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Transcript

Introduction
 
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talks. This week, I want to talk about something slightly different. I wanted to talk about one of my passions in life when I don't work, which is, pretty much pop culture. I you know, that's the way that I unwind from work, and I follow superstars.
 
Like, my dog is named Beyonce just because I've been so obsessed with Beyonce for the last two decades.
 
I watch everything about Taylor Swift. I think she's fascinating as a business leader. And then last year, we traveled to Munich to go and see Adele in concert, because, you know, she's worth traveling for. And by watching these very successful women in pop culture, thrive, I've I've also picked up a lot of lessons.
 
Like, I I watched them and how they navigate the complexities of fame, building a brand, but also at the same time balancing building off a brand, being super personable with doing great business. They built incredible businesses around them. And I thought that surely there must be lessons in what these women have achieved and how they've pushed that brand forward. And I actually think that there is a lot.
 
And I wanted to just talk through the nine lessons that I've taken away from from just analyzing these women in the last couple of years, how they tour, what they do with their brand and how they've evolved their brands, and then reflect that back on hospitality. And if you are building a hotel brand, if you are trying to do something that's different, it is really important that we look for inspiration outside of our own industry and then figure out a way to translate that back into hospitality.
 
So, you know, I hope you like those women as much as I do because, you know, they've changed my world and and I've seen them grown from, you know, Beyonce. I saw her performing Crazy in Love, when she literally just came out with that single. And just seeing how she has navigated the industry in the last twenty years and how she actually changed the industry is is a thing that I'm very passionate about. Today, I'm recording from, the hotel that I learned hotelling in.
 
I arrived here at, I think, I was twenty two years old, at the Hilton Prague, and I'm staying here because I'm visiting the the local office. And what was nice is that the, the GM was obviously welcoming me at the door, not because I was there, but there was a dignitary there. And, casually, I ran into him, and he said, I I hope that we got the right apples in your room. And there was green apples in the room, so and you all know how I feel about green apples.
 
They're they're sour. They're, you know, they're they're not really a nice warm welcome presence, but there was also red apples in the room. So I have to say that they you know, by giving me the option is probably better than than giving me just one type of apple. So well done to the Hilton Prague, and thank you for having me again.

Chapter
Lesson 1. Listen to your fans
 
Let's kick off, talking about my nine kind of key strategies that I've learned from these superstars. The first thing I wanted to talk about is really listening to fans.
 
These superstars, they can't engage with every single fan, but you know that they're listening. By the small changes that they're making to their products, to their tours, the way that they're instantly modifying things that they do, you know that they're listening. And the way that they're dropping Easter eggs eggs into their tours, like Taylor Swift is quite famous for having Easter eggs throughout her songs, the way that she performs. And then, you know, they there's a real meaning behind them, and it's because they have this really tight relationship with their fans.
 
And if you take that to, you know, for example, Cabo Carter, the the the tour that Beyonce just kicked off, night one had rave reviews by the media. Like, it was so incredibly good, but the fans were not happy. And some of the people that bought these really high end VIP tickets didn't feel like they were getting the experience that they had purchased. And instantly overnight, Beyonce changed small things to the tour to make sure that those fans felt they had more exposure to Beyonce.
 
So the way that she's floating around the stadium in this this car, the route of the car was amended to make sure that the the people that bought the tickets get real value out of it, because they can't get everything right nor can we in hotels. But the way we respond to the feedback is is really critical.
 
And then, like, looking at how we deal with this in hotels. So there's two sides. One is online, and these pop cultures, you know, drive this phenomenon by just, you know, really leaning into their brand and engaging with the community. And that there's this megaphone effect that happens, if the community picks up on something in a song and then turns it into this this really exciting thing. This happens in hotels.
 
If, you know, a hotel really embraces, for example, dogs I like I'm obsessed with hotels that allow for my dog to come because I want my dog to travel with me, that part of my family.
 
And one thing is we allow your dog to stay. Another thing is to realize that I deeply care about the experience of my dog and have fun with it. And I stayed in this incredible hotel in Austria that I now talk regularly about online.
 
And they had a room service menu for my dog, chicken and rice, her favorite dish. And and it's those things that they had. They had snacks from the local pet store, so they had a partnership, and that became a thing. And when I go to that hotel, there's a dining room for pet owners, and they had bowls by every table and a hook on the door so that you can have your dog there.
 
And, you know, people talk about this online, and it's become their thing. And figure out what your thing is and then have fun with it and and share it online. But, also, listen to the feedback of guests in house. Like, we I very often drop hints of things that I'm looking for, but I'm missing in the experience to see if they pick up on it.
 
