In this week’s episode of the Hotel Moment podcast, we’re doing a little “year in review.” We catch up with three guests who’ve appeared on the show before for a glimpse into how they’ve impacted hospitality in 2024.
Aaron Miller, Vice President of CRM and Digital at Highgate, pulls back the curtain to share what Highgate did to make Black Friday successful for 2024 — imparting advice for hoteliers on how to stay on track during the holiday season.
With experiential hospitality taking center stage in 2024, Shawn Jereb, Senior Vice President of Revenue Management and Distribution at Montage International, steps in to explain how Montage has approached luxury and the guest experience this year to stand out among guests looking to be impressed.
And if you missed Carlo Del Mistro, Chief Digital Officer at Ennismore, earlier this season talking about Ennismore’s membership program, “Dis-loyalty,” Carlo’s back to tell you more. “Dis-loyalty” is an inspiration for all hoteliers as Ennismore ditches the points and leads with data-driven rewards that have guests returning to all the properties within their portfolio.
Tune in for a glimpse at what these hoteliers have accomplished this year and how you can achieve similar results in 2025!
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
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Transcript
Intro – 00:00:04: 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 back to the Hotel Moment Podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And for this episode, we’re catching up with three guests who’ve appeared on the show before. All three will share updates from their hotels and the new hospitality endeavors they’re pursuing. We’re starting with Aaron Miller, who is the Vice President of CRM and Digital at Highgate, who reflected on Highgate’s strategy and performance during Black Friday. Next, we’ll hear from Shawn Jereb, who is the Vice President of Revenue Management for Montage International, who also came on to chat. Shawn details how Montage has been creating bigger and better luxury experiences. And then, of course, the brains behind Ennismore’s “Dis-loyalty” program, Carlo Del Mistro, who is the Chief Digital Officer, came on to give us the latest on that program, which I always find fascinating. So get ready to see how these three hoteliers have had their moment using technology to better their hotels. Let’s hear from Aaron first. Welcome back to the podcast, Aaron.
Aaron Miller – 00:01:32: Thank you for having me.
Karen Stephens- 00:01:33: It’s great to see you again. So the last time we caught up was May of this year when we were in Miami together for NAVIGATE. So just so our listeners are reminded who you are and what you do, can you just give the highest level of your role at Highgate and what portion of the Highgate portfolio you oversee?
Aaron Miller – 00:01:49: Sure. I’m Aaron Miller, Vice President of CRM and Digital for Highgate. So I mainly oversee our independent portfolio, of which we’re probably close to 80 or 90 hotels worldwide. The vast majority of them are located in the United States, but we do a strong portfolio in Europe. We have a portfolio in the Caribbean. We have a portfolio in South America. So we’re growing all the time.
Karen Stephens- 00:02:16: Wow. Yeah, you’ve grown even a lot since we last talked in May. I think you picked up a few hotels. So you’ve been busy.
Aaron Miller – 00:02:23: And every day, yeah.
Karen Stephens- 00:02:25: Cool. Well, we’re coming up on the end of the year, and we’re recording this right after Black Friday. So we just finished Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday. So just really curious to hear, like, how did your hotels approach the holiday, and how did it go?
Aaron Miller – 00:02:40: Fortunately, at this point, we have a bit of a playbook. It’s taken us several, the most recent, like after COVID, this kind of the last several years of fine-tuning what that playbook looks like. And I think this was the first year that we basically instituted it without having to make a ton of adjustments. So obviously that preparation is key. It keeps me a little sane. We also started earlier this year. I think we really started getting things built and approved at the beginning of September, maybe end of August, beginning of September. I think the end of August, we had our internal conversations. So we rolled it out to the field in September to start getting things built and approved, which was the right move. These things take time, and there’s always going to be a little intricacies to adjust throughout your website, through your emails, throughout your paid ads, throughout any PR opportunities that are going to reference this, social media, all of that. So it was successful. It’s a big lift, but it’s well worth the lift. I mean, it’s the most important sale of our year.
