In this week’s episode of Hotel Moment, Bashar Wali, Founder and CEO of Practice Hospitality, joins Revinate CMO Karen Stephens with several honest perspectives on how hoteliers can clean up operations and become better stewards of hotel stays rooted in emotional intelligence.
From optimizing the online booking experience to remain competitive with OTAs to valuing the guest’s time at check-in and being smart about upsells, Bashar explains why it’s all about the human connection and meeting your guests’ needs.
Bashar also advocates for using technology as a tool to eliminate friction in every stage of the guest journey, so that hoteliers can focus on ultra-personalization that inspires guest loyalty.
Tune in and find out if your guests are leaving your hotel without a true connection to your brand, and what you can do to become memorable.
Meet your host
As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships.
Karen is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.
Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com
Connect with Karen
Transcript
Bashar Wali – 00:00:00: If I don’t connect with you, you’re just a place. I walk in, I walk out, I get what I need, I move on.
Karen Stephens – 00:00:08: Welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.
Karen Stephens – 00:00:36: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today we are thrilled to have Bashar Wali with us, the founder and CEO of Practice Hospitality and This Assembly, which is a group of hospitality service companies that includes Practice Hospitality. With over three decades of experience in the hospitality industry, Bashar has been at the forefront of creating innovative and human-centered hotel experiences. He is passionate about blending creative design, community engagement, and exceptional service to elevate the guest experience. From leading renowned properties like Providence hotels to founding his own companies, Bashar’s approach to hospitality is all about connecting people on a deeper level. So I have to say, if you haven’t had a conversation with Bashar before, you are really in for a treat. He’s got a great lens, as he even self-described, kind of born and raised in hotels and came up in the industry. And his take on where we are as a service industry in terms of how we relate to retail, the airlines, and what we can do better to improve connections with guests and build that trust is really phenomenal. So I think you’re going to laugh. I did a few times. He’s got some great commentary. So here you go, Bashar Wali. Hello, Bashar. Welcome to the podcast.
Bashar Wali – 00:01:54: Karen, nice to see you. Delighted to be here with you. So Bashar,
Karen Stephens – 00:01:57: You’ve been part of the hospitality industry for decades, and you’ve played a key role in creating unique and immersive hotel experiences. What drives you in the hospitality space, and what excites you most about where the industry is headed?
Bashar Wali – 00:02:10: I wish I were that smart to agree with what you said about me. I tell people I’m just a hotel guy trying to do good work, and I really think of our industry as a ultra-simple industry at the end of the day. We’re not curing cancer. There’s no rocket science anywhere here. I feel passion is the singular, most underrated thing people think about when they think about our industry. I can teach you how to do all the things. I could show you how to push the buttons and move things around. I cannot teach you to be passionate about what you do. And unless you really have that fire within, this is not an industry for you. So for me, passion is what drives me, what motivates me, what keeps me going. And looking at human behavior, rather than trends, has been a pillar to everything I do. And what I mean by that is, I think people chase trends, and trends by definition have a shelf life. I say, I look at how humans behave, meaning how they interact with our spaces, how they interact with each other, what their eating trends look like, drinking trends look like, and I try to cater things and craft things to meet their expectations of how they live today. Again, just the way people eat, this idea of food allergies. You can’t exist today without thinking about those. But if you thought about those early enough, you became the go-to. You created loyalty. Because I say, Karen, I have gluten-free. Before gluten-free was a thing. I care about you. I see you. You matter to me. So it’s a nuanced approach that allows you to connect with people and make them feel cared for. That’s really the business we’re in, is making you feel cared for without chasing trends, without shocking on. Now, what I look to for inspiration, sadly, we’ve become a copy-paste industry. I no longer look at hospitality for inspiration. I forever said I’ve always looked at retail for inspiration. And the reason why I think retail specifically is because retail was at the verge of death and necessity is the mother of all invention. So they’ve had to really think about how do we actually change the narrative? How do we keep retail alive? And they’ve managed to understand that retail is not about transaction. Sure, it’s all about transaction, but that’s not how you attract people to you. It’s really about experiences. So you walk into retail stores. Now, everybody has activations and things and bells and whistles. So it’s less about buying the product and more about creating loyalty between you and the brand. So I definitely look at retail. I love their ease of use. I go on Instagram. I see a pair of shoes. I press three buttons. They’re in the mail coming my way. I go on a hotel website to book a room and on step 75, they’re making me change my keyboard from alpha to numerical to give them my zip code. Why in God’s name do you need my zip code? Why does it matter? Right? So it’s funny. We’re very archaic that way. And retail. Retail has leaps and bounds past us. So, yeah, I don’t look at hotels for inspiration anymore. I really look at other industries.
