Today we’re joined by Lissa Gruman, a partner at Gruman & Nicoll Public Relations specializing in getting media coverage for hotels.

Our conversation – shared in three parts – explains how to design a PR campaign for your hotel, the promotional value of stories and unique amenities, and how merging traditional and new media can help you reach more guests.

Josiah: How would you define your job as a public relations specialist?

Lissa: I see myself in three parts: One, advocate for the client; two, representative of their business; and three, as a creative director in communicating with the media.

Josiah: How do you really understand a client’s business?

Lissa: In my experience, the long-term relationships that are extremely integrated tend to be the most successful, unless of course you’re doing a short-term project that has a very clear start and you know exactly what the end goal is.

I can’t stress enough the sharing of information, how important that is. I represent hotels and lifestyle industries, and those industries – as it relates to garnering press – are often related to trends, to activities, obviously any sort of economic climate – recessions – would fall in there as well. But I need information from the client to be a good communicator on their behalf.

Josiah: What are some of the common misconceptions that you feel are out there about public relations?

Lissa: One, that public relations is a fix-all for a problem or a concern in an organization that may have deeper roots. I think that often businesses arrive at the public relations doorstep as a last gasp in trying to figure out what’s wrong with their company, either why they’re not selling more or gaining more traction.

And I think the belief is there that if they had more public awareness, that their business would be driven accordingly. And in some cases, that can impact it. But if there are other issues at play, public relations really is not a fix-all.

The second piece of that is to really realize that the public relations professional in a lot of organizations – if it’s a contract position – is one of those positions that kind of comes and goes. In good times, it’s added. In bad times, it’s taken away. I think it’s often perceived as the fluff part of a communications and marketing strategy. And in fact, it’s really one arm or one spoke in the wheel of a comprehensive program.

Josiah: It sounds like you need to be working on these relationships from the start. Thinking, how can we communicate with the press, with our customers, with our target audience in a very sustainable manner.

Lissa: I think that’s exactly it. In designing a campaign, everybody has to be in mutual and very clear agreement about what the end goal is. And with that end goal, what success looks like and doesn’t look like for everybody.

I have a series of questions that I will either send to a client or go over with the client — typically, it’s one of those that I like to leave with them or send to them in advance — that identifies what the clear goals and expectations are for both parties.

I’m very clear, always, to not make promises that I don’t feel I can achieve. I think if you go into it saying that you can deliver one thing and you’re unable to do that, it creates a lot of animosity and is not really good for the working relationship. As a PR practitioner, your job is to help guide and frame the company persona to the public via the media.

Josiah: I’d like for you to walk us through the steps that you go through when designing a PR campaign. And perhaps we could begin with, how do we identify or formulate this big goal at the start?

Lissa: Good question. I think it requires a lot of discussion. Everybody’s favorite project, mine included, is a new product launch. Those are the best, because everybody is very excited, and it has been unseen, probably unwritten about for the most part. So at that point in time, it’s really about sitting down and getting a full understanding of what is your product or service, what differentiates it amongst other like products and services, and who are the constituent groups that we want to know about your product or service.

With that in mind, with everybody being very clear at the table on who those groups are and where we’re trying to get to, I would typically – and specifically with hotels – look at the different media groups that I want to reach.

For example, what is the business story? Is it the amount of money that has been put into the build of a new hotel? Is it a renovation? And with that, I would probably go to business media accordingly saying, “here’s your business story regarding the financial piece of this.”

If it’s lifestyle, I would try to pull out the exciting features of the property. Perhaps you’ve got a specific designer that you’ve worked with. Perhaps there’s been a commitment to artwork within a hotel property. There may be a spa or a special feature that makes it unique.

Certainly with hotels – with food and beverage being a big part – I would look at the culinary program. Independently of hotels, I represent a lot of restaurants and chefs, so I’m always looking for that hook as we like to call it in the PR world. What is the hook? What differentiates your product and service from your competitors?

In structuring [your PR campaign], look at the different outreach possibilities for media and the key themes or stories that you can put together to pitch to them. And then, drilling down further from that, who within those specific publications – whether they be online or print – do you really want to reach? Where do you get the biggest bang for the buck?

If it’s an existing business, those strategies become more complicated, and at that point you really, really have to be very clear and very honest about what you have to offer that is distinguishing from your competition and your comp set. Specifically with hotels, that’s really important.

Thank you, Lissa!

[Check back next week to learn how storytelling and unique amenities can boost your hotel's PR campaign.]