Karen Stephens- 00:03:35: It really is. I mean, we’re seeing phenomenal numbers across our install base, and we’re going to be doing a blog post. So we’ll release more of that later. But I’m really curious. Well, you said a couple things I think we all need to hone in on there. First of all, preparation is key so that everybody can actually enjoy their holiday. Like by the time Black Friday shows up, all the campaigns should be locked and loaded, ready to go, and just sending at that point, right? You don’t want to deal with that.
Aaron Miller – 00:04:00: Our directive was to have everything locked and loaded on November 1st. Our sale, like everybody’s kind of starts a little early. There’s no such thing as Black Friday anymore. It’s basically the month of November.
Karen Stephens- 00:04:11: The month of November.
Aaron Miller – 00:04:13: We started about a week and a half before actual Black Friday, and remind on Black Friday, remind on Cyber Monday. Sale ends the last, the Friday after Cyber Monday. So it’s probably like a threesome week sale that we’re just constantly peppering in little messages here and there. Like reminder, “Don’t forget” — these types of messages to make sure that it’s top of mind.
Karen Stephens- 00:04:35: Great. And did you see, so we saw that as well, kind of trending across all of Revinate customers. We had sales starting as early as the beginning of November. But interestingly enough, the peak day that we saw in our data was still on Black Friday, even with Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday, I don’t know, I mean, we didn’t see any big jump on there. So I think even though that’s kind of coined as “travel day,” Black Friday was still kind of the main driver on our side. But hey, we’ll take it. If we want to take the whole month and train customers to think about it a little bit and come back and the deal’s still there, right on.
Aaron Miller – 00:05:09: Yeah, I think it’s the nature of the travel industry, right? It’s hard to just make a decision unless you’ve already planned on it. You’re just waiting for that sale to go live. That takes a little bit of, you know, check your flights. Am I going to get a deal there? Am I going to check a couple other things? You’re inundated with other sales from every other product on this planet at the same time. So, yeah, we just try to give as much of a reasonable timeline with the urgency as we can.
Karen Stephens- 00:05:33: That’s great. Well, I’m glad to hear it was successful. That’s phenomenal. And I know the dust is still settling, which is good. But it’s good to know overall, plan for it, and hit the mark. That’s great. So what else have you been up to since May? Kind of what are you thinking through the rest of the year? Did budget season go okay? Is there anything else that kind of stood out in 2024 or in the last half of 2024 that was significant for your portfolio?
Aaron Miller – 00:05:55: All over the place. Budget season is budget season. It’s an interesting time that it overlaps with the Cyber Monday conversation and all the work that goes into that. So I’m getting grayer by the day because of those things, but successful. The firm has been growing. We’ve been managing new hotels. We have a couple more in the pipeline before the end of the year and then very early in Q1. So it’s been a very interesting time, and we’re really excited for next year. We have like a lot of things that are in the works that we’re planning to roll out in Q1 for a lot of our hotels online. So those are getting into the works right now and we’re excited to kind of release them into the world through March, basically.
Karen Stephens- 00:06:34: So Aaron is telling all hoteliers what they need to hear. Preparation is key to achieving success for any major holiday. Getting your data in order and email campaigns set and segmented makes all the difference when those emails hit your guest inboxes. Okay, so next up is Shawn Jereb, my guest from Montage International. Montage has been doing a lot this year for the guest experience. Let’s hear from Shawn.
Welcome back to the podcast, Shawn. It’s great to see you.
Shawn Jereb – 00:07:01: Great to see you too.
Karen Stephens- 00:07:02: So, Shawn, last time you were here, we dove into luxury and we talked about the concept of approachable luxury and how you’re weaving that into the guest experience. So can you talk a little bit about anything that you’ve learned since last October that has helped further Montage International towards that goal of approachable luxury?
Shawn Jereb – 00:07:21: Great question. What’s happened since last October? I think the main focus right now has really been on experiences. So that seems to be the big highlight at the moment, which is, of course, very squarely in our wheelhouse. So I think that’s really where we’re putting a lot of focus right now is on various experiences that can really differentiate us in that luxury space of the things that you can do, because obviously, tons of good product out there, tons of good service out there. But the ability to deliver exceptional experiences is, I think, maybe one of the key focuses since we last spoke.
Karen Stephens- 00:07:52: Yeah, that’s great. So can you talk a little bit about how that’s manifesting? Is that starting with the website? Where do you think that the through line picks up for that experience? And then how is that carried through when you get on property?