Karen Stephens – 00:04:56: That’s really interesting. I love that correlation because I do think in hospitality, we always seem to be a little bit behind the curve and I think you hit it on the head. It’s like, how do you really connect with the guests? And it is about how somebody feels both about your brand and your website and also how they get on property. So can you talk a little bit about the ventures you’re involved in now? So there’s This Assembly and also Practice Hospitality. But how did those two work together to help hoteliers kind of achieve that feeling, for lack of a better word?
Bashar Wali – 00:05:24: So we’re trying to organize it better. I know it’s by design been confusing. And frankly, I posted something recently on LinkedIn that I love the fact that many, many people that I know know me and I admire them and they admire me don’t know what I do. And it’s a little philosophical here because I say, look, what I do is not who I am. Who I am is who I am. What I do is secondary. So I love that fact. They sort of say hotel guy. We don’t know if he’s a trust fund kid who loves to loves to stay in hotels or he’s a doorman who works in hotels. And I love that. But to simplify, this assembly was designed to assemble a bunch of amazing people doing amazing things under one umbrella. And that’s what I’m trying to do now. So Practice Hospitality is a hotel management company. I will have the company that does sort of real estate development syndication advisory that will sit under that umbrella. We’re currently thinking about a couple of other ventures that would fit in that category. Ultimately, I want to be your, go-to guy. Hotel guy. Like everybody’s got a guy. I want to be your guy. When someone says, hey, I have this fill in the blank hospitality problem, Karen, I want you to say, I got a guy and kind of fill in the blank. Now, Jack of all trades, master of none, our specialty release sort of lifestyle, how to create places that matter and are memorable. I sort of say from my neurotic jumping around from hotel to hotel, there’s two kinds of hotels in the world. Only two. I don’t care about your Michelin keys and your stars and your diamonds. You’re either memorable. Or you’re forgettable. That’s it. Nothing else matters. I like to say we’re in that memorable hotel space. You can call it lifestyle. You can call it indie. You can go to a boutique. You can label it. However you want to label it. Those are nothing but labels. We’re in the business of when you walk into a place, making you feel a certain way that stays with you and you take it home with you. That’s all I want. And by the way, that could be two star or seven star. It really is not about stars. It’s about what you bring home.
Karen Stephens – 00:07:15: Yeah, so I’ve actually heard you say along those lines, it’s that service is what you provide and hospitality is how you make people feel. So that’s kind of a summary of what you just said.
Bashar Wali – 00:07:24: 100%.
Karen Stephens – 00:07:25: Okay, so how do hotels balance high-tech innovation and with creating that emotional connection? So how do you foster that on property using technology as well?
