Return on Concierge and Engaging Guests for Total Revenues | with Alberto Santana
​GAIN Momentum episode #69: Return on Concierge and Engaging Guests for Total Revenues | with Alberto Santana
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the GAIN Momentum podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, technology, travel, and food service. Our co-host today is Brendon Granger, and our special guest today is Alberto Santana. Chief Revenue Officer of Alliance. Alberto, how are you down in Miami?
Alberto Santana: Doing fantastic Adam, and very happy to be here. Very happy to be here with Brendon as well. Brendon, and to everyone. Hello and Ola from Miami, Florida as we say.
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome. So to start off with, give us the elevator pitch for Alliance and where, where it fits in on this grand landscape of hotel tech.
Alberto Santana: Thank you. So Alliance enables, um, incredible experiences. We're a guest engagement platform and we aim to do [00:01:00] a few different things. We wanna remove some of the friction of travel. We wanna help. The staff be able to provide incredible experiences to people, and we wanna help you really understand your customer.
We wanna help you engage with your customer in a new and exciting way. We want you to be able to say, Hey, I know who you are. I know why you're coming to town. How can I help you enjoy my property? Enjoy our city, and keep bringing you back as often. As possible. And at the very least, please, please share this with the people that you know.
If we provide you with an incredible experience, you'll share it with the people that you know, and this should drive additional revenue and revenue opportunities really all over the hotel.
Adam Mogelonsky: So we're getting into the difference between a pure rev par. Strategy and now a t rev par strategy, which is more for full service, truly trying to drive ancillaries. And [00:02:00] we do know that the more a guest uses a property IE, the more they spend, the more satisfied they are, the more they're likely to talk about the property, to come back to stay longer and extend all those beautiful metrics that hotels like to have.
Alberto Santana: Absolutely. And you know what, lemme just throw here something out for you as well. I mean, part of what we're doing is removing friction. So to me that opens up to all aspects of the industry, whether you're select service or not. I mean, we recently had big news about, uh, how we put the. Hotel key in your Apple wallet.
Uh, I think anything that revolves around digital, check-in, getting that key in right into your wallet that you can hopefully just go on your merry way. Uh, bypassing a few aspects as well. That's one key because that's. I don't wanna say that we're trying to be frictionless. I'm gonna rephrase that term and I'm gonna use something that I heard from, uh, one of our friends over at Global, which is, is, [00:03:00] well, we're gonna do friction sunk, right?
Because you're always gonna have a little bit of friction when you're travel, right? But if I can get to my room, uh, and especially if I'm on a select service property, usually what I'm coming in late, I'm leaving early. I'm there for business, I'm there for something, you know, other than really the hotel stay, I just really needed a place to stay.
I kind of want to, if I've been on the road for eight hours driving, uh, if I've got off a plane, I just wanna make it to my room, right? Or I wanna get 'em packed. I wanna move on my merry way. And when you open up that, then once you're full service as well, I think you open up a lot of possibilities for so much more engagement because you're, again, friction sum.
And then you're saying, all right, what else can I do? what else can I do now to really engage with this customer?
Adam Mogelonsky: Right, so we're talking about the. Whole category of a property experience management system, PXMS, which is a term that Alliance is a leader in. By bringing together those, those integrations and, and a [00:04:00] unified, uh, guest. Interaction platform, virtual concierge, unified inbox, whatever terminology you wanna call it.
Can you describe what that looks like from the operator's perspective? Insofar as having that unified inbox, you have people behind the scenes that are monitoring that. It's multi, it's omni-channel. It, uh, it's incorporating, allows 'em to book and record ancillaries to build up that itinerary, and then it has now this mobile wallet.
Can you describe what the technology actually does and how it really helps to drive that experience?
Alberto Santana: Yeah, and I love this opportunity by the way, because. I like to use analogies as I'm speaking to people because I think there's just other problems in the industry that we need to address as well, right? So the average person that works at a hotel is logging into several different systems.
they take a request here and they gotta go somewhere else for it, or they want to talk to you about something, but they still have to check with someone else. And what we're doing, in essence, is tying in through integrations and through our integration partners as well. 'cause let me just tell you right [00:05:00] now, no one has.
The full solution for anything. So what we wanna do is tie in as much as possible directly to remove some of those steps that re that are, are required right now by logging in somewhere else, by taking my my eyes away from you to go somewhere else and to say, Hey, hold on a second. I have this guest and I wanna engage with them.
So let's start with a few things. First of all, I, I'm gonna give you a little bit of background on myself 'cause I think it's important as well, which is I travel all the time. I'm 120, 130 night a year traveler, and it's not just business, it's business and pleasure. Now I'll make a booking, and when I do it for my family, I put two adults, two children.
I'm always forced to put the name, the ages of the children, which I think is pretty funny. And then once I do that, I think nothing happens after that. I mean, nobody seems to really be paying attention to what I put on there. And also everything revolves around me and my name on that booking.
