No Show
No Show is about the business of travel: hotels, tourism, technology, changing consumer tastes, the conference industry, and what you actually get for $50 worth of resort fees.
Hosts Jeff Borman and Matt Brown explore the intersection of design, architecture, place, emotion, and memory. When we travel, we pass through these intersections, supported by a massive business infrastructure and a fleet of dedicated (and patient) service professionals.
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No Show
Holly Zoba, Pioneer of Travel Marketing
Like a prophet emerging from the haze of the Arizona desert, our guest Holly Zoba leads hospitality brands to the promised land. She has decades of experience in hotel sales and marketing, and has founded, co-founded, or been essential to companies that are dedicated to educating generations of hotel professionals.
Her classes are THE gold standard of hospitality sales training, and we talk about how digital marketing is changing to meet new audiences, getting on board the AI train, new trends in customer loyalty, and the importance of carpool etiquette on snow days.
https://hotelbschool.com/
https://www.scoutsimply.com/
https://www.influencer-sales.com/
https://hsmaiacademy.org/team/holly-zoba-chdm/
Hi everybody, it's no Show. I'm Matt Brown, joined as always by Jeff Foreman. Like a prophet emerging from the haze of the Arizona desert, our guest, holly Zoba, leads hospitality brands to the promised land. She has decades of experience in hotel sales and marketing and has founded, co-founded or been essential to companies that are dedicated to educating hotel professionals. Her classes are the gold standard of hospitality sales training and she deeply understands the power of storytelling and relationships, not just in selling but in life. Holly's also become an expert on hospitality's ever-changing, sometimes mystifying, relationship with technology. She's a full-stack web developer, a prolific speaker, tell-it-like-it-is consultant, even more tell-it-like-it-is political junkie, superman aficionado, washington DC refugee and, most importantly, dog lover. Holly Zoba, show us the light, show us the way. Welcome to no Show.
Speaker 2:Way to set expectations there.
Speaker 1:This is nothing to you. Come on, we're small potatoes compared to all the people that you speak to, and you speak all around the world. We're catching you just after you've led a train session in Puerto Rico. Let's start with something big and broad. Holly, everybody asks you about trends. It's the occupational hazard of profits. What's something hotels need to understand about the ways digital marketing is changing their interactions with new generations of customers? What are the next five to 10 years going to look like for people in hotel marketing?
Speaker 2:Big data is everything. That's what is changing everything. Big data and massive computer power, and so you hear it as AI everywhere. But it's not so much AI as massive data and being able to really personalize experiences, and so marketing should be getting a lot smarter and a lot more personalized, based on your intent when you're searching. There's so many ways now to pick up on what people are searching versus what they actually are intending to do. The data points around big data make it more possible to kind of extrapolate, so you don't have to go with the obvious. I mean, it's an exciting time, I think, to be in the hotel business. You ought to be able to. You know the whole key to marketing and sales is reaching out to the right person, the right buyer, at the right time, in the right way, the way they want to be spoken to, the way they want to be reached, and big data, ai, personalization is making that a lot more effective, I think.
Speaker 1:Do you ever yearn for the days of the hotel rack cards?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Life was simpler maybe in the print era of rack and rate cards, right.
Speaker 2:Well, I talk about that in the history of digital. In the olden days we would print 10,000 to 20,000 brochures and they would be our brochure until they ran out, and so the pictures might be 10 years old, but who cared? Because nobody had a camera or a phone. I mean that they would show up and compare what was on our website because we didn't have a website with what it looked like now. So it was a simpler time and it's funny. I was just talking about the olden days. Also in hotel sales.
Speaker 2:In the olden days, one person made decisions about enormous purchases for hotels. As an example, I was the regional or a corporate person in the DC market and a woman by the name of Ann Taneen really controlled about 30,000 room nights into the DC market single handedly room nights into the DC market single-handedly. And so it was great if you got on Antonine's good side, because literally it was like turning on a faucet and she was very good at her job. She wasn't going to send people to bad hotels, but if you could establish the relationship, establish some credibility with her, you really could. We took over a new hotel in DC, we renovated it and I picked up the phone and said Ann, this is our hotel. Now I think we got about, you know, 5,000 room nights.
