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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, as always, Ryan Embree. Thank you for joining us, wherever you are listening or watching us on our YouTube channel from. I’ve got a great guest with me today that I’m gonna introduce in just a second, but this is a part of our Hospitality Trailblazers series. If this is your first one, or your fifth one or your 12th one. This series is all about highlighting and showcasing some of the individuals or companies that are pushing our industry forward into the future. So without further ado, it’s my pleasure to bring in Sarah Moss, Chief of Staff at the Hunter Hotel Advisors. Sarah, thank you so much for being with me today.

Sarah Moss:
Thank you so much, Ryan, for having us. We’re so excited to chat about the conference today.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes being a Hospitality Trailblazer means that you’re actually putting a lot of the people in the same room together to help move our industry forward and Hunter Hotel Conference does such a fabulous job of doing that. But before we jump into all the exciting things about the conference, since this is your first time on the Suite Spot, it is always a little ritual to ask, you know, kind of about your background in the hospitality journey that led you to Hunter Hotel Advisors.

Sarah Moss:
Sure. So my journey in hospitality started when I was really young. My first job was in a restaurant in my hometown. Then going into college, I worked at a hotel property, really fell in love with hotels and the operations of them and was so fortunate that Georgia State is a partner of Hunter Hotel Advisors in the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference or our co-founder of the conference. And we place an intern every year with the company to give the students a really immersive experience to teach them what goes on through a conference and here at the advisory firm as well. And I was lucky enough to be one of the students that they placed here at Hunter. And so that’s really how I got my journey here to Hunter today. But it’s really unique and I love it. But I’ve been here for almost five years now and did my internship for two years before that, so seven total.

Ryan Embree:
That’s such a cool story to hear that background that you were just an intern starting at the Hunter Hotel Conference and now you’re already Chief of Staff here just several years later. It’s super exciting and you know, your start is very much like a lot of these Hospitality Trailblazers that I interview, you know, started somewhere line level with myself. I started as a bellman at a hotel. But I think that’s one of the unique things about our industry is that we just, we start in these places, all of us are travelers at heart, right? I haven’t run into one person in hospitality that doesn’t like to travel. So we’re travelers at heart. But when we start our journey in hospitality, typically it starts, you know, just serving people and you know, you get to see that evolution, which is so cool. So speaking of the evolution of things, this is the 35th anniversary of the Hunter Hotel Conference. It’s grown to be one of the biggest and most anticipated events of the year. I know you’ve said you’ve only been with this conference for about five years, but can you talk about kind of the evolution of, of this event and maybe where it started to where it is today?

Sarah Moss:
Absolutely. So like you mentioned, we’re celebrating our 35th year, which is super exciting for the conference and just for the company in general. Our first conference was in 1989 with 92 attendees. So we have grown quite, quite a few between now and then. But our, I think our, you know, biggest milestones for the conference was when we moved into the Marriott Marquee downtown, one of our amazing partners that we have to help us produce the event. It’s a lot of space, it’s a lot of exciting things that we get to activate and to, you know, provide to attendees. And it also, you know, has a connection to the downtown Hilton and the downtown Hyatt. And so it provides every brand and opportunity to be able to utilize this space in their own capacity and their own functionality as well. In 2015 we had a thousand attendees and then today we think we’re gonna be over 2000 again this year we’re shooting for 2300 coming up in March.

Ryan Embree:
What an incredible feat. And yeah, Atlanta, you know, certainly a hub for hospitality to be able to host at the venue like the Marriott Marquee. I’m sure certainly helps accommodate, you know, over 2000 now attendees, which is fantastic to hear. So let’s fast forward to March, 2024. Right. What are some of the things you’re most excited about this year’s event?

Sarah Moss:
We have a lot of really cool things planned this year. I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this upcoming year, our advisory board and the committee for our award winner chose Bob Hunter, our founder of the conference, to win the award this upcoming year, which is super exciting just to be able to see him honored on stage. He’s played such a pivotal role, a lot of people’s lives and their stories in the hospitality space. And so I’m personally just really excited to see him honored for that this upcoming year. Additional to that, we have a really cool keynote speaker for lunch on Wednesday this year. Os Perlman, he’s like a world renowned mentalist. So often when you’re at these conferences, you are in meetings or you’re, you know, constantly networking. So to be able to take what we’re calling a mental break for an hour or so to come watch him and see him perform, we’re really excited about this year.