So, you know, this weekend, I stayed at a very nice hotel, and I paid a lot of money for this hotel. And and they knew I was lactose intolerant.
 
And I, unfortunately, had to repeat that every single restaurant I visit despite them having asked whether I had allergies, and every waiter constantly kept asking. But the one thing that, I always do at the breakfast is saying, do you have any lactose free yogurts so that I can have the nice granola? And they all say no. And this hotel just said no, and that was it.
 
And that's fine. Right? This wasn't on the menu. I I asked for an off menu item, and I'm just used to it now.
 
I stayed at this wonderful hotel, La Botteza, in Cape Town the other day. And the next morning when I got back to their breakfast room, they had gone out to the shop to buy coconut milk. Like, a small thing, it doesn't cost anything. It's a little bit of effort, but it it changes the way that I perceive the service at this hotel at a minimal cost.
 
And I think it's those things that make such a major difference. This is own and I've been asking for a lactose free yogurt for the last few years, and it's only happened twice. And I stay in a hotel every single week. It's happened at an Aman hotel where, you know, they they even homemade yo coconut, yogurt for me, and it's happened at La Portesa.
 
And it's that. Like, listen to the clues and then do something really special with it, and you will get the recognition in some way. So really deeply listen to the feedback that your customers are giving, making sure that that data gets into the system and that you have enabled your team members to actually do something with it. All of this will lead to your guests going online to the megaphone platforms and making sure that your brand gets exposure for the really special experiences that you create for your guests.
 
So really listen to your fans. Lesson two, Adele.
 
I love Adele. I didn't always love Adele, but I have grown to love her just be based on how she shown up at live performances.
 
And I just think she has so much love for her fans, but she also sets really clear boundaries. We ended up traveling to Munich last year, because Adele, you know, realized that she she didn't want a tour.
 
So she said, I'm gonna take a residency in Munich, and I'm gonna make my fans travel to me, which, you know, on its own, like, that's a bit, you know, why are fans traveling to me instead of her coming to us? But she made sure that it was a real experience. It was such a special special concert and she really invested in the experience. And, you know, when she went into Vegas and she canceled the first, you know, batch of dates because she said, the experience isn't good enough.
 
If I'm gonna make people travel to me, I better make sure that this experience is top notch. And she has such a high level for quality that if it isn't good enough, she's go not gonna allow fans to experience it because she wants everyone to have a remarkable experience. And I think that is the lesson for hotels. Make sure that your hotel builds a real experience, that it's thought through what is the experience you want guests to have, and don't allow for anyone to have a subpar experience.
 
If you notice anyone not having a great experience, you need to up the game and really jump into this.
 
You know, a lot of hotels are just operating because they're in a city where it's just busy. Right? So, people travel to Amsterdam, Rome, Paris. All the major cities is where people travel to, and then there's hotels to facilitate it. So the hotel isn't the the destination.
 
I've seen examples of really great hotels recently, and one of my favorites is this hotel in Stockholm called, Ett Hem, a home.
 
And they've created an experience where I now travel to Stockholm because of the hotel, not because I wanted to see the city Stockholm, because I wanted my husband to see that hotel and the experience that they've created. And that experiential travel is is real. Like, there's now more and more brands popping up, not in your main cities, but they're in remote places. But because customers currently look for something different, especially post COVID, we realized we want experiences because our freedom was taken from us during COVID. We were locked up in our homes, and we realized that, actually, a lot of our memories come from travel and the really great experiences. And there's now hotel brands that are genuinely building experiences that that people are willing to travel for.

Chapter
Lesson 2. Creating memorable experiences
 
And you have to make sure that those experiences are really, really good, and that will help build your brand. So experience is everything. The third lesson, I would focus on innovation through fiction. Most of these women have had really challenging times to reach the status that they've reached today, and we all look at it thinking this has come really easy for them. But if you've been following them for ten, fifteen, twenty years, you can see that they have had to really fight for their position. You know, Taylor Swift had a real challenging time with Kanye, came on stage, and and he he basically told them that she was nothing and that Beyonce should have won. And that had such a tremendous impact on her personally that she had to step away from the industry for a year.
 
But she came back. Like, she took that year and that anxiety, and she put it into an incredible album, and she came back roaring. And I think it is when we have when we face these really tough times, you can either sit back and take it, or you can come up with a plan to transform. We at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ, as COVID happened, we realized that, you know, we had three years of a pandemic coming that wasn't going to be solved.
 
