This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 279 December 11th 2020

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 279 December 11th 2020

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 279

 

CoHosts
Evan Kharrazi
Edward StOnge
Dean Schmit
Adele Gutman
Stuart Butler
Robert Cole
Melissa Kavanagh
Show Notes
00:01 — Introductions of Evan
00:14 — how do you create the focus of this balance of life to work or the lack there of…
00:54 — AirBnB IPO and what does it really mean
01:09 — the real value of influencers
01:44 — announcement of Bit.ly/wearehospitality restarted
02:22 — Show ends
Topics

Top Story

1. Airbnb just debuted on Wall Street. Now it’s worth more than Marriott and Hilton combined
    a. AirBnB Is the Apple of Travel

Brands & Product

2. How is it that the small, local hotel chains are beating Hilton, IHG, and Marriott in dealing with COVID-19?
3. Oyo cuts nearly 300 more staff amid ongoing business slump, sources say
4. Viceroy opens women-centric D.C. hotel

Intermediaries & Distribution

5. Expedia Group CEO wants to be “the best travel tech platform in the world”
6. Instagram has sucked the spontaneity out of travel
7. Google launches hub to aid destinations, hotels and partners in recovery

Marketing & Strategy

8. 10 Takeaways From Brand Activations That Adapted to Crisis in 2020
9. How Influencer Marketing Took Power, and What the Future Holds
10. 300 marketers were asked how real people use tech. Their replies were oh, boy

Tech & Finance

11. Hilton, Marriott CEOs say investors should act now
12. Predictions: 10 technology trends in marketing for 2021
13. Getting there: Structured data, semantics, robotics, and the future of AI

Boop!

14. Conde Nast Traveler – The 2021 Gold List

Ruh-Roh…

15. The All-you-can-drink Tequila Train Now Comes With Custom Cocktails and an Elevated Open-bar Experience

 

So who liquidated all their Bitcoin to go all-in on the Airbnb IPO? If so, well played.
You must have known, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky would see Door Dash’s 75% opening pop the previous day and say, “hold my beer,” right?
So how did the day go for Chesky & company? First, my prediction that Airbnb would open with a market cap higher than Marriott’s $42 billion came to fruition.
Every successful IPO wants to create a compelling story to capture the imaginations of investors, and Airbnb did a masterful job.
On December 1st, the company initially set its pricing forecast in the $44 to $50 range ($30.5 to $34.5 billion.) Modestly below Marriott.
Six days later, on Monday, it flexed it up to the $56 to $60 range ($38.7 to $41.5 billion) coming in just shy of Marriott – which didn’t seem to be much of an accident.
But once Thursday rolled around, word was out that Airbnb was pricing at a healthy $68, yielding a $47 Billion market cap – 10% higher than Marriott – again, looking exactly like it was following a well planned script to open as the globe’s most highly valued lodging equity.
However, the market had a slightly different narrative in mind. The shares opened trading at $146.19 – forgetting about any former unicorn status and entering new-found hectocorn territory with a $101+ billion market cap.
Eight minutes later, the share price peaked at $163.29 – a market cap of nearly $113 billion before profit-taking moderated the price back to its eventual close at $144.71 – settling in after its first day at just over $100 billion.
My theory on why resistance was met at the $113 billion level? Maybe because that figure was approximately equal to the COMBINED market caps of:
  • Marriott
  • Hilton
  • IHG
  • Accor
  • Hyatt
  • Choice
  • Wyndham

 

So how does Airbnb now stack up against other publicly traded travel industry equities? We’ll skip the airlines – that’s just too embarrassing.
Booking Holdings is currently valued at about $87 billion and Expedia is at about $18.5 Billion. (For those keeping score at home, that comes to $105 billion total…)
Since those two were mentioned in ABNB’s S1 as their primary competition (it’s always nicer to associate oneself with a group trading at a healthier multiple), the game over the next few weeks will be to see if Airbnb will end the year higher or lower than the top two companies in its sector.
If they can do that – then maybe the next threshold to be tested will be that $113 combined level of the hotel groups.
So now dear reader, your next big decision will be how to use all those day trading profits.
Flush with cash and with 2020 coming to an end, you might want to consider this week’s Boop, Conde Nast Traveler’s 2021 Gold List.
If I recall correctly, wasn’t their 2020 Gold List a discarded mattress resting in a burning dumpster of pig manure…?  Good riddance to 2020 – Enjoy considering a new direction for 2021.
However, for any others that didn’t invest in Airbnb and still feel a bit overwhelmed by 2020, there’s always this week’s Ruh-roh.
An all-you-can-drink Tequila Train? Why are we only finding out about this during the 2nd week of December!? Yup, 2020 sucked…

This Week in Hospitality Marketing Live Show 279 Transcripts (English U.S.)

 

[00:00:17.370]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to This Week, In hospitality Marketing Live  Show number two hundred and seventy nine. As you know, you’re seeing a new face to us. One of our guests co-hosts actually, and not so far around the block in Israel, Tel Aviv, to be exact. His name is Evan Kharazi. Right. You got it right.

 

[00:00:38.700]

That’s right. Because he knows I’m name challenged.

 

[00:00:40.950]

He murders names the way that I did.

 

[00:00:45.870]

I warn him, this is dude, I am so sorry, but I am terrible with names that God, you have a great symbol for his name. Edward Snowden. Please meet Evan.

 

[00:00:53.190]

Hey, Edward. Hi. Nice to meet you.

 

[00:00:56.010]

We were just a little pre conversation before the show in the green room. We don’t agree. Green Eminem is in the green room, by the way. I think I spoke with my agent about that. No green green Eminem’s and the value of a lot of our discussion today.

 

[00:01:10.410]

Really, if anything, I know we’ve had to come up in the show a few times this past few weeks on the mental stress and toll that what everyone’s going through and in particular hospitality professionals, whether they’re still currently employed and overwhelmed or whether they’re unemployed or underemployed. All that stress associated to that end, whenever I reached out to us and said, hey, can I join the pockets of the live show, might be more fun to really bring this to light a little bit more so without much more for the do, please.

 

[00:01:41.250]

Other than where you’re at, what inspired you do this? What is it you’re trying to do? And just give us some great details. We start asking hopefully. Well, Ed will have very intelligent questions.

 

[00:01:49.230]

I’ll just nod my head a lot, but head back and let him do pretty much how it goes. Yeah, it’s pretty much that way. I just try to look good on the camera all the time and I don’t know for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here again. I’m Evan Khorasani. I’m the founder of Kharazi Natural Health. I’ve worked in the hotel industry for several years. I went to Cornell, the school hotel administration, and I have a passion and dance, so I kind of live in two different worlds.

 

[00:02:28.080]

But I lost my my revenue management job with Highgate Hotels back in March due to the pandemic. And it was a big wake up call for me. I really started to think about what is my my purpose if I have no work right now and I’ve always lived with a mindset of service. I’ve read. Is there Sharp’s book, The Founder of Four Seasons, The Story of a Business Philosophy. And I knew like I wanted to get in the industry from then on.

 

[00:03:02.490]

But I also did have my dance background, and that’s an element of service, too. So without having work, I’m doing service. I had a lot of time for introspection and decided to really learn and starting my own health journey. So with that, I did study at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and launched my own health coaching business, really tailored to hospitality professionals, we serve so many other people and put the guest first and it’s time to now take care of ourselves.

 

[00:03:43.910]

So there is a silver lining to covid. It’s a lot of introspection and and putting the work back on ourselves to to feel better. We have not we have no choice. So I’m here really to kind of just talk about where I’m at and the services I provide and just really being the need for a support for those that help others, which is the hospitality industry.

 

[00:04:11.940]

I have a question. How do you get people I mean, I’ve read your testimonies on your website of those that you’ve already worked with and helped and so forth. How do you get people to step over that line of. I’m fine. I’m dealing with it. Life, his life, whatever to I want support. I need help. I need to open up and I need some nourishment to myself to make me feel better about going through what I’m going through.

 

[00:04:38.900]

How do you get them to transition to them?

 

[00:04:41.570]

So I have like a a unique approach. I put movement into my health coaching. I’m a Zumba instructor. And I think I think health can be fun. And we like to have fun in the hotel industry or the hospitality industry. So that’s kind of my my approach is to reel them in with a movement approach that makes it fun. And then we kind of dig deeper from there. What’s the cause of the issue? How can we bring together nutrition?

 

[00:05:16.730]

That’s not just what nourishes you on the plate, but what nourishes you off the plate.

 

[00:05:21.930]

I’m having just recently brought in a nutritionist into my life to shed some poundage and whatever, because for me, I went through the yeah, I’ll just sit around on the couch and so forth to transitioning into no, I need to get off the couch and start being more active. I need to start controlling more of my diet, what have you. That was a mental personal choice. I didn’t really other than my wife looking me going really give me motivated regardless of how do you get people that are isolated, that don’t have family support or spouse support and are going through this.

 

[00:05:53.540]

I don’t have an income. I don’t have a purpose. The job gives you how do you get them to realize that this is a effort to self nourish, to to help themselves? How do you get them to begin to think like that? How do you reach out to them and be able to make that mental process change?

 

[00:06:10.130]

I try to connect with them. That’s a great question. I try to connect with them. I try to find something that we relate to and whether that’s the industry or being a professional. And and really, they are. In need, and and that’s when they have the high motivation to change their lifestyle. That’s when it really works.

 

[00:06:35.830]

Oh, by the way, Daneshmand, I’m sorry, but let me make introductions. Other codes do you spit? Evan, Evan Dean. Dean has his own company based company, Metasearch Marketing.

 

[00:06:47.090]

And just so you know, the check box to the right hand side just mentioned you had to step out real quickly for something. Back then, an Adel’s there. I was just asking. Dishwasher’s in the chat room, not with us as a co-host. Recruitment group is also owner of our own company as by reputation marketing.

 

[00:07:04.780]

This is Evan Evan Zomba. Yeah, and I do the license anyway, just in case.

 

[00:07:16.330]

And Father, I’ve ever gone to you and nice to meet you.

 

[00:07:24.460]

So by all means, so the process of when somebody finally realizes they want this part of their life for whatever their level is, whether they’re currently working up, working or partially working, whatever. How do you incorporate that into their lifestyle where they begin to feel that this is a part of their routine rather than something that’s not normal for them?

 

[00:07:44.120]

So it’s important that they know health is a process, and that’s why these are not instant programs. These are three to six month programs where you really are with them week to week and you start to you start to see that a lot of things happen in people’s lives over a three month period, let alone two months. And even now, we can’t even, you know, see what’s coming next month.

 

[00:08:16.160]

So you really you really start to be with them on their journey and be there for support and also as an accountability partner. And I think that last part is really, really critical to keep them on track.

 

[00:08:33.550]

And even Mr. Fitness himself, the man who has won twice over, I think, or something, I don’t know, lose to lose track of all the trophies you keep your own for bodybuilding, I’m not too sure.

 

[00:08:45.160]

But still, the gentleman actually referred to you earlier about Mr. Stuart Butler from Fuel Travel. Stuart.

 

[00:08:52.880]

Evan, I’ve been listening in, so I just because I joined the show. But to clarify, I ran a marathon on March 7th of this year. My first time Americans have won a few hearts. I have not exercised one time since then. So I am the antithesis of what you’re talking about. I have a situation overwhelming to the point where I’m hoping that by the end of today’s session that you’re going to inspire me to get off my ass and start actually working out.

 

[00:09:22.250]

A lot of people talk lately about before you lead others, you need to lead yourself. And there is no mental fitness without some physical fitness. And it’s it is so important for your mind, for your emotions. And I think we need it more than ever. And I can say that while I was crazy busy before, I’m still busy, but now I have the time. Now that I’m a solo person, I have the time to make as much time as I need for fitness.

 

[00:10:03.250]

And I tell you what, even in the stressful time, I feel more serene than for many years before thing.

 

[00:10:11.680]

And I have done a market research study recently, and we know the burnout issues. We know the physical impacts, the lowered immunity, exhaustion, all of that. That really comes as a hospitality professional getting to so many other people first. But we’re now seeing a new set of issues working remotely. And while we can’t physically connect with our clients, you know, that’s particularly hard with those in the sales and marketing space. You know, the touch and feel like I lived in Hawaii for three years.

 

[00:10:50.860]

And the the aloha spirit is the touching the feel. But we’re also seeing blurred boundaries between work life at work and personal. Now, with remote, it’s hard to disconnect. And you know what I’m done working for today and I want to focus on my personal. I think that’s been one of the hottest points for me, you know, work from home a bit and I have two kids and a home three days a week, five days a week in school, two days.

 

[00:11:22.870]

And like having that mental separation. I know Melissa, who’s probably in the chat room on our team, has done a really good job here.

 

[00:11:30.560]

Oh, so does that mean you’ve done a great job, Melissa, of kind of drawing the line between work and and home?

 

[00:11:38.860]

And you you have practices that you employ to make sure that happens, right?

 

[00:11:42.970]

I absolutely do. And first of all, I’m in my actual workspace and I feel like all the things that keeps me seeing it is the physical separation of my work and my home, even though I am working at home.

 

[00:11:57.160]

I’m with you on that, Melissa. I’ve worked at home for many years, actually, and I envy the people that I remember having colleagues who would brag about their ability to do some laundry, clean house and do all these other things and multitask while they were working. And I just thought, so are you actually working or are you doing these other things? I am. And it goes both ways for me. When I am at work, I am in my office like you are.

 

[00:12:20.110]

This is my workspace and when I am not at work, I am not in here right now.

 

[00:12:27.430]

Let me introduce I’m sorry, Evan. Melissa, who is the brains of fuel challenges of stewardship. I can be maximalists as I can.

 

[00:12:35.540]

I mean, really the core fuel travel, Stewart, some insanitary person kind of thing. Now, Dean of Robert below Robert, which by the way, bedside banister stuff. But this is a new look for you in the background.

 

[00:12:50.060]

I have a competing workspace. My wife I gave to my my workspace because she had another Zune call that had to be a little bit more official.

 

[00:12:59.840]

So you chose the bed backdrop. OK, what do you mean by remote studio? I can be anywhere.

 

[00:13:08.680]

And by the way, just to break tempo here, but just Robert, I’m so glad you’re feeling better. Seriously, thank you.

 

[00:13:13.390]

So I just. Evans I’m sorry, sir.

 

[00:13:17.350]

Robert, I thought you didn’t Segway to me when he mentioned burnout.

 

[00:13:20.560]

So that’s Robert just went through a nasty stint of covid.

 

[00:13:26.980]

Oh, my gosh. Quite nice. Yeah. Nasty, nasty. None of the lung stuff. Just the fever and chills and stuff like that. So it’s great.