Thank you, Kara!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Karl Bruno as part of the research for my upcoming book on service. Karl is General Manager of Kenwood Inn & Spa – a top-10 small resort in the United States, according to Conde Nast 2010 rankings. Below are a few of the big ideas I took away from the conversation.

“We constantly improve through guest feedback.”

Each of our staff members – regardless of their position – is trained to listen to guests and ask open-ended questions to gather guest feedback. We don’t want to be intrusive, but there for their every need.

The industry norm is to have all staff/guest interactions scripted and minimized. I do not agree with the philosophy of “as few words as possible.” We encourage informal conversation with guests.

I try to connect with each guest over breakfast each morning, and ask how their stay is going.

“We designed our property to encourage conversation.”

For example, many of our guests enjoy talking around our horseshoe-shaped bar. Our clientele is very well traveled, and many lively conversations happen here over some of our great local wines.

The design of your rooms affects how guests interact.

“We offer each guest a welcome beverage and tour of the entire property on check-in.”

This usually takes about 15 minutes, but gives us the opportunity to learn more about what the guest hopes to get out of their stay. A lot of conversation happens during this tour.

We can then help them plan their itinerary for touring the area.

It’s important to set the tone right from the start.

“Hiring the right people doesn’t require psychoanalysis.”

I hire people who engage well with me, our staff and our guests. Hiring is a group decision I make with my managers. We want the person to fit in well with everyone.

In my experience, you cannot change behavior that was taught – so I hire people with good values.

“Just because it’s always been done this way….”

…doesn’t mean it’s right. The best hospitality companies of the future might have to do things a lot differently than service has been offered in the past.

Watch part one of a video interview series I created with VFM Leonardo on the subject of content marketing:

If you would like more information on the topic, you should check out my free guide to content marketing.

Geraldine Daly is a strategy consultant based in Ireland with an extensive background in hospitality (@TweetieBirdies on Twitter). On today’s call, she explains why we need to stop being afraid of change, and how to embrace it instead. I think you’ll find it as helpful as I did. Listen now:

Josiah: Why do the people in the hotel and travel industry need to be embracing change?

Geraldine: I think the first point about change is that it’s constantly happening around us, so if we don’t embrace it, we’re just going to get lost in the crowd. It’s in the interest of any individual hotel or hotel group out there to embrace change as fast as we can so that we can maintain competitive advantage, so that we can survive, and so that the product and services can evolve with client demands, which are ever-changing.

Josiah: If some hoteliers out there are afraid of some of this change, what would you say to them?

Geraldine: I would say it’s very important to listen to the right people, because there’s an awful lot of messaging coming at us at the moment, and there’s a lot of disagreement between experts in certain areas on change, technology, potential growth markets, etc. I think it’s very important to select the right mentors.

One of the most important articles – I believe – to read is the Amadeus Gold Travel Rush document. It’s a really good document that’s been put together about the travel industry in general, and it talks about the changes that are coming at us. It tells us things like that the travel industry is making an uneven recovery, that Asia will represent 30% of the travel business and spend by 2020, so we need to be focusing some attention towards Asia and how we’re going to develop that business.

These are things that we’re being told we now need to change, so if we’re not listening to what we’re being recommended to do and actually implementing change, we’re just not going to survive… because other people will do it.

Becoming Better Informed

Josiah: What is your criteria for selecting information, selecting mentors?

Geraldine: I think it really is time to look to people who have done the right things up until now, because it’s people who have been doing the wrong things up until now who are telling us what to do in the future. I have a great hesitation about listening to these people. So, look at the people who are making the predictions up until now and getting it right.

I’m a great believer in looking to Cornell School of Hotel Administration; I think they’re constantly evolving their model there and looking at different ways to enhance management in a global way. I think we need to look at general trends in consumers; I think that’s very important, because I think we need to look inside and outside of our industry, and I also think it’s very important to keep an eye on what the airlines are doing because – let’s face it – the airlines are the leaders in the hospitality sector, as far as I’m concerned.

Using Analytics for Forward Planning

Josiah: Can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on benchmarking our present status and using a little bit of analytics for forward future planning?

Geraldine: I think we’re never going to get to a particular point in the future if we don’t understand our starting point. It’s really important to sit down and analyze where our business is currently at.

It’s extremely easy to do now, with all the information that comes at us from our front office systems. We have incredible reporting opportunities that are only being utilized – I would say, maybe – up to ten percent within the hotel sector.

There is a great opportunity there to properly research the statistical information that we have in hand, to review it on a weekly, monthly basis. It’ll help us with our forecasting, and it really is important to know the “Why?” and the “Where?” your clients are coming from, and “Why are they actually staying with you? How do they choose you instead of another hotel?”