Ryan Embree:
That’s great. And to speak to Bob Hunter, I mean, certainly fitting on the 35th anniversary to be recognizing him, and I am sure he’s seen it from that, you know, less than 100 attendee conference grow to what a milestone and feat that is, to be potentially over 2300 this year is fantastic. And yeah, that is exciting. It’s really unique to have a mentalist at a conference like that. Super, super fun. And I’m excited to see that as well. Now one of the topics that we’ve explored in this hospitality Trailblazer series, Sarah is talking about the impact that the last couple years that the pandemic has had on our industry and maybe some of the lessons learned. I think you bring a really unique perspective being that you are obviously in hospitality, but also in the event industry planning this annual event. Can you talk to us about maybe lessons learned during that difficult time and how you guys got back to almost potentially breaking records in attendance this year?

Sarah Moss:
Absolutely. Covid was a tough time for us here at Hunter. Our conference is annually in March every year. And so, as many of you may remember, March was really the time that the news broke here in the US and all of thd shutdowns happened and it happened to us the week before the conference was supposed to happen. So really tough timing for us, but I will have to give credit to our team here. They rallied and we, you know, came up with creative solutions to what we are gonna be offering. One of the things I think was the most unique that came out of COVID for us here at the conference in the brokerage firm was our TikTok series. We had this amazing conference planned and we had all these speakers lined up to speak and didn’t happen. And so we were like, Hey, all these people are ready to go, have their stories lined up, have, you know, whatever’s going on in their world, so we wanna hear about it, let’s go ahead and record some sessions with them. And so that ended up turning into this amazing series that we’re still producing today. I think it was just a interesting time during COVID people just wanted to know what was going on. You wanted the information at the moment, but also you wanted to know from a hotelier’s perspective, like you’re not alone and whatever you’re going through, the person on the other side or across the country is going through the same thing. And so for us, the TikTok series was pivotal for us to be able to stay in front of people and to, you know, be that thought leadership, but to also, you know, carry us through until the next conference. We were the first conference to come back in the hospitality space after Covid in May of 2021. And we were so proud of it. And here we are having another one here in 2023 and we also had one in 2022. So just continuing and just building resiliency off of what happens, making lemons outta lemonade or whatever the phrase is.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah. You know, I love those, those stories of kind of innovation and adaptation during that time. Because it’s, it’s something that, you know, I don’t think you fully appreciate in the moment, right? It was probably just what you would call is, you know, business survival instinct to say, how can we just bring value and, and make the best out of the, maybe this, this really bad situation right now, but now reflecting on it and retrospectively looking back, you know, you see these things and you’re like, man, that was really, really cool what we did there. And it is something that we’ve seen so many, whether it’s new initiatives, whether it’s new technological advances in our industry, how they’ve evolved into a time where it’s like, I don’t remember when we didn’t do this. And, but you know, on the other hand of that, Sarah, I will say, and I’ve been to, you know, several hospitality events since that time and for some reason, I don’t know if it’s like, we always talk about revenge travel on the guest side, but I don’t know if it’s that revenge travel feeling of coming to these conferences, especially with hospitality people. Because it was felt so hard in our industry because we are truly a people serving people industry. So taking that away from us, that’s a foundation of who we are as industry associates, right? And, and serving people. So I don’t know what it was, but coming back to these types of events, there’s just this energy and this vibe that people have at these events now. And I’m sure it has been felt since you returned back with Hunter Hotel Conference and sure it will be felt this year, but it’s one of those things that we heard during the pandemic of, you know, I don’t know if these conferences are gonna come back. Not only are they coming back, they’re coming back in full force and producing some of the best agendas and conference material that, that we’ve seen before. So super, super exciting now. But let’s talk a little bit more about your role, Sarah, because I don’t think for our audience we typically talk about the operation side, some social and media and reputation stuff. We’re gonna talk about that a little bit later. But I don’t think people fully understand and grasp the, the monumental effort that it is to put on an event for 2000, potentially 2300 attendees. Right? You know, you’ve gotta get speakers, you’ve gotta put an agenda together. You know, give us just a little bit of an insight and a look at what it takes to prepare that, the type of preparation that you need to do in order to make this the event that it is.