 

[00:13:36.480]

And to your point, I mean, that’s the other thing, too. We’re talking about the stresses associated with the displacement of hospitality industry and the impacts everybody on. But we’re also talking about a definitely as a sword. Is am I correct in saying remember that it was a Democrats? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

 

[00:13:51.130]

So, yeah, I’m old. I’m not that old. You are that old.

 

[00:13:54.700]

You’re the one that made the parable. I know.

 

[00:13:56.320]

Anyway, so but you know, that whole over arching that if we go out we’re facing even other things like this. So we’re covered is a is a threat and then also having loved ones or those in family that are being hit by that. And that completely alters the ability for normality for everyone. You know, like even if we did what Melissa did, which is obviously good, where you balance out between the work in the walk out and do the exercises and so forth, then there’s the whole spin cycle of now you have to take care of potentially a family member and or friends that can’t take care of themselves, that aren’t hospital bound, but they’re in between.

 

[00:14:35.890]

You know, they need some support, but you put yourself at risk. So you have all these tensions and so forth.

 

[00:14:39.850]

So how do you add that into what you do? How do you how do you translate that to not just doing stretches and exercises? And I feel better for but actually mentally changing the focus to making it as valuable as anything else you’re doing. Oh, there’s there’s so many things we go through.

 

[00:14:56.660]

I mean, I personally came across I don’t know if anyone knows, but the concept if the Japanese concept and it’s about purpose and daily practice and I was kind of the beginning of my health journey and I was really drawn to it because I was trying to find a new purpose because I was no longer able to work and provide for others in the hotel industry. So another thing we look at is the circle of life. This is an institute for integrative nutrition principle.

 

[00:15:33.410]

And it’s, you know, every time we meet together is looking at looking at where things in your life are out of synergy and it’s really defining your circle of life and and what’s out of whack and what is working and drilling in their. And I think really feeling your best is having synergy with many things that are outside of what nourishes you on the plate, you know, home environment, social life, things like that that we need to also talk about.

 

[00:16:12.180]

It’s not just nutrition. It’s it’s a balance. It’s a balancing act.

 

[00:16:16.980]

So what advice do you give to people? Hypothetically, I’m not necessarily talking about myself specifically, but I am. So folks that have the cognitive dissonance of having been in a position in their life relatively recently, where they were eating correctly, exercising, practicing regular mindfulness meditation in and read all of the benefits of that had more energy, more vibrant, small capabilities, and then has, you know, maybe fallen off the wagon, knows that they shouldn’t have fallen on my nose, that they should do that other stuff.

 

[00:16:54.090]

But it’s just that cheeseburger looks so delicious and then you’ve got to bite it. So what’s the what’s the secret?

 

[00:17:01.560]

Oh, I mean, intuitive eating is all about getting into what your body wants and what you need.

 

[00:17:09.810]

So have that cheeseburger, but then get back on track. I mean, I even give myself I’m a Whole Foods plant based kind of following diet, but I give myself a cheat day a week. I mean, my ancestry differently than we do now. But I need to observe what biologically what my body needs. So it’s not about being perfect. It’s about finding what works for you and under this umbrella of bio individuality. So it’s not a one size fits all.

 

[00:17:48.330]

It’s finding what works for you, which may be different than Robert or Adele.

 

[00:17:53.460]

You know, one of the interesting things of a very good friend is an interventional radiologist, vegan, and a very, very health oriented, very holistic kind of approach to his life. But my perspective is to be always be very analytical. And he gave me some advice. This was years ago and basically said, look, because I was having they’re staying with us. And as I was having at the time, every night at like ten thirty to watch Letterman or whatever.

 

[00:18:26.030]

Yeah. A pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate chip ice cream because it was delicious. Right. So I was like, wow. Yeah, yeah. It is delicious because you know how much saturated fats and the like. I have no idea. And he’s like, well maybe he goes, you know, saturated fat isn’t very good for you, but I’ll. Have you ever tried like a non-fat frozen yogurt? I go, well, it doesn’t taste as good.

 

[00:18:52.410]

He goes, No, I imagine it wouldn’t. But why don’t you think of that saturated fat as money sort of thing? Because that happens to have over two hundred percent more. Would you pay? Is it two hundred percent better? And he goes, if it is, do not deny yourself have the thing that’s two hundred percent. Yeah. Do your own personal value equation and that’s fine. But if it’s not, maybe you should just think of it.

 

[00:19:21.330]

And the mindfulness aspect is just being aware of what you’re assaulting your body with. Right. Or your time. Right allocated. Gee, I’ve only worked seventeen and a half hours without sitting up on this project, you know, looking up. Maybe I should do something. How sure. That’s fun. Maybe there are certain times where that is really important to do it, but if you aren’t aware of it and you are keeping track. So to try to balance it again, if you maybe it’s about getting out money, maybe it’s time, maybe it’s counting calories.

 

[00:19:56.560]

It doesn’t really maybe it’s numbers of steps. Right. Something that you can measure and evaluate because we do so much stuff about how do you evaluate success in marketing and how do you evaluate success in revenue management or profitability? It’s the same sort of approach. Right. How do you measure your what are you using to measure your success?

 

[00:20:15.270]

What’s what’s your expectation? What’s your level of achievement? And do you have a plan to get from where you are to where where you want to go that you can do that distribution model now?

 

[00:20:27.600]

Exactly. Yeah. And and again, I loved his point because he was kind of like, hey, don’t the private of the classic was that where this really came up was our our older daughter’s christening because my wife was on a oh, I was like an Atkins diet or something like that. Right. I was like all the bacon fat you could eat and not what, just stupid low carb type thing. Really unhealthy crap. Right. Know, just not a stupid.

 

[00:20:53.290]

Stupid fat diet, and so she’s standing at the cake table, it’s like, why aren’t you having cake? And she’s like, we discussed this last night. I can’t help it because that’s why you’re losing weight. You’re on the cake diet because you’ve modified your eating behavior.

 

[00:21:08.590]

Now, you haven’t replaced it with healthy stuff that’s good for your body, but you modified your eating behavior because just do that and try to be healthy with it and forget the stupid diet you something. Just be smart about it, right?

 

[00:21:21.880]

Yeah. I mean, just lowering your sugar is an amazing thing to do for your overall good health. I mean, I think sugar is the problem with it is that when you have it, you want more. And the more you have it, the more you want, the more bread and potatoes and fats that you have if you want it. So not benefiting your life. Yeah. And specifically around those foods, your body actually doesn’t activate the the hormones.

 

[00:21:56.800]

It needs to say I’m full.

 

[00:21:58.660]

It actually is false and. Interestingly, like tying it back to to the hospitality industry is we need to slow down as professionals and actually eat more slowly or have those periods of reflection or mindfulness meditation. It’s critical to reset because there’s so much noise going on.

 

[00:22:26.330]

And we don’t really if if you don’t reset, you don’t know what you need for your body. And if you’re craving sugar, that’s fine. But what’s maybe your overexerting yourself, you know, maybe you’re spending too much energy so we drill down further.

 

[00:22:45.810]

We have an interesting point because, I mean, even having come from restaurants, what have you eating was a displacement of what you needed to get done. Actually, most of the time you’re eating in lieu of something you should be doing and or you. That was a flexible time that somebody can interrupt you. You had to do something else. You’re trying to multitask. It was a function rather than, as you say, mindfulness of saying pause that me mindful of what I’m doing and it carries over to hotels.

 

[00:23:11.780]

I mean, if you’re a hotel or you’re working at a hotel this large, have its own food facilities, cafeteria, what have you, you if you’re a manager, you’re doing it in an interactive way with staff and team, a chance to dialogue with staff and team. So eating isn’t really being a thought. Processes is is a function. If you’re able to eat and you’re doing it without having to have that consideration, you’re doing it as fast as possible and or with distraction because you’re just doing it to be able to get to the next thing you need to do.

 

[00:23:39.290]

It is a very accelerated metric. My wife was very quick to point out when we first talked, it goes like you eat fast. And I’m like, yeah, I grew up in restaurants. And, you know, to me it was like, OK, I finished doing my set and ready work, ready to open the door. Let me snarf something. And if I don’t eat it fast, I want my co-workers. We like to finish that.

 

[00:23:55.280]

So you eat fast and then in hotels was no different. You didn’t really sit and say, we’re gonna have a meal. You sat and said, OK, I’ve got to get this done. I got to eat something, let me go. And then that’s when you get into nibbling and you’re walking to the kitchen, you start doing food testing, whatever. You know, you start having those components into your daily life on facts.

 

[00:24:13.790]

I learned this this week and I never read this before, but the origination of the word restaurant comes from a French word. That means restor. That was, they created restaurants for people to come in and nourish themselves physically and mentally, which is kind of cool. But, you know, in general, that’s what we’re about. We’re about restoring people, you know, especially travel. It’s very restorative.

 

[00:24:36.200]

So and and that kind of goes to an interesting conversation that came up from some of the dialogue that was having, that restaurants will never truly rebound correctly until we have the ability to exercise our option to be there, because they’re not just a food facility, they’re not just a function of a type of food or a person that makes the food for you that you like. It’s exactly we just said the restaurant that the name comes from is the ability to set.

 

[00:24:58.430]

And I mean, the way you say be mindful, you’re enjoying a meal with people, you’re taking the time to be there. Doing what you’re doing with people and eating is enjoyable process to that compared to it being just a function.

 

[00:25:12.680]

So in that sense, you know, that was I think it was on 60 Minutes and they were showing that a school at a school in France, the little children are eating like a five course lunch that takes a long time. And it even has a cheese course. And they have very, very small portions. And it’s and they really sit there and enjoy the camaraderie and the company and and the experience and their blim. They like you look at that classroom and they were talking about the fact that they’re eating like this and they’re so slim.

 

[00:25:52.790]

And then in our school things, we unfortunately very often what accounts for healthy eating can be tomato sauce on the on the pizza is considered a vegetable, as are potatoes, you know, and corn, you know, not necessarily, you know, giving your body what it needs to thrive and and learn a lifestyle of that slowing down and mindfully eating and giving your body a wide variety of nutrients that leaves them satisfied and not eating crap later on in during the day.

 

[00:26:40.070]

Being that we are international, that Evan is currently in Israel at this point of time. I was in Barcelona and Barcelona are famous for it at the top of the key things. So being the big American that I was, we go into a topless bar and I’m like, oh yeah, shovel.

 

[00:26:54.350]

You know, I need these many these many know if you started talking five of them later and you have twenty more to go, you’re like, oh, you know, because. You slowed down to your point that you’re being slow, you’re enjoying where you’re at, you’re eating little bits and you fill up because you’re pacing yourself where you didn’t have to eat as much. But me eating fast is like, yeah, it’s not for burger fries. Everything else down real quick.

 

[00:27:16.460]

You’re still, quote, hungry because your body hasn’t caught up with you yet.

 

[00:27:19.850]

They actually have much else.

 

[00:27:22.140]

And then we’re talking around you, like, how do you get this in front of people? How do you interact with people? Is it because of the screen screen? Is that I mean, do you have programs that people download? They play back? How do you get them engaged with what you’re trying to get them to do? Unfortunately, it’s it’s virtual now, but I do have a few people I’ve worked with here in Israel, and I take them on a food shopping experience.

 

[00:27:48.620]

I show them how how to how it’s not that hard to actually cook and how many okra, which is like my big thing, meal prep is a lifesaver because if you plan out your day, you’re not going to resort to more palatable foods which are actually not as good for you. So I think at the end of the day, like, yeah, I think your point in the beginning, like I need to take care of myself first before I can help others.

 

[00:28:25.310]

So I need to remain a role model for others. And I think that will show through my actions that it’s possible that you can do this.

 

[00:28:37.640]

How do you measure your activity levels and so forth? You mentioned that you guys, you shared the Zumba. And for me, I can’t do Zumba now. And I’m not really the super athletic type anymore, like Stewart being one of own. So how do you incorporate your balancing of what you’re saying is meal planning and measuring what it is that you’re doing to also the activity levels? How do you how do you coordinate that in doing both of those?

 

[00:29:02.630]

Well, I’ve been active kind of most of my life. I live in another world. I’m a dancer, a professional dancer. So I went to an art high school. I was waitlisted at Juilliard and kind of wanted to pursue that path. So I always wanted to keep movement in my life. And that’s kind of my secret source in terms of health coaching, is you have to have a movement mindset to make it fun and to to kind of switch things up.

 

[00:29:35.090]

So what I love to do is body weight, go out to the outdoor gym and do pull ups, push ups, Zumba, even just dancing, honestly, is a life saver. And when I’m dancing and I can see other people enjoying it, it just lights up my day in Israel, the way they have the outdoor gyms and each and everything.

 

[00:30:03.770]

It’s such a beautiful thing. And you know about the hospitality business in Israel. If you go to a video of a hotel to see whether you want to choose that hotel for your trip, more than half of the video is going to be about the breakfast buffet. You never seen such crazy buffets.

 

[00:30:32.510]

It’s like dinner.

 

[00:30:35.000]

I they’ll have complete dinner options, lunch options, breakfast options, everything that the mind can imagine at those buffets.

 

[00:30:46.340]

I don’t know how anybody can function of something like that. It’s crazy. So it’s it’s a very, very lavish the way they do it. But when you walk around, you see the people are slim. Most don’t you think so? Yeah, I mean, the Mediterranean diet is considered one of the five blue zones. Also why I was intrigued by the concept that the Okinawans in Japan are live the longest in the world. So looking at what do they eat?

 

[00:31:23.040]

But also every Israeli has to go through two years of the army and there is definitely a physical aspect that’s required in their lifestyle.

 

[00:31:35.790]

So when you’re on video with somebody where you don’t have the luxury of being with them in person to help them through this process and so forth, how does somebody for those are potential listeners know something payback? How do you engage with it? What do you see? You’re staring them in a screen, so obviously they limited what they can do to you. You say put the camera far away or the phone far away so I can see you in the whole room.

 

[00:31:56.310]

Move like this. Do like what is it that you do interactively with them so that they begin this process of adding it to their lifestyle?

 

[00:32:03.450]

Yeah, those things we we start with a guided meditation to kind of center ourselves, take out the external noise, go into the coaching fundamentals, and then we’ll close with a movement aspect and we’ll try to shift the screen around so I can see them. And it would be yoga stretching Zumba, really what they want to do, dancing. So yeah, it’s kind of like a trifold it’s nutrition, it’s movement and it’s mindset all in one.

 

[00:32:39.870]

And from the mindset perspective, do you open the dialogue with them?

