks and Snapchats et cetera, about inspirational things, about going to see New York City, but until you actually get there and you get in the subway and you take the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and you go up to the Empire State Building, until you do that, like it's different.
28:59
Jay: And so for us as marketers you know leveraging all these different channels And if it means I need to create something in AI to lure you, so it's like gets to a point like, okay, now I have to go to New York, then that's what we need to do as a marketer.
29:11
Jay: I just hope it doesn't get to a point where we're all sitting around with goggles on our heads all the time.
29:18
Josiah: It's a pretty dystopian future.
29:19
Josiah: Yeah, it is, but I think.
29:21
Josiah: but if I think about you know, i'm always thinking you know what is, what are the capabilities we need to develop to succeed in that world?
29:28
Josiah: And I think, if I think back to earlier in our conversation, there's this sense of creativity.
29:33
Josiah: There was you know, yes, an ounce of science, but there's.
29:36
Josiah: There's kind of this imagination, muscle or capability that it sounds like is a core thing to maintain and build as we're becoming increasingly AI driven.
29:47
Jay: I agree with that.
29:47
Jay: Yeah, i mean, the creativity is there and and and understanding what does your customer base want and what are the channels that you need to leverage to reach them.
29:57
Jay: So there's no, no dearth of opportunities for all of us, but you know, some of us are are more bleeding edge than others.
30:07
Jay: I will say in the in the space.
30:08
Jay: So we'll dabble in a few different things and we'll test some things out, but you know, we may let others lead the way and see how how it goes for them.
30:17
Jay: But it's an exciting time, it really is.
30:21
Josiah: It really is, i guess you know.
30:22
Josiah: In closing, i'm curious, what you're most excited about.
30:25
Josiah: You talked about some exciting international opportunities.
30:28
Josiah: You know whether it's that or something else.
30:29
Josiah: What are you excited about for the remainder of the year and heading into next?
30:33
Jay: I'll go back to that.
30:34
Jay: That people want to travel, yo, it's.
30:37
Jay: It's an interesting economic environment right now, i'm sure political environment, but we're not going to talk about it, of course.
30:44
Jay: But, like I talked about, you can experience thing virtually or watch videos online until you go there and you smell the air and you taste the food and you see different things and experience new cultures and honestly, just so, it's not about going to New York or going to Venice or going to To Frankfurt.
31:02
Jay: I live in Dallas and 50 miles away it's, it's different.
31:04
Jay: I mean actually a joke with people who don't know the Dallas Metroplex that Dallas and Fort Worth are very, very different cultures, very different cities, and I love going to Fort Worth.
31:15
Jay: So experiencing that is part of what is all about travel and hospitality is a cornerstone of that.
31:21
Jay: Our new vision is inspiring travel through unique experiences we have.
31:25
Jay: We have unique hotels, we have unique hotel owners.
31:29
Jay: Every one of us is unique and every experiences on our on our travels are unique.
31:34
Jay: And again, going back to New York is fun to Kind of experience it through the eyes of my boys.
31:39
Jay: I live there for a while, my wife lived there for a long time.
31:42
Jay: It'll be interesting to see, like what they would really solidifies in their minds about their first trip to New York.
31:48
Jay: I remember my first trip to New York.
31:50
Jay: I was 17 years old, but really we experience that.
31:53
Jay: That's when it becomes part of who we are.
31:56
Jay: You know, i remember going here.
31:57
Jay: I remember doing that.
31:58
Jay: So I think hospitality is a key component to that.
32:02
Jay: And obviously we're here talking about marketing.
32:04
Jay: So I'm all about marketing different hotels and different destinations and trying to get people out there again, whether it's To go 5000 miles away or 500 miles away, or, for me, even 50 miles away for most of us it's a different part of the country and getting people to experience that and recognize it.
32:21
Jay: We We joked about years ago about the term staycation or Leisure, business and leisure, and now here we are.
32:29
Jay: We live it right people.
32:30
Jay: They do staycations and go not too far away, or they Do mix their business and their leisure trips and stay on a Thursday night or stay on a Sunday night.
32:39
Jay: We've seen increases in that and I and I think it's fantastic.
32:42
Jay: I think it's all about inspiring people to go and And if you have to go somewhere for work and like, let me tack on another day or two and check more things out.
32:50
Jay: I was on a call earlier today with a gentleman and talking about his Midwest Rust Belt City that people frown upon.
32:58
Jay: But we had our convention there is in Cleveland last year and it was fantastic and I said I want to come back to Cleveland, actually want to take My boys to Cleveland, go back and see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and go to a Cleveland Guardians game and experience like little things like that, that I don't have to go to To Venice or to Paris to really experience, you know, a different change in travel and be inspired.
33:20
Jay: My quick trip to Cleveland last year was inspirational enough for me that I want.
33:24
Jay: I want to go back, but I also want to go to Venice and to Santorini another places to sell, too many places, not enough time, just Well that's what we're doing, this, and I can't think of a better way to kind of, like you know, bring this all home is like.
33:38
Josiah: That's why we're doing all this right is to inspire people to have these moments, to build relationships, to discover the world, discover themselves.
33:43
Josiah: Yes, it's really exciting.