Sarah Moss:
Absolutely. Man, I don’t even know where to start because there’s a lot of details that go into these events, but I think from my point of view and in my role there are so many stakeholders for the event. There’s our personal team here. We have three dedicated staff for the conference year round that plan year round. And then we also have additional help here in the office that kind of sit between the brokerage firm and the conference. So there our internal team is a stakeholder. We have the hunter family who’s a stakeholder within the conference. We have our attendees, we have our sponsors, we have our speakers, like you mentioned, there are so many different groups of people and they all come to the conference for different reasons. And so being able to produce an event that caters to everyone and everything that they’re trying to accomplish and get outta the conference, it’s, it’s a challenge at the end of the day. And I think our team does a really great job at it. I’ll be honest, I’m a little, I’m a little biased obviously, but it takes a lot of intentionality and our team is so thoughtful about thinking through all the details ahead of time, making sure our sponsors getting the return on investment that they’re looking for, making sure they’re getting deals done. Because that’s really what they’re there to do. Making sure our speakers on stage that we’re prepping them appropriately ahead of schedule so the attendees get what they need out of it. But also from a speaker standpoint is being able to advocate for yourself on stage and being that presence and brand for yourself. There are just so many things that go into the conference. I could probably sit here and talk to you about it for another 30 minutes, but I just had to give kudos to our team because I think they do a really great job at it.

Ryan Embree:
The logistics, again, I can’t even begin to imagine all of that, but it’s what you said. I mean, and sometimes with so many stakeholders and everyone moving, you know, that’s why it’s so key and critical and I think Hunter Hotel Conference does a great job of this, is having that goal in mind or that end in mind of what everyone wants to get out of this conference. And you know, so when you have a lot of moving parts, you know, the one thing is that North Star or that compass to say, at the end of the day, this is what we wanna accomplish and this is what we see as a successful conference for the year. So I teased it before, but you know, this is a digital marketing podcast. We talk about things like social media, reputation. Listen, it’s hard to, it’s hard to believe if you haven’t heard of Hunter Hotel Conference because it literally shuts down LinkedIn for an entire week. Like my entire feed is just people recording and pictures at everything from the conference. So can you talk about the importance of this from an event perspective or even if, you know, I think it’s good insight for hotels that are on this listening that have conferences at their own hotel and the type of social media campaigns or strategies that you can do to make the event as big as possible. And then also a reputation. You know, reputation doesn’t just mean TripAdvisor and Google, you know, you’ve got a reputation for what that conference logo means or what that slogan means, which we’re gonna talk about. So can you talk a little bit about utilizing social media and leveraging that as well as as reputation online to build the conference?

Sarah Moss:
Yeah, as I just mentioned in the previous answer, it was as stakeholders are so important to us and we, we lean into that and we utilize them to be our biggest advocates and influencers on social media. For example, our advisory board, an amazing group of 42 individuals that we have, we send them out a graphic and ask them, Hey, do you mind posting this on your social media saying, I’m attending Hunter. We wanna build anticipation for the event. You wanna make sure the right people are there. And so that’s really important to us. So we also do it with our speakers. So making sure that they all have a graphic saying I’m speaking or I’m a panelist there. We also do it for students, we do it for our sponsors. Just making sure that we’re building, like you mentioned, that cohesion before the event so people know and, you know, build a little fomo. They don’t wanna miss out on the event when they see all these people going. And so it helps our registration. You definitely see an uptick in our registration stats as we start posting more and more online every year, especially on our social media.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, I love that, the FOMO aspect of it. And that’s great. Again, it’s great advice for hotels that run conferences, how could you be supportive to make that conference, you know, bigger than it’s ever been? Because you know, I’m sure as Sarah will tell you, if you’re doing a great job running a conference and the conference continues to grow, that partnership and bond that you have between venue and event is gonna grow stronger and stronger. So think about creative ways that you can put that event out there. Even talk to some big advocates and influencers maybe with followings on places like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, wherever your target audience may be. Obviously for Hunter Hotel Conference, that’s gonna be LinkedIn. And I’m sure that’s a really, really important piece of your social media strategy over there.

Sarah Moss:
I think, like it’s also important to like review your analytics and I tell people I’m like, hey, or even internally I’m like, hey, this blast that we sent out or this push that we sent out, like it didn’t, it didn’t hit right. People aren’t clicking, people aren’t looking at stuff. I’m like, let’s pivot, let’s try something different. I think it’s so important to watch your analytics, whether they’re coming from social media or they’re coming from your media partners as well. It’s vitally important because you wanna make sure you’re spending your time wisely. There’s so many things that go into the event that if you’re not appropriately allocating time and the right resources to your marketing ahead of schedule and even post-conference as well, we haven’t touched that, it definitely plays an impact on how the event goes.

