Hotel Tech Insider

SPEAKER_03:
Our goal is to grow the company with automation, though. I want to create an assembly line type execution of sales and marketing where every time we take on a property, we don't have to have five people. So our philosophy is automation with human oversight. And it's important in pointing that out. We're not talking about introducing AI to replace anyone or any strategy.

SPEAKER_00:
From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them.

SPEAKER_01:
Our conversation today is with Patrick Norton, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Britain Hotels and Resorts. Patrick shares his experience overhauling the tech stack at Britain, including switching to a new PMS at 13 of their resorts, and how he actually doesn't consider the PMS to be the center of his technology ecosystem. You'll want to listen to this conversation to learn how to put data at the forefront of your hotel operations, how to take personalization to the next level, and how we can take inspiration from the e-commerce industry to boost conversion rates and revenue.

SPEAKER_02:
Well, thank you so much for dialing in. So first question, I would love to hear a bit about your background and your current role, as well as the company you work for, if you can tell us a bit about that as well.

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, I started when I was 15 in hospitality in Lake George, New York, which is upstate in the Adirondacks where I grew up. Moved down south when I was 20, decided to live where I had vacationed my whole life, which was Myrtle Beach, and got hooked up with a hotel group here. For most of the past 20 years, I've been with that company, climbing the ladder there, became an owner this year. I'm currently the Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Britain is a pretty large management company. 2,500 hotel employees, about 20 premier resorts, 45 F&B outlets. And I have the pleasure of running the sales and marketing department, which is about 40 employees within the management company.

SPEAKER_02:
And are the properties branded or independent?

SPEAKER_03:
Mostly independent. We just built a dual brand Marriott Spring Hill and Courtyard right in the middle oceanfront of Myrtle Beach.

SPEAKER_02:
And are all the hotels in Myrtle Beach?

SPEAKER_03:
They are currently all in Myrtle Beach right now, but we are getting ready to expand in the southeast and then eventually nationally.

SPEAKER_02:
And how long have you been in your current role?

SPEAKER_03:
I've been vice president of sales and marketing for probably, I think about eight years and was just running marketing before that. Marketing's my background. Went to school for digital arts, got my MBA at Johns Hopkins and have just been in marketing for mostly the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_02:
And were you at Britain before you were in this role?

SPEAKER_03:
I was, actually. I started at the reservations at one of the hotels when I was 20, I think. I'm 42 now, and so for most of the past 22 years, I've been with the same company.

SPEAKER_02:
Has the company grown over that time? How big was it when you started?

SPEAKER_03:
I think it was about nine, maybe seven to nine resorts, and we're closer to 20 now. It's been growing. We've also grown beyond just resorts. We opened a call center in Jamaica with 300 agents. It's not the most spectacular thing unless you're in hospitality. We opened a central laundry here, which is this huge, massive, multi-million dollar investment in laundry to centralize it all. It's really not impressive until you see it and you see what a $2 million dryer looks like. Then when you see a machine pulling towels apart, it feels like Terminator 4.

SPEAKER_02:
That's a great segue into the next question. Curious to hear out of all the technology that you and Britain uses, what do you consider to be the most critical technology partner?

SPEAKER_03:
Well, it's without a doubt revenue. We kind of have a different philosophy from most management companies. And it's part of wanting to buck the legacy trends that have, you know, I think held down the hospitality industry and that there's this battle to keep the PMS at the center of your technology hub, which we call technology matrix. And I don't believe that at all. I think it hasn't been in years. I think your PMS is a tool to run your hotel. I think it's a tool to gather information, but the center of your technology hub should be a CDP, which we use in the form of Revenate, right? Revenate is our database deployment tools, our CDP tool where we acquire all and build the biggest customer profiles that we can because we want to do dynamic marketing through the CDP. We use Power BI as well to kind of enhance the recording capabilities of the Revenate platform. But yeah, for a multi-channel, omni-channel, however you want to refer to an approach of how we're going to communicate with our guests, we use Revenate for our CDP, all our database marketing deployments, Ivy, our on-site communication, it's a text messaging software. And it's also the background of our entire call center. So it used to be a company called Navisa they acquired. So I don't think there's anything Revenate builds right now that we don't have integrated into our technology matrix.