Josiah: Are there any other sources of information or other analytics programs that you would recommend?

Geraldine: I find that Google Analytics – if used properly – is one of the best, and my recommendations to any of the hotels is to focus on specific things and to do those properly. What’s happening at the moment is there’s so much information out there. There’s statistical information coming from all kinds of reports from associations, hotel federations etc, etc. And at the end of the day, people are getting very confused.

So I would say, use Google Analytics and become really familiar with that. There are statistics that come in – for example, the Amadeus Travel Gold Rush document – that has quite a lot of information in there, and I also follow HVS; they do quite a lot of statistical reporting. A lot of the tourism organizations give specific information for specific countries, but if you look at certain information coming through – for example, USA statistics – RevPAR will only reach 2006 levels in 2014.

So we have these years to kill now, and we’re working with a lower RevPAR, and what are we going to do with all of this? It depends on the market you’re in. Different statistics are coming through from different organizations. You’ve got to make a judgement call and decide what is going to work for you.

Productivity is Crucial to Survival

Josiah: If I’m the owner of a smaller hotel, how can I use some of this information? Is this only applicable to larger hotel groups or travel organizations, or if I’m a single property, can I use some of these trends?

Geraldine: I believe that one can use trends, whether you’re an independent hotel, a bed and breakfast, or whether you’re part of a chain. Basically, global trends will have an effect on a drill-down basis. I’ve dealt with the Asian market for many years, and there is a trend where – when buying from China, for example – your operator prefers to deal with a tour operator who can then book 8-10 hotels within the same group, or at least of the same level, so there is a certain buying trend for group travel.

When it comes to smaller hotels, these may see some of the individual travel, but I believe that what happens is that some business gets displaced out of the chain hotels, and you have that drill-down effect where your independent hotel may get more of the experience-seeking clients.

Josiah: What are some of the practical things that we can do to embrace change?

Geraldine: I believe that – because of the way the industry is going to become extremely competitive, and while clients now or guests will actually travel on airlines and do budget airline travel – they still wanna stay in 4-5 star hotels a lot of the time. Location is important. But I think what’s really important is that your business works for you 24 hours, 7 days a week.

You’ve got to look at optimizing every aspect of your business. You’ve got to look at working at your OTAs, working with median Meeting-bookers, Restaurant Diary, anything that can make your business work 24/7. You’ve got to revisit the last “loss-leaders” and find alternative solutions. Gone are the days where you can decide, “Well, we lose money in the spa, but we have it just because 2 out of the 40 guests that stay with us like to know that it’s there.”

We have to remove ongoing time-wasters and issues in the actual operations and in our hotels, because very often it’s the same things that keep popping up and we’re just not solving them. I believe we have to work on the 80/20 principle. We’ve really got to look at where we’re getting most of our business and revenue from, and do as much of that as we can possibly do.

I think pre-planning for 12 months in advance is really important now. We know where we’re going; we have a plan and we can get everybody on board, working towards it. You’re always going to be tweaking and making changes, but really, you’ve got to have some direction and gotta be going forward instead of zigzagging every time somebody makes a statement.

We’ve really got to review the traditional hotel roles; I think most of these are out-of-date now and not very productive, and I think customers like one-stop shopping as offered by the airlines, where you can book multiple facilities, and I think that is going to be really important. But I think any space that we have, we need to be filling. If we’re not filling them, we need to be finding out why we’re not filling them. It’s all those kinds of things. I think you’ve got to revisit every aspect of your business and make sure that it’s a profit center.

Develop a Culture that Reflects Your Brand in Line with Your Personal Philosophy

Josiah: How can we develop a culture within our organization that embraces change quickly, and where we have our entire team on-board with this mentality of embracing change and having a strong business focus on all of our activities?

Geraldine: I think firstly, it’s got to be leadership driven and not management driven. There was a survey done several years ago, and they took the 10 best hotels in the world and identified what these ten hotels had in common, and it was actually great leaders as general managers. They didn’t all come from a hotel background; some were accountants, some were marketing people, but it was leadership quality that made a great hotel.

You’ve got to practice what you preach, because neither staff nor guests are stupid. You’ve got to develop a brand and culture. We have to have a can-do attitude. We have to be the best that we can. We may not be a 5 star hotel, but if you’re a 3 star hotel, be the best that you can as a 3 star hotel.

We’ve got to remember that hotels are not stand-alone properties. It’s about community and adding value to the guest’s experience. We’ve got to develop a win-win culture, because we’re all in this together. We’ve got to develop it for ourselves, for our staff, for our guests and for our clients, whoever those clients are.