So what we're saying is like, hold on a [00:06:00] second, as once you get this in, especially as you have details of this guest emails, cell phones, what have you, the idea is how do we reach out to this customer where they are? So right now I think a lot of things are happening via email. I don't know about the rest of you.
there's hundreds of emails. I have tons of email boxes. I use some just that I sign up with when I want a discount, like everyone else does. I have some that are, I'm actually reading daily. I have, you know, what have you. Okay. So. I think there's a lot of ways to reach out to customers. I think an omni messaging platform, which is something we provides an an instant opportunity for that.
Because if, if I'm really gonna be there on mobile, if I'm really gonna be there on, on WhatsApp, if I'm really there on WeChat, whatever the case might be, that's where I wanna start connecting. And I think we can do something magical in our, in our industry, which is this question, what's bringing you to town?
Why are you visiting Miami? Right there. That opens up the door for a lot of opportunities. So once you say, well, hey, oh, I'm coming in for a birthday. [00:07:00] Oh great. Hey, I noticed that you have two children and another adult on your reservation. Would you like me to add another name to your reservation?
And right there, we actually start building that other name into a profile as well. And this, I mean, for those of you who have your thinking hats right now, this opened up a plethora of opportunities because when Alberto Santana. Is traveling with his family. It's Mrs. Santana who's making a lot of the financial decisions at what we're doing, but they're lost in the booking process right now.
You're when you come back and you're, and you even do email marketing campaign or we're gonna have you, to me after my stay, you're actually picking the wrong person. You actually should be going to Mrs. Santana on this, uh, on this opportunity. The other thing is if I say, whoa, it's my birthday, it's my daughter's birthday, or this, that, and the other, that opens up that opportunity right there.
How would you like a cake in the room? How would you like us to get you some balloons? Do you have anything planned? And I think all this, depending on the size of your team, depending on where you wanna take it, [00:08:00] really, really open it up the door to start engaging. So I, I hope that's a good example of what I mean to say, and I don't want to take up all the time on the airwaves here, but I think that opens the door to that one opportunity.
If I know what's bringing you to town, then. Whether it's using our AI tools, our large language models, whether it's just using your own know-how to build that information, we're gonna be able to present data and present information out that's gonna help you engage that customer. And as a society, my friends, we are all dying for engagement.
That's why you see so many people on social media. That's why you see so many people counting the likes, counting the re-shares, counting the posts. I mean, what is that, if not an engagement, and what is that? If not the need for somebody to wanna connect with me. And as soon as you open that door for connection, then the world is yours in terms of what you can do and what you can offer that customer.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, I mean, when you're referring to Miami, [00:09:00] the question is not what brings you to town. The question is, why aren't you already here? Why aren't you visiting all the time, such a beautiful city? Well, that's just me. Um.
Alberto Santana: I appreciate as a, as a born and bred Miami, Miami, and which everyone knows that means my parents are Cuban watching Miami I love to hear that. I love to hear that. It, it, it really is a wonderful place and I, and I welcome people to visit as often as possible.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. In, in my mind it's uh, this is my opinion as Aian still suffering in winter and mid-April, but it is the best city in North America in my mind.
Alberto Santana: Thank you. Well, you know, we have something in common. This why I always love speaking to people to Toronto. I mean, This was a fact until not too long ago. I think I, I forgot what segmentation of United Nations reads this, but the most foreign born citizens in the world are always, I think, Toronto's second to Miami and sometimes Toronto I think we're always battling between first and second. I think what's interesting, I would say in [00:10:00] Toronto, it's probably. A much more broad audience of international folks. Uh, whereas Miami, it's really, there's a lot of Caribbean, a lot of Latin America, uh, and we're definitely have our influx of Europeans as well.
So it's interesting. I mean, it's not unusual here to, I mean, you go into a place and you never know, wait, do I need to speak English or Spanish?
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I mean the, the, this is the whole thing with we can ask a, a question like, what brings you to town now? And then we can deploy LLMs. And then behind the scenes, that still means we're dealing with unstructured data that needs to be interpreted at scale by some form of artificial intelligence to then be acted upon.
With some sort of prompt follow up, get the conversation going, passed off to a live agent with SLAs, or uses the basis for an itinerary as well as then structured and imported into the CRM. Talk about that [00:11:00] daisy chain and how Alliance fits into really get the most outta that single, outta that single question to build the satisfaction from the start, as well as revenues.
Alberto Santana: Yeah, so let, let's unpack that and I'll use my favorite example. I'll use that, that birthday one. I've seen people do this manually for so long. I love the fact that we're able to bring it together. obviously there's different types of, there's different types of opportunities and obviously there's different type of customers and they're coming for different reasons and there's different type of properties.
But if we unpack things a bit, I don't think anybody wants to sit there, show their id, show their credit card, show, all that stuff, if I can take care of that before I arrive. Great. I would love to do that. And I would also love for you to remember that, take it, put it in a capsule so the next time I come in, I don't always have to do this.