SPEAKER_02:
Would love if you could elaborate a little more on specific features of Revenate or maybe integrations that you find especially powerful.

SPEAKER_03:
So the direction we're heading, we refer to as AI driven business intelligence. So what we want to do is get away from this kind of shotgun marketing into this Not one size fits all dynamic approach to marketing. We want each customer experience on our website or call center to be a unique journey that has the most dynamic offer and path created for them to book according to whatever unique specifications it will take to get them to convert. So the abandonment program is a good one, right? So we take them through the website. Actually back up even further than that we do a lot of guest history marketing we send about thirty five million emails here next year in the same fifty million emails here through revenues database platform. When we get them into our website if they don't convert they have an abandonment program that we use where it will capture the customer information and we can auto email back to the revenue platform what's like and what takes the next level so also generate into the navis call center form so that an agent can follow up. and try to convert. So now we're trying an email approach to storing and saving the reservation and trying to convert again. We're trying a phone attempt at conversion by following up exactly with the dates. Hey, you just left the website, you were checking this date, you have this right, you have this room type, you know, if you book today, we can XYZ. So it's really that kind of left right hook approach to trying to convert them and take every swing at the customer before you let them go back out into the open market. Just continue shopping with your competitors.

SPEAKER_02:
And what are the metrics that you would look at to determine that this program is successful?

SPEAKER_03:
We kind of have a new philosophy in our company this year that every person, every department is part of the revenue management team, because that is the ultimate goal. It doesn't matter what department you are. We are trying to beat it in everyone's head that we are all here to generate revenue. Obviously, we want to provide the best customer experience, but we don't work in operations. We work in sales and marketing. So our job is to get customers with the end goal of generating revenue. So the number one metric we look for in these email and phone campaigns is how much revenue did they generate? Conversion percentage is important, but again, go back to social media is a good example, right? We have, I think on average, 75,000 Facebook fans per page, which is amazing, over 20 resorts. And for too long, we've watched that metric. So, wow, look at the Facebook growth, but is it doing anything? Is it leading to revenue? Is it generating any revenue? So, I like to be a sophisticated company. I love when companies talk about digging into this metric and that soft KPI and all that, but it's kind of nonsense. If it's generating revenue, that's the number one thing you need to look for. You don't have to get too fancy with it. Usually people that are getting too fancy with it are trying to sell you a KPI report product. So definitely revenue.

SPEAKER_02:
Thanks for sharing so much about revenue. I would love to expand and learn more about your tech stack.

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, so we spent three years and $5 million redefining our what we call the Britain technology matrix. And the idea of it was, we went through a tough challenge this year, we swapped out our PMS at 13 different resorts, which if you're in hospitality, and you've ever done that 13 resorts through your business season, in a six month span is a nightmare. It's very difficult. As a management company, we want to grow, but we don't want to grow and manage resorts constantly have to swap out their property management system. We're trying to create a technology matrix that is product agnostic. So it doesn't matter what product you have, what PMS you have, what systems you're using. Because we have Revenate, our CDP, and Power BI, our business intelligence tool at the center of our technology matrix, Any products you have can just be another spoke on that hub, right? Spoke on that wheel that as long as we can build a connection from that into the CDP and the business intelligence tool, the rest is fine. We're making all of our decisions that we're deploying all our marketing out of those two tools. So adopting your technology when we manage your resort and then creating a connection from it to our kind of the nucleus of our matrix is the most important thing that we'll do.

SPEAKER_02:
And then what sort of tech do you use on premise? Like, is there a communication tool or a POS?