All of these things are very important, but I would just stress here that it comes from the top down: your culture, your brand, your brand’s statement. That all comes from the top down, and you’ve got to lead by example.

Josiah: Geraldine, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us today.

Bowen Payson, Online Marketing Manager at Virgin America

I run the online marketing team, responsible for all digital communications from Virgin America
There’s four of us working on social media: 2 from marketing, 2 from corporate communications
My workday is 50% managing content development, 50% on promotional activities generating direct revenue
We’re focused on fare promotions, and also on telling people about our unique amenities
People may say something online, but do something else. On our recent Facebook promotions, for every person that complains, 5 are buying a ticket
We have a matrix approach to promotions: if we only did one type (discount, giveaway, etc) it would burn out the audience. It’s all about creating a mix.
Twitter a year ago was totally different than Twitter today. Facebook is the same way.
Early adopters used be the only ones on some social media; now it’s more mainstream
For me, Twitter is a newsfeed; for others it may be something else
We plan some social media promotions months ahead of time
Our editorial calendar is pretty lose and open, so we can change and update as needed
Our most successful channel in terms of views, clicks, and sales is Twitter
Facebook is growing, but user behavior is different. Facebook can bring a very engaged audience.
Nick Schwartz is our voice on Twitter
If there’s a basic question, Nick takes care of it. If it’s bigger, we work closely with our guest services team to resolve issues.
A big project for us right now is finding the right buzz channels. Last week we launched a promotion around “awkward family photos,” where people send in photos for a chance to win prizes.
It’s great because the photos are viral and funny, but it’s also a good offer for our customers.
Our website is intended to be fun and user-friendly. It’s meant to be relevant and intuitive. We’re using big photos and less text to quickly get the message across.
If I could start over, I would have focused more on search optimization. I’d work on deeper integration of the social media into the website.
One of the best things we ever did was in emails to our Elevate members: including a “tweet this” button in our emails. Different people at different times need different things from email. Sometimes people aren’t buying, but want to share an offer with their friends.
Social media takes a lot of work. What you invest, you get out. You need to invest in people, thought, time and strategy. It’s not like buying traditional media.

See Bowen next week at EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution Summit North America 2010.

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) recently commissioned PhotoWeb to update the photography for all 3,500 of their properties. In today’s interview, listen to PhotoWeb project manager David Firestone explain what he sees as the top trends in hotel photography:

[Click here to download the MP3 version]

For those of you that prefer to read, Samantha transcribed this summary for you….

Josiah: Why is great photography is so important for hotels?

David: Someone just said to me today that when they go and look at a hotel website and they realize that it’s very poor photography, not only is it hard to get a good picture of the hotel, it gives the impression that the hotel doesn’t care. If they don’t care what their photography looks like, and they don’t invest the money and time to get great photography, it looks to people that they may not care so much about the property itself.

Beyond that, things have changed so much in the industry; where it used to be, someone would always stay at the Hilton. They had total brand loyalty. But now, with third-party travel sites where you can look up immediately to see if the JW Marriott in the town you’re going to is cheaper than the Hilton, people can’t rely on that brand loyalty, and they have to make sure of the images that they provide.

Not only on the brand site, but even more importantly, on the travel sites where they’re compared to other hotels. They have to make sure that not only are they realistic and high-quality, but they also show everything that the guests want to see.

Josiah: I’d like to hear more about how you plan on shooting the photos. It sounds like you want to create more than just the standard set of photographs that most hotels do.

David: Exactly. That’s exactly right. We want to give a comprehensive view of the property. And also, one thing which I fully agree with that IHG is doing, is they want the property to look the way it will actually look when you get there. If we’re shooting a guest room, quite often the people at the hotel will want to bring a tree to put in every corner, wine glasses on the table, some golf clubs, and you’re trying to tell a little sales-related story by propping the images that way. But, IHG strictly requires that we not use models, that we not prop the images, that we simply show what the property will look like when the people arrive.

In fact, the only photo that we shoot where we’re allowed to have anyone is in the front desk shot. Simply because if you see a photo of a front desk with no one standing there, it gives you the impression that you’ve just arrived and there’s no one there to help you.

Josiah: Can you tell me a little more about the big trends that you see in hotel photography?

David: Sure. One of the big trends, I think, in hotel photography is more and more hotels are moving towards including virtual tours in what they offer. Part of the benefit in virtual tours showing that 360-degree view is it shows your guest that you’re not trying to hide anything and you’re happy to show them everything that you have in your hotel.