If I wanna, if you, you can ask that magic question, which you get from some of our favorite providers, right? When you're like, oh, do you wanna use that credit card ending in 1, 1, 2, 3? [00:12:00] Yeah, that's, that's exactly the one I wanna use. Okay, great. If not all, actually I don't, let me give you that other credit card so that friction part of travel, we.
let's just say that we have that, uh, plans for, that we have that taken care of. We've solved for that a bit. When we talk about this unified though message, I'll go back to that birthday example and I'll use the example of my wife. Um, not long ago I went up to, um, Henderson Beach, Florida, and it's beautiful up there.
It's up in the panhandle. I took a 12 hour road trip. That's the only downside of living down in Miami. It takes a long time to see the rest of your state, if, especially if you're traveling, if you're driving, well. On the way to this one property, uh, they asked me, Hey, what was the, I got on the phone for a different reason.
They're like, oh, what's bringing you to town? And I go, well, it's my daughter's birthday. And she happens to know, she happens to like the beach. So they asked me, they asked me the question, do you wanna, how would you like a cake in that room? And I go, sure. I, I would love a cake in that room. I never asked how much it cost.
Right, because I think all of us do the same thing. We make a booking, we, we have a plan to go somewhere. We kind of [00:13:00] shop around, right? Sometimes we shop on rates, sometimes we shop on location. Then we balance the good in the evil between those two things, right? I might have an extra $20 here, $30 there, so maybe I want use that for something else.
Is there a parking fee? Is there not a parking fee? You've got all these different aspects of things that go into a decision. A lot of what's upselling, if what people do nowadays is they're always trying to say. How'd you like a suite? How'd you like this? And it's like, Hey, slow down. I'm three months away from going there and I'm already out $2,000.
Right? Like I'm not, I don't have real money yet. And when we go on vacation, when we're actually there, I think that's when our money kind of turns into Monopoly money. That's when we're like, okay, great. Now let's up it onto floodgates and get experiences. So what this property did was they asked me this question though, what's bringing her down?
I said, yeah, and I'll never forget this. I still have a picture of it. It's on my phone. It's a favorite picture. It said, happy birthday, Mariana. There was the cake. And I got a picture of my daughter slicing
into it. Where that unit, that itinerary. Yeah. This is, that's a monster, right? It's [00:14:00] an incredible experience.
And again, did I pay for it? I did. How much did it cost? Don't even remember. Because I think we all forget, you can say to yourself, oh man, that pace was expensive. Or you say, you know what? It was worth it. Kind of like if you've ever taken a helicopter ride in Hawaii, it's super expensive, but nobody cares about the price because once you do it, you're like, I.
Oh wow. What an amazing experience I just had. Right? And again, it goes part of that vacation, fake money that we all kind of have extra money for. Kind of like we have the extra stomach for dessert as well, right? We always have a little room for dessert. That's a different story. So in that example, the, and if I can use a similar example, anytime I address a question that way, or a customer addresses a question that way, these are data points.
Hey, I caught a birthday here. Now can I keep that data privacy laws or whatever? Hey, put that to the side. Those are other opportunities. Those are things you can work through. But the other thing, especially that unified box, is I think when I'm traveling with my family, sometimes [00:15:00] I'm with them, sometimes I'm not, and I'll explain.
Okay. Uh, believe it or not, my wife and I, for example, don't like the same things and I'm sure most people with their
significant other, yeah, shocker. So I think there's so many opportunities here. So again, in a traditional world, I make a booking, right? Let's say that, uh, Mrs. Santana goes and uses, uh, the spa.
And I don't feel like gonna, the spa, I feel like playing golf, everything revolves around Mr. Santana. Everything. Rev revolves her. Oh, I have a reservation. Oh, is it Alberto Santana? Yeah. Yeah, it's that one. Right. So what we're doing is we're actually building multiple itineraries in our platform.
For that booking so that again, you can start tracking that additional name and anything else that's a like and want on their side. And it unifies when it has to, so that if I text in back to the hotel and I say, Hey, uh, what time was dinner tonight? And which one of your, depending on the property, six restaurants, seven restaurants, it was, they can go ahead and do that now.
Let me go ahead and add something else to [00:16:00] that. As you're making bookings, this is where those integrations come in traditionally. You're working with somebody, you say, Hey, can you make me a reservation at the restaurant they'll say. We're, and we're using integration that goes straight to seven rooms. Now you got that confirmation and that's it. I'm still in front of you. I'm still working with you. I don't have to log in somewhere else. I don't have to come back. Same thing, first spa where those integrations take place. And same thing everywhere else.
Is there a tea time available? Is this available? Is that available? And as I build that credible itinerary, now we have this unified family vacation. You have a great view of this and you can see where we're tying into the kids, where we're not tying it to the kids, if that makes sense.
Adam Mogelonsky: it it makes perfect sense. Uh, you, you got my mind completely just. Just churning here with ideas of how to use the technology. [00:17:00] And I wanna go back to that pre-arrival about this whole psychology is saying, well, I just made a booking for $2,000 and, uh, you're already trying to upsell me. And my first thought is that one question of what brings you to town and then the, the information you get off of that question to then be used against some form of multivariate testing.
