How David Craig helped Hotel Teatro reach the top of TripAdvisor

For our next interview, we’re talking with Dave Craig, General Manager of Hotel Teatro in Denver, Colorado, USA. In addition to receiving great rankings on TripAdvisor, the hotel was named one of the Top 50 Large City Hotels in the US by Travel + Leisure magazine, and rated the top Denver hotel in 2009 by Zagat.

Josiah: Tell us a little bit about your hotel

Dave: Hotel Teatro is a boutique hotel located in the heart of downtown Denver. While the property is a registered historic landmark we typically don’t market it as such because virtually every space has been remodeled with state of the art décor and technology. Teatro is Italian for “theater” so the hotel has a theatrical influence in the design and artwork.

How have you achieved your success on TripAdvisor?

Hotel Teatro has an inherent culture of exceptional service. We hire our hospitality professionals very carefully and work diligently to train them to 5 Star & 5 Diamond Standards. We have the ability to involve our associates in many of the global decisions that affect the way the hotel operates so there is a strong sense of ownership. Our team is empowered to make active decisions that will create a successful experience for our guests. We have seasoned operational managers on duty 24 hours per day, 7 days per week so there is always intense scrutiny over our daily operations.

We also spend the first portion of every staff meeting reading our newest TripAdvisor reviews aloud to the group. This establishes a forum for recognizing favorable performance and for developing solutions where we have areas of opportunity.

How do you encourage guests to share their experience on TripAdvisor?

We are blessed with many wonderful guests, a large number of whom have been returning to Hotel Teatro for many years. Every day we receive cards, letters and e-mails of thanks. I make certain to respond to each one personally and whenever I do, I typically finish my correspondence with a phrase like the following:

Thank you for taking the time to relay the details of your experience at Hotel Teatro. I am so glad that you had a wonderful visit. If you’d like to share your experience with others, I encourage you to do so at www.tripadvisor.com.

What other internet marketing tactics is your hotel focusing on right now?

I am continually amazed at the viral nature of social media websites. I don’t think that even Mark Zuckerburg, when he established Facebook, could have foreseen its exponential growth. It appears that business CEOs have learned from their teenagers that the speed and volume of communication has changed forever the way that we do business. The social media sites are becoming business media sites as more business adopt their own pages in these environments. Yelp, Facebook, and Twitter are ultimately where our clients are sharing their experiences, but TripAdvisor is clearly the most highly recognized source for unbiased travel feedback.

What marketing tactics have performed best for you? Which don’t live up to the hype?

Ultimately we recognize that today’s travel consumer is much better educated than the traveler of even 5 years ago. Periodicals such as US Today and the wide variety of internet channels provide exciting new resources that result in a consumer who knows how to book more efficiently, for better value and has developed higher expectations. Consequently we recognize that their travel experience is not just an airline flight, a hotel, a dinner and a trip to the theater, but all of these things combined. In this experience economy we work diligently to provide as many of these services as possible and to involve ourselves in each to ensure a high quality experience. For example, if appropriate, we will have a guest services associate escort our guests to the theater to ensure they find their way, obtain their tickets and are off to a good start.

Because guests will report their first hand experience, without edit, on the internet, the value of that documentary is quite valuable. Due to the increased demand on this kind of information, other sources such as straight advertising carry less value and consequently we have come to shift our dependency accordingly.

Can you give an example of this in action?

We had a couple arriving at the hotel. The husband had left to run an errand and the wife was pulling the car to the curb, while trying to manage two crying babies. Our bell captain could clearly see the frustration on her face and offered to help. Through near tears she said “I just wanted to get settled and go to my favorite Chinese food restaurant, but with these two crying babies, that will never happen!” The bellman, seeing her plight expediently got her settled in her guest room, then went to the Chinese restaurant of her choice, picked out her favorite entrees, brought it back to the hotel and had it plated on beautiful china and silver and had it delivered to her room. The guest was amazed and it began to be her favorite ‘hotel story’ which I heard again and again due to the viral nature of sites like TripAdvisor.

Thanks for your time, Dave.