So we could either sit back and hope for the best, or we can have a plan of how we come out fighting on the other side. And that's what we did. We we made really strategic difficult decisions that transformed the business. And and I think this is what hotels, should do.
 
You've seen post COVID some of these brands appear that are really leaning into the the shortages for short term housing. So you have these apart hotels and extended stay brands that are coming up because people are wanting to be hybrids. They want to, at some point of the year, relocate to another country and work from a hotel for a while. So you need hotels that have co working spaces.
 
So you see hotels really, embracing the challenges of a a tough economy or a a COVID crisis and leaning into it. AI is very quickly transforming what's happening in our industry, and some hotels have leaned into it and are like, right. This is an exciting thing. We should we should deploy this and and work with it.
 
And a lot of hotels haven't. Like, a lot of hotels over fifty percent today still don't use a revenue management system to manage rates because they believe that the humans behind, the price setting in their hotels do a better job than a machine who's working twenty four seven and can process a huge amount of rate changes instantly.
 
It is automating your workflows so that you can hire a different profile of of team member. Like, we've struggled with service for such a long time, especially post COVID and especially now if the macro climate turned sour, you wanna make sure that you're as lean as possible. So automate as many workflows through your technology stack. That give you gives you freedom.
 
On the one side, less staff makes you less reliable on those fixed costs. But on the other side, you also get to hire a different profile because you don't need to have people that have learned the the traditional systems. You can now hire for emotional intelligence. You can hire those people with personality, who you want in the front line, who you want to have create these experiences.
 
So so and I think that's really if if if you're having a tough time as a hotel, stop and think and be brave. Just make a change and make another change and make another change and constantly listen to the feedback and making sure that it's iteratively getting better and you're building and you're building. And if it isn't great, then you take a step back and then you take two steps forward. And it's just that entrepreneurial mindset that I think sometimes we lack in hospitality, but there is so much opportunity and there's so many different types of guests that we can do exciting things with.

Chapter
Lesson 3. Innovation through friction
 
But it does require you to try things and to have a plan and a vision. And when I ask a lot of hoteliers whether I can see their vision documents or their brand documents, most hoteliers haven't written down their strategy for what their five year plan is. And and I think if you don't have a five year plan, you should write one. I have one.
 
I've written one, and I don't always enjoy writing it. But I'm I once I've written it, what my thinking is, we're we're moving as an as a as a company, I actually feel like I have a much stronger view of our business because I've had to dissect it and then figure out a way forward. So work through, like, embrace the friction and then make innovation through that friction.

Chapter
Lesson 4. Creative freedom
 
Four, creative freedom.
 
These superstars have fought for their creative freedom. Most of the time when you sign up with a record label, they will tell you what to do, what songs to sing, how to dress, how to act.
 
And these women are so talented that they knew to negotiate this well or start their own record label. Like Beyonce and JC, they have their own record label.
 
Roc Nation, Taylor negotiated that she had complete freedom to write her own music. And you're seeing these stars, like Taylor Swift and Beyonce specifically, move across segments because the freedom that they created allows them to go far beyond the boundaries of what they do.
 
If you take that to our industry, our industry is very commoditized. It isn't very exciting. I don't love checking into, you know, your typical five star branded hotel because the experience is generally the same. I get really excited when you can see that a hotel brand has been built from a creative mindset, who didn't affiliate, who did something really, really different, and that made them so unique. And it makes me wanna talk about those hotels because they create, a really unique experience. And if they can figure out how to take that one pocket of beautiful uniqueness and start to scale it as a brand, that's something that could truly transform hospitality.
 
So I definitely push hoteliers to make sure that you have creative freedom.
 
And sometimes putting a major global brand on your roof will limit your ambitions or at least what you can do, what your creativity allows you to do because the brands will tell you, exactly what you're allowed to do. And that limiting factor might not create the best hotels in the world. Five,

Chapter
Lesson 5. Community and loyalty
 
community and loyalty.
 
Fans are the ultimate loyal members.
 
And you didn't buy these fans with points like our point programs do, but it's because they genuinely love the superstars that they're fans of. When I got tickets to Taylor Swift, I realized this was a cultural moment and I had to be there. Even though I was maybe not the biggest Swiftie in the world because that there's a crazy community out there. I just want to be part of this stadium and feel the atmosphere, and I'd never experienced a concert where there was so much genuine love for the star on stage because of the community and the connection that she built with her audience.
 
And through that, she built this incredible loyalty people that have traveled to all of these concerts around the world, the way that they're trading bracelets, the way that their fans are purchasing the merch. And, you know, it's this balance of, engaging with the community and making money from the community. And you can either push that too far, and I think that's a really delicate balance that these superstars get really right because they do make money through merch, and we have to acknowledge that. But because they're doing it in such a great, way in the way that they're engaging and making the bracelets part of the the the thing of Taylor Swift, they get away with it.
 
