In this year-in-review episode, podcast host Ryan Embree has a meaningful conversation with Travel Media Group President, Dana Singer, to go over some of the most significant innovations and milestones that took place in 2023 for TMG and what exciting developments hoteliers can look forward to from TMG in the new year. 

With hotels and hotel management companies trying to grow their digital marketing efforts and reach more travelers, you will find out how Travel Media Group plans to help them achieve their hotel digital marketing strategy resolutions.

Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, as always, one of my favorite episodes of the year. It’s an annual tradition. Dana Singer, President of Travel Media Group joins me today. Morning, good morning Dana. And, we’re wrapping up another year and I love this episode ’cause it takes the time to reflect on everything that we’ve accomplished as a company, Travel Media Group, but also the industry. You know, as we get into another year, we’ve sat here in years past before and, you know, maybe that that outlook hasn’t been as bright as it looks in 2024. And maybe finding those bright spots have been a little bit harder to do. But before we get into talking about Travel Media Group, which we’re certainly gonna talk a lot about today, this is the year in review episode. I wanna talk a little bit more about the hotel industry as a whole and how it compares to those last couple years that I just talked about.

Dana Singer:
Sure, yeah. You know, the industry continues to demonstrate resilience, travel demand remains strong. however, it’s not without its headwinds and, and challenges. And this year at Travel Media Group, we conducted several industry surveys of our database, over 40,000 hotels. And we found that staffing is still a significant challenge. It’s important to mention that the industry forecasts are positive and it’s exciting to see the number of new entrants into the market, and that really speaks to the evolving needs and expectations of travelers.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, so certainly a brighter outlook than, like I said, maybe years past that we’ve seen. But, you know, some of the challenges that we’ve seen in this industry, we talked about it on this podcast just a few episodes ago with Chip Rogers when he came on, you know, still seeing those challenges when it comes to staffing and for hotel owners and management companies to find that time. But they’re getting it much more effective and efficient at combating these staffing challenges. This hasn’t been something that’s happened in the last six months, is actually something that’s happened over the last couple years. So that’s why actually we’re at Travel Media Group seeing a lot more demand for things like crafting social media for a hotel or management portfolio, responding to reviews, giving back time to their employees, taking task off their plate so that they can be more efficient. So there’s also this kind of evolution and trend towards outsourcing some of that stuff that’s a lot more welcome. So in that same vein, I wanna talk about Travel Media Group and, you know, some of the latest innovations and developments. We’ve had Jason Lee on here, chief Technology Officer. I feel like he’s on here almost every other episode talking about some sort of new development or launch. Let’s talk about some of those developments in 2023 and the impact that it’s had on our hotel partners.

Dana Singer:
Sure. You know, if I look back, I would say, one of our most notable innovations, for TMG this year would be the launch of our enhanced social media solution. Adding Instagram reels and social video content, to our existing offering really presents transformative opportunities for our clients to engage with guests and travelers. And like our other solutions and services, our social media management offers truly differentiated levels of support and content expertise, and that enables consistency and messaging and certainly a significant time savings.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah. So important to be consistent there.

Dana Singer:
Yeah. And then we also launched the inclusion of Medallia as part of our respond and resolve solution. So now we have full capabilities to respond to both public facing and internal reviews, which adds additional efficiencies and time savings for our hotel partners. And it’s something that they’ve asked for. So when we think about our Respond & Resolve™ solution, it continues to be the industry leading solution. It provides high levels of support overall, and the need for a consistent review response strategy has never been more important relative to reputation management and the sincere connection to managing guest feedback.