It’s quite easy to take a still photo and show a beautiful area, but to get a virtual tour that shows that same area and also everything in that 360-degree circle gives people the confidence that they’re actually seeing what the hotel’s gonna look like.

There are other differences, too. One of the old trends that’s really gone away is people used to light the hotel rooms for photography in kind of a studio setting. They would use so many studio lights that it really no longer looked like a guest room. It kind of looked like high-end advertising photography. There are no shadows, everything is extremely, brightly lit, but it really doesn’t look like your hotel room was gonna look like when you arrive.

So when we shoot a guest room, we only light the room organically; we only use two or three light sources, and we use natural light as well, and it gives a more realistic view of what the room’s gonna look like when you get there.

Josiah: From a guest perspective, what do you think is the most important thing they look for when looking at a library of hotel photos?

David: I think it varies so widely, and that’s why it’s really important that we get this comprehensive look at the whole hotel. I’ve talked to guests that’ve told me that the only thing they’re interested in is the bathroom. If the bathroom looks good, they’re happy. They know that the rest of the hotel will be good. For other people, it’s the dining outlets. Or, increasingly, the fitness room. They wanna see immediately if they have the type of fitness equipment that they expect or they use daily, and if they don’t, they simply move on to the next hotel.

To me, if I had to pick one type of image that’s the most important, I would say the guest room photos. But, having said that, depending on the guest, it could be the meeting rooms, the leisure facilities; but once you show the entire hotel, then at least you’re covering all the expectations the guests may have as far as photography.

Josiah: How difficult is it to produce a virtual tour? Is it realistic for each property to think about putting together multiple virtual tours?

David: From a hotel’s perspective, the photography of the virtual tours takes no longer than still photography. With any of our images, the majority of time is making sure that everything looks perfect in the room, the pillows are straight, the cords are hidden away as they normally are, things like that.

On our end, the virtual tours are a lot more intensive to create because each virtual tour is created from 6 still photos. So, where normally we’d take a single still photo and process that from raw, we have to take 6 still photos, process all of those from raw, do any necessary retouching for each of those photos and then stitch them together, which is the really intensive part. It takes quite a bit of time for the computer to work out the points where each of the images connects, and it’s very important to us that there are no stitch errors.

If you’re looking at the bed, there shouldn’t be a jagged line right in the middle of the bed. It should all come together so smoothly that you can’t tell where the stitch lines are in those six photos.

Josiah: Is there anything else you want to add about the project or hotel photography in general?

David: The only thing I’d like to mention that we’re doing differently with this project than we’ve done in the past, is that a lot of the hotels that we’re photographing don’t have much uplighting for their exterior shots and IHG is having us shoot an exterior both at daytime and at sunset, when you have that rich, blue, dark sky.

But a lot of the hotels don’t have uplighting, which lights up the hotel, so each of our photographers carries with them a 3-million candle-power spotlight; it’s a rechargable spotlight that can be used from up to a 100 feet away. So, when we take a sunset shot of the hotel, we’ll do a long exposure, say 25-seconds, which gives us time to paint the hotel with light.

We simply point the spotlight at the hotel and smoothly move it back and forth over the entire front and in effect, this can increase the brightness by up to 4 times. So a picture wouldn’t look dark and uninviting in the front, we can light it up with these portable spotlights that we carry with us.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, David.

Charles Deyo of Cendyn joins us today to explain how hotels and guests can benefit from targeted behavioral advertising. Listen to the full program here, or read the summary below:

[Download the mp3 file here]

Josiah: Can you explain to us what behavioral advertising is and why it’s so important for hotels?

Charles: Basically, behavioral advertising looks at web users and determines their behavior relative to where they’re going on the internet, and sends them relevant communication to make their web experience better.

In the case of hotels, we might look at somebody who’s going to airline sites as an example, and put them in a bucket with someone that’s potentially looking for travel options. With the new technology that we have today, with some of the ad serving platforms, we can put that individual into a bucket and start doing things like advertising to that person through messaging, or we can actually change the messaging to make that more relevant to the user.

Josiah: From the perspective of the hotels — the people doing the advertising — this gives us a much higher level of targeting. Are you seeing conversion rates go up as a result of this?

Charles: Yes, absolutely. One of the metrics that we use in the industry is “return on ad-spend”, and we’ve seen it go up significantly. Not just on display, but across all integrated campaigns. For example, someone’s doing a display campaign and a paid search campaign on Google; the combination of those are greater than the sum of the parts. We see a lift on both the paid search and on the return on ad-spend on the display campaign.