Four driving upsells. So if you know that somebody's coming in for corporate, the offers that you present them are gonna be different than if they're coming in for a family vacation. And that's just a basic segmentation of how you can drive revenue off of that. One question that or that one answer to that question.
Alberto Santana: You know, Adam, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add to that because there's something that's been driving me bonkers.
I've been around this industry and I've been, I, I like to say, plus 20 at this point, because once you get to [00:18:00] 20. We're just aging ourselves, right? So I, earlier today I was in a call when I made a Tupac reference and then I realized, oh boy, that was in 1996.
I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to change to Kendrick, but that's neither here nor there. So I think a lot, I think a lot about this when it comes to events. And it's been interesting, I think for a long time, you know, and pre pandemic, even post pandemic, I've been seeing the same thing, which is, oh, I sold an event.
People are gonna come in on the Monday, they're gonna check in on the Thursday. And I've always been like, how come nobody's trying to make you stay longer? How come nobody's trying to reach out to me and say, Hey, man, and think about it if, if the company's already paying your flight. The company doesn't care if you fly out on a Friday or a within reasons of dollars.
Right. And I think when you're hearing leisure, it's because, you know, or whatever we wanna call it, it travel plus whatever, there's so many terms for this, but I think when we hear this, it's, Hey, I wanna take advantage of the fact that I have to be an X [00:19:00] place to do Y things. And we'll start checking things out.
I mean, I'm guilty of this as well. I'll go to Instagram. I start looking at certain people and shout out to some people that are really good at this. They just put good content out there and I'll start thinking, oh, I like to eat there. I like to go do this. I'm fascinated that I. You have this room block, you're getting this data, you should be reaching out to people and saying, Hey, that same rate I gave you, I can extend that three days longer, or I can give it to you three days earlier.
Because what grinds my gears here as well is I. I've been to places where I sit down and, and you know, the nicer hotel, they'll give you like a nice book of the area. This happened to me recently in Mexico, in Mexico City, and I'm going through this book and I'm going, wait a minute, look at all these places that were near here.
I don't have time for them now. I'm in this event, you know, I'm my, my time is taken. But boy, I would've called Mrs. Santana and go, Hey, this thing ends on Thursday. You wanna fly on Thursday and I'll hang out till Monday and maybe we can go do these things. And. I don't know [00:20:00] why we're not doing this. I'm kind of shocked by it.
We're, we're kind of letting people do this on their own. And trust me, I'm one of those people. I've been doing it on my own. But why don't you engage people a little bit more and just give them this new opportunity, something really interesting, really fun, and sell that? Well, you do know why, but hasn't that changed?
Adam Mogelonsky: it has changed if you put in the work. But the reason why it hasn't happened to date with these extensions is because of LOI, lack of integrations couldn't be done at scale, but now it again. So again, continue. Uh, just tell us how that's, how that's happening at scale with the proper integrations of allowing for these, these group masters and the preferred rates to be extended.
Alberto Santana: Yeah, so I think once we're, once we're talking about rate, of course that's a whole conversation that has to happen internally where the magics things happen with revenue departments. I do believe right now, and I think we're seeing in the industry anyway, there's a lot of pressure on room [00:21:00] rates and I.
I, I think that the experience makes a big difference because again, once I tell you it's my birthday, it's my anniversary, it's what have you. That extra 10 $20 that you're trying to get a room night means nothing compared to a bar tab compared to, uh, a, a lunch tab, uh, compared to whatever I would pay to maybe get the room that does have the Peloton right, or whatever the case might be.
So I think it opens up this opportunity to say, all right, hold on a second. I got this person visiting me. I know that you're interested in X and Y, and by the way, with some Google searches, you can go out there and really learn a lot about any customer very easily. I find it. Another thing that I find fascinating is the term guest historian existed for such a long time in our industry, and as we've gotten technology that makes it so easy for you to learn more about people, we're hearing about this less.
And to me that that almost doesn't make any sense. It's almost like this is a great time to have a historian. This is a great time to start building data. So again, I think that [00:22:00] as we, I think that as travelers go out and as people are searching for experiences, because this is at the end of the day. This is where the budget is, right?
People are spending less on a lot of things, but they're spending more than they ever have on experiences. And if I can tie an experience to the opportunity I already have you here. It's kind of like when you go to the supermarket, there's a reason why that gum and that mint is right there, right? it's these impulse items that we can grab.
To me, I think all these things are impulse, height. I think everything that your city has to offer as well. Is an impulse item. And I love, I love when a property takes on that local feel of saying, Hey man, this is my city and I'm gonna teach you some other things about my city. Guess what? I don't have a Cuban sandwich here.
But I can tell you, we can get a really good one. Hey, I don't have, uh, here I got something, a cute little prop for you 'cause we're in Miami and it's Cafecito time. Uh, I don't have a cafecito here, but you don't have a Starbucks. But if you want a Cafecito, you can go over here to sis, which [00:23:00] is, you know, a world class place to have cafecito.
