Reality Check: Sales, Strategy & Standing Out in Branded Hotels

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Hotel Growth Podcast. I'm Adam Haberdash and today's guest has hospitality running through her, uh, veins, quite literally. Wendy White is head of sales and marketing at Q Green Hotels, a portfolio of predominantly branded properties across the UK. From collecting glasses at 13 to leading sales and marketing strategy for a major hotel group. Wendy. Wendy's career is a masterclass in working your way up and understanding this industry from every angle. In this episode, we dive into some of the big challenges hotels are facing right now, from the changing shape of business travel to the struggle for visibility in a crowded market, and how brands can adapt to grow in 2025 and beyond. Wendy shares her thoughts on the importance of defining your hotel's experience, why CRM data is the most valuable marketing asset, and what it takes to keep guest coming back in tougher, uh, times. Whether you're a branded or independent hotelier. Ah, there's plenty in there to get you thinking about your own growth strategy. So let's get into it. Wendy, it's fantastic to have you on the Hotel Growth podcast today. I'm really excited that you've joined us. Very warm welcome. How are you today?

Speaker A: I'm really good, thank you. Yeah, one of the hottest days of the year again and the sun is shining, so, yeah, we're all good, so thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Even in Derby, it's a hot day.

Speaker A: The sun always shines in Derby.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, listen, I'm so pleased that you've joined us on the podcast. We had a really good conversation a few weeks back, so let's dive straight into your experience and I'd love to understand a little bit about your sort of experience in the industry and, um, where you are now.

Speaker A: Yeah, great, thank you. Well, I got into hotels. My first job in a hotel, I was 18 years old and it was a placement with Hilton. In my year, my gap year, I did a sandwich course. And, um, when I was at Sheffield, it was poly and then it became a university. And, yeah, I just fell in love with the whole way that hotels worked, the people, customers, you know, I think you just, you get into it and it just becomes in your DNA, you just absolutely love it. And no matter what you do and however many try, you have to go find another job. You never do. You just find a different job within hotels. So I started off from, you know, as I say, an industrial placement student, worked in every department. But then after about sort of seven years, I got into sales and decided that rather than serving the champagne, I wanted to drink the champagne and do the entertaining with the customers and have the coffee served to me and everything. And, yeah, I really enjoyed that whole, um, interaction, you know, being a natural talker, uh, you know, with people and things like that. It was the way to go. And I think I found it was really rewarding. I mean, I think I've always found, as probably a lot of people do, you know, you find the role that you're in very, very rewarding. But I think because of the whole variety of what hotels and hospitality happen. I mean, I was a glass collector at 13 in a bar to be head of sales and marketing. Now, you know, sort of 40 years later, uh, it's a very vast and an array of jobs, but ultimately, people at the heart of it, whether it's your team who you're working with and, um, customers, obviously, is the other part of it. They're both m. They've both got so much importance for both sides. So, yeah, so quite a variety of what I've done over the years as well, but I just never could leave.