Bashar Wali – 00:07:35: I literally was having this conversation this morning using the airline business as an example. The airlines were masters of eliminating the bodies in the front and pushing you towards the app and the kiosk. They were masters at it. But the one thing they have that we don’t have is once I do all my things on my phone, I book my reservations, I check in, I change my seat, I do all the things. They remove the friction. I no longer need to call or go in a line for an hour to check in at the airport. But what the airlines have that we don’t have is now I’m stuck on that tin can in the air for one, two, 10 hours, and they can engage with me one-on-one. They can provide me service. They can get me to join their tribe by recruiting me, by providing me good service. Not many of them anymore, sadly, particularly in the US, but certainly internationally, they understand that concept. The problem with hotels following that model is, and I’ve used it before, I could literally engage with a hotel the same exact way and never meet a human in the process. Airplane, I’m checking in, I get in my Uber, I walk in the lobby, just zip through the lobby, go on the elevator, open my room, get in my room, get out of my room, leave, check out, never engage with someone. And what a missed opportunity. Because what you’ve done now is you’ve become a commodity. I need a bed and a shower, you give me a bed and a shower. There’s nothing more about it. How do you make a room memorable? A room is not memorable. Marble is not memorable. Art is not memorable. It’s really the people that make those things memorable. It’s not about the art. It’s about the artist who created the art and what was going on in their heart and soul and brain that makes the art more valuable. Even if it’s so abstract, even if it’s paint thrown on a canvas, if you really understand how we came together and engage with that artist indirectly through a curator, through a docent, through something, that’s why the art matters. So I think the danger for us is following the airline model without having that piece where I can connect with you. So my view on technology is we are dinosaurs. We hotels are absolute dinosaurs. Again, back to my example of the booking engine. Hotel people, I love you. I do not want to go to the OTAs to book my room. Please don’t fight me every step of the way when I’m trying to book my room on your website. Make it easy for me. Because by step 75, if you are making me change my keyboard from numerical to alpha, guess what I’m doing? I’m going to Expedia, sorry. One, two, three, room book. We are dinosaurs when it comes to technology. We have a great opportunity to adapt. Be fast at it because we are historically dinosaurs. Remove the friction. My view on technology is its job is to remove the friction. So when I walk up to you at the desk, Karen, don’t ask me to sign here and initial there and stick my credit card here and show you this and do that. The airlines have figured out to remove all of that. Why haven’t we? Allow me at that moment in time when I come up to you at the desk to ask you, what’s your favorite FOSS spot in town? What should I do? What’s around the corner? How do I do this? How do I get that? Like, allow me to engage with you. Because, and I talk about this a lot in Nazi and frankly, everyone who follows me will be like, oh God, here he goes again. I’m going Darwinian on you. You ready?
Karen Stephens – 00:10:31: Yeah.
Bashar Wali – 00:10:32: We are tribal animals. We need each other to survive. We have not evolved enough past that yet. Maybe someday we will. But right now we all want to feel like we belong. And when you remove the humans out of the transaction, you are shelter. You are providing me the very lowest thing on Maslow’s hierarchy of need that we human needs. We all need shelter. And if you are just shelter to me, man, that is an expensive way to sleep for one night, paying you four, five, eight, nine thousand dollars. If you don’t give me a reason to say, oh, this is my place. I belong here. Sure, I’ll admire your design and your art and your scent and your lighting. All these are important. But ultimately, in my opinion, if I don’t connect with you, you’re just a place. I walk in, I walk out, I get what I need, I move on. So we are not using technology enough to remove friction. We still have a lot of friction points. And by the way, another interesting thing is I tell people, you’re badly mistaken if you think you are in any other business other than retail. You are retailers. Hoteliers, you are retailers. You have perishable inventory. If you don’t sell that room tonight, it is gone forever. You can’t resell it tomorrow. So don’t fight me when I’m trying to buy from you. Allow me to buy seamlessly and then find a hook for me to become loyal to you so I’m not shopping anyone else.
Karen Stephens – 00:11:41: Yeah. Can you give an example? So again, if we’re removing the friction and making the booking easier, making the experience and check-in easier, can you share an example of how a hotel experience can foster deeper connection or how humans in the loop can make sure that that happens to create that loyalty and that impact?