Ryan Embree:
You made a point in there about our hotel partners asking for this, and I feel like those two things specifically was something that we were hearing from our hotel partners all the time. Like, is Travel Media Group going to be launching social video, or I want to be on Instagram reels, or my hotel wants to actually create a TikTok account. Right? And we were hearing these from our hotel partners and for us to fulfill that need and be actually one of the first to be able to do that and at such a high quality as well, with some of the custom content that you were speaking about and how we can really match the hotel’s voice. Super, super important. And then obviously we know, we’ve talked about it on, on this podcast, how much the emphasize these Medallia, surveys, how much this is a really a great roadmap because it isn’t public facing. It’s actually a one-on-one conversation that you’re having with the guests about how you can improve your hotel and guest experience. So these are absolutely critical in things like, like you said, sincere connection to managing guest feedback. So really, really important launches there. If you haven’t had the chance we have episodes on both of those you can check ’em out on our YouTube page or Spotify, SoundCloud, anywhere you can find those. So I would really encourage you, but I wanna explore this topic of, of social media a little bit further. We’ve talked a lot in some of our series to industry leaders about the evolution of social media and how it’s evolved over the last couple years. How has that translated of how Travel Media Group utilizes its social media platforms right now?

Dana Singer:
Yeah, sure. Great points. I mean, social media clearly plays, a significant role in hospitality overall. You know, guests and travelers who are in the booking journey have high expectations around a connection to the hotel that they’re gonna be staying at. And also they really need a consistent social media presence to engage with, because for the hotel that has a number of far reaching benefits in 2023, TMG launched our official TikTok page. It’s just a natural expansion of our overall social media presence with several videos already published on the page, followers can expect to watch informative, yet entertaining content including clips from virtual events, industry trade shows, interviews with some of the biggest names in hospitality and helpful podcast clips.

Ryan Embree:
One of the things before we get into Travel Media Group social media and a milestone that we hit, but where social media plays a role in the traveler’s journey is, I think one of the habits we picked up during the pandemic as travelers and consumers is we didn’t want any unwanted surprises whenever we were, especially in a time when we were traveling. So one of the things that we used to kind of set expectations or set the table of what we were hopefully going to expect was social media. And I think that has turned into a habit for travelers now. Definitely they want to come into an experience almost knowing the guardrails of what’s going to happen. I think gone are the days of just saying, Hey, I’m just gonna book here and just see what this is all about. So social media, and we’ve heard it from industry leaders on some of the series that we do, are such a great job of setting expectations prior to. And it also keeps them interested vested in your hotel up until the point where they actually step into your lobby. Because at this point right now, there’s still that risk of losing a traveler if something doesn’t match up to an expectation prior to their staying. You know, because you know how much research they’re doing, you know how much information’s out there, you know, there’s probably a plan B or a Plan C. So social media really helps kind of pad that reservation and make sure that you insulate that reservation from any unwanted competition there. Transitioning to Travel Media Group, you know, we hit the incredible milestone in 2023 of 5,000 followers on LinkedIn. And that’s such an incredible tool. I know for our hotel partners we’re posting on there such a powerful B2B platform for groups, you know, weddings and, and all those types of events that that can be found on there. But also just a way to get out news and share news, exciting developments. If you’re a hotel management company, you know, you’re trying to expand your brand. Looking for audiences like that is absolutely key. So we were absolutely thrilled to hit that 5,000 milestone. We’re sharing exciting news in some of our new series that we’ve launched, including the Suite Spot: Spotlight series, which if you are hearing for the first time, we’ve traveled already to New York City, the historic Chatwal, Marriott, Cancun, the World’s first Marriott, all-inclusive resort, which is exciting, and down to South Beach at the SLS where we actually had our first onsite episode. So we are looking for more opportunities to do that and highlight some of our industry’s most unique hotels out there. So really excited about that. You know, I feel like Travel Media Group in 2023 had this underlying theme of collaboration and connection. Can you share some initiatives that happened this past year in our organization that facilitated that connection between our hotel partners and travel media group?

Dana Singer:
Yeah, sure. I mean, as we look back on 2023, we definitely covered a lot of ground relative to the importance of collaboration and strengthening connections with our partners. And while we continue to meet with hotels face-to-face at established industry events, we also expanded this to include participation at several new events such as the inaugural hospitality and independent hotel show in Miami.

Ryan Embree:
We had the pleasure of of attending those shows. You know, hospitality show in Las Vegas was absolutely fantastic. The independent hotel show in Miami, that face-to-face connection is something, you know, we found over the last couple years. It’s hard to replace. You know, but we have found some other outlets where people, again, we’re talking about those habits that we formed where people feel more comfortable maybe doing some interactive collaborative events.