Speaker B: Well, that's great to hear. And I think, if I may kind of touch on m. Something you said that, uh, I mean, I love that concept of I wanted to drink champagne rather than serve champagne. Quite put like that, but rightly so. You've obviously been in hospitality, then, for, uh, by the sounds of it, the entirety of your career. Do you think that perhaps young people today know enough about the sheer breadth of roles that exist within the industry? I think very often I think people think of hospitality and they do think of the most natural sort of fit of serving customers, being in the kitchens, etc. Do you feel that enough is being made of the fact that you can go from being a glass collector, uh, to your role, um, in head of sales and marketing, for example?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a really good point you make. And I think we don't do enough, um, generally as a country. I think this is because I think we all go on holiday abroad, you know, we go to France or we go to Spain or, you know, or Germany, anywhere. And hospitality is seen as a career. And, you know, we experience such great service from, you know, our European counterparts in America as well, you know, is the kind of the other extreme. But I think in this country, I think dependent on what role you are going down in hospitality, there's not enough role models, I think, for people to aspire. So if you're a chef, you know, we all went through the Jamie Olivers, but there's, you Know, people see a chef now and do they want to be golden Ramsay, but is that the right way to be or is it because they see him, um, multimillionaire and friend David Beckham or something? You know, have we got the right level of role models to make it something that people can see as attainable and is achievable? And then also what are we doing for everything else as well? Because certainly, you know, I went to university and did a course. I think that's more diminishing now in terms of that the level and the. What people see as, uh, a real career path. Because like you say, when you say you work in hotels. Oh, do you work in reception? Kind of can be the first thing that you know when you go, no, actually I head up sales and marketing for a multimillion pound company. And, and I think it's that whole. People almost see hospitality as monopoly money, maybe that's the word. But we don't see it as true industry with value with so many people that we employ who are on minimum wage as well. I think that's the key thing here. We are an industry that pays minimum wage to probably 85% or something like that, the people that are in it. And I think until as a government, I mean as an industry, I think we do quite a lot of good stuff. You know, we've got lots of associations, we've got. But we're kind of preaching to the converted, I think, already, because we know what we do as an industry. So it's how do we get into schools, how do we get into colleges, how do we, you know, are we creating food and hospitality colleges that are at that level which will make people see that they really have a career path. So I think we don't do enough. But I think certainly as an industry, and the hotels we certainly do green. We have apprenticeship programs, we go out to schools and colleges. We work with local education because we do see that benefit and we do want people come in. But you're quite lonely. It's a lonely road that when you're trying to do it yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, listen, I couldn't agree with you more. I think there is so much noise for those of us that are in the industry and have been for some time. And I think there's some brilliant organizations that are really starting to gain some traction. One that comes to mind, it's called Hospitality Connect, where they're really trying to connect with schools and introduce hospitality as an industry. But I absolutely agree with you, we don't have Enough role models and interestingly, m, I attended an Institute for Hospitality networking event in Scotland probably about eight years ago now.

Speaker A: Oh, wow.

Speaker B: And that was one of the discussion points of how to get role models. And I talked about how. Always forget how to pronounce his name. But the chap on is named, um. Is it Frank Serou? I've probably.

Speaker A: Oh, the guy. Guy off the celebrity dates that was dating. Yeah, he worked in the restaurant. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: But he's to my knowledge the only sort of really sort of famous maitre d that you've got front of house, you know.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: You can probably say about 10 different chefs, but other roles within the industry just don't have those necessarily those kind of role models. But listen, we digress. We're here to talk about. I could talk about this all day, as you probably gathered.

Speaker A: No, absolutely.

Speaker B: But we're here to talk about growth. So how do hotels grow in your opinion? What do you think are the biggest challenges right now facing the industry?

Speaker A: Gosh, we are in a really, really challenging situation and I think as obviously speaking as a hospitality, um, company, but I think as business generally, obviously in this country at the moment we are facing so many challenges coming at us left, right and you know, from, from government decisions, from the state of the world of impacts of global events, what are going on. Um, then that all compounds into how that affects us day to day because, you know, we're predominantly a UK business in terms of UK to uk. So I'm not, you know, I'm not a five star London central hotel. But all of a sudden if the US stops traveling, it's going to have a dramatic impact on my business because it will have an effect on my business at some point, but there'll be a lag as to how that impacts my business. Whereas, you know, for me it's about industry in this country. So what are we doing to um, our, you know, companies that we work with that have a lot of employees and now looking at their headcount, they're looking at the training that they do, they're looking at their travel spend because all of these people that used to go away on a Sunday night stay for five nights or four nights, they'd eat and drink in the hotels, they'd pay 100 pound for a room. You know, all of a sudden they're going, well, we need to cut this down a little bit. And, and we know that there's been impact on business generally because of, you know, dare I say, COVID pandemic. Um, you know, people have changed the way that they do work. And we certainly as a business, as a hotel, and this is hotels generally, because I speak to counterparts, um, we see that companies now are not in the office as much. So the days that they travel have always been a peak. Tuesday, Wednesday, but we see a drop off on a Monday. We don't see people as much business on a Thursday. We have to then find other business to fill those gaps and other businesses are trying to find other business to fill their own gaps and things as well. So it's a real struggle I think with the knock on effect of all of this to do with and it's ultimately money and profits. We're all here to make a profit for our shareholders, for our investors, you know, whatever that is. And I think that's having a massive impact. But then also staffing, we mentioned staffing before, staffing, retention, you know, minimum wage. It's a vicious circle of how we, you know, if you don't have great staff, you don't necessarily, you know, you don't deliver good service. So you're putting yourself at ah, risk from customers obviously choosing a competitor. And in some locations you're the only hotel or the only branded hotel and people will always, you know, it's a bit like the va. People will always fly with VA to get their points. They'll go halfway around the world to get to the right destination and people are the same with the Marriott loyal or the Hilton loyal or their IHG loyal. So that gives you an advantage but not always in, you know, in what is becoming and has been but is more so a very crowded market for a lot of hotels. Um, and we're all fighting for very, very similar business. Unless you are a five star spa resort with a, you know, X, Y and Z and can offer this or a country retreat or whatever, then you are in that unique niche market which hasn't gone away but also side of motorways we want in corporate business, project business etc. Were maybe one of four. So it is a real challenge I think at the moment of various things that are coming at us which we're all kind of navigating and trying to work our way through.