Shawn Jereb – 00:08:03: Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s really tough, right? Because it’s a lot of moving pieces. So there’s really a lot of different touch points that we have to hit from our marketing pieces to, as you mentioned, the website, but also really curating them, making sure we can pull them off, and pulling them together is really one of the, I think, bigger challenges is really operationalizing all of those various experiences and making sure that we can deliver on them. So there’s a lot of time spent pulling them together and figuring out what they look like before we’re able to launch them into market. So there’s been a lot of focus on really diving into, you know, what are our pillars? What are our key signature experiences that we want to push out? And then what are individualized by each property to make sure it remains local.
Karen Stephens- 00:08:46: Right. That’s great. And making sure that that human touch, because I think that that, and that’s something we’ve talked about a lot. There’s getting it right in terms of the digital experience and the communications. And then once that guest shows up on property — making sure that the human touch continues there with the interaction.
Shawn Jereb – 00:09:00: Hopefully.
Karen Stephens- 00:09:02: Hopefully. That’s right. The other thing we talked about last time you were here, again, it was in the fall of 2023. And obviously we had that horrible fire in Maui. So I’m really curious to understand how your property in Maui is doing and your employees at that property.
Shawn Jereb – 00:09:18: Yeah, you know… Not great, to be honest. It’s been a really tough, I think, return, particularly for us, just based on where we are. So I think there has been a return to Maui, but it’s been predominantly West Maui, where it wasn’t as impacted, which I think we might’ve touched on last time we spoke. So I think still a long road to recovery for Kapalua Bay. It has been slow, to be honest with you, but we’re hanging in there and chipping away. Things are starting to turn a little bit, but it’s been a year, as you said, which I can’t believe. But yeah, it’s been a slow road, to be honest.
Karen Stephens- 00:09:52: Right. Well, and I can say I’ve been on that property myself. I had the… pleasure. Because it is honestly such a beautiful property. So I’ll just say anybody who’s out there, you want to go to a beautiful trip, go to Maui, go stay at the Montage. That is so beautiful.
Shawn Jereb – 00:10:08: Thank you. And it’s true. It is a stunning place.
Karen Stephens- 00:10:10: It’s a stunning place. That’s great. Well, thank you so much, Shawn. It’s great to see you and good luck with the rest of the year. We’ll see you in 2025.
Shawn Jereb – 00:10:17: Thank you. Good to catch up. I can’t wait for the year. All right. Great. Thanks, Karen.
Karen Stephens- 00:10:22: So as you just heard, Shawn discussed communication channels, which I think is really important. When it comes to creating a memorable guest experience, you have to think about how that translates to your website and how that comes across over email in order to resonate with your ideal guest. And last but not least, let’s hear from the king of “Dis-loyalty”, Carlo Del Mistro.
Well, hello, Carlo. It is so good to have the mastermind behind “Dis-loyalty” at Ennismore back on the podcast. How are you?
Carlo Del Mistro – 00:10:49: I’m great. Thank you, Karen. 2024 has been an absolutely amazing year for Dis-loyalty for Ennismore. So I’m very pleased to be back with you to chat a bit about “Dis-loyalty.”
Karen Stephens- 00:11:01: I love it. So cool to do a check-in. So just for those who aren’t aware, “Dis-loyalty” is Ennismore’s program that’s ditching the points, and prompting loyalty stays and engendering loyalty across your guests, across the entire portfolio. So that was a very high-level description. Can you give us a little bit more detail? What is “Dis-loyalty”, and why is it so great?
Carlo Del Mistro – 00:11:22: Yeah, absolutely, Karen. So “Dis-loyalty” is an Ennismore membership program. We don’t like talking about loyalty. That’s why we call the program “Dis-loyalty” — to just arrive at the point. It’s basically a food and travel program. Members can subscribe for a fee. So it’s paid up front, and there’s an annual subscription. Once you are a member, you get all the benefit from the get-go. So it doesn’t matter whether you just joined “Dis-loyalty”, or have been a member for many years. Once you’re a part of “Dis-loyalty”, there’s no tiers, there’s no points, there’s just benefits. And the thing that we really do to differentiate ourselves from the competition is that we incentivize our members to discover new venues, discover new restaurants and travel and be a bit excited about what’s out there. So we actually give you a higher discount the first time you go to a new location. We get the three main discounts that we give is 50% off on new open hotels for the first three months. And this is extremely popular, and it helps us a lot with putting the new hotels on the map. And then there’s more. We have plenty of new openings coming u, and we’re very excited about. We give 20% the first time you travel to an established hotel. It becomes 10% once you have already been there once. And this is what I was telling you about the discount becoming lower the more you travel to the same location. And finally, the discount on F&B — a one free barista made a drink every day.