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, so we actually switched to a PMS called Agiles recently, and they have their own PMS system that they offer. We're going to experiment with that this year. But for on-site communication, we use Ivy, which is Revenate's text messaging software. And it's a great tool. One, it's another way for you to continue to kind of flesh out that profile of your customer, get that data back into them. What kind of behaviors should they show while they're on site? What products are they purchasing? What goods and services are they using while they're at your property? But it's also good for onsite promotion. Try to get them down to your spa, run a special happy hour, get them to your breakfast, just to communicate them in a non-interruptive way while they're on vacation. A text message is gentle. It's easy. They've agreed to it when they checked in, so they are interested in hearing from you. But, you know, you don't want to be calling them. You don't want to be sliding stuff under the door. You don't want to do any of this kind of antiquated communication that people are sick of and growing out of. So IV is a very, very slick on-site guest communication tool.

SPEAKER_02:
And do you have any tech in the guest rooms? Tablets or interactive TV or anything like that?

SPEAKER_03:
Interactive TV for sure. It is interesting. There's so much focus on guest history as far as being an operations school, right? People always ask, like, where do we find new customers? There's pressure on sales and marketing. Where do we find new customers? No one ever asked enough. Why are we losing our old customers? So it ends up being this idea that operations is supposed to lead in technology. They're supposed to lead in guest history and all that. It's just not true. The basic fundamentals of a good vacation are great customer service. Yes, we have to continue to integrate technology into that experience, but Our focus as a management company is technology before you check in and converting. And again, we're just trying to pair them with the perfect hotel. We're trying to pair them with the perfect vacation, set them up for success. Knowing operations will deliver a world class guest experience. But outside of smart TV integration, not much in the form of tablets or automations in the room. But we are heading in that direction consistently.

SPEAKER_02:
And maybe circling back to Revenate, or maybe there's a different vendor that you have in mind. Is there one company or one product on the market that you feel is especially innovative? Maybe it's something you haven't implemented yet, or maybe it is.

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, I feel Revenate is the number one product that we recommend. It has become the backbone of our technology. We started with them in the early years of their company when they were really basically just email deployment tool. And Over the years as they've acquired multiple companies and continue to build out into this become a suite of products We've partnered with them along the entire journey Continue to integrate everything that roll out into our technology matrix and in a significant way We work with them to try to make the product better every year in that we're trying to get the CDP to continue to be more dynamic so that there's not really a product on the market that I'm interested in experimenting with and more than I am the next iteration of revenue CDP, which is supposed to come out in 2024. I think the tools that will allow us to deploy, which will allow us to do more dynamic marketing is the goal that we're kind of trying to work toward with them and that I don't want every email to be the same. And the industry is accepting too much that dynamic marketing means that your email says, dear Patrick, instead of dear guests, that's not dynamic marketing. Everyone's been able to do that. That's a neutralizing factor. Everyone's been able to do for a decade. Dynamic marketing is more in the sense of how does amazon send me an email with exactly what i want to buy just me and my wife gets a different email. We have to move that way in the hotel industry some of the flags have had better luck with that because they have more opportunity to membership programs to. have more customer data on you so they're able to kind of flesh out or personalize and tailor it a little better but as independents we have to continue to get there but we can't do so without a strong CDP partner which I'm glad to hear revenue is getting ready to unveil this new next generation of CDP for their tools.

SPEAKER_02:
Can you tell me a bit about the relationship between Britain and Brevinate? You know, how do you pass feedback along to them? And how do you share your ideas of maybe what they should build next?

SPEAKER_03:
Sure. So fortunately, they've asked me to serve on their customer advisory board. So that's an annual meeting. They have a huge conference every year. It's a great conference called Navigate. But they have a customer advisory kind of panel during that time frame. So we get together and that's where we all talk about our wish list, what we want to see in the next year, new tools that we want. But really, it's an ongoing relationship where we we will meet as needed or quarterly just to kind of get updates on what's out there, what we might be seeing out in the market that we would like them to build, what's missing in their current product or platforms. And they are very attentive partners. They are not afraid to improve their product based on customer feedback. They treat us more as partners than customers. And are constantly upgrading their suite of products based on our feedback.

SPEAKER_02:
So switching gears a little bit, I would love to hear about a couple of the highest priority business objectives that you're focused on and how does technology help you reach this?