 

[00:32:43.420]

Do you have a pattern of like a an agenda list of things that you progressed through? How do you mentally begin to get them to think differently through this process? I mean, obviously you can handle up menus and concepts and nutritional guidelines and exercise regimes and patterns and so forth.

 

[00:32:59.970]

But how do you get their mind to buy to move into that direction and say, this is what I want to do or add to my lifestyle?

 

[00:33:08.070]

It’s asking the why and the what is our hotness? High high mileage questions are very powerful. You kind of just sit back and you keep asking, why is that?

 

[00:33:21.810]

Their whole life story, and you’re like, that makes sense.

 

[00:33:26.370]

Yeah, and they are doing it for other people, it winds up not being a figure. They have to figure out how it’s meaningful to their life, not maybe their relationships with other people or how they feel about themselves. But it’s got to somehow be settled or it’s meaningful to them and not just kind of this whole external type thing. Yeah, that that seems to hold better for a lot of people. If it’s if again, it’s that whole self-awareness and mindfulness and things like that of going, wait, I need this to be part of my part of my life, because, again, if it’s not important and they can’t prioritize it, they’re just doing it for kind of temporary appearances.

 

[00:34:07.470]

It’s probably not realistic, right?

 

[00:34:09.270]

Absolutely. You know, it’s not if you’re saying I just want to be skinny, it’s it’s easy not to stick with that. But if you’re saying look at people who are really having terrible health issues in the country and throughout the world, and we know that diabetes and obesity and and and other health issues that deal with stress and inflammation are killing, literally killing people.

 

[00:34:42.990]

And to be there for myself, for my my spouse, for my my children, the rest of my family, and for the people that I can have an impact on and help them in their lives.

 

[00:34:56.460]

The people I can influence this you only have this one life.

 

[00:35:03.450]

This is the time if there’s ever been a time to say, let me throw away the things that are stealing and the enjoyment from my life and how can I give myself the life that I deserve in the years that I have. And I think that that’s so important is to start with with the why.

 

[00:35:28.110]

And and and yes, I think it’s very intriguing to to ask. So so what are you here for? What is it that you want and and what else and what else. And without saying what else. And people will come forth and if they just write it down and look at what they wrote every day, maybe keep a journal, I think that that’s really helpful to you. And also here at the end of the year, it’s a perfect time to say what I don’t what I want to leave behind.

 

[00:35:58.380]

And in twenty twenty and how I want a vision. What’s the vision that you have for how you want to be?

 

[00:36:07.260]

Yeah, and typically I’ll start with a vision board exercise. I did one back in February before covid and I put a star of David on my vision board and I’m and I finally made it, made it happen. I manifested it by coming to Israel through through a way of dance. But I think you bring up a lot of great points. And it’s just it’s so important to to ask people who don’t forget, like who loves you. And that brings motivation right back in because health is a complex and there’s going to be death.

 

[00:36:47.550]

But it’s them remembering who loves them and who they love. And I have a great story. I heard about a surgeon and he was going to treat somebody and he was this guy. I just went through so much and he goes, he’s an older man. And he goes, I’m just kind of done with my life. No, more like the surgery will really mean much to me. Then there’s another gentleman that comes. He comes across the surgeon and he’s like, I need the surgery.

 

[00:37:17.670]

My, my my kid is disabled and I need to live for him because if I’m not here, then he will not be able to function day to day. I am his caregiver. And so he now went back. The surgeon went back to the other gentleman and goes, Let me tell you this story. You know, this dad that needed to be here for his kid day to day. So people need to remember that they’re critical in other people’s lives.

 

[00:37:47.250]

Everyone’s so from from a perspective of engaging with you and so forth.

 

[00:37:51.870]

I mean, I went to your website and you do have a great diversity of people that you’ve engaged with and credits to you that you’re not just that one type of person reaching out to you for whatever that is across the board to talk to people they’re looking for your help with this. Is this preprogrammed or is every person uniquely talking to you like, OK, if somebody wants to do what you’re saying to do and they want to reach out to you, is it like, OK, well, here’s my pre-recorded stuff here.

 

[00:38:17.850]

And when you get through it, if you. One personalisation or something. I mean, it’s all just they talk to you, you figure it out, you guys work it out together. It’s what usually happens.

 

[00:38:26.580]

Yeah. So so my program is integrative nutrition. What feeds you on and off the plate as well as a movement therapy. But outside of that, people come in with different issues. So everything is it’s live interaction with them. It’s all one on one and truly tailored to what they need.

 

[00:38:50.450]

Can I ask you something for the hospitality people out there right now who are working, the general managers who see that they have an incredibly stressed staff trying to manage their own personal life stress, but also may be handling multiple jobs, maybe having less pay, but more hours because of the circumstances in hotels today. And what can a general manager or a hotel owner do to help ease the stress of of of the way the hospitality workspace is right now?

 

[00:39:32.990]

What can they do to make things easier for them? That’s that’s an amazing question I started in housekeeping and, you know, just knowing that I can get a 30 minute break for lunch or I can bond with my team or.

 

[00:39:57.230]

The turnover in hospitality is unreal. So we’re also pressured to constantly fill and train.

 

[00:40:07.370]

So I really think it goes back to the Golden Rule, which which is really what drew me into the hotel industry was is Northup’s book the founder of Four Seasons and how you need to treat people, how you want to be treated and allowing employees to take their breaks, not have to go and take care of a guest. And really also saying that working 10 hours or 12 hours, I like I don’t encourage that. Maybe you’re not efficient enough or maybe we need to add somebody else on.

 

[00:40:50.390]

So I think productivity is such a hot topic, particularly with analytics that we have today that we didn’t have before. But it’s knowing like. Just really being in tune with their staff. I hope that somewhat and that’s so true. You really do need to have enough people. People shouldn’t have to work a 10 or 12 hour shift. It happens all the time. It’s like they’re volunteering for those extra hours and you really should take better care of them and just appreciate them.

 

[00:41:28.850]

And maybe maybe we should have some nice Zilber music playing in the fact that we going to hear their music.

 

[00:41:41.250]

And I happen to have graduated from Cornell a couple of years before, just a couple of years before you and unlike you, my first job out of schools with four seasons. Right. So say get your bingo cards, guys.

 

[00:41:55.790]

I got to got to plug those guys have just you know, Robert was the one that overbooked Bethlehem.

 

[00:42:04.650]

That’s how far back for that. Exactly. But but is he is he in the early 80s spoke extensively again because the company was growing very rapidly at that point.

 

[00:42:21.960]

It was a small Canadian hotel company and really transitioning more into what it what it’s doing now. But he did go into general managers and executive chefs. Cultures didn’t matter who’s the most important person in this building. And it’d be like, oh, the general manager is like, no, it’s the housekeeper. Because if the housekeeper doesn’t do their job, yes, everything stops immediately.

 

[00:42:47.370]

Yeah, the general manager doesn’t do their job, you know, might be able to get by. They missed the meeting. They didn’t do this. The budgets late, that sort of thing. But you are not impacting the guests in the same way. So the way they set up and dealing with owners back at that that point in time was very difficult because there was actually a major recession in nineteen eighty four. Right. Which was which was a big crunch.

 

[00:43:11.400]

But you know, they allowed housekeepers once you worked. I can’t rule has 90 days or something like that. You wound up getting a certain number of nights staying at four seasons. Right. And, and this got very, very expensive. Right. For the owners giving all these comp rooms to basically staff rooms. But Izzy was adamant about it. And you had to do it because, look, these are the most valuable staff in the hotel socioeconomically.

 

[00:43:37.620]

In most cases, they and most people who work for Four seasons are not Four Seasons Target clientele flat out anyway, right? Yeah, just the regular mid management staff normally can’t afford to stay out of four season like those. They need to understand the guest experience and to do that, if they do it themselves, not only is it a tremendous perk and they can take pride and show their family and experience the whole thing, but they experience knowing what the the bottom line is on the guest experience as well, because that’s how you have to do it.

 

[00:44:10.890]

And it was was the embodiment of the golden rule. And it wasn’t just what we’re going to treat our investment as well and we’re going to treat our suppliers. Well, it’s everybody it has to apply to everything because it does it breaks down if you don’t do it that way. And that’s what made that company great. I mean, not that one is his perspective on taking that, you know, taking that approach.

 

[00:44:32.340]

You know, Kevin, I think your message right now is very strong because there are categorically three people. I’m sure there’s much more. But just in general terms, there’s those that are burnt out that have maintained their jobs but are being completely overworked, like we’re talking about assuming roles that they didn’t have before because of the reduction in staff and so forth. You have those that are partially employed or fully employed, but partially paid whatever wage you anywhere look at it.

 

[00:44:54.930]

They themselves are stressed out because of the lack of contribution financially that whatever they’re doing is happening with and the of those that are literally out of the mainstream right now that have lost their positions, that aren’t able to replace those positions and lose that identity aspect of having a position that they love. And there’s a lot of people that are losing the ability to come back into hospitality. They’re finding other positions, other roles in other industries because of the disadvantage of not being able to find a position.

 

[00:45:19.380]

But also they need to put something on the table and they need to find a job that can do that. So you have those major categories of people here we are in holiday period, which is supposed to be a reflection of positive introspection, review of our life and so forth. And this year, nobody wants to remember, nobody wants to think back fondly of this year. Even if they had highlights. It’s still a it’s still a tough year for everyone.

 

[00:45:42.690]

So with all that in mind, the need to put some physicality, balanced nutritional balance, some positive self value into what you’re doing, I think is a very strong message right now that needs to get out in front of not just those in hospitality, which is what we’re trying to do with this conversation, but also in general where it is like Melissa does closed door.

 

[00:46:04.150]

This is my work. Open the. It’s not my work, you know, it’s it’s balancing the things that you’re doing and, you know, stir things to go back. And when it’s a marathon, you a few passes out the first 12 miles.

 

[00:46:15.160]

Well, I will say this. I want one thing I think everyone should get is an accountability body on any of the stuff, whether that’s a pay professional or or friend or family member. There is zero chance I would ever ran that race had Mellissa not been my accountability body. We trained together like not physically together. We lived in different parts of the city. But we would every every time we did a run, we would send it to the other person.

 

[00:46:42.820]

We would check in. We would encourage.

 

[00:46:45.370]

There were times when there was there were tears on both sides and we don’t do anything without each other thing. You can do this and you’re going to let me down. And I don’t want to let you down. We would never have never done it. I wouldn’t have probably wouldn’t either.

 

[00:47:02.530]

How did you verify Stuart’s actual workouts if you didn’t see them? Just you were right.

 

[00:47:11.290]

But that’s the other tip that I would give people, like whether it’s nutrition and logging, like you talked earlier about using tools like you were doing with money and things like that. When I when I was really hard core on my nutrition and exercise, I would use RunKeeper for my exercise. I would use my plate for my nutrition, and I would log it before I did it because it made me mindful of what I was consuming. So before I would go and look up the not just the calories, but all of the nutritional value of anything I ate.

 

[00:47:45.760]

And there were several times when I would make better incremental decisions because I’m like, is it worth it?

 

[00:47:52.590]

Is that worth the couch chocolate versus the Froot Loops for breakfast? I know. I know those are important. And those are the biggest elements of breakfast today.

 

[00:48:02.470]

Yeah, exactly. But that really helped me. So writing it down and having goals that you’re mindful about, how you’re contributing towards or away from those goals and then having an accountability person or people that you say this is the goal I’ve set and I want you to help me get there. You’re part of this and you need to make sure that I don’t let you down and I don’t let myself down, that those are the keys to me to success.

 

[00:48:27.680]

How I’m so important is also just feeding my mind with the right information. And when I I’m addicted to audible, I listen every single day, at least minimum of an hour. And I love to listen to books about healthy eating. And there’s a guy, a doctor and called Jason Found with many wonderful books, including the obesity code and the diabetes code and cancer code and the way he talks.

 

[00:49:07.090]

But there are so many other books about fat and sugar and salt and hunt and eating vegetarian and all of these things. And just putting that talk in my head is setting me up that tomorrow I’m going to have a better day and I’m going to make better choices because it gets on the front of my mind. Very often we have a goal, but because we don’t talk about it every day, we’re not it.

 

[00:49:38.500]

We forget why we’re doing it and just putting a little nice verbiage in your head and saying, yes, this is how I think makes a huge difference for me. Yeah.

 

[00:49:52.450]

Price on your health, the most important thing that you have without it, you are nothing indeed. So think about that when you’re prioritizing what you’re going to do for the day. What? Nutrients you’re going to put in your body and what you’re going to feed the mind, because it all together, all of it’s important.

 

[00:50:14.490]

So the fact that my only source of information for the last nine months has been the real Donald Trump on Twitter is probably not a good benchmark.

 

[00:50:24.830]

No, no.

 

[00:50:27.000]

So, Evan, just to get out for a second, is a platform that I’m going to send over to you called Odem, which I think would be a no, that it lacks a little bit of the personalization of you being one on one with somebody, but it does give you broadcast capabilities of what you’re doing. It can put you on like Hulu, Netflix and stuff as a subscription channel. I notice a lot of people are using this for fitness, wellness, awareness, nutrition.

 

[00:50:51.090]

It’s whatever Kreig things you can do to incentivize people to begin something and then to reach out to you to continue that or create the momentum that wants them to engage with you. It’s a pretty new thing. Plus, it’s also a great way of getting a larger audience with you and so forth. So I’ll send the information as to whether it’s pretty cool, just kind of geeky thing. But and anyway, so I not only asked you for a half hour to an hour, which is a typical time, you’re more than welcome to hang with us and everything else like this.

 

[00:51:23.160]

I just didn’t want to go. I want to be mindful of your time if you had because it is now seven twenty is your time.

 

[00:51:29.430]

Yes, I had some a happy Hanukkah, happy details to find you website what have you.

 

[00:51:41.330]

Well I mean the show knows but we’re going we’re going to find you.

 

[00:51:45.280]

OK, you can find me. I have a brand new website. It’s Evan Kharazi, Dotcom Evenki and Cange A are Azi. And that last name I know is a little funky. I’m half Persian, so that’s that side of the family. I just want to say that it’s been a pleasure to talk to all of you and actually reconnect with some hospitality people and just remember what inspires you to stay motivated and just really find an accountability partner. And as this industry rebounds, you know, soon, hopefully make sure you take care of yourself now and set up the process so that one day when we are full speed, you already have that those habits in place, you know, it’s a priority now.

 

[00:52:44.250]

So you can take care with that.

 

[00:52:46.110]

And when you do, you do realize you do not have to go. It just I just wanted to make sure that, OK, I’ll take care of it.