Dana Singer:
Absolutely. And in 2023, we also launched a brand new interactive webinar platform where hotels pop in and out of break rooms, interact with peers, engage with social media and review response experts. And this was all highlighted in our spring digital workshop series where attendees could join live breakout sessions around different hotel digital marketing strategies and really get a ton out of it because there’s so much learning when it’s interactive. But our ongoing commitment to industry thought leadership is definitely reflected in all of our content marketing efforts.

Ryan Embree:
I had the pleasure of hosting some of those digital workshops digital marketing workshops in the spring. And let me tell you, it was one of the most rewarding and really cool things I did all year to see a Hilton property in California talk to, you know, a Marriott property in the Midwest and talk about collaborating on social media ideas, saying, you know, we’ve got this great idea for Instagram, how can we take it a step further? And just sharing those thoughts between, you know, industry professionals. We crave that, you know, as hospitality professionals, we crave that connection. And, and some of those events have just been absolutely fascinating and facilitating some of those conversations that right now maybe have just happened at trade shows and industry events. So being able to put those on for our hotel partners has been a really, really cool thing to see and, and, and witness and be a part of. So let’s talk about 2024. You know, this is also a fun time to kind of look into the future, the crystal ball a little bit. Any insights or preview of exciting TMG developments that our hotel partners can look forward to in 2024?

Dana Singer:
Yeah, sure. I mean, we we’re looking forward to our continued path of innovation that is dedicated to the industry and really the evolving needs of our partners. These plans do include the launch of an exciting new mobile app for our OneView® platform, along with some new reporting releases that provide even more insights into the guest experience.

Ryan Embree:
That sounds amazing. To be able to think that we might be doing a episode here in 2024 talking about the launch of a TMG OneView® mobile app would be just, I think, the perfect evolution of, of where we’re kind of headed right now. And I think another point you made is what we talked about earlier, is just kind hearing the needs of our hotels and also looking at the outside trends of what’s happening out there and, you know, adapting our solutions to fit those needs. So that’s where things like connection and collaboration that we talked about come in so handy. So if you are a hotel partner at Travel Media Group, we’d love to hear from you even some of the challenges that you might be experiencing right now, because that really sets us up for a roadmap to develop, you know, some of these innovative solutions that we’re talking about on this episode. So that’s really cool. As we get to the end here, you know, I always love asking you this question, Dana, you have a really good insight on it. What would be your message to listeners? You know, like I said, it’s been tough for the last couple years, maybe a message of hope and inspiration, but what about next year in 2024?

Dana Singer:
Yeah, well, first of all, on behalf of our entire team at TMG I wanna wish everyone all the best for successful 2024. We’re looking forward to being a part of the success journey for our partners, and we’re always here for them. So, on behalf of our entire team at TMG, I wanna wish everyone all the best for successful 2024. We’re definitely looking forward to being a part of the success journey for our partners and are always here for them. We celebrated a milestone of 40 years in business in 2023, and we’re very grateful for our growing partnerships and appreciate the continued opportunity to make a positive difference. So really looking forward to the new year.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, it’s gonna be absolutely fantastic to be a part of, really exciting time to be in the industry. We talked about this with Chip Rogers on our episode, you know, is a, a shiny outlook. Everything that we’ve seen, 2024 is gonna be a really great year from everything we’re hearing and seeing even from our hotel partners. We’re just so thankful and grateful to be a part of this industry. As Dana shared that sentiment, really looking forward to all of you listening to the podcast and hopefully sharing some news if you’re a hotel listener out there with some new exciting things that you have on, on your horizon too. So thank you all for listening. This was our last episode of 2023, which wraps up just a fantastic year, tons of special guests onsite episodes, which a lot of first for us, again, just incredibly grateful. Grateful and for, for you taking the time. Thankful for you taking the time, Dana, being on the Suite Spot once again. Looking forward to next year and, and having you back on the podcast.

Dana Singer:
Sounds great.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, so thank you so much. Thank you for listening. You can check us out on our YouTube page as well as any streaming platform. Thanks for listening to the Suite Spot. We’ll talk to you next time.To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star ratingon iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.