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, so number one is preparing for growth in a way that does not tax labor, right? It's very hard to find good employees nowadays, it's hard to find employees, period. We've had to go more remote and be more open minded about using the entire national labor force as a chance to grow our team, which has been great. We've got some significant talent once we started going out of town. Our goal is to grow the company with automation, though. I want to create an assembly line type execution of sales and marketing where every time we take on a property, we don't have to have five people. So Our philosophy is automation with human oversight, and it's important in pointing that out. We're not talking about introducing AI to replace anyone or any strategy. I'm a firm believer that AI should not replace your strategy. It shouldn't replace your team. It should augment both of them. It should make both of them better and enhance your strategies for what you're doing. So rolling out pieces like an RMS we rolled out, partnering with Duetto, We're doing our full rate management now through the same amount of staff that we used to it's not that you let any staff go it's that now we can grow without adding additional staff and the machine learning of rms is unbelievable it's probably the best example we have of introducing sort of intelligence into our revenue generation. Hundreds of thousands of data points that you start to process every single day can i be done in two seconds and You can have a revenue manager go in and just kind of supervise the final results and approve or decline. So it's a huge, huge example of using AI to make your team better and not to replace.

SPEAKER_02:
Is there another business objective that you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, I think continuing to grow deeper with the CDP and the business intelligence tool. So the goal for 2024 is to, in a non-invasive way, gather as much customer data as we can, not even necessarily to use for 2024, but just to continue to build robust profiles so that when the time comes and the marketing campaign is appropriate to use that information to convert, you have it at your hands. So We don't even know what data we need in the future for the customer. There was a time when you wouldn't think you needed their email address. There was a time when the phone number wasn't that important. It's all important now. It's gather everything you can from them. So trying to get as much data from them without interfering with the conversion process is priority number one for us next year. Priority number two is to actually find ways to make that data actionable, right? And we think we can accomplish that with the CDP and our business intelligence tool, Power BI. to gather that data in the CDP, to process it in the business intelligence tool and then to deploy it back through the revenue channel to do more tailored marketing messages that we really want to get more customized with our dynamic marketing for 2024.

SPEAKER_02:
Is there a company within our industry or beyond that you feel is doing this personalized marketing really well?

SPEAKER_03:
I think the brands come closest, but I still think they're way behind other industries out there. So If you go back to the early adoption of the Internet, the travel industry was one of the first successful industries to really take advantage of the Internet. Travel consumer adopted booking online very quickly. The peak and fall of the travel agent industry was almost overnight. I mean, it was the easiest way to convert vacation. You see pictures and videos. It was a perfect marriage of travel and the Internet to convert. I think AI will be similar. I think introducing AI to make the travel booking experience and the actual Stay. I think it will enhance it for the customer once we adopt it better. But you can see, I think retail is way, way ahead of travel here. And we are a form of retail in the sense that we're just selling an experience and a service instead of a good. But no, I have not seen a good example to copy out there, which is why we take our inspiration from others. Like Amazon is probably the biggest one. There has to be a reason that they are so good at converting you. Even when you leave the shopping cart, they get you back into the shopping cart. One of the biggest things to take away from all that is that you don't have to look to people within your industry to be inspired by ideas on how to make that customer experience have a better conversion rate. You can go outside your industry. Just be inspired by anyone that is in the e-commerce space period. Borrow ideas from them and implement them into your industry.

SPEAKER_02:
So next question, shifting gears a bit, curious to hear from you one or two of the most important skills that you feel hoteliers should have in order to be successful in today's environment.