Bashar Wali – 00:11:58: And again, I feel like I’m sick and tired of hearing myself tell the same stories again. I’ll give you an example I use often. Back to the airline business. Status on Delta, top status. I walk up to the gate. I look on the screen. I see my name at the top of the screen for the upgrade. Sure, I’ll take your upgrade. I’m not complaining. But my brain says, wait a minute. Bashar didn’t get an upgrade. I’m nobody. I don’t matter to them. I’m a record number. Record number 5789 that flew this many miles, that has this much status, that bought the ticket at this time, gets to the top of the upgrade. I’ll take your upgrade. But that doesn’t push that button in me that says, hey, you’re important. You matter. And we all want that. We all desperately want that. We desperately want to matter. Back to Maslow’s hierarchy of need, triangle, bottom is shelter, oxygen, water. The very top is transcendence and self-actualization. And self-actualization to me means, Aaron, you see me. I matter to you, right? That’s what hits that button that I’ve arrived. Now I’m at the peak of my species. So I get on the plane. I got the upgrade. Great, fine. I didn’t get the upgrade. The record got the upgrade. I paid my dues to get that upgrade. You didn’t do it for me. Sitting on that plane, I get a handwritten postcard from the pilot that says, dear Mr. Wali, thank you for being a million miler. Thank you for continuing to fly with us through the pandemic. You’re the reason we fly. I am king of the world. I am blown away. So in hotels to be more tactical and kind of stop being so philosophical and nebulous, if you want to accomplish that same idea, to me, the future of luxury is ultra personalization. Forget what color M&M I want on my pillows. That’s so true. Trivial and inconsequential. I’ll give you an example. I’m top status on Marriott. I’ve stayed in hundreds of Marriotts across the globe. Hundreds. I like my room 64 degrees year round. You would think once someone says, hey, we know this customer is a good customer. 20% of your customers give you 80% of your business. We should know that he likes his room cold. I’m going to push a button because technology allows us to do that. I don’t even need to go to the room anymore. Energy management system to drop the temperature for him and take credit for it. Leave a little note that says, hey, we know you like your room more temperature. You’re all set. Hope you enjoy it. Because that wins my loyalty. Not your damn points. Because points are not loyalty. Points are bribery. Come stay at my hotel. I will give you a point. If I stop giving you points, are you still coming? No, that’s not loyalty. I’m buying your loyalty, not earning it. So I think there are a lot of simple ways. But to me, really, it is about ultra customization. And that could mean, by the way, let’s be clear. The biggest luxury for me, single biggest luxury is time. We just don’t have enough of it. So if you want to give me luxury, don’t waste my time. So that may mean I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to engage with you. I want to choose to. Don’t force me to. So when I show up at 11 p.m. to check in for a one night stay, you know, I’m leaving at seven. Why are you telling me about the spa? Does it look like I care about your spa or your gym? So those to me are honestly emotional intelligence at the end of the day is where it boils down to. If we can focus enough on helping our team learn and foster emotional intelligence, read the room, read your customer. I don’t need ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. I’m not a gentleman. Don’t call me by my last name. Don’t send me a butler. Give me what I need. So I tell people when I interview people. And by the way, I have a bunch of jobs open. We have new hotels opening. I don’t care about your Cornell. I don’t care about your whatever. I care that you have common sense, which is very uncommon and have emotional intelligence. People, we are not curing cancer. This is not that hard. All you have to do is be nice and read the room. That’s it. Kind of like at home. When you have company at home, read the room, Karen. If the music’s too loud, read the room. Turn the music down. Right? Like it’s so simple, yet so hard.
Karen Stephens – 00:15:34: I love that. I’m over here laughing. It’s so true. I think the other thing that really hit for me. So first of all, ultra personalization. Yes. And then the second thing is and take credit for it. In other words, you don’t have to be like, you know, but just a little note in the room.
Bashar Wali – 00:15:49: Take credit for it.
Karen Stephens – 00:15:50: Yeah. It’s a morgue temperature in here on purpose.
Bashar Wali – 00:15:53: Absolutely. Take credit for it. The other piece I’ll touch on on technology. Again, look at retail, right? Like I mean, look at Amazon and Instagram and you don’t even have to say it anymore. You think about it and it shows up. Like I feel that if we wanted to, we have the ability to. Karen, I can for very little money tell you how many times you went to the bathroom in your room, how long your shower was, whether you flushed the toilet or not, whether you washed your hands after you’ve used the toilet or not. We can dig so deep in on you to really get to know you. I am shocked. And maybe I’m wrong. And if someone thinks I’m wrong, please correct. That Marriott, the largest, doesn’t have an entire department with a bunch of MIT PhDs that are data scientists that are saying, okay, what can we learn about Karen and how do we put it to work to her benefit? Not big brother, not breaching any privacy issues. I know there’s a lot of people concerned about that. But for example, I have a routine, right? Business traveler. I walk in the room. There are five things I do every time. So if you know that every time I walk in the room, I turn the temperature down and I put the TV on, pick a channel, CNN. Think how magical that would be for me. To arrive in the room, have the temperature be down and the TV be on CNN. Because now I’m loyal to you. You know me, you get me. But nobody thinks about loyalty in that lens. We keep thinking about bribery, throw points at them, extra points. Oh, great. So that’s where the magic is lost. But you make a good point about take credit for it. Because if I don’t know, I won’t know. I’ll assume it’s a coincidence. Maybe, oh, they put the TV on CNN. It happens to be what I watch. Great. But if you say, hey, not to every guest, by the way, you’re a thousand room hotels. You’re not sending a thousand handwritten notes. And by the way, for those who don’t know, you literally can buy a machine, a robotic machine that has a pen, not super expensive, that will write handwritten notes for you. So you can’t write a thousand notes handwritten with a pen. But take credit for it. Because taking credit for it is your way of showing me love and showing me that you care about me.