 

[00:52:54.600]

Just I was like, you know, we asked for only a half hour and then an hour later we’re still chatting about it. You know, it’s like so make sure if you needed a nice way of blowing away that you have. But you’re more the one winning, because I know Steube didn’t want to lose track of this topic either. You mentioned during the well, and we need to warn him before he decides what he’s doing or not, that the gloves now come off.

 

[00:53:13.140]

Oh, it’s clearly the show drops precipitously, points.

 

[00:53:20.400]

He’s sharp elbows, sometimes talking to me like, stop, I got to say something. So, yeah.

 

[00:53:26.220]

That have been brought up before, though, it’s very important that the the turnover rate in hotels for employment is so high. And you know what? I never really hear anybody talking about what are we going to do to keep that cost down, because I think it is a big cost. And I only say this because I I signed up for the Aitchison, my business acumen certification, of course, online, and it starts to show different is different financial statements.

 

[00:54:08.880]

And I nearly passed out when I saw the number of the thousands of dollars that were being spent each year by the sample hotel for the cost of retraining.

 

[00:54:23.970]

And so do the recruitment and recruitment, onboarding and training, recurrent training, skills, supervision. It’s it’s a huge cost for me.

 

[00:54:37.470]

Are we not doing something about this?

 

[00:54:40.890]

I mean, I think it’s it’s partially inherent into the nature of the business, because even back in the day I used to refer to people acquiring success in hospitality is kind of going through SEAL team training purposely.

 

[00:54:52.470]

You shove a thousand people in for ten people to come out.

 

[00:54:55.260]

I get to bring up David Gorgons. Go ahead. Go ahead, please. No, no.

 

[00:55:01.530]

I mean a man that can run like a hundred mile. In twenty four hours or something crazy, yeah, it’s it’s it’s one of those things where we purposely built the infrastructure of how we operate is built on the roads that it should succeed do because that they survived. And it’s the medical profession does the same thing with their intern program. You know, they shove them through these ridiculous time cycles and ridiculous work requirements under the auspices that they by rote understand what they need to do, regardless of their physical ability of acuity, whether they’re awake or half asleep, because they’ve gone through the repetitions and and the the trial by fire.

 

[00:55:40.570]

So much those inhospitality, it’s about being able to light it up where I mean, I used it.

 

[00:55:45.970]

We used to have famous stories where we’d go out and party. Everybody was off until four o’clock in the morning and there were bright and crispy at five a.m. cracking open the restaurant. You know, we used to we used to be priding ourselves in our ability to just, like, be the warrior. And, you know, as the venture that gets eroded away, that you succeeded in a level where you don’t have to do that or you fell off of it and you’re no longer in the industry.

 

[00:56:08.800]

So we kind of built into the mindset in a bad way that we go through that. Right.

 

[00:56:14.200]

But but I don’t think that means that it’s something we shouldn’t tackle the same as the conversation.

 

[00:56:17.960]

No, I definitely agree with that. Review’s right now. There’s a whatever seventy five percent satisfaction rating and people just think that’s OK. And the best we can do is they’ll we’ll tell everyone you can make incremental changes to to improve that situation. And it’s the same with recruiting and retention. There’s a Belka of properties in terms of how well they do culture and empowerment and just creating fulfilling work environments for employees at every level. And I can look at different clients in from the very beginning, how they approach marketing, how they approach a lot of things.

 

[00:56:54.670]

I can tell what it’s probably like to work for them. And we’ve got clients that have retained staff, housekeepers for 30 plus years in the same position. And if you talk to these people, they love it so much that 30 different literally the hotel my son works at, 30 different people from the same family have worked at that hotel over the last 30 years. And that says a lot if you’re willing to recommend it to to your family members that that says that they’re doing a good job.

 

[00:57:23.410]

But then on the flip side, there’s people that the churn and burn and they have such a high attrition rate and then they think, well, it’s so expensive. So I’m going to pay these people less because they’re going to leave me in six months. And it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

 

[00:57:36.400]

Because they’re still really replaceable and they become exactly what you pay them to be.

 

[00:57:42.760]

And so when one group’s investing in their resources and the other is not, it’s just disposable disposable resources. Right. I’ll just let it go through. Doesn’t matter. Interchangeable. I just need a I need a head to clean the room tonight and that’s it. And we’ll drive off the bridge when we come to it the next the next day.

 

[00:58:03.550]

We’re not a body. It’s a human being that should be inspired correctly with proper leadership will feel that they know that they’re the most important person. They know how their their efforts and everything they put towards what they do is the reason their company will be able to grow and and thrive. They if they don’t understand, if the if the ownership in the management don’t understand what that human contributes and that their mindset is so important that they are doing their work with love and with devotion and imagining that they’re building a cathedral, so to speak, and the meaning.

 

[00:58:54.670]

I’m not just building a wall and I’m not just cleaning the room. I’m I’m I’m creating an incredible experience. And that incredible experience for that just cannot happen without my devotion. And so I am so important to the financial success of my company and they appreciate me for it. And, you know, the exactly same work that needs to be done to get better reviews will also make me feel better.

 

[00:59:26.080]

And I and I worked in revenue management. And, you know, that is when I truly saw the how the whole hotel goes together. And I feel like, you know, line level employees versus top level management. They don’t see there’s a huge disconnect. You know, they don’t see that disconnect like they actually a support system in place. And when one thing falls out, the rest, you know, it’s not it’s not great. So it’s like bringing it’s bringing people together from all levels.

 

[01:00:02.730]

And I think to back the four seasons that open. And our policy, having engagement with the general manager, with the line level employee and and feeling like they are part of something really valuable to Stuart’s point also is that you could tell by the way they market is the way they treat their staff.

 

[01:00:21.340]

If they treated what I call the Disney line mentality, which is if you don’t like the rate and the price, get out of line because somebody else behind you wants it. They also have the same mentality with their staff, if not you, than the next person. And they treat their teams like that. And then you really just I mean, not causing this, but people don’t want to work with Guy. And I don’t like what you guys are doing.

 

[01:00:39.190]

But to then I want to put a twist to it with Dean. Dean, you made a point earlier and it’s been persistent. You’ve worked remote for a very long time and kind of lending to something that ever mentioned. How do you reach through the screen? How do you create those connections with your coworkers and the people that you’re responsible with? And to I know you’re running on business number two when you’re working for somebody, but how did you create that ability to have that personalization that felt like you were being supportive or supported with the people that you were in with?

 

[01:01:09.310]

Just a little more challenging now than it used to be, actually, because it used to be that you on a regular basis would fly to whatever corporate office you had or regional office you had and you would physically meet with people. I think that is the one thing that I miss most about not working in an office is just that general around the water cooler conversation of, hey, how is your cat doing? Or did did your kid have a good concert last night of those kind of things?

 

[01:01:32.380]

And so you have to have those conversations. You still have to have those calls that Artecoll, as part of a management meeting, that’s how the calls for this is just a call for us all to forgive my friends through the shit. And, hey, what’s going on in your world today? Because that’s an important part of our of our business, of our camaraderie with everybody else that we’re working with. The Xoom is great or whatever variation of that you’re using, that’s great.

 

[01:01:57.340]

But there’s a reason the Zoom and WebEx and GoToMeeting didn’t take over the world even before covid is because we still wanted to have that physical contact and the advantage of having that feeling of physical contact. I’m there talking with you right now is the fact that that’s what you are doing. That is what you are doing. Right. Whereas if I’m on a zoom call with a bunch of people, guess what? I’m probably multitasking. I’m probably doing something off the side.

 

[01:02:24.280]

You may have noticed me switch screens here. You can probably see the light changes on my face. That’s because I’m glancing at my email real quick. Right. And yeah, I know the horror of that, but it that’s the reality of what happens when you’re working in this type of environment. So I think if if you have to work remotely and that is the only way that you can work with people don’t always be about business, be about, hey, you’re a human being and I’m going to talk with other human beings.

 

[01:02:51.880]

They’re a part of my group. They’re part of my tribe here.

 

[01:02:55.540]

Some companies do it better than others. There are some companies that I’ve seen that are not very adept to working with remote people. They’re more adept to I’m in a cubicle and I can stand up and talk over my cubicle or catch you in the hallway to have conversations with you. Some companies do that better than others. I think with covid companies have learned to do it better than they did before, but not all companies have always been that good at it.

 

[01:03:21.070]

The Feel Good team is very active in our group Skype chat. That has become the water cooler for sure. There you go. Find all the random topics that would have been discussed over keyboards and the random parts about how in Skype.

 

[01:03:37.540]

Melissa, don’t you Miss Stewart dropping by your cube to ask for the TPS report every day now escapes me and asks me for them.

 

[01:03:46.300]

It’s fine. Oh, I see it.

 

[01:03:49.060]

You know what? I love that you call yourselves feel ligands. I think that really speaks to it’s a club. It’s fun. It’s who we are. We are special inside group. And I need funds.

 

[01:04:10.060]

You I just and you all embrace him. And it was interesting about that.

 

[01:04:15.280]

It wasn’t a corporate push down. It came from I don’t even remember who came up with it, but someone just kind of threw it out one day and it just stuck. And it’s it’s kind of evolved in its meaning over the years. But we we’re very deliberate about who we hire from a DNA perspective. They have to meet the fuel and criteria. And I’m talked about on the show before, but the very first thing you do when you try to become a fuel again is you have to jump through some crazy hoops, which include tweeting us the meme of Steve Harvey is making us goods and bringing them.

 

[01:04:50.800]

If you’re lucky enough to get an in-person interview and we have all these little hoops because we know the kind of people that are going to enjoy doing that kind of weird stuff are going to be the ones that are going to fit into our team. So it’s. It’s it’s fun we had it that’s important that we hire you, hire the person, and then you teach them the skills they need.

 

[01:05:11.890]

Oh yeah, with attitude and aptitude over experience every day of the week, like every single day. But we just we just recently hired someone who’s been with us about three weeks now, and she’s the newest fuel again. And we were on the team chat yesterday. And I think the debate was about I don’t remember. We’ve had a few we have one in Lord of the Rings versus Star Wars, the best third movie in any series of movies. There’s been some weird stuff going on the last couple weeks.

 

[01:05:39.160]

There was there was a whole debate about nine candle versus seven candles for menorahs.

 

[01:05:45.550]

There’s been all kinds of weird debate, but yeah, it’s nice for a menorah. It’s seven.

 

[01:05:52.870]

This is the conversation we had, though, with the new person, Nicollet. She just all of a sudden in the middle of conversation said, I’m so happy to be a field, just like it was a spontaneous. Now I get it. Like this is a club. You guys are family. And I want to be a part of this because it’s inclusive. You know, there’s no nonsense that goes on, you know, excluding people. Everyone’s welcome to be a feeling and they just have to have the right attitude and they can be a part of the club.

 

[01:06:23.130]

Melissa, if if you’re try if you’re trying to escape, please pull on like your left, Turkey is trying to escape the cult.

 

[01:06:35.700]

Yeah, it’s a cult. I’m pretty sure it may have been a Freudian slip. So put that in mind in the fact that Robert is with us. Evans Robert puts a very excellent curated list together per week. And ironically, this week we had a normal schedule.

 

[01:06:52.150]

I mean, a whole day before we had the show, I had the list. That’s Astron.

 

[01:06:57.810]

If we’re going to have a Cornell hotel on, I mean, there needs to be a certain level of preparation and a lot I mean, even some, as Robert will send his list and maybe the middle of the show just you know, I don’t think I’ve ever been after ten forty five in the morning Central Time.

 

[01:07:18.250]

So 15 minutes or so.

 

[01:07:22.080]

And then we talk about Airbnb. Yeah, I know. Fan of this, but Stuart. Sorry, dude, Airbnb is valued more than Marriott and Hilton combined right now. No, no, no, no.

 

[01:07:34.350]

Go back and and Hyatt and join and the wind and the core and well they’re pretty close now.

 

[01:07:47.070]

The world is across the line and they have totally lost the plot on this. I agree with you. This is what happens when you let random people invest in the stock market. This is why only the elites should.

 

[01:08:01.000]

You’re right, Stuart, and all the experts had it here. And they like yahoos like me that when and incidentally, put a got a bunch of Disney stock about a year ago. And I’m very happy today after yesterday’s announcements, we go and buy what we think we know, you know what we’re passionate about. It works, but there’s no correlation in today’s world about what something’s really worth and what its stock market value is.

 

[01:08:29.130]

This is going like this over the next. Let’s have a craziness, just craziness. We’re investing in the hype right now.

 

[01:08:36.060]

That period, that’s what we’re investing.

 

[01:08:37.830]

When you see the world market, that’s what it is.

 

[01:08:44.550]

OK, taking the word is just think situationally right now, with all the pent up frustration of not being able to travel, the less crazy the brands have really done a terrible job of doing anything. The value sports brands. I mean, honestly, they just fall short by far.

 

[01:09:00.660]

Somebody looking for some sort of like direction to all this, like, wow, is Airbnb going to be that thing? Like now people are going to do this long term stay stuff, stay in one place, radiate from that one location, not do this.

 

[01:09:15.270]

So hotel room hopping things, group business and core businesses in a floundering right now at best, you know, is this the salvation aspect of hospitality in the near future, which is why it amped so much people’s perception of the value of it?

 

[01:09:30.890]

No, I don’t I mean, I think that’s part of it, right, but you haven’t seen the same excitement around other travel brands, and if that was the primary driver, you would you would expect to see Expedia or booking and Marriott and Hilton’s stock price going up significantly overnight to. And it didn’t really happen.

 

[01:09:48.200]

This is this is a hype thing. This is Airbnb has been phenomenal at PR. They’ve always done really, really well. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they have a phenomenal product. They built the most frictionless experience both from a consumer in the host perspective, but they have they have a fundamental problem, and that is inventory. And then still, until they solve that problem, I just can’t get behind this valuation. I think it’s inflated and I think they’re going to get a lot more demand.

 

[01:10:16.610]

There’s no question. The fact that and we talked about this about three weeks ago on the show, Airbnb, still the vast majority of people that travel have not stayed in an Airbnb. Now excuse obviously younger, but the majority of people still prefer a hotel experience. We as the hotel industry have helped prop up Airbnb and turn it into this big, bad monster that’s threatening all of us. But the reality is it’s you know, it’s about the same size as Marriott from a booking perspective.

 

[01:10:44.820]

Right? It’s not like going to dwarf everyone else as this valuation would believe. The way they get inventory is is by definition going to be limited in the stock market. Traditionally, they use things based on growth potential. They have.