Now, is that generating revenue for the property? When I get Cafecito Versailles, probably not, but. Am I not gonna remember the feeling that I got when you told me to go there? Am I not gonna tell any other people? Hey, you know what? If you visit this hotel and you talk to Adam, and if you talk to Brendon, they're gonna open up the opportunity for you to like really get to know their city.
'cause they're proud of it right now. Why is this important? Because it becomes a personalized conversation, not a transactional one. So if I go back to that booking, uh, example, that major, uh, brain start thinking, and your thought juice is flowing, um, the challenge that I see right now is that I'm gonna raise my hand.
We're being attacked with people giving us transactional data. Attacked. It's an attack. It's anytime. Here's a sponsored this, here's a that, here's a this, here's a that. And it's not personalized. Just 'cause I searched for a hotel in [00:24:00] Toronto yesterday doesn't mean I'm going into Toronto right now and I don't need all these extra things about Toronto.
Right? The hotel has an interesting opportunity because they know your company, right? They know you're here. And once you're here, they know so much more about you. This is time to unpack that transactional feel that people are tired of, and create an emotional connection with people. 'cause emotional connections.
To your point earlier, drive more loyalty and drive more business. To me, engagement equals revenue.
Adam Mogelonsky: I think intrinsically hoteliers know that. They know that being a host, being friendly will in. Dear guests to them so they feel they, they have more trust and wanna spend more. And the phrase I've heard you speak to drive this message home is return on concierge.
Or essentially a concierge is, is a host.
Uh, you're friendly, you're there to help out, you're [00:25:00] there to make sure they have the right recommendation. No, no, no, no. You want the cafecito. Don't go there. Go to this place. It's way better. You know, this place here, here has better, has better cigars than that place over there, right? But therein, we're trying to then get metrics off of emotional qualities.
So how can we draw the line between what a concierge does in being true service people, true hosts. Through to an actual ROC return on concierge, a return on that investment of investing into in your concierge team and the technology that now supports them.
Alberto Santana: Yeah. Thank you for, that question and, and it's very timely. So just last week I had the pleasure of joining the, uh, several colleagues, uh, at Alliance. We are a proud sponsors of the Educational Day for the Clay Door Conference. The Clay Door just had their, their annual conference in [00:26:00] Madrid last week.
What a pleasure to be in Madrid. For me, it's my origins, my grandmother's from cia. I got to go to Andal, Lucia. I went back to Madrid where having tapas and beers is just,
Adam Mogelonsky: Life's tough.
Alberto Santana: life. Well, yeah. I twist my arm if you want me to go back there, because I will certainly do it. Um, it's interesting that we're having this conversation, not just on the heels of that, but just in the way that we're seeing the evolution of the industry and what you touched on.
The ho. I think hotel companies do know this, and I think for the most part, hotel executives do know this, but there's hospitality and there's KPIs out there, and I really believe that we're in a Moneyball moment in our industry. So I love that you asked that question because what do I mean by money bought?
For those people that are unfamiliar with it, they're like, oh, that's the Brad Pimp movie that has to do with baseball, et cetera. And I go, well, it's deeper than that. What that movie and what that represented in, in the work of, I might get this wrong, but Bill James, who wrote the book on, on the [00:27:00] metrics on it, is that for years they were looking at baseball, the sport of baseball on certain numbers.
Average runners batted in, home runs, stolen bases, et cetera. And what they started saying was like, you know, this doesn't make a difference. What makes a difference is getting on base. And there's this huge scene that I love where, you know, he's just pointing at Jonah Hill, why do we want this guy? Why do we want that person?
'cause he gets on base. Why? Because he gets on base. And I love that. I love that scene because it's a mind shift change. So the Oakland A did this as an organization and they were able to compete with the Yankees of the world with a budget that's down here because they were looking at the industry and their profession and what they were doing in a completely new and different light.
So when I think of return on concierge, I think I think of the same thing. But let's take a little step back as well. I talked about being friction some, I talked about removing some friction, right? So as I'm doing a digital [00:28:00] check-in, if I am getting a digital wallet. That takes away that transactional conversation that's happening at a front desk, which I always find it fascinating.
That's the word reception. It's not always the most receptive place. Right. But that's neither here nor there. The, what I'm trying to say here is I think the receptionist themselves, the people at the front desk, and I think the concierge team who's been. I mean educated who goes through all sorts of training to earn those gold keys as they do, and they earn it well at the clay door.
I think these people are actually gonna start becoming more and more folks that are more concentrated on the hospitality of you, because we've removed some of this transactional stuff that you're doing today. Now what also happening in the industry is that, yeah, people have said, oh, I need a messaging platform.
I have one. I message with customers all the time. I make a joke about this and all, and I won't call any brands out by name or any properties out by name, but I can't tell you the number of times that I've responded to a text and got a [00:29:00] no response, zero response, or I've responded. And then when I have to go to the front desk because nobody's helped me, they don't even have that conversation history.