Speaker B: Yeah, I understand. And if I'm not mistaken, Kew Green Hotels has a number of predominantly branded properties around the uk. Is that right?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. IHG is our main franchise partner which is a nice position to be in because we do have the backing of a very, very well known brand with a really excellent loyalty program which is really key or um, can be the deciding factor of where somebody stays, because they want their points, they work hard all week and then they want to go on holiday for a week to wherever and they use their points. But it's understanding your customers as to why they want to stay with you. And number one is generally location. It's about being well located. But in some locations you could have 10 hotels within a mile. So you're not unique in that respect.

Speaker B: Yeah. And to that point I see an enormous amount of development going on through, uh, the trade press for both branded and sort of unbranded properties. But certainly on the branded side, you sort of alluded there, Wendy, to the fact that, you know, ultimately there's a lot less business than there perhaps once was because of changing work patterns and that sort of thing. But yet the room stock seems to be increasing. So that must in itself prove quite a challenge for when there's ultimately less demand and. Or less supply, or more supply and less demand.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think a lot of this in terms of the supply, obviously deals and projects are done so far in advance and so planned that there's always going to be a pipeline of this that actually because of COVID again got well delayed, got, you know, people's funding got changed, people have, as positions and situations have changed and then these projects haven't quite got going. But there was always going to be some that were always going to have to happen because the deals were done, the contracts were signed. So. But in some markets, but it's a very, very few, you know, very few markets, we see the numbers, we all get rstr, um, stats in terms of occupancy and average rate. And, you know, the UK and the world is really suffering. You know, there's very, very few locations which are booking the trend in terms of smashing it out of the market. And generally that is because of effects of events. So Taylor Swift was obviously the big one, the Taylor effect, which everybody still. But you've got a mini Oasis effect this year maybe is the thing. But again, it's Edinburgh, Manchester and London and Cardiff for a couple of nights. So it. There's just not enough happening generally. But at some points, and I was having this conversation with some people in London, some of our hoteliers and owners in London, we don't spread our events out enough. And if they could, if, you know, in London you'll have a Wembley event, you'll have then something on at the arena, you'll have a boxing match on at Tottenham or something, and then you'll have something else going on. Somewhere else. And they're like, oh, my goodness, can we not just make them one a Friday, one a Sunday, one the next weekend and everything? And. And cities are the same at doing that as well. You know, Manchester, you'll have Man United playing, you'll have something on at one arena, you'll have something on at the other arena, and then, you know, there'll be something going on elsewhere as well. And that's what we're not so good at, is spreading the business out so that you feel the benefit all the time, rather than it just going in these peaks and troughs, which is when the hotels go, God, yeah, there's loads of, you know, look at that. Everybody's running at 97% on a Saturday night.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But they're running at 70 on a Friday and they're running at 60 on a. On a Sunday. So it's. It's finding that balance as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds like there's a bit of sort of feast or famine there.

Speaker A: Uh, absolutely.

Speaker B: Where, you know, ultimately you could probably, you know, increase your rate to a really high level on those sort of peak events, but then the rate really suffers, presumably again the next night when it's not. Ah, the demand isn't.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: So that sort of lends to my next question, Wendy. There's a challenging market out there for sort of unbranded and branded alike. That sort of naturally suggests that one has to do more with marketing to sort of stand out and be seen and be visible. What would you say are sort of the biggest challenges for marketing professionals in this sector? Uh, for sort of the. Right now and the year ahead? What do you see are the biggest problems?