Karen Stephens – 00:17:42: Yeah, that’s amazing. The other thing I want to pick up on is just talking about points, even in the airline or with hotel. It’s like you earn those points because you’re on those planes all the time, in those rooms all the time. So that’s not a reward for me. That’s a road warrior. You know, that’s something in my career that makes me be here all the time.
Bashar Wali – 00:18:00: It’s the price of admission, right? Like it is the price of admission. And funny, by the way, you see those who get it, they’ll show up at an independent hotel with no points. They’ll open their wallet and there’ll be every top status card in their wallet that you see. They’re not choosing you for the points. Again, listen, and we’ll talk about the other kind of a traveler in a minute. But those who are seeking the experiences, they’re not choosing you for the points. But if you give them the points, sure, they’ll take it. But they’re not gonna sacrifice the experience for the points. So if you happen to have a good experience and you give them points, okay, great, bonus. But that’s not what they’re coming there for. Now, in fairness, there’s a lot of hardworking people out there who are barely making it, who will go out of their way to a lesser experience to get the points because that’s how they take their family on vacation. I am not knocking those people. But they are doing that consciously and they’re doing thoughtfully for a reason. So no knock on those point chasers because I get why they’re doing it. But if you’re touting your ability to attract people based on experience, my argument is you don’t need points.
Karen Stephens – 00:19:00: Well, we talk about this a lot at Revinate. We deal with a lot of independent hotels and small groups. And it is about the experience and tailoring that experience and making sure that people understand even beyond the hotel, what’s in the local area that’s going to enrich your whole stay. So we think about that a lot. Because if you don’t have 30,000 rooms, points really don’t. It takes a long time to do.
Bashar Wali – 00:19:22: And we talk a lot about CRM, and I think people throw that word around and they don’t know what it means anymore. CRM isn’t sending a guest an email to have them come back and stay. It’s a complex journey from beginning to end to build customer relationship management. Relationship. We think about it transaction. I have a need period. I’m going to send you an email to come stay with me. That’s not relationship nurturing. Relationship nurturing is having a dialogue with you ongoing in any different way, whatever that means, a newsletter or whatever. It’s not always about look at me, look at me, come by me, come by me. So I think we need to better define CRM in our industry broadly and what it means back to this ultra customization issue. Also, we back to again, Marriott to pick on them for a minute. You should know everything about me, but what are you doing with that information? Nothing. As far as I’m concerned, nothing. And by the way, the same example I gave you about the upgrade on Delta. I mean, I’m a hotel ops guy. I grew up in the business. When you get an amenity in the room, Karen, don’t get excited. I don’t know who you are. You’re just a name on a list. I print a list that says, here are the VIPs. Karen is VIP level one. You send her this amenity. So it’s very impersonal unless it is personal where someone found out something about you, knew you liked, how do you do melon or whatever? I wrote you a note to take credit for it. Hey, this is not just an amenity that everyone gets. Karen, we know you like honeydew and we sent you honeydew specifically because then it’s not an amenity. Then it’s like, holy crap. I love these people. How did they know that about me?
Karen Stephens – 00:20:41: Yeah, it really does feel like that too. I admit it.
Bashar Wali – 00:20:45: Transactional, all transactional.
Karen Stephens – 00:20:47: Right? That’s so true. Okay. You mentioned Instagram. So let’s talk a little bit about the Instagramification of hotels. How do you think this trend is shaping how hotels market themselves and what should hotels be doing to tell their brand story more effectively using digital?