 

[01:11:02.240]

They still have. They still have growth potential. I mean, I’m going to push back a little bit, but it’s not. And it’s been. It’s not. But OK, but let’s separate the valuation. Right, because that’s right. That’s just the stock market frothing. And you can go across a lot of other industry sectors and say, what the hell is going on with your PE ratio or whatever method of traditional valuation is out the window, right?

 

[01:11:28.880]

I mean, yeah, that’s just a separate issue. The company is very well managed. I mean, Chesky has really done an exceptional certainly being a design driven company and certainly understanding the hosts and guests bring in and bringing in Chip Conley to teach them hospitality and what’s important, critically, critically important, important move for those guys. But they also did everything properly during the panel. And they had some pretty bad mistakes at the beginning, right when they were growing.

 

[01:12:02.960]

But, boy, they they bought this defensive a little bit at the beginning, like, oops, we didn’t do anything wrong. All of a sudden they were, oh, no, no. We got to embrace the stuff. Let’s go and do it now. Again, they did a lot of other things for governmental tax payments where they the strategy is completely avoid paying anything. You don’t have to. It’s come in. But why. Yeah.

 

[01:12:25.760]

Why sign up early to pay a bunch of money that is isn’t mandated. But but just give those guys through this pandemic have done a masterful job. I mean they cut twenty five percent of their staff, they got out of a lot of ancillary businesses which were distractive and things like that focused on the core. Did all the things you want to do when when you’re battening down the hatches. And they built this story. Right.

 

[01:12:53.420]

And so they’ve got a couple of things that are going for them. One, most people haven’t stayed in Airbnb is they have very strong net promoter scores and people who recommend it to others. Right. That’s that’s still very, very strong. So that bodes well for for continued organic growth.

 

[01:13:10.580]

The other the other side of is. Ninety three percent of their business comes direct. Right. That they aren’t completely dependent on Google and OTAs and things like that. So structurally and that didn’t happen by accident. Right. Sort of thing at all. So these were all strategies that they kind of lay it out. So they’ve got good fundable now. Do they justify. Yeah. Is there a valuation? Should Airbnb valuation be equal to booking dotcom plus Expedia?

 

[01:13:41.390]

Should it be more than booking dotcom?

 

[01:13:43.970]

Probably not. Right. I mean, there’s there’s not a lot of evidence for it. So, yeah, we’ll see what happens. And again, they you know, right now, midday, there’s a little bit of selling, but they still haven’t quite dipped below yesterday’s close. Right. Things are hanging in there. So we’ll see if it if it goes. But these guys manage instead of being valued with all the hotel guys, they are now valued as a tech company and in with the OTAs and those margins.

 

[01:14:13.580]

So there’s just a whole number, a whole thing. And all of a sudden they just got access to a this is a technical financial term, a shit ton of cheap capital, because they can now trade that share price at the hundred billion value you ought to. Acquire something, we can trade you some Airbnb stock. What do you think? And that’s not very expensive for them.

 

[01:14:39.880]

You find that you make a good argument. I think we agree that the slightly overvalued right now.

 

[01:14:45.550]

But I think I think for me, they have been phenomenal.

 

[01:14:49.600]

Every step, every decision, every pivot they’ve made has been almost perfect. And at some point, that’s not going to be the case either. You know, someone’s going to cash out now because they just became a billionaire overnight and say, yeah, I can retire. Right. They’re going to lose some key folks potentially. But at some point, you know, in my mind, Airbnb has always been two or three bad stories away from a PR nightmare that could destroy that business.

 

[01:15:18.880]

You know, the fact that they’re getting more popular is going to drive demand both on the consumer side, in the House side. It’s now gone from this this kind of fringe company inhospitality to a mainstream company that majority people probably will try over the next couple of years because they’re going to be on the Today show and they’re going to be on the mainstream media all the time, especially right now, because the IPO. So it legitimizes them in the eyes of some people that may have been a little reluctant to try it before, but that also means there’s going to be opportunists come in that are going to try to host trying to maximize their net return.

 

[01:15:54.690]

And I think you’re going to see the quality of the product maybe is going to decline in certain areas. You’re going to see potentially more risky behavior happening in potentially some stories. And you’ve seen them in the past with someone’s got cameras in the room or someone gets murdered or they want to bring in those stories back to back. They get high profile enough, the media picks up.

 

[01:16:16.390]

This company is destroyed, but they also have a lot of structures in place to. And will those things happen? I don’t know.

 

[01:16:25.890]

Yes, it’s going to be so far out of here’s what our company here’s what our company stands for. Because, again, a lot of the social proof aspect of it, kind of what’s driven TripAdvisor and everything like that is, yes, you want to have the super host and things like that who have very, very high ratings, who do a great job.

 

[01:16:47.410]

It’s structured to be if you do a good job, you’re going to get a higher ADR, right. And you’re going to be more profitable. You do these things right. So they’ve they’ve aligned incentives with the rewards pretty effectively for these folks.

 

[01:17:01.860]

The other behavior, all the A that you’re going to have a pretty big company. And again, in shutting down a lot of these house parties, shutting down a lot of the covid parties, they are all over. I mean, they structurally put onto their platform that if you check it out, you could not rebook that same property within whatever it was, 48 hours. Right. You have to have that that downtime. I think I think companies did not do that right then.

 

[01:17:29.590]

They didn’t necessarily have to do it because they could put people in different rooms. But again, they didn’t go out there and say aggressively, hey, you know what? We’re making sure these things are spaced out. Here’s what we’re doing.

 

[01:17:42.190]

We’re responding to this is the fact that now for all the people that are on that squali edge, all of a sudden they’re getting their their uniforms with the logos on a going ship. That’s it.

 

[01:17:51.610]

Oh, yeah. And and a lot of people that used to be on that now now they could walk around and be the the the Airbnb police and so forth. And just for the record store, when you do your IPO and Melissa turns into a billionaire, she will not leave you.

 

[01:18:05.920]

I know this. She will hang with you even after the billionaire because y’all are like kindred spirits and stuff.

 

[01:18:14.470]

But the idea of Airbnb, you’re changing the game has changed.

 

[01:18:20.800]

OK, it is not just them being the outside fringe of or the renegade wannabes or the the upstart global economy thing. It is now. They are a player in the space. To Robert’s point, what do we want to buy? How do we want to make this happen? How do we legitimize this? How do we standardize this? Because they have to prove to the people that are paid the coin to be owners now what the heck we’re doing with that and what are we going to make out of that?

 

[01:18:48.130]

And you look at the domino models and so forth where all of a sudden our society has changed. A corporate traveler, whatever I emerge to be, isn’t going to be the Road Warrior Hotel hopper as much maybe anymore. Maybe I’m the I go to a place to stay a week person.

 

[01:19:03.490]

And now corporate world wants to just have a relationship with an Airbnb entity or a permanent rented corporate place that they put those people in for the week that they’re going to be at the border.

 

[01:19:14.770]

But there is a technology in place where a corporate travel is incentivized to find the cheapest deal and will get a rebate. I don’t know for a. Back in cash value for the difference, so their technology is catching up to its head to give these corporate travelers the incentive, the companies are good at the same.

 

[01:19:43.770]

Here is the per diem. And if you say, yeah, you’re Purdum’s or whatever, 250 bucks a nine. One hundred and twenty doesn’t matter. We are broken up by the market. You can stay for less that fun. You pocket the difference. We’re good with that.

 

[01:19:55.720]

Yeah, but some corporate policies just they restrict where you can stay right from a risk mitigation stamp duty of care investment.

 

[01:20:04.620]

But Airbnb is all over that five years ago. Right. They figured out the settlement process to make it easier for corporate travel managers and travel major TMD to take the billions and to seamlessly have that pass through, just like anything else market for just in midtown New York.

 

[01:20:24.330]

Because Dell can talk to this all day long. We can talk a little bit about Enron there as well as a bilkent. But so now you have companies that have decentralized themselves to some degree. There is a lot of hotels, 15 percent of the hotels in midtown alone have already been projected to not reopen as hotels.

 

[01:20:39.930]

So they’re off the board for the hotels that are still in existence.

 

[01:20:43.680]

And they’re looking for business and a corporate office who kept the mothership downtown because of the contract they have for the space or whatever. They’re going to have people come back to the mothership or they’re not going to permanently stay. They come to a hotel that’s struggling and say either we’re going to buy a block or buy a segment of repeated business with you at a certain rate, or they’re going to go to an Airbnb model of someplace that they can literally be the person that controls it, saying, look, we’re always your number one guest.

 

[01:21:09.750]

We’re going to do this mainlined based business. There’s a whole group segment potential that Airbnb hasn’t really tapped towards yet that could come into market as this void of business recirculation begins to happen because some companies will not grow back to their office space again. Some entities may not even stay in their current space because of cost constraints about being in a New York location versus a Charlotte location, you know, and just say, oh, actually, it’s getting really expensive.

 

[01:21:36.450]

Maybe not that one, but we know those kind of thing. There’s a whole movement that’s just going. And now that Airbnb is, quote, legit, OK, now all of a sudden they are a player in that space.

 

[01:21:49.860]

They can go to some of their super hosts that built buildings or took over buildings and ran them.

 

[01:21:54.840]

For those very entities saying you are now the ABC Corporation’s corporate offices, this is your flat rate, whatever you’re that.

 

[01:22:02.370]

And now they turn into an air.

 

[01:22:03.420]

Don’t go don’t go into what could be their downfall. Right. So if you’ve ever heard of this brand, but there was this phenomenal brand long time ago that did a really good job treating the consumer the right way, aggregating reviews, being an advocate for other people. I think it was called TripAdvisor. And then they they ended up going public and they completely lost sight of what made them unique and made them valuable to the consumer. And they started chasing profits because they had to make decisions which were in line with their shareholders demands.

 

[01:22:36.210]

They had to show growth and they completely failed in every pivot they ever made because every decision was against the consumer and for the shareholder in the short term, which ended up backfiring. And if Chesky in the Gaza and decide now that they have to do what the stock market demands and then shareholders demand could be the problem for them, I don’t think I don’t think they’ll do that because they’ve they’ve positioned themselves.

 

[01:23:04.500]

They only got three and a half billion out of this. They didn’t sell a massive portion of the of the shares and everything like that. So they’ve got they’ve still got a lot of control. But what hurt TripAdvisor was was kind of the acquisition originally by Expedia and then the split off there. And that was really kind of undercut coughers ability to really kind of on their run off.

 

[01:23:31.710]

It was at around thirty dollars and then it went well, well, well, up a hundred and ten. It was at that point quite a bit later. Then it started to write tank. Yeah.

 

[01:23:48.480]

What amazes me about the whole Airbnb IPO thing is that it’s still is a lodging company. Right. That’s ultimately what we’re talking about in the middle of covid. We’re nowhere. Nobody is traveling. We all have these problems with no traffic, no volume in the meantime. And so who’s using it right now? It’s my big question to start with and buy right now. I mean, right now, in the meantime, the day prior, another company had an IPO door dash, which did pretty well, by the way, but not as Airbnb.

 

[01:24:18.240]

And I’m looking at the other one. I’m thinking, holy crap, everybody’s using Douridas.

 

[01:24:22.320]

Now, that’s used to make this much after the. It is over now, but we’re not there yet. Think about what’s going on right now and to me, door dash right now to be more value, have a higher value than an Airbnb.

 

[01:24:41.460]

It’s making more money today than it probably ever will in the rest of its history, because three, four months from now, when hopefully vaccination is being deployed successfully, the number actually is going to decrease overnight.

 

[01:24:55.200]

And there’s no but the day trader, which most of these people who bought that Airbnb stock are, they were just buying it this morning so they could sell this afternoon. If I am a day trader, what’s going on right now ought to be what’s most important to me. Mm hmm.

 

[01:25:13.080]

And, you know, I think that Airbnb, once people get used to the concept, you know, the more people use it, the more people will feel comfortable with it. And if you’re going for a week or more especially, it’s going to be so attractive because it’s a beautiful thing to have an entire house with your own swimming pool when you’re on vacation instead of having to share the pool with someone else. If you’re having a multigenerational family or a few couples together or something like that in it.

 

[01:25:53.550]

And there’s such great storytellers and look how they’re doing, what they’re doing with spending so much less money on advertising. According to what Robert shared, something like 11 percent compete on advertising and marketing rather than their what was it? Thirty two percent for thirty to thirty three.

 

[01:26:13.530]

I can’t remember whether they’re doing an amazing job.

 

[01:26:18.570]

And I just think it’s as time passes, people will just get used to the idea that it’s a safe and fun thing to do.

 

[01:26:27.130]

Well, I think I think still brings a very good point. They are an odd juxtaposition as to what is influencing their processes forward. They know that they are a publicly traded company. One thing that I would say in comparison to what they were versus what they are now is there’s recourse from the perception of the consumer. When I would go to America and if I didn’t like what I had his experience at that hotel and I expressed my disappointment with the hotel and the general manager, if I still didn’t feel satisfied that I was listened to or compensated or whatever was my purpose, I felt like there was another entity I could go to, the brand flag that was sitting over the building.

 

[01:27:00.060]

Airbnb also had that where if I had a problem with the host or with property or whatever it was, I dead ended with the host. I really there was nobody else to go to. I could go complain to Airbnb, but they legitimately said we’re not a participant in the process for you. We’re just a vehicle for communication. For you to be able to have this opportunity to stay with the host if the host doesn’t resolve it, there’s nothing we’re doing now.

 

[01:27:20.070]

I think they’re going to be into that context of accountability. They are putting themselves above basically a sign every place that they’re doing business with now, and that the consumer will think that they can go to this big company now and say, I was not happy with my experience and they’re going to be facing the choice. Do we work at that level that we now go and talk to the host that we do to intervene?

 

[01:27:43.380]

They already they already have been doing that for for several years, but not to the level. I disagree in the sense that not to the level that a brand represents itself as being responsible for.

 

[01:27:52.840]

Oh, absolutely. They are. Right. Right.

 

[01:27:58.530]

It’s the same way, as you say. Well, booking, you know, that’s the classic book direct with Marriott, because you have somebody go, why go to an intermediary? Why would you talk to Expedia or booking versus. Well, I stayed I stayed in Paris at a horrible, horrible hotel. Right.

 

[01:28:14.460]

It was just turned out miserably. Bedbugs. Right. Not a good situation during Easter week. Right. The busiest, most for booking dotcom got into another place. Now I had to spend double, but I we got another place and they they basically saved by. Yes. Save my ass sort of thing. Right. So it’s the same sort of thing. Right. There’s huge structural advantages to hotels. Mass Instructables, the hotel industry has done a horrifically bad job because I’m sorry I’ve said this countless numbers of times.