Speaker A: Well, I think you've got kind of two things, really. I think you've got the fact that there's so much pressure on business, there's pressure on cost and there's pressure on how much do you spend on these things? Because marketing, as we know, is all about awareness. It's. It's about, you know, create. You've got your brand, you've got your, you know, you want to engage with your customers. It's not about. Necessarily, it's not about selling them. Some of them, you know, you might have campaigns and stuff that's specifically targeting, but it's that whole, you know, that whole overall awareness of what you are, either as a hotel or as a brand or as a. As a service, whatever it is that you're doing. So. So you've got the pressure with the cost and how much do you spend on this and you know, do we reduce our marketing, um, team down? What are we getting? Why are our budgets back and everything? It's a bit like, you know, let's stack all the sales people because we're not getting in the right sales and everything. You know, it's you because, you know, companies have these quandaries of what do we do. But then if you are like a unique venue which tends to be more top end venues that five star market, or they're very specialist in terms of you've got leisure, you've got. And now, I mean we do see it as well, is that the leisure golf, um, is still trading very, very well. They've got money to spend and you know, and everybody's got some level of money to spend, whether it's a, you know, the holiday is a, is a weekend away in Spain or whether it's a week in Devon or it's a week in Skegness and everything in between as well. So it's about how do you attract your customers and why should they come to you? And we do know through research and you know, when we don't have five star spa resorts, we have very much, ah, you know, branded Holiday Inns. Um, yes, lovely Holiday Inns and they're nice but they're not all on the coast or they're not all in city centre. So we have to really drive people to go, okay, we're kind of 10 miles away from Alton Towers, come and stay in Alton in our hotel and come and have a really, you know, economical break and go to Alton Towers, use it as a base. Whereas if you are a five star resort with everything else in all dancing golf, you can be like, wow, come and you never leave the complex. You can golf, you can spa, you can maybe go horse riding, you can do this, you can, you know, whatever. And, and people are looking and going, I want an experience for my money. If I'm willing to spend and I've got £500, what is the best experience I can possibly get? What makes me feel like I have got the most return off that money or made me feel the best and everything and, and maybe necessarily, you know, we've got to be realistic with what we're doing. Staying in a Holiday Inn at the side of a motorway, as nice as it may be, is not always going to be the best. They're going to go, no, actually I want to spend, I'm going to spend a little bit more and I'm going to go somewhere that's got a bit more of a Spa or something like that. And it might not be top end, you know, kind of Cameron House or whatever, do you know what I mean? But it's, it could be just something a little bit more that they can afford. So that's our biggest challenge at the moment is finding those customers, finding the new customers, keeping the repeat customers as well. That's the other thing. But that's what we've got to do as hoteliers is to make sure they have the best experience. But certainly from a marketing point of view, it's getting to those customers. Standing out again in a really crowded market with your marketing, your shop windows, obviously it's a key thing to the absolute um, to the world is how you sell yourself. Why do they want to, why would they come and stay with you? What's your TripAdvisor score, what's your booking, dot com reviews, that kind of thing as well. That's what the real focus is. And the challenge is, is how you make that as uh, that's what people will Google first. Hotels in wherever they want to go. Hotels in Bristol. So what can you do to get yourself up the rankings? I think is the key thing, which is getting really harder.

Speaker B: A quick break to mention the team behind this podcast formula. We're the digital growth agency for independent hotel brands. What makes us different to other marketing agencies is that we have no juniors in our team, only seasoned experts. We don't believe in long term contracts and we only ever work with 20 clients at any given time. Now, full disclosure, we're currently at full capacity. But if you're exploring working with a new digital growth partner at some point in the next six months, head to ThisIsFormula.com to register interest and join our waiting list. That's uh, thisisformula.com and we'll reach out as soon as a spot opens. Right. Back to this episode. M. It certainly is. I'll come on to talk about that or ask about that in a second. I just want to pick up on something that you sort of said there. I think, you know, it sort of struck me around that word around experience. So, you know, ultimately it doesn't matter whether you're, as you say, staying on the side of a motorway in a very nice Holiday Inn or you're looking at more sort of five star luxury retreat. Ultimately what I inferred from your comments, Wendy, was kind of almost it's about communicating the value of that experience. Would you agree with that?