Bashar Wali – 00:21:02: As I vomit in my mouth at the very thought of Instagrammable moments. So I often say, do good work. Funny, I tell designers, if you win an award for doing this project for me, I will never hire you again because now the award is the only thing you’re thinking about. So you will do things that make no sense, that have no basis. And in reality, because you’re chasing that nebulous award. What I say is do good work and the award will come. And similarly, do thoughtful things that naturally become Instagrammable moment. Don’t go put a sign on the world, a wall that says, this must be the place you have arrived. La la la la. Like we’ve seen them all now. And when cool becomes ubiquitous, it’s not cool anymore. When there’s a checklist on how to be cool, that is the definition of being uncool. Do not follow that checklist. So this never ending Instagrammable moment, has become almost our purpose and our North Star to a fault. It makes no sense. Sometimes what we do with it as no context, it has no basis. If you are thoughtful about what you do, I love those two words, thoughtful and intentional. Don’t just put a piece of art on the wall because it’s a good piece of art. Make sure it resonates. It has meaning. It has purpose specifically. And the way you could tell your story through digital, which is super important, obviously, and I’ll give you a real life example in a minute is make sure that the work that. You’re doing to tell the story has those moments of surprise and delight. I hate that term too. It’s very hotel nineties. But the idea is like, if you’re trying to tell me a story about this historic building or this location or this market or this destination or these people or whatever it is that you’re celebrating or this forest or this river, find a moment that’s interesting. That’s elegant, intentional, and thoughtful that you believe will naturally become the Instagrammable moment. Don’t start the process by saying, let’s find the Instagrammable moment out of this thing and put it on the wall. We’ve story. And you know, when you’re reading a book and there’s a, maybe an illustration that’s beautiful and it grabs your attention. That’s how I think of it. But that illustration is a part of the story. It’s not just some random thing thrown on a wall that has no context whatsoever to the story. So that’s how I think about Instagrammable moments. They are important. We have to use digital. The example I was gonna give you is I take my kids on separate trips every spring break across the globe, one-on-one and often I’m the neurotic hotel guy. I’m gonna pick the hotel. So last time I went with. My daughter, seven countries in 10 days, literally I said, you’re in charge. You go find the hotels. Here’s your parameters. Here’s the budget. Here’s the quality, et cetera. Don’t tell me. And I promise, cuz I’m known to be whiny a lot about that stuff. I’m like, I will shut my mouth and I will accept it. Literally every hotel she picked in seven countries across the globe that we’ve never been to, except for one I had been to were spectacular. I would have never found them. And she found them all on TikTok. So dear hoteliers. Sure. It’s nice to be in The New York Times. So. I can go to a cocktail party and brag to my friends that my hotel made it in The New York Times. That’s not how people are buying today. If you’re not on digital and all in on digital, you are asleep at the week. You’re the guy who back in the nineties said, oh, that internet thing is a fad. It’ll go away. The future is short videos, real time user generated. It can’t all be shiny influencer, sexy bikini. That kind of like early on when we, the TripAdvisor, right? Like it was so good cuz it was user generated. You could rely and trust it. People are far more sophisticated now and they can read through the BS that we might serve them. So it has to be authentic, but that’s where the future is. And you have to create places in your hotel that are a conducive for these customers that are paying you to help you tell your story for free. They’re doing your marketing for you. Don’t get in their way. Let them walk around with their selfie sticks. Let them have the right, proper lighting. Make sure your wifi is fast enough. That’s how you foster those people to allow them to come brand evangelists for you across the globe. But absolutely the future, a hundred percent across the spectrum from luxury to select serve is digital. Like got email who opens email and reads email anymore. Are you kidding me? But it has to be, it can’t be, oh, let’s do a reel for TikTok tomorrow. No, no, no, no. It has to be a bonafide, well thought out, thoughtful and intentional strategy. That is a long-term strategy. It’s all let’s spend a thousand dollars on TikTok next month. Oh, we got no money out of it. Forget to no, no, no, no. It has to be part of your marketing plan.
Karen Stephens – 00:25:20: I love that because I do think that kind of the old way of thinking is what is our social media strategy? We’re going to do X amount of posts per week. We’re going to blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I’m hearing you say is create the environment and the experience. And obviously your hotel has to be great. And then those guests are going to come in and they will do your marketing for you, especially the younger generations, right? I was skiing the other weekend and there was a guy at the top of the mountain, you know, had his whole coat off taking pictures with the lake behind. I mean, it was like, what is going on? But I just realized, hey, that’s a generational thing. And they’re the new buyers. Like I’m reading the The New York Times. They’re looking at TikTok.