So there's, it's kind of lost out there. Now, getting back to this return on concierge. Topic, if you would. The concierge is at, at the concierge or the people who act as concierge at a property. Those people who are having these conversations as they're coming in, whether it's in front of you, in person, whether again on an omni message platform.
Once you unify this and I start tracking the requests and what we did, the request and what we did, the requests and what we did, then we start building our data. So again, to the point of did I see the f and b revenue here when I sent you to the bar over there? No, I'm gonna miss out on that. But I know you came in, I know you came in to see a bar or maybe you said, Hey, where are there good tacos around here?
Well, to me, that starts informing the hotel itself as well to say maybe we need to add tacos to the menu. And Adam, I'll think I'm gonna go to something that I heard from you one time because I, I [00:30:00] heard you speaking, I forgot what, uh, what interview you were with. I think it was Bart.
And, uh, you were having a conversation about breakfast and the whole concept of free breakfast, and I'll raise my hand as well. I don't eat breakfast. I'm a black coffee all morning guy and I have lunch. That message is lost on me. So this is what I'm trying to say. Those generic messages are gone and once I respond, oh it's okay.
Or once I say something, that conversational history needs to live somewhere where we can go to it and it can't be those old school F 10 notes. In my PMS or whatever it was that I'm gonna go down and find this, this, no. That's where the models are starting to get trained. That's where the models are learning, and that's where we know that we can present it to, again, empower the staff to be more in touch with you, more connected with you, because again, that'll drive revenue regardless.
So I will have a revenue number anyways. And by the way, as you come back. As you keep coming back, like to me, [00:31:00] that's NPS 1 0 1, right? I'll recommend you, clearly I'm recommend you 'cause I keep coming back and I keep coming back for more. So I think there's a lot of ways we can measure this.
Um, you know, we've been sitting here for a long time, to your point, here's where RevPAR, here's our A DR, here's this and that. And what I'm saying is that this is a Moneyball moment to say, hold on a second. what was that trip? Or what was that total revenue? And what was the total engagement?
Because again, the more what we've seen in our numbers is that the people who engage with our customers right now spend 65% more than everyone else, which is a massive number. A massive number. And by the way, I had to double check this all the time. 'cause every time one of our data scientists showed this to me, I'm, I'm blown away.
Like, I figured the number would be higher. I didn't know it'd be that high. But I think, I mean, could there be other nuances to this? Of course, I mean, there's no argument that as you continue, as you listen to the voice of the customer. As you engage with a customer, as you're getting talking to them, and it's a [00:32:00] unified conversation.
I'll say that one more time. We'll underline it. A unified conversation that doesn't get lost because nobody, I don't wanna sit here on the phone and say, Hey Brendon, here's a challenge that I have. And he goes, oh, hold on. I gotta transfer you to Adam. Hey, oh, how can I help you? Oh, great. I gotta repeat the same thing again.
So, so we, nobody wants to go through that telephone war. So the more we have that there unified, the more the opportunity is bound for us.
Brendon Granger: That's a, a great point. You, we've obviously talked about concierge, we've talked about technology. How do you see that balance, you know, there, there's always the point. Or point of concern that, you know, are we taking the human aspect out of the industry by using too much technology? Where do you see that balance fitting in?
Alberto Santana: Yeah, the interesting thing about your questing there is that I think that you still have a human aspect even when it's a text. I'll argue that point, because the reason I'll argue that point is because anyone I know under 30, if I call them, I. If I [00:33:00] call my niece, she's not gonna answer the phone. If I text her, she gets back to me right away.
And you know what she says? She says, love you uncle. And I say, I love you too. And we send little emojis to each other, right? No, but this happens over, this happens over and over. This happens to all my nieces, all my nephews, everything else. We gotta go find the customer where they are. If I am. And to me, you can be personal no matter what.
Now we. Easy things that are robotic that nobody's gonna tell the difference. At what time does the pool open? 10:00 AM you know, it is what it is. But I think that what you're gonna find is, and, and again, I'm gonna use one of Adam's words 'cause I love when he said it. There's a constellation of profiles.
There's a constellation. I mean, we're trying to do all these one size fits all aspects of things. And it's just it's not real. It's not real. The other interesting thing about that human touchpoint is that no one gets happier, and this happened to me recently than when you finally meet somebody [00:34:00] in person.
I. Think about it. Like right now we're meeting, I mean this is digital. We're, we're two dimensional right now. But the second I sit down and I see you in the same thing happen. Look, I saw Adam in Miami not too long ago. When I get to see you in person and now, now we're gonna get even more personal.
We're gonna get even deeper, you know what have you. But I think you've gotta go find the customer where they are. And again, I think the concierges, they know this. I mean, they have people, they have people that reach out to them even when they're in another hotel. Right. Hey, I tried to book with you, but you didn't have any rooms available, but can you help me?