Speaker A: Sort of, Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's understanding why people would want to come to your property. So you know is because generally as I say for hotels like ours, the majority about its location because they use the example I used as Alton Towers. You've already decided you want to take your family to Alton Towers or your other half or whatever want to go and have a day at Alton Towers. The next thing is right, are we staying? If we are going to stay then what are we paying? Is it going to be that we want to have something budget because we're literally not going to be in the hotel for very long. We're literally sleeping there and then that becomes a right, we just want a really good review. We want something clean, we want something comfortable. How are we getting there? Okay, we're driving so we'd want the car park um, as well or whatever. And, and it's you know you can't be everything to everybody. No hotel can be. But you've got to understand what you are so that you can then relay that message in your marketing, um, in your E shots, in your social media, whatever that, whatever. You know all these different platforms again and on your website as well, you know to say we're really well located for X, Y and Z users as a base and you can go visit the whole of this country or county or you know area or whatever it is. So yeah, that's the key thing is really understanding what you can be and hoping that your prices and the offering reflect that. Um, so that people can go actually yeah. Do you know what we want a nice bar, we want a great breakfast and that's what Holodienne stands for. So that's what we're going to go for and the price is right and it reflects and we're a one rewards member so it works, it works for us. Do you know what I mean? We don't need to go down a little bit more to budget because actually you know we want a little bit of an experience. We don't need to be staying in a, in a, in a double the price room on a night time because actually we're not going to be. You don't need a roll top bath and a balcony and stuff because we're not going to experience that either. So yeah, it's just finding that it's funny.

Speaker B: I had a conversation with a small group of hotels in London yesterday and they've got three distinctive properties in the same area in London but they're all kind of different price points and they offer something slightly different. What we're doing is sort of amalgamating all of their websites into a one group website. A question was sort of asked of me yesterday. So how are we going to convey to the customer, uh, what each property has? And what we kind of came up with is almost like a positioning statement for each property. So stay at this particular hotel if you're looking for this. And that could appeal to both families and work, um, and um, obviously corporate travelers, um, alike. But it's almost like defining, so this particular, this lovely five star boutique hotel. Stay in this property if you're looking for a touch of decadence, you're looking for a really interesting, unique experience and you want it to be close to X, Y and Z, you know. Ah, and so that we've found that almost that ah, positioning statement of defining what the product is and putting it in the terms of the customer rather than we are this, you should book us if you're looking for X, uh, can make a real, really big difference. So it's interesting that you mentioned that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think you've got to sell to what the customers need, not what you think they need. It's, you know, the understanding of that side of it. It's not about, oh, we're great because we do X, Y and Z. If the customers actually don't see that or don't feel that that's the benefit to them. Yeah, absolutely. So I can totally understand that for that kind of company. Yeah.

Speaker B: Great. So you mentioned as well around, you know, getting up the rankings, Google, which is obviously traditionally sort of search engine optimization, you know, moving things up. Uh, I'm interested to know if that's sort of a big part of your strategy at QGreen Hotels and if so, why you feel it's still a really important part of how you gain awareness and customers.