 

[01:28:49.860]

The hotel industry deals with disruption using a patented four step process. Step one is the ignore step two, when told by individuals like us, hey, you should pay attention because they continue to ignore it. Step three is they panic and step four is they complain about it. So we are just about to enter stage four in the Airbnb saga. Right, because they did the the industry was so blind to it. And my numbers of conversations with eight going, hey, guys, maybe you should embrace this and put in training programs and you’re at the lodging association.

 

[01:29:29.680]

And not try to kill it with fire, because having the pity of people trying to make money by selling their extra room versus supporting corporate entities is not going to play well.

 

[01:29:44.560]

They didn’t do it right. I mean, and and now the industry goes, oh, crap. Yeah, maybe we should have started looking at that in 2009 or 2010.

 

[01:29:52.900]

Do it has Robert changed for you? Robert used to be happy go lucky and he had such a potty mouth. Now all of a sudden he comes back from his covid experience.

 

[01:30:01.870]

He’s cynical, he’s bitter.

 

[01:30:04.120]

He’s never.

 

[01:30:07.510]

Well, that’s a bitter pill, but it’s a huge opportunity lost if they could have defended themselves and they didn’t. Right. And they took the stupid what they thought was the easy approach. Oh, we’ll just try to litigate them out of existence. Like, come on, guys. Yeah, that’s not. Yeah, you’d better have a much better strategy.

 

[01:30:27.850]

But that’s in our chat box. Just to bring up the point to which, of course, I mean, you don’t know where to, Richard, go for our long term senior management. He says, I’m not sure what the true or legal activities will there be an individual host of flags of every district and a legal relationship that is actually licensed to or which is, he said, is very tight. So in answer to our conversation about everybody’s potential engagement and so forth.

 

[01:30:52.780]

So anyways, to that end, not be construed. Let’s talk about Airbnb all day long. Can’t get himself enough of that.

 

[01:31:03.910]

And if that’s an inside joke from the right that Stewart has in fact highlighted Airbnb, which he feels should not be highlighted simply we created the monster ourselves.

 

[01:31:11.860]

Absolutely. We promoted it more than they did. The reason they have ninety three percent of the bookings come direct is because folks like us are talking about. All right.

 

[01:31:24.250]

But since we do have Robert and he did do a wonderful list and it is rare that we get him bedside like this, literally, guys had thirteen hours to ignore the list this time.

 

[01:31:36.910]

So, yeah.

 

[01:31:37.990]

Is there is there a favorite of your list, Robert, that we are you know, I never pick a favorite amongst the children. There was a lot about influences.

 

[01:31:48.910]

There were there works. I thought there were a couple. And so I don’t know. Did you want to go for the the positive one of the negative Instagram is a great click Baity headline. Instagram has sucked the spontaneity out of travel.

 

[01:32:02.200]

You know, I think influencers and and actually social media has done enormous benefit for tourism because if I didn’t see all those beautiful pictures in my inbox every day, I wouldn’t be as inspired to go to or build a dream of going to some of these crazy places that just I make.

 

[01:32:30.280]

I may just have said, oh, you know, I’ll just go to the Caribbean because it’s Cuba near to the East Coast. But you see incredibly interesting, exotic locations and people doing amazing things. And that is very inspirational. And I may not remember what hotel they were at, but I, I will start thinking about that country.

 

[01:32:55.810]

And also, you know, some people say that if you build a hotel, you know, somewhere that is and not a classic destination like London or Paris or whatever, that you have to sell the destination first.

 

[01:33:16.450]

But literally, I could see a hotel and a balcony. I can see listen to news in Positano and say I have to stay at that hotel. I wasn’t thinking about going there, but I have to stay at that hotel because I want to see myself in that picture. And so I think that they do a tremendous, tremendous good for promoting travel, which brings the world together. And we need that. But I if if those complaints that were about over tourism and too many influencers going to make the exactly same picture in the exact same spot, then hour, then we need to make sure that those tourism offices are doing a better job promoting outside the central business district.

 

[01:34:08.170]

Because just like in New York, if you go to anything promoting New York, you’re going to see that they’re doing their very best to try to include Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx and even Staten Island.

 

[01:34:23.260]

Yeah, I know some of the over tourism is legitimate, though. I mean, because, you know, the. Rushing crowds in Venice, especially when you have, you know, not just the tourists who are there, but, you know, cruise ships coming in and dumping off twenty three thousand people on drugs is not a great, you know, not a great consumer experience. So a lot of the local jurisdictions have to figure out how Barcelona has been very aggressive.

 

[01:34:50.000]

How do you limit numbers of tourists so you don’t feel the same thing they have to go through with Airbnb to make sure that everybody these just aren’t empty rental units with nobody living in the neighborhoods which destroy the which destroy the neighborhoods which make these cities great. Right. So all these local jurisdictions are going to have to figure those things out to keep killing. Yes, you can go destroy Costa Rica if the Costa Rican government wasn’t so aggressive in protecting what they what they have.

 

[01:35:21.590]

So I try to keep out Airbnb barbecues and working in concert to influence the conversation. I think you make an incredibly excellent point. But it is a fine line.

 

[01:35:33.380]

There is there is the the the aspect that if you centralize too much on the bulk of what’s the most popular thing to point out to the Spanish steps, the you know, the the fountains that the David, if you’re going to go to Florence and so forth set.

 

[01:35:50.000]

But the ne part of it is, is that what we forget is that we have the ability to create segmentation demographically and of interest now, and we have the ability to highlight off the beaten path stuff or uniquely interesting to certain categories of people. The the other edge to that sword is you can get too granular and to a specific of an audience when you’re looking for influencers and you can miss larger opportunities or other opportunities because you’re focusing on what you think you want to come in your door rather than what would be willing to come into Utah, which is it’s a strange word of saying it, but there’s a big difference between selling just to the people you want compared to the people that we’re interested in what you have and going for influencers.

 

[01:36:34.130]

We should actually have a training on how to vet, find work with dialogue and define what an influencer does for you. And it’s not just the contrary when you have a phenomenal presentation. Agents I of I was not going to throw your age into this another event.

 

[01:36:53.150]

We got a lot of hotels doing that stuff, though, right?

 

[01:36:56.600]

I mean, where you can go wrong with just hiring somebody that and it goes beyond the vetting of what their audiences are. They engaged, not engage their proper size and in proper size of the demographically correct. There’s lots of nuances to what it is that would define who you’re going to talk to. Beyond that is your own self bias as to whom you think you should be talking to, being open to watch things like Stewart and Melissa do all the time.

 

[01:37:20.750]

You’re talking about finding the markets that are interested to listen to what you have to say, not the markets that you’re thinking you want to talk to all too often, create marketing campaigns. You start with where you think you want the business to be from, only to realize that that’s just a fragment or an aspect of a whole other series of people that want to know where you have to say as well. And you create marketing variations to them as well.

 

[01:37:40.850]

You know, it goes back to the old adage, the owner always wanted the picture of his building. He’s the only one that wanted the picture of his building. Nobody else cares what the building looks like.

 

[01:37:49.730]

You know, what they want to know is what the room is and what the comment, not the porter cochet or, you know, it’s like, come on.

 

[01:37:55.130]

So because of that, the influence of think is very powerful because we can be very people perceive us as being very biased. If we keep talking about all the stuff cool around our hotel, people are smart. They know we’re saying that because we want you to stay at our hotel influencers, have a broader capability of referring to your hotel and the value of it in comparison also to people who are interested in what they have to say, knowing that the hotel component of that and it gives them a nice, relatively neutral bias in their dialogue compared to potentially the perceived bias of a hotel and about themselves.

 

[01:38:28.880]

Like a campaign. Like a true campaign. Right. Because what you want to do, it’s not the influencer, it’s the influencers followers. Right. Of what you’re going to do. So what are the call? Is it just we want a picture of this person in front of the building or whatever they’re doing? No. What’s the experience that they’re doing? And can you get those followers to whatever register to win that experience so they can have, you know, whatever breakfast on the suite overlooking the Eiffel Tower at the Shangri-La or whatever is in Paris?

 

[01:39:01.280]

Right. Right, right. And all of a sudden, you have people doing and going, hey, this is great, because they saw the picture, the influencer, they did it. And now you can experience it, too, because that’s where the real power of these influencers is to really say, hey, I’m introducing you, trust my stuff and what I do and I can help you maybe win this experience, then you start getting a really beneficial relationship.

 

[01:39:29.950]

This influenza that everyone should focus on, and it’s not someone with a bazillion YouTube followers or Instagram followers, it’s your guest, the guest is the best you have. I think we all get caught up and learn who is guilty of this as anyone. This is why I always talk about it like people get. So we’re all about the latest greatest thing. And although we’re talking about influences for four or five years now, and it’s really an extension of what has been going on with celebrity endorsement for years, we’ve got to get back to the fundamentals of word of mouth advertising.

 

[01:40:02.560]

And that’s why I always rave about flipped to as a platform and it’s not on here right now, but taking every guest, making sure you’re focused on turning them into an influence to turn them into an advocate by making sure they have a great experience and then not having to pay a penny to encourage them to then go and tell them that the state is the best influencer marketing. You can do it. And it’s twofold, right? Because, one, once you quit, you turn your your guests into your secret army to go and promote the quality product that you have.

 

[01:40:37.540]

You also are collecting new content that then can be used in all of your advertising. And that was I was just looking at some results. Myrtle Beach is a destination. Just we’re going through some rebranding. And we did some focus groups recently on some new brand anthems and some just new messaging. And we started really incorporating some of the authentic photos that came from my flip to submissions and showing real people enjoying Myrtle Beach. And the overwhelming response from the focus groups was, this is great.

 

[01:41:10.870]

I can see being this these look like real people enjoying the beach, not some polished over published thing to do thing. So before you go spending a thousand dollars or trading some room for comping a room for some wannabe blogger, focus on your guests. That’s the best.

 

[01:41:32.110]

The crowd rip is wonderful, too, by the way. You can make beautiful you you get you get to use the pictures that people made of your hotel or standing about your hotel on your website and make custom galleries on various like here wedding photos that were taken. And we have their permission to use them. And they’re they’re much more moving. Those lifestyle photos are much more moving than any professional photography.

 

[01:42:08.530]

We can pay for that. I mean, you know that I now call the stoor disclaimer whenever I talk about Whiz-Bang toys before trying this at home, boys and girls.

 

[01:42:20.320]

And then to do this to Uncle Stewie says, let’s do this to your Bluck Eckle first.

 

[01:42:26.020]

Boys and girls don’t try this at home. But all that being said, I do think that there might be a transition of terminology that will eventually happen, that talking to you about your guests is being influencers is valid and accurate. But I also think that that can be translated into a conversation of advocacy that’s not going to disclose those advocates.

 

[01:42:45.820]

But it’s two sides of the same coin, really. It is influence as many people. But you better believe that every guest you have has a circle of influence, the influence of friends, family, their co-workers. That’s right.

 

[01:42:58.630]

Now, we refer to influencers as having an audience that is is different in scope than the average circle of friends that you have, although you influence your friends. Absolutely. So the terminology, as you said, is interchangeable. But to keep the difference with chasing someone down has an audience specific to what they’re pursuing as their content has multiple dimensions to that.

 

[01:43:19.090]

Right. Because you’ve got you’ve got the volume of the audience, but you’ve also got the strength of connection in the audience.

 

[01:43:24.280]

And that critical component actually might have a like 10000 people that follow you on Instagram. But how connected are you really? How how influential are you on the decision? So there’s a multiplier of size versus strength, the relationship that is important it.

 

[01:43:42.660]

Another good thing about using the guests that you have in the hotel as your influencers is that’s the kind of person that likes the hotel already. And, you know, it’s not necessarily the 20 and and 30 somethings that are asking to be at the hotel. And very often I’d have some 20 something begging me for a hotel and a stay at the Casablanca hotel. And I don’t have guests like that. I have matured guests. I have unpretentious guests.

 

[01:44:18.040]

And I really need, you know, that senior or middle aged couple or family that looks like. You know, everybody that is the kind of person that I want to see, because that’s what other people are going to relinquish when they see the 20 something pictures in the hotel, those young people that are seeing that are not going to come to the Casablanca because that’s not it’s not designing enough for them or you know what I mean.

 

[01:44:54.530]

If you do that, if you have the wrong answers to right now with covid being what it is, of course, every hotel you’re under, the sun has got a something on their page talking about COGAT and how they’re being careful and taking all these steps and doing all these things. You know what? Read the reviews. Read the consumer reviews. What did the guests who stayed there say about it? And I’ll use a really good example. I’m going to promote a hotel.

 

[01:45:21.120]

Actually, I stayed about a year ago in a home two suites down in Addison, Texas. And I tell you, when I reviewed this hotel, it was like hospital grade, sterile, clean. I mean, it was so unbelievably clean. If I just went back to in Texas right now in a heartbeat, that’s exactly the place I was going to stay in. And that’s what I’m going to look for is what did other people say about that property?

 

[01:45:42.550]

I want to interject something. This new data which turned this conversation four times past into compliance and special needs, traveler’s advocacy can translate into uniqueness of travel, having and engaging with people that can give a particular unique experience relationship as to what you’ve done for them and behalf of what it is that is that is a value to them. It goes a long way into the communities that they’re connected to. You talk about advocacy and influencing. We’ve talked about this many times on the show where those that have special requirements during travel keeping communities to each other, they were the original social media.

 

[01:46:18.270]

You know, if you had something that was concerning to you when you traveled, you knew like minded people and with their references and recommendations, guided your travel knowing that that hospital, that hotel accommodated your needs like a refrigerator for insulin or whatever, that those things were there.

 

[01:46:34.050]

And this is a chance because of the cool technology that Stuart Pupu is on me, on this cool technology out there that allows you to really help with the engagement of those people to work with and then share what you’re doing.

 

[01:46:49.380]

And that’s simple as it is.

 

[01:46:52.140]

There’s a video program and stuff that you can put hotspots on that talks through ADA compliance. So that actually helps the visual engagement for those who are visually impaired to be able to know what the videos and and navigation of what the video can be helping you with that.

 

[01:47:06.090]

That was a sidebar sub. I didn’t realize with that that platform was talking about. I guess we could go in a sector where the hot spots of click this to go here, click this for this or this is in the picture. Click here, really helped the added value of it for people that now it wasn’t just a picture of a sunny sunset. It was like, no, this is a picture of the lobbying. Click here for the sanitation, click here for the elevator.

 

[01:47:28.950]

They got a sense of self that the picture was interpreting for them without having to see it. And I thought was pretty cool.

 

[01:47:33.870]

So technology, OP’s analogy, I just want people to do the things in order of impact versus excitement level.