Speaker 2:That first year it was just turning on a faucet, and that's not the case anymore. Now it's really weird. There are multiple people involved in even $25,000 purchase decisions, and so and as sellers and marketers, we don't get to talk to the entire buying committee, we still only talk to one person, and then we have to rely on that one person to go back and sell us to everybody else, which is why it's so critical that marketing and sales be able to work together today. So really, I wish I was a prophet that could tell you where to invest, why it's so critical that marketing and sales be able to work together today. So really, I wish I was a prophet that could tell you where to invest, because you'd think, after looking at this so closely, I would be able to tell you okay, this is what I'm seeing, but all I can say is better personalization, better data. That's the future.
Speaker 1:Well, one area in which a lot of people are investing is AI. At worst, ai is cast as the boogeyman for certain jobs maybe all jobs and at best it's met with a general sense of tentative. What's the first thing you tell hotel people about how AI will make their lives and jobs better?
Speaker 2:So this I am passionate about AI. I love it. Of course, I'm aware of the trouble it can be, but my theory is and the same thing happened to me when I was trying to teach people how to do social media Everybody was like you know, I'm pretty sure it's just a fad, it's going to go away. So I don't think we're going to invest in it. And if you recall, many hotels were not allowed to access social media on property. It was forbidden. And now, today it's a different story and it's the same with AI. I was so frustrated. A year ago I went to a marketing conference for hotels and I talked to everybody, all the hotel management companies. I said what are you guys doing with AI? And several of them said to me we are not allowing its use in our hotels. And I said here we go again. Now I will say fast forward. Six months ago and, thanks to a couple of reasons, everyone seems to be at least trying to figure it out. My theory is it's not going away.
Speaker 2:It really can be impactful to your life. Learn it, train your people on it so they don't do bad things. It's very possible for them to save hundreds of hours. Write better. Hoteliers are not the best writers, and AI can help. It shouldn't replace you, but it can certainly help with writing. It can help with research. It can help with coaching. There's so much that it can help with, but it can also be a nightmare if you put information into it that you don't want to get out there. So my, what I tell hotels is figure out some use cases, and I can help you do that. Figure out where it's going to save you some time, save you some money, make you better and then teach your employees how to use it wisely. So I'm a huge fan.
Speaker 3:Huge. You reminded me of a conversation I had with a general manager in 1999 about putting computer terminals next to the concierge station, and he was just absolutely forbade the idea. It's a terrible idea, jeff. All they will do is play solitaire all day instead of paying attention to our guests. That's right.
Speaker 1:Hotel advertising, like the big brands themselves, to me can feel so monolithic and I feel like even as brands have pushed into digital these last 25 years, it can still feel like the overall strategies are very much of the print and TV ad era. How important do you think ads are to sales efforts these days? Should hotels across the board rethink engagement across all platforms?
Speaker 2:They should and mostly they have, I think I mean certainly not all, but I work with a couple of the digital agencies for the brands and they can't be as nimble as standalone agencies for a couple of reasons. But what they do have is data. I mean, think about, you know, let's use Marriott as an example. Think about the behaviors that they are able to look at on the part of their guests, what their guests search for, what the guests do when they come to their properties, where they end up staying over and over the service score, like. Think of this massive amount of data that these digital agencies get to look at at these big brands now. And that should be what's driving their advertising. And some embrace it and do it better than others and some are still a little bit behind. That's sort of just to be expected, but they can't be nimble because there's so many of them.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, that certainly presents the challenge. The other big challenge, of course, that we have are our legacy systems. It's the main of our existence. I mean, when you think about Apple or Amazon or Airbnb, they built their systems right. They built their technology from scratch to do exactly what they wanted it to do? We are dealing with a front desk system that is separate from our marketing system, that's separate from our sales system. You have a hotel website and your booking engine is done by a different company.