It’s a great win/win for the hotel and to the web user who gets more relevant content and a better web experience.

Josiah: Can you give us some of the top things that hotel operators need to know about behavioral retargeting? For someone brand new to this, what do they need to know?

Charles: What you need to know is how the process works, so that you can make the messaging very relevant to the end user. Then, you need to have what’s being advertised correlate to the targets that you’re going after.

For example, if I’m looking at potentially geotargeting and time-based targeting — the location of the individual and time that they’re looking at information — that would dictate the type of offer or messaging that I want to put on the display ads. You need to understand not only how the process works but also the different attributes that would make sure that the messaging is very relevant to that particular campaign.

Josiah: Are big brands interested in this or is this something you can only do on a small scale?

Charles: No, big brands are investing a lot of money into this technology now. They’re doing it more at the brand level. In many cases, when you look at some of the big chains, you’re not seeing a lot of retail-oriented ads, you’re seeing a lot more brand-oriented ads where, “Come stay at any one of our hotels; click here to learn more about our special offers”, and that’ll bring them to a webpage with multiple properties listed as an example.

With individual properties, we’ve seen great success with targeted retail ads, so what you see is a combination of both. You see the big chains investing in brand oriented campaigns, and we’re seeing a lot of investment from retail properties. For example, with big casinos or big resort destinations, they’ll do very retail specific advertising.

Josiah: Is Google Advertising where most of the behavioral targeting is used or are there other options?

Charles: There are a lot of different networks out there. A lot of them can access the same websites, and a lot of the ad serving platforms all have retargeting capabilities built into them. What’s happening in the online advertising space is that we’re seeing less focus around the networks and more emphasis, now, on the data.

When we talk about data in the online advertising space, we’re talking about the anonymous cookies that are used to really track those behaviors that people move around the internet. We’re seeing opportunities where you can build a proprietary cookie pool.

For example, we’ve built a proprietary cookie pool of people that we know are frequent travelers. We have the ability to track those anonymous cookies across the internet so we can send them very relevant advertising that should make their web experience better.

Josiah: You had an article published in Hotel Online in June 2010 where you said you had 200 million of these frequent traveler profiles. How detailed is the information you have on these people?

Charles: These are anonymous cookie profiles –we don’t have any information about who they are, but we do know in most cases the sites that they’ve visited. And then in other cases we’ll have other attributes that are more useful for more complex targeting.

For example, if there’s registration data associated with those cookie profiles, we might know gender, we might know income levels, different things that the user has filled out as part of a registration process on a website that is then linked on a cookie profile. But, anytime that occurs, we take it as a prompt to send out an email, where somebody understands that the information is used to provide them more relevant product information that would be useful to them.

Josiah: Is this something you’re building proprietary to Cendyn?

Charles: It is proprietary to Cendyn, relative to what we’re doing with the cookie pool, but it’s not to say that other companies aren’t doing something similar. What’s proprietary around Cendyn, is we’ve got a 360 degree marketing platform, and I think the big difference with us — aside from the cookie pool — is that we look at how we don’t only send the right message to the right user at the right time, but also through the right channel.

I think the most important thing is not only having the right data and using it for the purpose of targeting, but also understanding that an integrated campaign always works better.

Josiah: What’s the best way to targeting groups or audiences together? What are some of the different attributes that you try for effectiveness?

Charles: What we do, is we have a first ring — this large pool of people that we know — for the purpose of discussion, very travel oriented, and based on the campaign, we look at the behavior of how those cookies interact with our ads so that we can take them out of the big pool and put them “in market”, so they’re “in market” for that campaign. That’s how we create those subsets.

Josiah: From that article, you also mentioned a “game over” mechanism and making sure that if people want to stop the ads from following them around there needs to be a place to stop. How does that look practically?

Charles: The way that it works is, of course, someone can turn off their cookies, and the process doesn’t work. A lot of the networks now are also building in capabilities for people to opt out of some of the retargeting and behavioral advertising process.

For example, Google just announced recently that they’re doing behavioral advertising and are making available a preference page that somebody can go in and adjust the settings relative to their web experience.

Josiah: Can you tell me a little bit of what you’re working on to take advantage of this platform?

Charles: One of the things we’re doing is continuing to make our 360 degree platform more robust and creating the ability to provide this behavioral targeting across any channel – whether that’s social media, mobile advertising or display advertising, it doesn’t matter. We should have the ability to send the right message via the right channel.