Bashar Wali – 00:25:59: And they’re influencing their parents, also the younger ones. Like, by the way, Karen, you think you’re the decision maker? You’re not. You’re gonna listen to those kids. They’re gonna influence their decision-making for you. And to your point, let the consumers do the hard work for you, but you still have to have your own strategy. And of course, influencers are very important. And I think influencers, it’s become a dirty word almost, but those that are good at it and know what they’re doing are very accretive and valuable. But we also get caught up in the ROI. And I get it. I’m an owner and an operator in some cases. We all want ROI. But you can’t spend a dollar on Instagram and expect to get $7 back because there’s this idea of brand recognition. Why does AT&T pay 40 million bucks to put their name on a stadium? They’re not saying, how many more phones or plans have we sold as a result of this? They’re saying, we want our name to be front and center. So I think of those campaigns as two separate ones. There’s the name recognition that you can’t put an ROI on because it’s a long-term brand strategy. Then there’s the direct campaign. I have a sneak period. I want to succinctly do a campaign to generate traffic to this hotel during that period. What do I do? And you can’t do it the day before. Like this again, has to be a strategy in place, kind of like sales plans and marketing plans. You created the beginning of the year. 90% of them sit on a shelf and nobody looks at them ever again. It has to be a living documents that changes every day because habits change, platforms change, and timing and need periods change. And I think we’re not using digital enough because sadly, the industry is dominated by middle-aged white dudes and they all want to be in the The New York Times and they all want to be in that whatever. I would much rather be mentioned in Goop than be in the The New York Times. I mean, that’s again, we’ve got to shed the old thinking. I call us the middle-aged white dudes, not white, but the double-breasted shiny suit guys who still think that thing is in style. Although maybe it is coming back now. Like we’ve got to shed the notion that we know everything and really listen and learn because we do not know everything. And if you think you know everything today, literally go home and retire because you’re dead. You’re going to be a has-been and so fast, you won’t know what hit you. You’ll be five minutes ago. We have to pay attention to what’s happening in real time. And things change so fast today. Back in the old days, think about revenue management. Back in the old days, you met once a month, you set the rates for the month and that was it. You’re done with revenue management. Now it’s like a stock market ticker. You have to watch it like a hawk and yield and how you yield those rooms. There’s talk now of Karen, if you want to sit in the restaurant at the table by the window at 7 p.m. on a Saturday, the menu is dynamic. The menu prices will change because the idea is you want premium and that’s where technology can help you maximize your returns, be agile and nimble because how do I do that now? Print different menus for different hours for different tables. But whether it’s a QR code, which by the way, I hate it’s that the QR codes are over, but there are a lot of ways to create dynamic pricing across all things we do to allow us to maximize. And by the way, allow Karen who can’t afford this restaurant at 7 p.m. On a Saturday to come at 5 p.m. On a Monday and get a really good deal. So it’s good for us for maximizing our revenue and it’s good for the consumer because now they could choose what their budget is and what fits in that budget.
Karen Stephens – 00:29:10: Right. Wow, that’s fascinating. I think digital strategy, we talk about this a lot, the long game and the short game. And again, that’s kind of borrowed from retail and traditional marketers. But hoteliers need to think of that as well. Brand building is not a short term activity. It does not have ROI out the gate. It’s something that, that goes over time. I’m telling you, my VP of marketing right now is jumping up and down because we talk about this all the time.
Bashar Wali – 00:29:32: Well, again, and what I said to you earlier is we don’t think we’re retailers and we really need to change that narrative. We say, oh, we’re in the guest service business. No, no, no. Guest service is what you do to make what you make at the end of the day work. Your job is to sell those rooms day in and day out. That’s the only job you have.
Karen Stephens – 00:29:49: Right. Okay, so I have one last question for you. So as a hotel operator, as someone who’s been in the business, has owned a lot of hotels, has had different brands and now with the two companies you’re with now, there’s a lot that hotel operators are dealing with. And what is your piece of advice? I mean, if you just think about the context that we’ve already got staffing shortages, costs are just going up, up, up. So I feel like the struggle for an operator at this point is to figure out how to do all of these things and stay alive. Maybe that’s dramatic, but one piece of advice for operators.