Because they, they're very good at, at bridging that. But they do have a lot of customers as well that are like, Hey, I need this really quick. Oh yeah, I need that really quick. I need this. You know, what have you. So I think if you're not, if you're not prepared to meet your customer where they are, well then you're not meeting your customer.
And then it doesn't matter how nice I am to you in person, it's lost if you would. Right. I think. I look at that and I see it actually an opportunity [00:35:00] because if I can get rid of the transactional stuff, then I'm opening up the door to have a personal conversation and, and listen once, I mean, think about it, we've been doing it.
A lot of people out there with chatbots are doing that today. Uh, I think famously you had Cosmo that had the rose one for a while. And then people started getting in trouble 'cause they were getting texted by Rose and they had to explain it to their significant other. But that's neither here nor there.
So, but I think it's interesting. Why are you putting a name on a chat bot? You're trying to personalize it. Well, don't tell me that a person responding on a chatbot or not isn't gonna be able to provide the same true personal. And at some point it's, here he is, it's brand, and it's Alberta. We're meeting in person, we're shaking hands.
I'm from Miami, so you're gonna get a hug. But that's a different story altogether. And I think that these two worlds are colliding, and I think we need to prepare not just for the traveler and the thought of today. But to go back to that Moneyball example is where is it going and what do we really need to start measuring?
Adam Mogelonsky: So let's stick with the Moneyball, [00:36:00] um, analogy here. And, uh, you know, you mentioned RevPAR, A-D-R-N-O-I net Operating Income, which is the big one for owners. And then related to RevPAR is gonna be to RevPAR that I've mentioned before. Those are sort of the macro, macro summation of everything that's going on.
But what you're essentially saying is that those are the home runs, grand Slams and strikeouts of. The hotel industry and we should be measuring the more minute stuff, like the time on base. And by capturing all the data related to your interactions and increasing level of interactions, you thereby have more data to form these correlations that are then gonna be added up.
And cumulatively be represented by Greater RevPAR, a DR occupancy and, and flow through to NOI.
Alberto Santana: undoubtedly, [00:37:00] Adam. I mean, don't, I mean how many businesses today are talking about NPS? All of them, right? Basically all of them. But aren't we talking about the same thing? So if I can count the number of engagements I had with you, right? And I can put a number to that, whichever one of these numbers that exist today that I wanna add to it, I can start creating.
Some sort of score around the engagement and what the revenue result was. And again, I don't have the answer on this, so I think the return on concierge was an interesting one. The concierge is, and shout out to like Jeannie Mills over at mgm, 'cause she talks about this a lot. I mean, the reason they're, they're going down this road is to say, Hey, hold on a second.
I'm generating a ton of revenue for you. I, I know that I'm booking this over here and it's a show, but let me show you. What we've been doing and why are people coming to us? And then you're gonna see that that person keeps returning, which is another thing we're missing. The other one that is very interesting to me is that for years we've been using surveys. I'm not a fan of the survey. [00:38:00] I'm just gonna say it out loud. I think I. I'm gonna give you an easy example. Every time I take an Uber or a Lyft ride, I give it five stars. The reason I don't give it four unless something goes, or three or two, unless something goes drastically wrong, is because it keeps forcing me to answer questions that they're pre picking.
For me to tell me why it's not five stars. It's like, Hey man, I'm sorry. It's just not five stars. The car smelled, and if it's not on here, I can't put it on there. And maybe the car smelled, it's not the poor driver's fault, it's whoever was in there last time. But it's gotten to the point that as a consumer, I'm just putting five and then the comment section, you're expecting me to put more.
And now we wanna use all sorts of data models to pull that out. And to me, okay, what is your, how many people are answering surveys anyways? I think the industry average, and I would love somebody to pull this out again, the last time I looked at it, I think it was 17%. So we're making business decisions based on 17% of our customers.
That seems insane to me. You know? So that means that of [00:39:00] every a hundred customers, I don't care what 83 of them said or what went through 83 of them. So again, I think all these data points start really d driving something that does turn into an MPS type score that does turn into an engagement score that does turn into something that we can say, Hey, we know that based on these touch points, this has happened.
Now you are gonna have a ton of customers that don't wanna be talked to. I mean, those exist. And by the way, let me flip the persona on you. Alberto Santana, the traveler that, uh, just flew Miami, London. That gets in early. The only thing I care about is that for the love of God, have some decency and let me have my early check-in.
Just give it to me like you have a room for me. I don't even want your nicest room. It could be the one next to the elevator. I just want a room because. Nine hours on a plane is brutal. And not all of us are flying, you know, Virgin Premier First class or whatever the case might be. Some of us are all in Coach City and Coach City's [00:40:00] not comfortable.
So the faster that I can get around my merry business and my merry way, it's, it's wonderful. And by the way, I appreciate it. I even appreciate it. If you don't charge me for it, if you wanna charge me for it, fine. Sometimes it's worth it for me. Charge me for it. I get it. Right. But again, I think as consumer behaviors, what we're talking about here is a change in consumer behaviors and how we measure those consumer behaviors.