The other thing that we run is a product called Insight which is like a customer analytics and campaign management tool that we market to hotels. We have all the guest history data out of our property management system, and then we’ve got a lot of information about somebody, and we’re actually interfacing that as part of our 360 degree marketing platform so we can plan a sort of “best customer” profile and use that to go out and find additional customers that fit the “best customer” profile for a particular property.

Josiah: Is there any push-back from guests or people seeing the ads?

Charles: My personal opinion — but of course, I am a marketer — is that it makes the web experience better. People want relevant information. We learned this many years ago through the email campaign process. All of us in the email marketing world strived very diligently to make sure that we’re sending the most relevant content we can to a recipient, and the same philosophy applies to the advertising space. If we’re doing our job of sending relevant content, we will make the web user’s experience better.

Josiah: Can you give me a specific example of a hotel that’s taking advantage of this technology in a good way?

Charles: We did a case study not too long ago, because we really wanted to get some firm metrics on what the overall value of this type of technology would be. To make sure that our case study was very empirical, we not only tracked online revenue, but we put the voice tracking in place so that we could record the phone calls associated with the campaign, and had somebody listen to the calls and key in the revenue values associated with that.

We also tracked, not only hotel online bookings, but also RFPs — requests for proposals — for meetings, that type of thing. What we found was that we had a significant return on ad spend - 17 to 1, where every dollar spent on an ad was returned 17 times. It’s very significant, and I think that’s representative of what you can expect when you’re running these types of campaigns on an integrated basis.

Josiah: Thank you very much, Charles, for explaining this for us.

Charles: It was a pleasure, and I look forward to talking to you in the future!

In our world of social media and online word of mouth, how you treat your customers becomes all the more important. That was the topic of my conversation today with William Brown, who recently published this good article: “Delighting customers in a social media era.”

Listen to this conversation here:

[Prefer to listen on the go? Right-click here to download the mp3 recording]

For those of you who prefer to read our conversation, here are the highlights:

[00:50] Josiah: Today I wanted to talk about a report that you had shared a few days ago, titled “Delighting Your Customers in a Social Media Era”. What’s going on in the hotel industry that makes this so important right now?

William: Social media has just exploded in the last five to ten years, from discussion boards and bulletin boards to social networks that provide real-time connectivity for people regardless of location and industry, and it’s really changing the nature of the conversation between the service provider and its customer. There’s a network effect going on that magnifies the potential awareness of that conversation, and by extension, its brand-reinforcing activities or its brand detracting activities. That’s really never been seen before.

[3:56] Josiah: How can a hotel delight their customers? What goes into creating a great guest experience?

William: I think there are many who would argue that it begins long before the actual guest experience, in that traditional sense. I think a strategy has to look at every aspect of that journey, from the customer getting the idea to want to visit your location, to isolating your property as a place to stay and then actually forming and re-enforcing positive pre-check-in thoughts that you reinforce once they arrive.

[07:04] Josiah: Is this whole concept of delighting customers more of a management issue than a marketing topic?

William: Marketing is full of platitudes that we ascribe to our own brand. We talk about ourselves as a premier experience or the best in our vertical, the best in our location, whatever it is. But the actual experience is what the customer, the guest, the consumer is going to remember and our ability to shape that experience is a function in management at the property level.

[08:30] Josiah: Should more people be getting involved in social media at the property level beyond just marketing? Should we be bringing on the general manager, should the concierge be sending Twitter updates and what-not?

William: I think about what the Four Seasons hotel brand does now with it’s properties. It appears that every single property has a Twitter presence right now at a unique property level.

The Four Seasons property in Vale talks about the art festival going on over Labor Day, as an example. And it talks about it in a very fun, very engaging, very welcoming kind of language, inviting the follower to engage with them further and maybe start to plant the seed that if not this year, maybe next year, that might be an interesting location for a late summer getaway.

Five or Six years ago, we didn’t have the kind of mechanisms to enable cost effective and customer-engaging ways of communicating that really cant permeate like social media can right now. It’s something that needs to be tested and explored, and feedback is a gift.

I think [social media] may open up all sorts of new opportunities to really deepen the relationship with an existing customer and then to influence people that they can influence. That’s the value of this whole idea of the Ultimate Question and this notion of the Net Promoter Score ideology. To identify true brand advocates. People who are so happy and satisfied that they become de-facto brand ambassadors.

[13:11] Josiah: Do you think the rule of marketing has changed it all? Is it more relationship building? The types of messages that we’re pushing out, do they have to change a little bit in content? Do we want to encourage conversation between our guests?

William: The potential upside is to look at [social media] as a series of conversations or one on-going conversation. Like, if there’s a new chef or a period of construction has ended and something is new and available at the property level, this is something that would resonate with long-time frequent guests of the property and it’s something that may capture the attention of the individual that has never stayed at the property before.