 

[01:47:44.700]

The Stewy disclaimer. Yes. And that the first two CRM is the CEO. And yes, of course, there there’s no evidence of that.

 

[01:47:52.200]

Right. So the point you make about accessibility, it’s you know, I think that’s something you should do. That’s a responsibility that every hotelier’s should have to make sure that there’s no discrimination going on because of someone’s disability. So I think there are certain things that maybe don’t on paper off of the return, but it just the right thing to do.

 

[01:48:12.660]

So I do agree in that case that you should be doing that and you should be having pictures of things that can actually be experienced in the right stuff.

 

[01:48:26.570]

Yeah, yeah.

 

[01:48:27.660]

And also, you don’t have to highlight the most popular aspects of your location. A lot of times you can. I mean, that’s the one thing we know. This goes back almost a year when Google started introducing the local reviews for your hotel on their mobile platform, that that rated you according to your proximity to things.

 

[01:48:43.650]

You had no control over that because it literally knew the geographic location of you based on the geographic graphic location of something that they thought the user was interested in and gave them a score as to how close you were in proximity to them for their value. And you couldn’t just say, I’m going to add that into my schema, add that into my content, and to influence that that rating system.

 

[01:49:06.180]

That was something Google did for the user that you really didn’t have an influence on because it already had the static data for it.

 

[01:49:13.590]

So it features, you know, yeah. It’s moving quickly.

 

[01:49:18.240]

As you can see, two hours can go by pretty quickly, do you think?

 

[01:49:22.590]

Oh, man, I wish I dropped off after the forty five.

 

[01:49:30.140]

There is a feeling that I do want to make with some things we have started up that we are hospitality, which is now Monday through Thursday, with the exception. Now, starting next week, Wednesdays, Wednesdays, we’re going to start what I hope is to be something fun, which is called pitch it for lack of a better word, because I’m going to actually ask to continue today, Stuart.

 

[01:49:49.220]

What if they have a better name for it and wait for this, will announce it in the show notes.

 

[01:49:52.770]

But the idea of pitch it is everybody has five minutes where they’re looking for a job, whether they have a service skill that trying to offer a product, they’re trying to offer their five minutes to do an elevator pitch of what they’re doing. And then when we record everything, they can use the recording for whatever they want to do for self promotion, but also hopefully get in front of the audiences that follow us on the live show and follow us on the podcast.

 

[01:50:12.920]

So it’ll be Bitly Ford.

 

[01:50:15.110]

Pitch it. Unless another name comes up at the end of our fund quarantine call today, so if you know of anybody that you think is looking for a job that wants to pitch, what do or if they have a product services, obviously they’ll be and all of us are going to be on there talking about what we do anyway to give a chance to put in front of people that we can record. But that’s something that’s going to happen on Wednesdays.

 

[01:50:36.590]

So Monday, Tuesday, Thursday is where hospitality it’s an open dialogue at noon Eastern for anybody that just wants to come and talk about anything. It’s not a broadcast show. It’s just a chance to see other people’s faces on a screen.

 

[01:50:50.150]

And they want people around before they come on that. It’s going to be five minutes of them pitching, ten minutes of us talking over them and telling them things that the experts on their subject. And after 20 minutes of rambling.

 

[01:51:04.940]

So, I mean, there’s no 30 minutes, 30 minute rambling. You sell yourself short.

 

[01:51:11.830]

I have no idea the full format other than the last four, five minutes.

 

[01:51:15.080]

Somebody give what they say and then I’m going to make sure that they get the recording of it after that. I have no clue how it’s going to format.

 

[01:51:21.320]

So speaking of going off the rails is a topic that I mentioned, Ilorin, that I wanted to bring up and discuss. Yes. Put a thought out there into the ether, as it were, and see where it goes. But I we’re we’re potentially coming up to the final chapter of it. Right. In terms of this, this country’s UK, for example, already deploying vaccinations. US will probably start within the next seven days, deploying vaccinations.

 

[01:51:48.020]

And there’s a lot of noise about this subject, right? There’s a lot of difference, a difference of opinions, some of which seem to be falling down political lines similar to the mosque debate. And, you know, and I think and I’m talking about us specifically when I say this, we’ve probably not done the best job as a country navigating the situation because of the differing opinions and different information. Right. I would put it out there that this the vaccination and the successful deployment of vaccination is the single and it’s the only path to recovery period.

 

[01:52:29.750]

Apple hospitality industry. There is no other light at the end of the tunnel other than us all coming together and rooting for successful vaccination deployment, period. I mean, there’s no argument to that. If if we don’t successfully vaccinate enough people in this country and around the world, then hospitality will be devastated for another 12 months and beyond. This virus is clearly not going away and we cannot get back to any kind of normality in our lives until the vast majority of people are vaccinated, probably 80 percent plus or at a minimum, everyone that is at risk.

 

[01:53:05.840]

Right. So regardless of you or my personal opinions, I think we all need to do a couple of things. One, we need to educate ourselves in a meaningful way. Right. Forget about your biases. Forget about your informational sources. Spend the time to educate yourself, not based on opinion, but based on science and fact and not based on what the rhetoric is of your your soup du jour of news outlets today. Right. Spend the time to really educate yourself because any flippant comment that you’ve made or will make about vaccinations like you may about masks, about whether they work or not, is detrimental.

 

[01:53:45.230]

Every person that doesn’t get vaccinated once it’s safe and you’re comfortable, that it’s safe and not being reckless. Every single person that doesn’t get vaccinated is just delaying recovery for hospitality. So if you love hospitality, if you want hospitality to get back on board, you have to be a part of this. And it starts with education. And then at the point where you feel like it’s not a blind faith, reckless decision to get vaccinated and your family get vaccinated, go get vaccinated as soon as you can and share that, put it on your social channels, show everyone else that you are going to be a leader in this and encourage everyone else to do the same.

 

[01:54:22.830]

If we all do that, we all get vaccinated at the appropriate time once we know what to say and we all share that and we all continue to do that with that. We’ve all got supercomputers in our pockets that we can take selfies, take videos, share that to the world. We can encourage more people in this industry that we love. It’s always been about putting other people before ourselves. That’s what that’s the spirit of hospitality. And if we do that here with vaccinations, we’re going to have a good twenty, twenty one.

 

[01:54:52.850]

If we choose not to. If we choose to fall prey to misinformation in fear. Yes, it’s inconvenient. Yes, there are side effects. Yes, there is a lot of potential risks. But if we fall prey to that and let that dictate our actions, we’re not recovering, period. So we have a choice to make as an industry. And I hope we make the right one. I hope it’s the one that puts us on a path to recovery.

 

[01:55:14.540]

So I’m going to step off. Fox is something but can’t, cannot, cannot agree more. And why, why the hospitality industry, which has ample empty meeting space and rooms, ample cold storage, things like that, hasn’t stepped up to say, how can we help you solve this through vaccinations or that sort of thing? Lauren, it seems like in March we had a webinar where we were begging some leaders of the four major associations within the hospitality industry to really get aggressive and to step up not just on our cleaning rooms, things like that, but what you can do to actually actively protect people, support testing, supporting local hospital and health care and public health outcomes.

 

[01:56:04.800]

That’s what you have to do, because let me tell you, my my watchword for twenty, twenty one is going to be patience, folks, just because there’s a vaccine that is not a magic wand that just goes everywhere and everybody gets it in a nice uniform manner and all rolls out. I mean, they were already saying, hey, we’re going to have these millions of doses by the end of the year. What’s happened four weeks out? They said, hey, little bit of delay.

 

[01:56:31.550]

We’re probably about eight weeks behind schedule. Well, that’s a two. Yeah, but that’s a three month gap right from where they were. So it’s not going to be necessarily that smooth and. Yes, bye bye. June ish, that sort of thing. Things will be OK. There will be people who are are wealthy and are well-connected who can certainly get the who will get the stuff earlier.

 

[01:56:57.890]

And they’re going to be massive swaths of other people, which may include a large number of employees and things like that. Who, yes, is a housekeeper, a front line essential worker. Are they going to be at the front row of getting the vaccine? Perhaps not.

 

[01:57:13.940]

And again, I feel bad that you weren’t in England because if you’re in England, you would have been the first vaccinated person based on your age.

 

[01:57:20.000]

Well, that’s that’s true. But again, it’s going to be it’s going to be a problem that you need.

 

[01:57:28.160]

You need broad distribution of the stuff. It’s not just these things start rolling out, right? I mean, it’s got to be everybody’s got it. And they’ve gotten two doses.

 

[01:57:38.240]

Right. As everybody is going to stop going, there’s a vaccine. We don’t care. We’re at the end of the tunnel. It’s all done. And all of a sudden the testing stops and the contact tracing stops and all that. And when the discipline stops, right.

 

[01:57:52.730]

The social I would I’ve been quarantined for two weeks. I went to a grocery store last night for the first time. Nobody wiping down carts. No, no hand sanitizer at the entrance, no hand sanitizer at the checkout counter. All that stuff’s gone. Right? They just aren’t doing any of it anyway. And let me tell you, in Dallas, there is a nice, big, healthy spike in cases.

 

[01:58:17.240]

Oh, don’t forget the fact that more people died yesterday in the US than everybody did in 9/11.

 

[01:58:24.330]

Oh, yeah. There’s somebody put together a chart of the largest Cotard’s. This is like one of the most depressing charts you’ve seen of, like, what’s happened. And then you go, yes. And they outlined each individual day of thousands of the worst, actually, the fourth worst now.

 

[01:58:41.840]

And of the top ten, eight of them are covered days. And I’m five, six of them are in the past seven days.

 

[01:58:48.520]

Right. Here’s the problem. Those people watching this that are going to be like, but I don’t believe those numbers. That’s fake. The numbers are inflated.

 

[01:58:55.820]

You thank you. I’m going to take a slightly different approach to this, regardless of your personal opinions about the reality that we live in.

 

[01:59:07.010]

The fact of the matter is, without successful deployment in a mass scale of vaccinations, restrictions are not going to be lifted. If people are not going to travel, fear is going to override their willingness to travel. So you love the hospitality industry. If you want to get your career back on track, your business back on track, it’s the only possible. Would you have used to embrace vaccinations? It’s the only thing I disagree.

 

[01:59:31.500]

Positive outcomes have to proceed. The economy is an output. It’s not an input.

 

[01:59:40.660]

Everybody to do everything normally. And it will be it does not work like that.

 

[01:59:44.990]

While keeping with the fact that, Robert, you’ve had it. And today our thoughts and prayers are with my aunt.

 

[01:59:51.110]

My aunt died of it and she knew she was living in the monastery. She shouldn’t go. I still don’t know how I got it. I think I got it like at a grocery store. And I agree in Washington to it all, that sort of thing. Not doing anything reckless.

 

[02:00:10.140]

She thought, oh, no, no, actually, yeah. I mean, and I was very lucky. The first one, my daughter got it. From her boyfriend, who got it from his mother, who got it from a friend. I mean, all these people being super careful, it was the one careless friend. I sit next sat next to my daughter for. Six hours, three, three cushion so far, my wife on one side, my daughter in the middle, and we did not get it from her, right.

 

[02:00:35.660]

And she tested positive on a rapid test. We’ve just lucked out. So quarantined for two weeks. There was literally a three day gap there where I didn’t go, not just go do. We barely went anywhere. We went to like a broms ice cream place to get like a frozen yogurt. We did a little bit like grocery shopping, and that was it. And then all of a sudden, four days later, I got it. And I guess I have no idea where I didn’t do anything reckless.

 

[02:01:02.450]

It wasn’t that I didn’t wash my hands or do whatever, but whatever happened, I, I got it right now and then says keep our thoughts and prayers with Ben’s wife, who’s suffering from coverage right now.

 

[02:01:17.650]

And he is now unable to join us because he’s taking care of his wife and keeping the kids separate over here, the wife taking care of here. He’s trying to stay separate.

 

[02:01:27.150]

They’re in lockdown in England. It’s not like it’s like, oh, you know, I can go outside. You know, he’s juggling this stuff, you know, I know that I was just looking back up, you know, went from knowing the president. The vice president was the president and CEO.

 

[02:01:42.440]

You see, he passed away covid of complication.

 

[02:01:48.290]

Just it’s just if there’s a fact, there’s there’s real tangible it’s not a matter of. Oh, I know somebody I don’t know somebody here. We have somewhere on the screen with us.

 

[02:01:56.690]

You know, it’s it has it is not whether you believe the numbers. No. It’s to what you just said, Stewart, if we’re going to expect any sort of positive results in our industry, you’ve got to jump on board with this. You can’t say, oh, politically, I don’t go do go outside, stay home, just stay.

 

[02:02:17.180]

And you’ve got to be proactive about it. Right. Because there’s this alarming statistic that forty six percent of American adults are not planning on getting the vaccination at this point right now.

 

[02:02:28.750]

We as marketers need to do a job of marketing this thing, and one of the things we can all do is be good role models and make it normal and make it socially unacceptable not to get it right. If we are all saying, hey, we encourage everyone to get vaccinated and look, hey, I’m getting it, it’s fine. I think that’s going to go a long way to turning a lot of people on.

 

[02:02:50.320]

This also changes the data starts coming in to people who are getting vaccinated, knock on wood. The numbers start going down the line, graphs are going down and you can relate one to the other sooner or later. It’s just a no brainer. But guys, look, it works.

 

[02:03:04.420]

And then you just kind of have you don’t have to get about 70 percent, 70 percent of the people basically in a situation where they they’ve been vaccinated because, again, people are getting it. It’s a coronavirus. Right. They don’t know enough about will it come back? Will it mutate, will it be, you know, different sort of thing? It may work a lot. No, it’s very different from the flu, but it may be hey, it comes back a different variety over here.

 

[02:03:33.130]

And you’ve got they’ve got to reformulate the vaccine and go give it a shot. Things like that. But again, it’s not just going to be oh, it went away and we’re fine. And I’ll let everybody else get the shots. And I don’t have I don’t know what happens with 50 percent. You’re still going to have to have these. You’re going to have people getting sick and it’s still going. And people aren’t going to go out to restaurants and do all the normal things that we walk between.

 

[02:04:02.320]

Now that the weather’s been nice, we walk from our place where we live to our office that we have. And that’s our trend. We’re willing to play and I do everything curbside and go into stores now. I just order everything curbside as much as I don’t like doing that because I love the job camp.

 

[02:04:16.330]

Good.

 

[02:04:16.840]

But I’ve also been one that doesn’t say something to somebody that’s not wearing a mask will walk by. We put their masks on to make sure that we stay. We’re even outside. We have our massages, we’re walking over and we first when we start walking by, people that mask we just kept as far away as we could off the sidewalk from them or stepped away so they could walk by. I have to stop that. I’m just like, guys, dude, where’s your mask?