Speaker 1:Do you think that hotel companies should start viewing themselves more like tech companies, and the argument behind that being, now, that you're not owning and operating? You know, marriott doesn't own and operate 8,000 hotels. Right, it is a brand company. And if you are a brand company, why not refocus and repurpose your mission a little bit to say, oh yeah, we are essentially a technology company who is in the hospitality space?
Speaker 2:So I'm curious what you think the differences would be if they thought of themselves as a tech company.
Speaker 3:About a month ago, someone quoted me for saying that if we don't start selling like Amazon, we'll be selling on Amazon, and what I meant by that and I think to your question to us is the intuitiveness of what I'm trying to buy. Amazon knows what I don't even know I want, right, amazon is presenting me with things that inspire me to buy more, that give me the way to buy something more customized, and when I look at hotels and I think this is where Matt's question was going you can only have so many bathroom photos right and looking at you know, I'm trying to choose a wonderful getaway for Heather and I, and the way I'm being directed to make that choice, or the information I'm given to make that choice, isn't very different than 25 years ago. What would Amazon do, is my question, and I guess, matt, inherently that's yours. Should the brand start selling that way, because it's clearly more effective and those who do it first are going to reap the rewards?
Speaker 2:It would be a very expensive venture for the reason that I stated earlier because of our legacy systems. Now we have started, you know, some systems now are integrating better with other systems. So we're not, you know, living in that walled garden anymore as much anymore, but we still are to some extent so that kind of gets in our way anymore. But we still are to some extent so that kind of gets in our way. But there are hotel companies that have made some pretty big advancements. I'll tell you, atlantis has invested in a bot that's pretty remarkable on their website. It's a pretty remarkable experience.
Speaker 2:I don't think you would necessarily believe you were talking to a bot and it is inspiring you to learn more and do more and expand. I really think they did a fantastic job with it. So I kind of feel like we're edging. But the big, you know, the brands, are always going to have to lag a little bit behind because they may not be in the hotel business. You know, they may be in the branding business, but they work for the owners and the owners would have to agree to invest and the owners have to invest in new televisions and new carpeting and renovations, and so to get them to also to invest the sort of money is going to be a challenge unless and this is what I think is happening computing power is becoming less expensive, and so it may be less of an issue in five years.
Speaker 3:And I'm pretty biased by this with the owner. Investment is that these are legacy platforms that the hotel companies choose and own. Right, if Amazon were to come to an owner and say, you know, just put your inventory on our platform instead, they wouldn't ask for an owner to do that tech work. Right, just give us the product and we take care of the rest. We're going to charge you for it, we're going to fleece you for a bunch, but you could make the case that any brand is doing that already anyway.
Speaker 3:So when I look at the platform capabilities of and again, you always pick on Marriott and Hilton and Hyatt, just because they roll off the tongue, right, but the one who figures out first how to sell rooms where you don't choose first? Do you want the king or the queen when you don't first choose which floor you want to be on? And these are all separate products. But instead you say I'm going to choose the hotel and you follow a different path. It's not bound by old legacy hierarchy. The hotel company that does that first is going to wipe up the rest.
Speaker 2:You know what's interesting, though? We were on Amazon, Amazon tried to have, you know, the hotel arm of it, and it didn't work. Why not? People don't want to consume hotels the same way. It doesn't seem like it, but it's a complicated business. I said you know, I'm sure that you two have encountered people who want to buy a hotel. Their whole life they wanted to buy a hotel. They made a lot of money in a different industry and they think, oh, hotels are going to be easy. So they buy this hotel. And what nightmare owners they turn out to be. Because they're so unrealistic.