Karen Stephens – 00:12:54: I love it. And the brands in Ennismore are so cool. I think what I love most about this program is that if you’re not in the industry, you might not know that Ennismore has multiple brands. You just know the brand itself. So you know the Hoxton, or you know Mondrian. But this really gives the guests the opportunity to discover those other brands, which is what is so cool.
Carlo Del Mistro – 00:13:14: Correct, our brands are really what differentiate ourselves. Ennismore is a brand that is not really a consumer-facing brand. And so “Dis-loyalty” is really helping our brands feel part of a family of lifestyle brands. And we see that our members, our “Dis-loyalty” members, that maybe come across “Dis-loyalty” because they are Hoxton fans or 25hours fans. Then they discover new brands. They discover SLS. They discover Mondrian. They discover Rixos. And this has been a very powerful engine for our growth.
Karen Stephens- 00:13:44: Yeah, absolutely. So remind me again, when did we roll out this program? When did you start this program?
Carlo Del Mistro – 00:13:50: We launched it in the summer of 2023. So it’s been less than two years. But 2024 has been an amazing year of growth for us. We launched a new app. We launched lots of more properties and brands during this loyalty. So we have now over 100 different properties on this loyalty across 10 brands, about 180 plus restaurants. So it’s a very big program, and we cover all the continents. So we have “Dis-loyalty” hotels across the world.
Karen Stephens- 00:14:19: I love that. And now that the program has been around for nearly two years, are you starting to see a lot of great data around how many guests are going to the different brands? Or is there anything high-level you can share with us that you’re like, oh, wow, I didn’t know that that was going to be as dramatic as it is?
Carlo Del Mistro – 00:14:36: Correct. If data is super interesting now that we have enough members with enough track records, we can see where they travel, how they book, how their behavior changes based on whether they are members or non-members. So, for example, when we launched the program, initially it was a very European-centric program with a bit of U.S. membership. However, today I can say that basically “Dis-loyalty” is successful across the globe. So we have our membership. It’s pretty much well distributed across North America, Europe, Middle East, and also Asia Pacific. It is very positive. And what we have been seeing is that, yes, people that come from a certain brand, for example, you join “Dis-loyalty” because you love Mama Shelter, tend to initially travel more within the Mama Shelter brand. But then they start, you know, usually we count about like after a couple of trips, they start booking beyond their original brand. And we see that. Okay. And actually beyond that.
Karen Stephens- 00:15:34: I love that. And obviously the discounts, the compelling discounts encourage that behavior, and then they love it, and they adopt it. And I just think it’s one of the coolest programs out there.
Carlo Del Mistro – 00:15:44: Thank you, Karen. Thank you.
Karen Stephens- 00:15:46: So it’s always so fun to talk to Carlo because we’re always talking about ditching the points. And it’s such a great initiative by Ennismore, to hear about how it’s expanding their revenue and opportunities and cross-promotion of hotels and brands by getting guests involved across the portfolio. And honestly, data is at the core of the program and how they’re personalizing offers for every guest stay at the hotel. I’m sure since this program has been now almost two years in flight, they’re seeing some really interesting trends. So stay tuned for that. So I’ll wrap up by saying that it was so great to catch up with all three of these gentlemen. All of these brands are favorite customers of Revinate, and I’ve enjoyed having all three of them on the podcast. If you’d like to hear the full podcast for each of these guests, please check the show notes, and I’m sure we’ll see more success out of all three of these brands as we come into 2025. Take their progress and their initiatives to heart and use it for inspiration for next year.
Outro – 00:16:44: 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 forward slash hotel moment podcast. Until next time, keep innovating.