[15:50] Josiah: For a single, independent property, the concept of one to one conversations is reasonable and it usually can be carried out fairly easily. With some of the larger brands or hotel groups… how can we create platforms that enable conversations without interacting one on one with every single person who mentions our brand?

[16:43] William: At the larger level, you have to find more things of common interest. I think one of those unifying concepts would be a loyalty program. This is something that travelers are absolutely impassioned about.

There are also opportunities that may be counter to the gut intuition of a brand manager, but these are conversations that will occur regardless of all participation. An example of that could be a negative experience with the brand. These negative situations are opportunities for the brand to demonstrate several things. We can demonstrate that we care, that we’re listening, and that we’re doing everything that we can in the public form and in private with the individual to try to resolve the underlying issues that were involved with their negative experience.

Companies with multiple properties should not be afraid to open up their communities to encourage this type of feedback. I’ve seen types of communities that are “open” but not really open, where they seek to positively reinforce the brand at every single possible opportunity by, in effect, censoring content that gets posted by travelers and not realistically viewing the nature of these channels. And what happens in that case is that the disaffected customer doesn’t view this channel as credible and that extends to the brand itself, and they will find another channel.

The lesson there is that in these social media channels, we are just one participant in the conversation. We are no longer in control of the conversation. The guest, the customer, the prospect, they’re all equal participants in the dialogue and we have to encourage honest and forthright communication, and we need to respond as honestly as we possibly can.

[22:19] Josiah: Can you define the Ultimate Question and the Net Promoter Score and and talk a little bit about why these are so important?

William: An individual with the Bain Consultancy, Fred Reichheld, who was a senior managing director at Bain, had written an article for the Harvard Business Review in 2003 which really kind of framed the idea of boiling down complex customer satisfaction surveys into one simple question. And that is to ask a customer, in effect, on a score of 0-10, how likely would you be to recommend our company or our brand to someone else?

And it really sought to demystify the area of customer satisfaction science because it had become such a beast onto itself. It had taken on so many different permutations and there were so many theories and methodologies for inferring the mind of the customer without basically getting at the root to what we’re all striving for as commercial businesses and that’s to grow our business and more fundamentally, to keep customers that we’ve fought hard to win, usually at great costs.

The idea of the Net Promoter is to gauge, with a visitor or guest, that if they have a good experience, will they be likely to recommend the experience to someone else? And conversely, if they were dissatisfied with the experience, how likely will they be to become a detractor on behalf of our brand?

[26:37] Josiah: Referrals dramatically increase in importance, so asking this question, tracking your progress against the Net Promoter Score, becomes all the more important over the last few years.

William: Absolutely. The important proposed benefits of the method really derive from simplifying and communicating the idea of creating more promoters and fewer detractors.

So, on a 0-10 scale, you consider your 9s and 10s to be promoters. If a customer being asked this question comes back with a 7 or 8, we may consider that a moral victory but in the field of Net Promoter methodology, you have an individual who’s generally satisfied with their experience. They’re not so satisfied as to very likely remember it a few days after checkout.

The goal of Net Promoter is to isolate the behaviors throughout every point in the guest booking value chain, if you will, from the time that the guest engages with marketing, to the time they make the reservation, to the time they’re at the check-in desk, to the house keeping, to the amenities, to checkout.

The science of the Net Promoter score card has begun to evolve since 2003 to a rich little cottage industry of breaking down every aspect of the guest experience and isolating where the opportunity to drive that 7-8 experience to a true Net Promoter likelihood behavior at a 9-10 level. You start to form actionable steps that can help your brand to begin to really move towards true transformation that drives topline and bottomline growth, especially in a very competitive environment.

The full transcript will be available shortly to Insider’s Circle members.

New York all-star concierge Nashid Braswell shares 12 tips for providing unforgettable service. The full transcript and audio interview are available to Insider’s Circle members.

1. “We’re very hands-on with our clients.”
At Luxe Concierge, our goal is to offer personalized guidance, privileged access, and exceptional accommodations that go beyond the ordinary in meeting the unique needs and tastes of our world-class clientele. We meet with our clients and get an understanding of what the needs are, and walk them, guide them — basically in a hand-holding process — making sure all of their needs are met.

2. “Everyone wants to feel that their dollar is being quantified.”
Our goal is to provide an experience, opposed to just buying something, sending it in, putting it in a pretty bow. People want to feel appreciated, and people want to feel needed and they wanna feel that they’re getting the most bang for their buck.