Speaker 2:It's not simple. It should be simple, but it's not. We are open 24 hours. Let's talk about technology inside of the hotel, that GM that you had with the concierge and the computer not wanting that. We deal with guests that don't want that. We deal with guests that when they walk up to the front desk, they want human interaction, and then we deal with guests who want nothing to do. So we have to live in both worlds. Amazon doesn't. Amazon has you. Try to talk to a human at Amazon. It's virtually impossible and that is frustrating to some people. So we're not that bad.
Speaker 1:No, no, we're not saying that, of course, you know from. Just from a customer service perspective too, you have to maintain hotels have to maintain a consistent customer service experience for as long as the stay is at minimum and you have to maintain that before you check in and after you check out. But let's say I'm staying at a place for three days, for 72 hours. This hotel has to maintain that consistency in a way that online you dip into Amazon for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, two minutes you're out In a retail experience, you're in the shop. For 20 minutes you're gone. Restaurants hour two hours, three hours max. Hotels don't have that luxury and that takes a ton of work. And I wanted to ask what is maybe part and parcel of that, what is unique about marketing hotels versus other parts of the travel industry or maybe other industries in general? What's the what's something that's sort of a must do, that's really unique to the hospitality industry?
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of other parts. I'm looking for airline reservations right now. And how do you pick your airline? It's your, the one that you have any sort of loyalty to. I mean points. You know any sort of privileges, what's the word? I'm looking for Status, and you know you're going to go with the airline where you have status. And why is that? Because you get to you know board earlier. There's certain perks that you're going to get Hotels. I have always thought our loyalty programs were a little bit odd, because it really has nothing to do with loyalty. It's same with the airlines. It's all about what perks are you going to give me? And a while ago I was dabbling in customer loyalty. I was working for a training company and there was a new company out there by the name of Influitive. Have you heard of them, influitive?
Speaker 1:No, but it sounds like the perfect tech startup name. It's like a cross between inventive and influenza. So great, I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. Of course I wanted to try it out and it was fascinating because it really. It took your most loyal customers and you made them part of your loyalty club. But you ask them to do things for you. For example, if we had a new training class, I would do a little video about it and I would ask my customers to post it on their social media. In exchange, they would get points that they could trade in for gift cards or something like that. And here's the thing Nobody ever cashed them in very rarely. Our loyal customers loved us and that's why they promoted us. That's why they talked about us. It seems to me that in the hospitality industry, that should be part of our loyalty program. These guests should love us. Instead, we've kind of created monsters. Talk to any front desk clerk and they will tell you how much trouble they have with the most loyal customers because they're so entitled. It causes people to leave our industry.
Speaker 3:What giant pains in the ass. These people are bringing all their money all the time.
Speaker 2:Right, they have the money. We want the money. We should embrace them. We do not like them. The front line does not like them. There's a problem there, like we're doing something wrong, you know. I think that's a fundamental change. We ought to try and figure out how to make so in your HSMAI certified hotel digital market.
Speaker 3:You spend a chapter, maybe even a little bit more, on the three media types owned, paid and earned. Owned being your hotel website, right? Your pay, yeah, I feel like this should just rattle right off. Right Paid, of course, is what you're buying, and then the earned is mostly the social and what people are writing and sharing about you. If I got that totally wrong, we'll delete it. You jump in for me. That's good, uh, but my question is how have those respective roles and priority changed over the last decade and where are they going in the future decade?
Speaker 2:they still exist. I think the lines just become a little bit more blurred, and then the components that make up each of those have also changed. Right, the key to owned it is your website, but how many people actually own their website? The brands own it. You don't even own the information. So you know if you have a vanity site, you own that website, but you get control. So on your even on your branded website, you get some control about the information that you release. That's not really changed, nor will it. If you own it, you're still going to get to control it.