And it can't just be one thing or another. I think people are too dynamic. I think people have a lot of different interests. Uh, they have a lot of different things that are important to them. They have different personas even within themselves. We need to start being very mindful of, and we just need to collect the data, put these numbers and say, what does engagement mean?
Is it gonna be a hard sell to my owners? A hundred percent. Right? By the same token, I mean we're all high fiving each other when I get a $10 a night more than my comp set. Like if you got 10 rooms right for $10, how much money do you have? [00:41:00]
Adam Mogelonsky: Uh, the occupancy times 365.
Alberto Santana: Yeah, but I mean, well for that point, but, I mean, but if you ask me if it was my birthday again and I went and I go, it is, whoa, hey, let me invite you to the spa for this.
Lemme do this and that. Don't tell me that's not gonna be more revenue. I just don't buy it. And not just from my own behavior, it's all those people around me that suddenly have monopoly money once we go on a trip. Instantly, everybody, everybody becomes the baller at the club or whatever once they're on vacation, because what else do we have?
If not the memories of wonderful experiences,
Adam Mogelonsky: I think that's a beautiful way to end off here, but I want to ask you one more question.
Midway through, you said that you were thinking about the examples of why people should extend and they're following people on Instagram famous chefs to see what restaurants they want to go to, and I believe that if anyone were coming to [00:42:00] Miami, the influencer they should follow is named Alberto Santana to give the best recommendations to Miami.
So Alberto, what would you recommend Living like a local for people to see the real city if they're coming down.
Alberto Santana: Well, if you're here during stone crab season, and I know it sounds cliche, but you have to go to Joe's Stone Crab. Joe's Stone Crab is an institution. And even when you were a young man or a young lady and you were looking at cartoons and it said, eat at Joe's boy, that Joe's is in Miami, Florida, and that place they is just.
Beautiful and wonderful. And the fact that it's so iconic in a constantly changing place, like South Beach tells a story that needs to be told over and over. Uh, I'll also say, if you wanna grab a little Cuban coffee, go to the window at Versailles that I mentioned earlier. Versailles. Versailles is, is the way it is.
That place is a political epicenter. I mean, this is where people, if you're running for office. That's where you go. You grab a [00:43:00] coffee and everyone's there to watch you have that coffee. I believe that I'm a big fan of La Rosa, uh, which is a Cuban, uh, restaurant, very near Miami International Airport. Uh, they've been around since I think 1972, and I think I've been going there since 1978.
Somehow their waiters don age, they've had the same waiters forever. They have elevated their game in recent years, but they still have good old traditional dishes, like a little Maita de puco that is unbelievable. Uh, Peruvian here with places like Ceviche 1 0 5 are just outstanding and a Peru, uh, and I'll say something else.
You gotta have a cigar. You gotta go to the beach. You gotta get around more. And I'll mention something else. There's two Wildlifes to Miami. Yes, there's a whole 11 nightclub type feel, but if you go west 30, 40 minutes tops, you're gonna be in the Everglades. The Everglades is amazing. Airboat rides.
Gators, turtles, cranes, [00:44:00] herons, you name it. And maybe you see a python though. Hopefully you don't. 'cause this is a problem that luckily we've been dealing with. Uh, I think those are all wonderful places for for you to take off. Now you can call me because I'll tell you the one biggest difference, One thing that I find about a lot of influencers, they tend to be under 30. No offense to my people under 30. I got an extra 25 years of a happy belly on you. So I'm, my palate is a little more, uh, specialized. We'll say, no one ever tells you when they had a bad time at these places, which I think is weird as well.
but. I will say this, trust your concierge. They're gonna tell you if it's worth it to wait that line. And the ones in Miami. Shout out to, uh, Claudia Abma, who's over at the Fountain Blue Miami Beach. She's, uh, she's always out there. Super good. And if, and by the way, hotel-wise, Ana, which is a product out of Argentina here, I mean.
Just an outstanding place and if you can watch anything anyone perform there Watson perform, it's just [00:45:00] wonderful. And then one more shout out that I'll give out just 'cause I love it as well, I'll give a shout out to the guys that's a Swire group. The East Miami Hotel is just wonderful. That Balinese rooftop, it feels like you are.
Yeah, it feels like you're in Thailand and you're sitting at the top of a downtown city center. So there's a lot of reasons. A lot of reasons to come visit. And if I may, the new Bright Line Service that connects you to Fort Lauderdale, connects you to the Palm Beaches. If you wanna visit the Breakers or what have you, go up to Orlando within three hours with amazing wifi.
Uh, great. I'm, I'm finally getting that little European vibe or northeast of the states train vibe here. And I think, you know, we're growing and we're going places.
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome.
Yeah, those are fantastic recommendations. Alberto, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Alberto Santana: It's my pleasure Adam, and thank you. Thank you, Brendon. I appreciate it. And again, uh, anyone who wants to have a chat, please, please find us. We're more than happy to have a discussion, uh, in [00:46:00] this wonderful industry of ours, which is constantly evolving.