SPEAKER_03:
Sure. I think, which was not an easy thing for me to say early in my career, but humility to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. Our team is relatively young, the marketing team in particular. They're all out of college, but we don't hire people that learn about social media in a textbook. We hire people that just use it every day and understand it. So we don't want marketing educated people to run our marketing department because they learned about the four peas and all the you know the textbook type marketing we want modern people in here with modern ideas for modern traveler so i think keeping your team current understanding when i'm forty two and i completely data myself out of marketing i've turned it over to a younger crowd and they get it it's never been more successful but understanding when it's time to pass the torch a little bit and that you have to delegate and you can't do it all yourself and you have to build a good team and trust your team And then a very weird one I have to succeed in hospitality is, professionally, is to get good at presentations. I think I see a lot of bad presentations. You are always selling yourself, your hotel, your team, everything. Get very good at presentations. I don't mean PowerPoint. If you think it means PowerPoint, then you're already not good at presentations. So there's significantly better software out there to make you, your company, and your hotels look good. But the number one thing that I think skill everyone has to have in hospitality is to understand that Every single vacation experience is different. And if you're building your hotel to satisfy everyone, if your marketing campaigns are built to satisfy everyone, if your strategy is just built for the general public, then you're going to have less success than people who take a boutique approach. Even if they're big, they still take a boutique approach of saying, I will find a way to tailor this message to speak to individuals and touch their unique experiences that they had at my properties and convert them based on their unique story right so understanding again that not every two customers have the same experience or will be similarly motivated to convert with you it may take two completely separate messages to get them to convert and stay at your property so you have to be open and able to tailor your marketing and your hotel experience to the unique characteristics of each year travelers.

SPEAKER_02:
So next question, this is always kind of a fun one. What is one thing that you believe about hotel technology that most folks in the industry might not agree with?

SPEAKER_03:
I'm going to repeat something I said earlier, but it is that the PMS is not the center of hospitality technology anymore. In our matrix, I have it as one piece off in the left. It's a very important piece, but it is not. It is that data aggregation and data processing Everything you know about your customers should be in the center of your technology hub, not the PMS. That is the biggest kind of legacy thinking that you will see in the industry, right? And it's because generally the industry is driven by operations focused people. It's not driven by sales and marketing. And I completely get that. Operations is in charge of that entire guest experience, but the cheese has moved and it's not easy to get customers anymore. They have a lot of options. They have a lot of ways to book and they have a lot of people talking to them. Which is why you have to get it telling them their unique story that they want to hear and that starts in sales and marketing with data that you gather which has very little to do with it so i think getting a cdp and business intelligence tool in the center of your technology to replace the pms is the biggest kind of controversial thought i have.

SPEAKER_02:
Would you say there was a period of adjustment to get the broader Britain team on board with this thinking? Are there still people in the organization that think the PMS should be at the center?

SPEAKER_03:
For the most part, no. I think the company has embraced our forward-thinking mentality of, hey, we want to grow. We want to be a national company, and there's going to be a lot of different PMSs out there. This model cannot work if every property you take over, you forced your suite of technology down their throat. That's just not how it works. That's why the product agnostic technology matrix is the general idea of how we want to manage resorts moving forward. So no, it's been pretty good buying from the team for sure.

SPEAKER_02:
Do you feel a lot of that belief comes from the top, like leadership is all very tech forward and kind of promoting that ethos among all the employees?

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, without a doubt. We have a very kind of innovative technology driven CEO named Matthew Britton. He's been the owner of the company since its inception. He loves technology. He loves to be a forward thinking company and he loves innovation. So yeah, he's definitely That thought process has leaked down into his executive team, who then continues to spread it throughout their team. So the company has embraced it really well. Again, the idea of good technology is making everyone's job easier, makes everyone more efficient. It's to, again, enhance what they're doing, not replace it. So it's kind of a hard thing to want to resist, right?

SPEAKER_02:
Well, that is all for my questions. I really appreciate your time. Great meeting you. Great learning about your experience. Thanks so much, Patrick.

SPEAKER_00:
That's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by Hoteltechreport.com. Our goal with this podcast is to show you how the best in the business are leveraging technology to grow their properties and outperform the comp set by using innovative digital tools and strategies. I encourage all of our listeners to go try at least one of these strategies or tools that you learned from today's episode. Successful digital transformation is all about consistent small experiments over a long period of time. So don't wait until tomorrow to try something new. Do you know a hotelier who would be great to feature on this show? Or do you think that your story would bring a lot of value to our audience? Reach out to me directly on LinkedIn by searching for Jordan Hollander. For more episodes like this, follow Hotel Tech Insider on all major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.