Speaker 2:Maybe what's changed is from an earned standpoint. Earned has always been the most credible, and so it's reviews, it's what people share, it's you know you can't buy it. You've got to earn it, and so it's the most credible. And on the flip side, of course, you have the absolute least control. People are becoming so cynical. There's so much misinformation out there that I fear earned is becoming less credible. You know they just assume it's not credible, and that makes for an intro. You know, influencers, there's not credible and that makes for an intro. You know, influencers, there's a lot of rules around influencers. You know people are a little bit suspicious and then paid.
Speaker 2:Paid has changed a lot. I mean paid has changed a lot. You know we used to do display ads, spray and pray, basically. You know you put an ad up and you hope that people would find it. Now we do programmatic. We don't touch it. Humans don't touch it. Machines are making decisions about where your ad's going to appear based on intent. You know again people sort of where their eyes are going. It's just, it's insane. I think paid probably has changed more than any of them. And the future with AI and personalization, I mean you know we make a joke.
Speaker 2:Google knows what you did next summer, because they do, and so they're able to really market to you. I mean, do you ever notice the ads that show up for you? You think, are you reading my mind? And to some extent they are. I know people talk about you know when I talk about it they must be listening, because I just talked about it and now the ad showed up. No, they're tracking your intent and this has been going on for a while. Do you remember Target? I think got in a huge amount of trouble because they noticed some data points being similar when women were buying vitamins and lotion, they were probably pregnant, and so they started sending them ads to their homes about, you know, the new baby, and that was a lot of trouble. Well, now we're there. Times a thousand.
Speaker 1:It's time for the mystery question. What is something, maybe from your personal history even, that you tell salespeople to never, ever do, under any circumstances. Don't say this, don't send this kind of email? Do you have sort of a cardinal law about a no-no?
Speaker 2:Probably a thousand, I mean, I don't just have one Like there's. You know, I've made every mistake possible because I've been doing this for so long. For example, remember when I was talking about how decision makers, there used to be just one, you know, and they controlled. So the decision maker for Boeing in Washington DC, I'm not going to say her name. I became friends with her and one time she called me and asked me for a ride to work. She lived not very far from me and it was the dead of winter and something was wrong with her car and I said oh sure, I'll pick you up, you know. And she said I'll come outside because it's hard to get into my driveway with the snow, blah, blah. I said, great, I forgot. I completely forgot. I left the woman responsible for millions of dollars of hotel rooms standing outside in and I didn't think about it until about 10 o'clock in the morning and I was like, oh my God, I can't believe it. So don't do that. But I know that's not really your question.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I do teach this is so funny and you've probably gotten these emails. It's annoying. By the way, email hasn't changed, it's still number one. You know we get bazillions of them, but it's just like the old days with junk mail you open the ones that appeal to what you're looking for because you have a need for it at that moment. Anyways, the emails that say gosh, I've sent you several emails and you haven't responded. And I'm just wondering if I discourage people from writing that, because who wants to be shamed, like, first of all, if I meant to call you and I didn't, you're shaming me. Second of all, if I didn't mean to call you or I didn't mean to reach back out to you, it's obvious because I didn't, so leave me alone. So I'm not a fan of that. It's obvious because I didn't, so leave me alone, so I'm not a fan of that.
Speaker 2:One thing that I was going to say that hasn't changed in all of these years is people still want authenticity. Right, you can make mistakes, and they're OK with it, as long as you appear sincere and genuine when you write emails, when you write ads, when you write social posts. It's one reason AI is not going to take over everything, because it's a little bit too perfect. It's. People recognize that they want some authenticity. That hasn't changed no matter what else has evolved. Authenticity, sincerity, you know. Being genuine, being trustworthy still outranks everything else. So I tell people don't sell your soul.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that, because we intentionally keep this podcast imperfect.
Speaker 1:It's better. Yes, we excel at it Really, Jeff.
Speaker 2:The art of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an art. It's an art and a science and, just to recap, I like these because it's like stay authentic, don't sleep on email and don't pick up clients in the middle of winter. I think that's a solid three. The prophet has spoken everyone. Holly Zoba, thank you for being a guest on no Show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.