Speaker A: Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean we're lucky again. And this is the whole, um, branded versus unbranded and the benefits potentially of both. M. Um, you know, if you're an independent hotel, you probably will spend a lot more on that, uh, in terms of your own SEO. But if you are very defined in terms of what you are as an independent hotel, because you've got a golf course and it's award winning, you've got spa, you've got, you know, a James Martin restaurant or something like that, you know, you naturally have got all these things that will, people will be googling you for, oh, I want to go to that hotel that James Martin's got his restaurant at, for instance. But when you're something like what we are, it's We've got the brand behind us so SEO is really important and we maximize obviously and build our websites and put content and all of that behind, behind it. But we do have um, ihg, uh, behind us, holiday and whatever. So we've got a lot of their bidding on words and they're doing a lot of marketing that you know, but we're all competing against. Booking.com generally is the spend millions on this and you know, you Google a hotel, hotels in Stoke again we keep keeping the same it. Chances are booking.com might come up there first before everybody else as well. And no amount of money that we could, we couldn't spend any amount of money that would ever stop that. So you know, but we know that IHG will be spending money and um, with what we do, like we said about, you know, it's not necessarily putting money behind it, it's about the wording, the, you know, making sure your websites are doing what they should be doing for you. Having those links, having those right words, linking in with partners, um, linking in with other like minded brands. You know, all of, all of the things that you can do. And that's where we work with and you know some hotels will obviously just have one website and that's right that they should just have one master website. They own, manage it, run it and everything and stuff and it does everything that they need it to do. We're slightly different because of web brand so we have a brand website again and this isn't a criticism necessarily of ihg but it's quite limiting in terms of. And most hotels that work with the brand will tell you that the brand website can be limited because it doesn't necessarily sell Christmas or weddings really well or events and things but it's great as an information booking engine. Obviously you click then through to the brand to check out and buy a room for instance. So we have independent websites as well that are a mirror of ah, that but give a little bit more information so that if people say weddings in Wakefield it wouldn't necessarily be the IHG branded website that would come up, it probably would be our independent website because we have more information about weddings and we will, you know, we have content and brochures and information and everything. So for us it's a balance about making sure that we've got as much information out there and obviously we work with, you know, people like Swerve is one that we've just started working with a remote working company. You know, they want people to come into bars, uh, restaurants, anywhere that you've got a table and a plug, basically, and, you know, laptop workers and that kind of thing. So we've just started with them. Um, so being on their platform again gives us that SEO. You know, you're out there. You know, it's another reason for people to find you. So that's what we're really mindful of, is how do people find us? That's the key thing.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting concept. I've not heard of that company.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, they're great. Yeah.

Speaker B: Swerve, swerve, swerve. Okay, interesting.

Speaker A: Swerve. S W U R F Swerve.

Speaker B: Okay. Uh, yeah.

Speaker A: So, yeah, I can put you in touch with the lady. She's fabulous. Nicki. Thank you.

Speaker B: It sounds really interesting. I think, you know, getting a bit quite, um, should we call it creative with your spaces? I think is a really smart and shrewd thing to do. So that's a really interesting concept. And I just want to pick up on something you said around. You know, ultimately booking.com will naturally always sort of sit or TripAdvisor will sit on the top spots. I think what we are certainly seeing with the, uh, most recent algorithm updates is actually how it's changing slightly based around the users, uh, the specific browsing behavior. Um, if you search on Google Chrome, it might be that booking.com will be lower down the list because you haven't clicked on it quite as regularly as perhaps you used to, sort of. I think that can certainly start to help level the playing field against some of the OTAs. But, yeah, it's always challenging. Booking.com. it's certainly a difficult one, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's. And it's part of, you know, it's part of life. It's, it's, you know, they, they have offers, they have incentives. They're. They, you know, they work with. It's not just with public, it's with corporate partners and things as well. You know, they reach in so much. So it's something that we absolutely, as hoteliers can't ignore. But obviously, ultimately, as a, As a hotelier, we, we have to do everything we can to try and get loyalty and get customers to come direct to us. And when you are part of a brand, at least you have that, that you can say, look, come and get points. You can get a better rate if you book direct. All that usual kind of brand screening and things like that. But it's. Right, but people don't always see that. They always. It's still that assumption. Oh, if I book with booking.com I'm going to get a better rate or whatever. And, and yes, so it's, it's, it's an interest, it's an interesting. And I don't think it's ever going away anytime soon. It's, it's. Booking.com are not disappearing. No.

Speaker B: And if you've seen in the news recently, this has sort of been recorded in mid August, but there's a. I think about a thousand hotels have joined a group lawsuit in Europe, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah, yes, absolutely.

Speaker B: It'll be interesting to see what happens there. I think they've got quite deep pockets, so I don't think they're not going away, are they?

Speaker A: Yeah, no.

Speaker B: So as we sort of draw to a close, Wendy, I'm interested to know about the sort of the. What you feel are the sort of the must have areas of marketing that either branded or unbranded hotels should be looking at for the year ahead. Given that we're seeing quite a rate of change across everything with the development of AI and all manner of things. What do you feel are the must have areas of marketing that every hotelier should be looking at?