 

[02:04:38.350]

And, you know, I get some nasty comments back and I’m like, you know, I’m twice your size.

 

[02:04:41.770]

I will kick your ass, go violence law. And that’s what we need.

 

[02:04:47.610]

You know, pointing out to people what you mask on, you know, what’s up with you? Why are you not wearing this idiot? I don’t want to happen, though, right.

 

[02:04:56.830]

We’re conflating masks and vaccinations and we can’t do because it’s going end up in the same divisive place. We’ve got to separate the conversations and say vaccinations are our passport period. Where does that where you’re a moron with masks or not, then you need to embrace vaccinations. Very true. It’s very cool to have someone have to do both in that interim period.

 

[02:05:20.740]

People are still going to have to wear they.

 

[02:05:23.350]

Here’s the thing. You know, wearing a mask today, you’re never going to wear a mask. We’re not going to change people’s minds on that.

 

[02:05:29.740]

We have a change of January, mid-January. Give it give it three weeks after Christmas.

 

[02:05:38.360]

That’s not a battle I want to fight anymore. I’m exhausted from that battle. But the vaccination battle is a new battle. That is the path to to complete recovery. Masks is a stem.

 

[02:05:50.650]

The flow helps, but it doesn’t stop the virus completely from you start you start getting you start getting the IRS overrun and five thousand, that’s the day. And things like that.

 

[02:06:02.530]

Not that I don’t give a shit what a means, but if not, then I’ll start getting more people’s attention when again, more people they know die and things like that. And again, the negative public health outcome is going to be all these, you know, basically emergency rooms. An ICU is tied up with all these covid patients. So, I mean, the Dallas elective surgeries are now suspended, right?

 

[02:06:27.610]

Well, look at what’s happening in Arizona. They’re actually complaining that they’re actually looking at the fact of what’s called critical care assessment. You come in hospital, if you’re if you look like you have a chance of surviving, you’ll be treated. If you look like you may not be able to survive. They refuse treatment. They’re life and death decisions people are making and end to me, whether it’s just because of age or whatever like this, when I see, unfortunately, those refrigerated trucks where there’s people bagged up, I think of a family member.

 

[02:06:55.660]

How would I feel if my family member was treated like that?

 

[02:07:00.220]

You know, how how how can you like that? I don’t feel we are sick and that’s what we’ve got.

 

[02:07:06.820]

And they have to make more of those decisions get made once you get up to one hundred and twenty percent capacity of your your ICU or. Yeah.

 

[02:07:17.200]

So much, even less. One of the newscasters kind of just went through the death numbers and they did it almost with a quasi smile, like they’re just reading a teleprompter, which was what they were the backlash on social media was.

 

[02:07:27.670]

Profound. How do you think you can just talk about one of my cousins was one of those numbers today?

 

[02:07:35.410]

I mean, they just because the reality is beginning to hit home for a lot of people, realizing that these aren’t just numbers, just X number of people getting sick or whatever have you. And then we start talking to people that are sick and they’re going through the actual reality of it. You hurt for them because it’s like there’s nothing you can do. You can’t even bring chicken soup, you know, you can’t go over. And only one, you’re jeopardizing yourself by trying to be that helpful.

 

[02:07:59.110]

So it’s tough things anyway.

 

[02:08:02.260]

Wow. OK. Hey, sorry to be so heavy.

 

[02:08:05.470]

We need a mission statement from now forward. Every time we have the chance talking about making sure we get vaccinated. Anything we can do to be. Let’s take this.

 

[02:08:14.020]

We have a point which is influential. We need to use it. I’m going to I plan on using the podcast to do the same thing on the podcast.

 

[02:08:22.120]

Now forward as we go with this.

 

[02:08:24.880]

And again, so can we tie in one article, the retros normally a negative? I think it ties into Evan’s whole thing.

 

[02:08:33.520]

There is an all you can drink tequila train. And I’m pissed off that we only found out about this in the last week or two. So this could have changed.

 

[02:08:42.220]

Twenty twenty for all we know now you are putting yourself, Robert, and to. Hello. What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?

 

[02:08:52.720]

They just they just aren’t. I wasn’t following the right influencers, obviously.

 

[02:09:00.640]

Following the recipe guide to your best margarita. That’s all you can drink. Tequila train folks. What could go wrong?

 

[02:09:09.430]

So nothing, absolutely nothing at this point. Nothing could go worse than what it is. All right. So with all that in mind, we’ll start with Evan. Evan, first again, if people want to know more about you and where to find you, we’re going to do this.

 

[02:09:20.620]

They can find me on my website, Evan Kharazi, Dotcom, I’ve and a crazy guy. I also have a private Facebook group for overworked professionals. It’s a health care for professionals group. And am I Instagram, Facebook the normal?

 

[02:09:41.860]

I’m saying thank you very much for spending not only the early time with us going through talking with you, but also all this other time where you stayed with us and went through all this conversation, dialogue with us.

 

[02:09:51.280]

Thank you very much for talking to us about downside to the dean, sir. More about base camp, better message marketing. Absolutely. So base camp Medda, if you’re looking to start a metasearch program and whether you’re a digital agency or a hotelier and you need to educate yourself and or your staff about what metasearch is, what it does and about how to run those campaigns. We have an educational series at Base Camp BET.com. You’ll find educational learning series there.

 

[02:10:21.130]

They can teach you all about that. If you are somebody who needs help running the campaign, you have metasearch marketing dot com. We provide a platform agnostic consultative service. Try saying that really fast travel times and we’ll give you the straight up as to, hey, is this going to benefit you? What should we expect from it? How can you succeed with it? Taking that a step further, if you are a small hotel room, bed and breakfast in Omaha, Nebraska, that has never been able to run it because you don’t have the technology stack, we can solve that problem for.

 

[02:10:53.200]

You won’t go into all those details, but reach out to us when we can help you with those things.

 

[02:10:57.640]

Don’t get your podcast. Oh, yes.

 

[02:11:00.340]

And our podcast, we actually just had one that we did with Adele that just came out earlier this week. In fact, talking about how your guest feedback and your reputation will impact your not just your metasearch campaigns, but really all of your marketing campaigns, how those tied together and all. By the way, I should also mention, too, that going back to the small Google for small hotels free for 30 days. So you have the opportunity to see what the data looks like.

 

[02:11:27.200]

Adele, speaking of you right, you have a hospitality reputation marketing podcast to join with Deanne’s podcast and Lauryn’s hospitality marketing podcasts and Holly’s hospitality sales podcast and Lillie’s Hospitality, Reputation Revenue Management podcast.

 

[02:11:53.880]

So just talk about it. We’re we’re all active and I’m so excited to be a part of it.

 

[02:12:03.260]

I had a wonderful interview yesterday with Chef Hike in such an inspiring author of a book called Amaze Every Customer Every Time and many, many other books. I hope that you’ll go visit. I put a link to the podcast, but you can just Google Hospitality, Reputation Marketing podcast and you will see it there. And I also have a website, Aspire Reputation Marketing dot com, and I am offering for unlimited time, going to continue to offer a free reputation assessment and an initial consultation to help you connect the dots.

 

[02:12:47.480]

If you’re a hotelier or a restaurateur, actually do a presentation to doctors so I can do that for you as well to to help you connect the dots between the reviews you have and how to close the gap between what you say about yourself and what your guest actually say about you. And that will, as we discussed earlier today, also help with your culture and retaining your employees as well as your guests. So I have a lot of fun with it.

 

[02:13:20.330]

And I I hope you’ll take advantage of my offer, Melissa.

 

[02:13:25.190]

We know that you’re the operations behind the award winning broad podcast of your travel.

 

[02:13:30.110]

We know that Stewart takes credit for way more than he should. But if you’re are you coming on the show next week to talk about the recent survey that you guys are doing?

 

[02:13:38.870]

It is not quite ready yet. We’ve got to wait as we go.

 

[02:13:44.130]

OK, we’re going to have a special co-host next week to Claudia and Vontae from VP, Margaretville, Vocera Organizational Thing for Women in Business, which Adele, please be there. Melissa, I would love if you could be there to the rest of us can just hang up in the wings. I’m going to get the all girl power thing going next year. Next week can be like the all just talked her Futrell Futrell podcast, what you can find all the time, including the award winning fuel podcast on fuel travel dot com.

 

[02:14:14.750]

You can also find anything about up into our CRM system and our booking engine. That doesn’t suck.

 

[02:14:23.870]

That is actually at the bar. It really is.

 

[02:14:28.430]

I mean, all joking aside, the vast majority of booking engines on the market suck it up. So it was OK. Again, we did a whole episode on this booking engine. So the answer is yes, unless you’re using Aspen Institute.

 

[02:14:42.710]

I mean, to that point, I mean, I don’t know whether you guys have the same advertising for these eggs up there, but it has it weird that these eggs are not free range. So it’s no bullshit eggs. I mean, but they do the bullshit, but they put the stars out. Have you seen that commercial yet at all?

 

[02:14:56.200]

I have no you. I think you should go for the whole truth and candor and marketing engine that doesn’t suck. Should be your slogan logo like just put it up there but like in jest. But we haven’t gotten to where it’s on. I think she leaned into it.

 

[02:15:13.760]

Sounds like a lot of people are going to do so. So sort of, you know, other than all the cool stuff Melissa’s doing, we always said fuel travel dot com is the mother ship, the fuel travel podcast or just search for hotel marketing podcasts anywhere and you’ll get us a hurt hotel marketing podcasts and feel left out because I’m not part of the hospitality focus group.

 

[02:15:35.630]

It’s the club. And that’s cool. Yeah, but and if you want to buy the Mandalorian, you just go to Richard Steward.

 

[02:15:41.900]

He’ll talk to you all in his Disney announced ten new stores shows in the next ten years. I think getting her on the job and never show up on the show again because I’m just looking for Mr Robert.

 

[02:15:56.690]

Next time, make sure they take the handcuffs off the back of the bed banister just so that there’s no backdrop for tickets and it’s a lot more and apparently furnishes his bedroom differently than I don’t know what to rock to to dotcom.

 

[02:16:21.320]

Robert Cakehole on social media or if you’d like to get a weekly newsletter of. News items, which every once in a while will have the actual news article correspond with the headline for it. Yeah, that was a little bit of an upset, but with that, you can go to Bitly structure to a lower case.

 

[02:16:42.660]

Excellent, excellent. Excellent newsletter. Incredibly well curated. It is the mainstay of our content. And our fallback to everything is we don’t always get to all the articles, but they are well worth a review.

 

[02:16:53.430]

And so how else would you find out about the tequila trend that, you know, that in itself is worth the price of admission? Actually, actually, the book, which is kind of the uplifting one, was kind of ass did come out with her twenty twenty one gold list, which is always, always nice to look through.

 

[02:17:10.830]

So Robert Battelle’s you remember slow day at Cornell.

 

[02:17:15.600]

I do. I was actually on the Cornell Konsta Commission for the first day with The Pretenders. Yeah, right.

 

[02:17:22.810]

Yeah. Robert goes back to when they first dug the spade in just after they got the Mayflower and they put the first little Evan for Cornell.

 

[02:17:31.170]

So we call Evan. Are you familiar with. Oh, Robbie Moore is a dancer. I think he’s mostly out of Antwerpen, Houston now. Any any chance you’ve run across Robbie Moore? He went to he was at Juilliard, I think a couple of years older than you probably.

 

[02:17:46.560]

But my my daughter used to dance with Joe Sergej, great choreographer, or Andrew Wingard, who’s now pretty andrews’, pretty big in L.A. He’s doing a lot of a lot of videos. He does things on so you think you can dance and things like that. So yeah. Yeah. My daughter in law Summer at Juilliard and I think there was one of our chaperones, he probably he very well may have and he it’s probably a couple of years, a couple of years older than a great guy.

 

[02:18:15.960]

Really nice guy.

 

[02:18:16.920]

That was a good example. OK, so for replay of the show and all previous to seventy eight of them, by all means please go to the hospital. I did some checking account for Sasselov. Look for it. We also have our podcast is there as well. Next week will be, as I mentioned, Claudia Infante, the VP of Margaretville. She’ll be talking about women in business organization she’s worked with are going to try to get Kat back.

 

[02:18:39.930]

I’m going to try to get Tracy on with us.

 

[02:18:42.300]

All the the women that we’ve had that have had the the same kind of genre of going forward conversation, they’re all working in the same space trying to because one thing that we have to be mindful of, of all those that we lost and hospitality industry recently, from everything that’s going on, the vast majority I remember this was a staggeringly painful one. The loss has been female. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

 

[02:19:04.890]

The ratio, it’s like I don’t know the exact number. It’s been like two thirds or something like that. Yeah.

 

[02:19:09.700]

Very, very large portion of the people that we lost with our industry, our females. And gosh knows that is the last entity of people in our organization that we need because of the most influential, positive progress.

 

[02:19:21.390]

So this whole push towards women in business and cultivating them and being able to give them opportunities and and so forth is, I think, just as valuable for dialogue. So that’s next week with Claudia and Phonte. So it should be a fun conversation. And so please, somebody rally people around it. And from now on, we all promise that everything we try to do moving forward will be a positive influence on vaccination. Sure. Thank you.

 

[02:19:43.440]

That is a very important point to bring forward from this question. Will it be on the show next week to be the counterpoint that everything went to hell when women got back? And I don’t know. Well, we got away with it.

 

[02:19:58.200]

We started about, oh, you know, maybe we can get away with it. Maybe maybe suffrage. I think he’s going to go for the suffrage angle.

 

[02:20:06.870]

I think so. I’m pretty sure that’s been one of his things for years, right?

 

[02:20:13.450]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In fact, when when you stop the steel movement started, it actually previously been and he was thinking that women were stealing jobs from man. He thought.

 

[02:20:24.030]

That’s right. I remember that now come to only twenty twenty. You’re right.

 

[02:20:28.850]

Yeah. You just fucked up. She said New York just shut down in room dining on Monday. Wow, wow wow. That’s going to, that’s a death dagger to a lot of people because I mean a lot of those restaurants are not built for anything.

 

[02:20:40.590]

Delivery is about delivering but not to be able to get into the place that will go goes belly and start ordering food from some other states.

 

[02:20:52.920]

And that, of course, is awesome. You can buy crazy stuff and go belly. Not that I have, mind you at all, because you got the most oil basically balancing my diet.

 

[02:21:05.450]

OK, all right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you again for joining us and everyone next week and some thirty eastern US time frame by.

Founder / CEO of Hospitality Digital Marketing

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