Ryan Embree:
Trial and error is a big part of it. But if you’re not kind of seeing the results from that, you don’t really know what’s working. And in my, you know, years of doing this podcast and being in the digital marketing realm, you’re gonna find a couple surprises here and there that you just think are really just maybe here’s a good graphic. I think this is gonna perform okay. And all of a sudden it just goes off and it really performs. And if you can’t sit back and say, why do I think that that performed? And this, this is for our listeners and audience, this is could be as granular as a social media post promotion that you put out there for a stay for a hotel. If you see how that forms and if even if it doesn’t perform, you know, what can you make little tweaks to make it perform even better? So always looking for those. I think that’s great advice Sarah, to try to say when all of this is done, when that project is complete, a big project like this, you know, what did we do right and how can we improve? And, and I’m sure there’s been some lessons learned over the years from where you’re at.

Sarah Moss:
Absolutely. And I think one, the one last thing I’ll say on this is we’re an annual conference. We happen once a year and so for like you said for that week or those three days, we shut down social media and it’s awesome and we have a lot of people pouring into our media channels as well. But what happens the other 51 weeks out of the year for us? And so we have to be really thoughtful with what we’re putting out in content that we’re pushing and to make sure we’re staying in front of people, not, you know, beating them over the head by any means. Because you don’t wanna be an annoyance, but you wanna make sure you’re staying relevant. And so like our TikTok series is one of that. We launched testimonials series this year just to be able to produce content before the conference and even post-conference that we can stay relevant and stay out there in front of people as well.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely. That trial and error is so important aspect to it. But also, you know, what you just spoke to Sarah, we talk about that with slow season for hotels, right? Is they’ll say, well during the the busy season, I don’t need occupancy. I’m not gonna post on my social media channels or even during my slower season, I don’t see much so I’m not gonna post. No. The consistency and buildup always help keep growing that audience, keep growing that following. So great advice there. Let’s talk about it, because I think when we first chatted, you hadn’t announced the winner of the Hunter Conference Award for Excellence and Inspiration. Since then you’ve revealed that, which is super exciting. Tell us a little bit more about the background of this award and what it means to be a recipient.

Sarah Moss:
Yeah, so I think here at Hunter, we fall into the trap far too often if we don’t celebrate our successes and we don’t celebrate the people here in the industry enough. And I think that’s really what the award was founded off of. It was the Hunter Conference is known for their investors and hotel owners that are in the room every year. We have a very high population of those attendees. And so we wanted to celebrate those individuals, that really make an impact on the industry and on people’s lives because it’s so important. We’ve talked about it here, but it’s, it’s a people serving people industry. At the end of the day, it’s not about how many hotels you own or how many, you know, dollars you can spend in a renovation or whatever it may be. It’s really about the people. And so that was really the foundation for the award. And like you mentioned, we’re so excited and thrilled this year to be honoring Bob, our founder of the conference and founder of the Hunter Hotel Advisors firm. So we, we could not be more grateful for the award committee that they have stewarded over the past 10 years. Really more than that now. It’s the 13th year. So, we’re just, we’re very grateful.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, again, we’re, we’re fortunate to work in an industry where we have some really cool stories to share and it, it’s more than just four walls and a bed. It’s, you know, it’s providing service, do a lot of good in our communities or a lot of hotel management companies, owners, hoteliers all over the country, do some really, really cool things. And it’s really cool to have awards and recognition like this to recognize some of some of those feats. So congratulations Bob Hunter, and excited to celebrate with you at the, the conference this year. Let’s talk about, you said you got one week a year to do this conference, then I’m sure it is on to planning 2025 in the next year, right?

Sarah Moss:
The next one.

Ryan Embree:
No, not too much time to celebrate and rest there. But you know, one of the things I always find so fascinating because you, you really could sit down with your team, Sarah and decide on really anything for your mantra or slogan. This year was – Know No Limits -. Tell me how you guys decided on that and landed on this as your slogan and what that means.