Speaker A: Your data is the key thing is your customers and knowing who your customers are and I think dependent on the tech stack. I mean we all talk about tech stack and oh my God, it's, it's never ending and you know, you go down a rabbit hole with some of this stuff as well is it's, you know, if you're starting out as a hotel and you've got nothing, this I think would be one of the most important decisions that you make in terms of what front office system you use and what diary system you use in the sales and catering. Do you then put a CRM system over the top of it? Does your sale. Can your sales team use that so you can understand who's buying what from you? Um, how does that interlink with another booking system or your spa system? I mean, and you've got, I mean it's just, you know, having that blank page. If you were to start any hotel again, your tax system I think is key and I think we're an established business, as most are. When you've been in it for quite a few years and then you look to change it, it really is quite a challenge because one system doesn't work with another or you need something else or APIs in here or connections and stuff. A CRM system I would say would be your biggest asset in terms of pulling all that data together into one place to tell you who your customers are, um, and why they're staying. So are they staying because it's an event weekend? Are they staying because you're dog friendly? Are they staying because you did a special offer and they picked up on that campaign that you sent them an email 20% off this weekend and, and you ended up with some bookings and you know, and then to know that actually next week you can see a gap in your restaurant bookings. But because everything's linked, you can see that some people haven't booked dinner or they're on room only packages so you can send them an email. So have you thought about dinner again? And I know you know you would be doing this anyway, but actually you do it without really having the data to tell you. You kind of do it on a hunch because you send an email out and say, oh, book dinner with us. Here you go, here's the link. You know, but when you've got that CRM M system, I think that would be something that again we're going through a journey at the moment in terms of how we work with that and how we get that better. But if I would say to anybody, what would you do? I would say have a CRM M system that works to give you. Because AI, you know, you don't have to sit there and work it out. You could say to the system, tell me who's not got breakfast book, tell me who's on a room only rate, tell me who booked this, this time last year for this year. And you know, if you've got regular events and we want to target Christmas, tell me everybody who booked in a certain period. You know, the capabilities of something like that are immense and can save your marketing team and you spend so much work. Yeah, uh, so yeah, that's what I would. And then it's creating your databases because if you don't have a database, you don't have a following and you're not creating that following on your social media that in, you know, that environment where people like, oh, I like that hotel because they do X, Y and Z or I like the pictures, I like the feel to it, then you're never going to grow and you're not going to be attracting your new customers and things as well because you need, you need those people to um, to kind of go like, like, like, like kind of thing and share that um, as well.

Speaker B: So I've taken from that fascinating answer, Wendy. What I've taken from that is really Kind of you really want to know the who and the why of your customers. So who are they? Why are they staying? But so you can manage your um, communications in a much more proactive way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Rather than perhaps the more traditional reactive. Okay, let's send out this, the, the F and B newsletter, uh, you know, every two weeks. That send out the accommodation newsletter every month.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Whatever the cadence. Uh, so what you're saying is really kind of having, once you've got that data and once you know who they are, why they're staying and then you can almost like ah, start to try to fill the gaps in your diary with really relevant communications. Is that what you're sort of.

Speaker A: Absolutely. That's the thing because again, it isn't completely what you said. It just like chuck loads at the wall and hope something sticks. Which is the basic level of what we do. If you don't have that, you are um, you know, you send an email out to a, to a database of. We've got all these festivals going on. You know, we've just done it as well is, you know, we've got Leeds Festival, we've got, I don't know, whatever other festivals, Leeds that came to mind. But you know, Reading, we've got hotel in Reading as well. So we send an email out. Um, and we probably send that to everybody on our database because you don't know who might go to. You know, just because you're based in Reading doesn't mean you're going to go to Reading. You're probably not, you might go somewhere else. So we obviously tailor the content of the email to be right. Okay, racecourses is the other one as well. So we've got Chester, we've got York, you've got Nottingham, you've got Leicester, you know, there's obviously a number of places, Ascot and things as well. So we will do these kind of email shots and remind everybody that the races are coming, it's the festival, it's this, it's whatever. But we'll have to be picky because not everybody would want that and that would, you know, we're really conscious of unsubscribes as well. You know, we monitor our unsubscribe rate as well because you know, you can't just send everything to everybody and hope that somebody books something. So we do, we do target, you know, because that's the other thing as well. It's understanding and knowing where your customers come from. Most people, there's a doughnut of where people. So you've got A location. They come within an hour, they come within two hours. That's, you know, Friday night after work. Nobody really wants to be driving for hours and they go somewhere. So, but we're in. If it's a concert, an oasis, then it's random. People are going to come from all over because they've just managed to get tickets. So, yeah, we do, we really do try to target and be a lot more, um, specialist with, and targeted with what we're, what we're trying to tell people about. Because you can't be everything to everybody, but you can't really, because people are just going to go, oh, and subscribe. I don't want to hear from them again. They're. They're spamming me.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that, you know, to me it comes back to that kind of relevance. But point that, you know, I think that you're suggesting that if we can start sending as relevant communications based around the data that we know about our customers, then they're much more likely. It might not be of interest every time, it probably won't be, but certainly if it's in the correct sort of ballpark in terms of that message, you're much more likely to resonate with it. I'm interested in terms of the integration then with the pms, because that's a question. In fact, uh, again, I was even asked yesterday by a client, which CRM should we be using? How important is it to integrate with pmss? I imagine working with the branded groups, they have their own tools or even bespoke software. But I'm interested to know first of all, how important you feel that integration, the CRM integration with the PMS's, and if there are any particular tools that you're fond of that you found to work to great effect.