Bashar Wali – 00:30:18: I wish I’d give it to myself if I had it. I mean, look, fundamentally, I am a true believer in the hire people that are smarter than you are and get out of their way. And that’s becoming harder and harder to your point about the labor market and now the immigration issue and deportation issue and how that affects our industry, et cetera. It has been a really, really rough go for us. Prices continue to go up. Margins continue to get squeezed. The big get bigger and make it harder for us little guys to kind of go chase it. I hate this idea of us being service providers, view the service provider. Karen, if you own a hotel, me being your service provider is very transactional. You’re hiring me to provide you a service and you’re paying me a fee for it. I think we’ve forgotten the idea that the way for this to be successful for both of us, this is a relationship. This is a partnership. I want to be your partner, your owner. I don’t want to be your service provider because by being your partner, it changes our collective perspective. We’re at the table together. Your concerns are mine. I’m helping you think your concerns. You’re invested in my success because my success is your success. I feel like there’s a lot of tension now between owner and operator. It always seems like it’s a fight. And I think the best example, obviously, is when you are the owner and the operator because now you control everything. But in the example where you are a service provider, our services become commoditized in a way by the big boys that have 1,500 hotels and will do it on a month-to-month basis for nothing, basically. If you want those guys, you can have them. They’re going to be your service provider. My advice to people in my space is you have to be a partner to your owner. You have to understand their hopes, their aspirations. You have to set their expectations realistically from the get-go. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. And don’t under-promise and over-deliver. Really, it’s kind of like a marriage or any relationship, for that matter. I think any relationship has to be built on the foundation of trust. If you don’t have trust, you have nothing. So we don’t spend enough time really getting to know our customers, our partners, our owners, establishing that trust relationship. But make no mistake about it, a good friend of mine described this management business as a knife fight out there, and it is a knife fight. At the end of the day, care and owner, if you’re a partner, if you want the commodity person, I’m not your person, I will make you connections to lots of people who will do it cheaper, faster. It just depends on what you want, and that might be the answer for you. But if you really want a partner, here, I’ll give you the silly analogy I use. You and your spouse are trying to have kids. It’s hard, hard, hard, hard. Finally, after years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, you have your baby. Blood, sweat, tears, money. Because that’s what hotels are to many developers. They’re not transactional. They’re passion, they’re children. And now you and your spouse want to go out to dinner. So you’re like, well, what do I do with the baby? Do you hire someone to manage your baby? Is that what you do? Manage is such a passive, transactional word. And that’s how we viewed it. So now my example now, you have this hotel, blood, sweat, and tears. You’ve agonized for months over what feeling that doorknob will give you when you open it, how tactile it is. And you’re going to give it to someone to manage? So the words I’d like to use back to the baby context is, you want someone to love, care for, nourish, nurture your baby. If you don’t think about it in those lens, and if I don’t think about it in that lens that you’re handing me your baby that I should love and cherish and grow, it’s transactional. I’m just managing your baby. I mean, think about literally that terminology. So I think, again, we’ve gone away from that whole inner person. Chip Conley was a genius at this with Joie de Vivre. His job wasn’t running hotels. His job was really engaging the owners. The owners didn’t hire J.D. Vitor on their hotels. They hired Chip Conley. Chip Conley knew their kids. He took them out to baseball games. He was a friend. He was their partner. And that’s why those relationships were successful because they were all built on this interpersonal thing and not just transactional. So if there’s any piece of advice I will give you is if you think of yourself as a service provider, I get paid to do the job, then fine, there’s a place for you. But if you really want to do something unique and different is you have to think about this as a partnership, a marriage, a relationship, and nurture it. You can’t just take it for granted. You can’t get the deal, send the show pony in to get the deal and walk away. It’s like any relationship. You have to continue to nurture and water it and feed it and take care of it for it to thrive.
Karen Stephens – 00:34:27: I love it. Well, thank you, Bashar. I really appreciate the conversation.
Bashar Wali – 00:34:31: Thank you. Delighted to be with you.
Karen Stephens – 00:34:37: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.
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