Sarah Moss:
It’s a great question and I think it takes some explaining because people are like, why do you need a theme or why do you need a slogan every year for the conference? And if you’ve attended Hunter conferences in the past, in the early 90’s, maybe like in maybe early 2000’s, they actually had a theme every year of “Seize the Day” or “The Time is Now”. And after Covid, we took a really hard look at ourselves and were like, what are the things that worked really well for us and what are the things that we should continue to do here? And one of the things that we brought back was the slogans themselves. Our one coming out of Covid was come together. And I think from Hunter’s point of view, it creates a sense of comradery between our attendees of knowing what the goal is and knowing what the call to action is. And so we had “Come Together”, we’ve had “Let’s Go”, and now it’s “Know No Limits.” You know, we’ve gone through these crazy crazy covid timing. We’ve gone through an amazing, you know, 2022, 2023 for investments and the industry and now it’s what’s next. And so we just wanna charge people with Know No Limits. It’s the sky is the limit for us and we can really do whatever we want to, but we have to come together to do that. And so when you’re coming together at the Hunter Conference, we can, we can work through any problem, we can figure out whatever there may be, but we just, we find there’s a sense of togetherness, if you wanna call it that.

Ryan Embree:
I love it. it actually speaks to exactly what we were just talking about, taking what works and tweaking it or moving it forward and bringing back that was a conscious decision, bringing back those themes and slogans. And I think you’re spot on with this slogan. You know, everything that I’m hearing from industry leaders right now is they are fired up about 2024, right? We’ve just been kind of waiting for the shoe to drop. There’s just always been this looming kind of external fears and factors out there, but it at this point we’re full steam ahead. Know No Limits. I love it. I’m fired up for the conference and definitely wanted to get your perspective on what that meant and I think it’s a great initiative to theme it. So, alright, so I’m gonna get you to predict the future a little bit here on the podcast, Sarah. So 35 years this conference is celebrating this March. What’s your vision for the future of this conference as we move forward into, into the years to come?

Sarah Moss:
The crystal ball is a scary place to look into these days, but, I think for the Hunter Conference, the future’s really bright. We have just seen the impact that we’ve had on the industry and the reception that we’ve had from people. And you can just see it in our attendance numbers. This past year we hit 2000, we’re expecting 300 more this year. I mean, it’s over a 10% growth rate since I’ve been here at Hunter. And it’s even doubled in the past two years, which is amazing. And I just think it speaks to the hard work the team has done here. I think you can expect to see some interesting and off the wall things like the mentalist this upcoming year. We try to provide unique opportunities that they wouldn’t have somewhere else. I think it’s also, you know, fun for attendees. We wanna entertain them at the end of the day, they’re there to have a good time. My two phrases I always tell the team is the event is never over until people stop talking about it. Love that. And it doesn’t matter the amount of people that come, it doesn’t matter what the amount of business that they do, it matters how we made them feel. And so I think those are things that we really try to rangetrue here at Hunter is how can we enhance the attendee experience every year for them to keep wanting to come back. And so just providing those unique opportunities is one of those things that we, we look forward to doing.

Ryan Embree:
It’s so many parallels. I mean, as, as you explained that there’s so many parallels to hoteliers and, and how they treat guests. You know, we want to make them feel something when they come on property and when they leave property. So, and I think you’re right too, when it talks about, you know, that experience that guests have at a hotel that doesn’t stop until they stop talking about it. Whether that’s online, whether that’s to friends, you know, hopefully that’s a memory. If it’s a big vacation, hopefully that’s a memory that carries with you for years to come. And I’m sure that attendees are, are making those same memories at the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference. I am certainly happy to be attending this year. This is my first time, a really exciting announcement that the Suite Spot is gonna be headed to the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference for the first time ever. We could not be more thrilled. Sarah, I know we covered a lot of ground on the conference. Any final thoughts before we wrap up today?

Sarah Moss:
We are so excited to have Suite Spot with us, number one, this upcoming year. Our partners are so important to us. While you are a diamond, you’re a silver, you’re an association, you’re a media partner, we treat you all the same. And you’re part of the Hunter family at the end of the day and we’re just so grateful. To be honest with you, it’s 35 years and we’re looking forward to 35 more. It’s gonna be the best conference yet.

Ryan Embree:
Awesome. Well, we can’t wait. Hope to see a lot of our listeners and audience out there. Best place to find information, HunterConference.com. Correct?

Sarah Moss:
Yes, www.hunterconference.com.

Ryan Embree:
Follow Hunter Hotel Investment Conference as well on social media. I’m sure they’ll be posting all the exciting updates. You just had that big announcement about the mentalist speaker, guest speaker that’s gonna be there. We cannot wait. We’re counting down the days. Sarah, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot.

Sarah Moss:
Absolutely. Thank you Ryan.

Ryan Embree:
All right. Thank you everyone for listening and we’ll talk to you next time on The Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on 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.