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. I think every CRM, um, person, company will tell you theirs is the best one and we should be working with them, but we know they pretty much all do the same thing. We're like, you know, what we all do, you know, we're a hotel. We all kind of do the same thing to a certain extent in the most basic way. You've got to find the one that's right for you based on, I suppose, what you're trying to, you know, what the objective is of what you're trying to do in terms of CRM systems as well. You know, there's so many in terms of. We can send emails for you, we can create the emails, but they'll create them in different ways. They'll, they Understand they've got AI to do this or they haven't or you, you have to write, you know, ask them to do a report and they will do them. But I do see more and more but the CRM say no, no, we've got AI built in with this. Yeah. So it does take the thought out of it for you, kind of give them a reason of what you're trying to do and it'll find the companies. But absolutely it's, you know, at the moment we're limited by. Because we are brand. The brand owns some of the data.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Um, so we can't just email everybody who's ever walked through our doors. There's some people we can and some people we can't and every branded hotel has got those limitations. So for us it's about, well, who's not. How do we get those onto our database? How do we get them to say, actually, you know, a bit like you got in our database, we'll give you a special rate or we'll give you access to sales quicker and all these kind of USPs and stuff, which you obviously can do. Or, um, we'll tell you when the next sales go in so you're ready and this kind of thing. So it is really, really important that you've got the right CRM that links then into your front office from an accommodation point of view. But then if you're an events, mainly an events driven establishment, non accommodation venue, you know, you could be just a barn or you could be a big stately home that's got 20 meeting rooms but no accommodation. You need to understand who they are as well and be able to market to them as well. So, and I think most CRMs as well, they probably won't thank me for saying it, but again, everything kind of does the same thing. You've just got to find the one that's got the right niche for you that integrates with your other systems. Whether it's reporting, because that's the other thing that can do reporting and give you a nice dashboard. But ultimately if that's not your company's way of doing it, because you use power bi or a tableau or something like that, you need to be able to manipulate that. Your data then can flow into that to give you how you need to do it for your internal stakeholders as well. So it is quite hard and tough and it's a process to get through to understand what works.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, uh, Wendy, we're near the end of our session. I've got one final question for you.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Finally, what do you feel is the most important thing hotel brands need to do to achieve growth in the year ahead?

Speaker A: Oh my goodness. We need to find new business somewhere. New business, New business, New business. Um, because you know, businesses is reducing everywhere it's becoming. It's always been competitive, you know, it always has been whatever, you know, 10 years, 20, 30 years ago, you know, we've always worked in a competitive market, but as things become more increasingly competitive in the business world in terms of who our customers are, we have to be more creative, be more on the ball in every single way. Not just from a sales, reactive sales, but it's that initial attracting customers to you. And whether that's B2B or B2C as well, you know, we've got to retain and make sure we keep our customers, but we know we'll always lose some. So new business, new business. New business is our lifeblood.

Speaker B: Wendy, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Always is some fascinating insights there and I think some really interesting points that you've shared, particularly I think around the experience piece that we discussed, but also the CRM discussion at the end there. I think that's really, really valuable. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Speaker A: Adam, it's been a pleasure as always. Thank you so much for having me. Brilliant.

Speaker B: Thanks Wendy. Speak soon.

Speaker A: Thanks, Adam. Bye.