And I think hotels can do the same. If you have a very unique brand, you should have a merch store or you should sell merch in the rooms. Just have it in the rooms with a price tag on it and saying, you know, if you take it, you know, remind remind on checkout, I'm gonna charge you for it. Or even have it off an offer in the online check-in and the kiosk.
 
The online checkout, we can we can charge it. So really even automate it, through the journey. But people if they love you, they will buy the merch. I have beach bags from some of my favorite hotels.
 
I steal the laundry bags because I, you know, I like to be reminded of my nice holidays, and I use those bags all the time. So lean into the community building and then make sure that you monetize it in some smart way. The

Chapter
Lesson 6. Pricing and perceived value
 
sixth one is, pricing and perceived value. So it's really hard to price concert tickets.
 
And you can see that, Taylor Swift has a strategy of never overpricing. The the tickets will be expensive, but it will never exceed a point where it is crazy. And if it does happen, then she will start a fight with Ticketmaster because she's like, don't don't rip off my fans and she stands up for them. Whereas with Beyonce, I think with Cowboy Carter, she pushed it too far.
 
And the dynamic pricing tool that they use in Ticketmaster, I think, or whatever mechanism that they have, pushed the prices to a level where her fans just said, I'm not willing to come anymore.
 
And and I think if you reflect back to, what that means is, like, she's now gonna have you know, she doesn't have empty stadiums, but there's still tickets left for sale because some fans just cannot afford it, and you do alienate some of your fans. Link that back to hotels.
 
Sometimes when there's a citywide convention, hotels put prices up to rates that you're like, okay. You're taking the Mickey.
 
And I'm not willing to pay a thousand euros for a a standard kind of business hotel.
 
And when you charge that amount of money, your expectation cannot be met. There's no way that you will meet my expectation of that thousand euro per night stay in this, like, very average hotel.
 
So I strongly encourage dynamic pricing. Think all hotels should lean into dynamic pricing, but you need to also know the height of the dynamic, like, elasticity that that's there. Customers have a threshold and you don't wanna exceed it because then you attract a different type of customer or you put them off and you end up with empty rooms. But whilst I think we strongly should lean into dynamic pricing and AI to set the pricing, you know better than anyone else what the maximum is at which you want to price, but also the minimum below which price you start to attract a different segment that might not be the right segment for your hotel. And that's often a question when you set up your revenue management system, what's the minimum and the maximum price. And that has to come from the hotelier who knows their business. And everything in between, the AI will manage, but never, price at a level where you can't meet the expectation.

Chapter
Lesson 7. A little mystery goes a long way
 
A little mystery goes a long way. That's like my seventh one where I love how Beyonce does not do interviews. You will never catch an interview. Like, she did in the early part of her career, but she doesn't do interviews anymore.
 
And that mystery creates the hype around her. Like, we all wanna know what she's thinking and what's going on behind the scenes, and everything is curated, but she doesn't reveal too much. So you'd we didn't know what was going to come with the cowboy card tour. We were you know, she doesn't reveal much.
 
But when you get there, you get the ultimate experience. She is there. She is present, and she does an incredible job. Taylor Swift has had a much more personal approach to building her brand and engaging with her community.
 
But recently, you've seen that as she's got so big, she just doesn't have the way to engage. But she uses, cryptic messages and Easter eggs to really engage with the community and recognize that she's listening to everything that she that she's saying.
 
If we take this to our industry, I think people are looking for a bit of mystery. They're not looking for everything exactly as they're on the website. We used to have these websites with these you know, you take a photo of the the pool, and it would be with this tele lens where you think that this pool is giant. And I I just stayed in a hotel in, where was it, somewhere in Spain.
 
And I booked a hotel with a nice pool.
 
When I got there and I got to the roof, I realized it was a bathtub on the roof. Like, it was the size of, like, three bathtubs maybe. It wasn't as as small, but it was definitely not the picture that I had seen on the website.
 
And that set the wrong expectations, and then I wasn't happy with that experience because I wanted to go to the pool and I wanna swim in the morning.
 
Today, with the transparency of the Internet, you need to either tell people what the experience is going to be like or tell them a little bit less and let them be like, enjoy the surprise of the experience. And I think some of the best brands get this right. Like, one of the brands that I'm obsessed with, but I can't really afford it, but I I it's an aspirational brand that I've, had the joy of staying a couple times, is Aman. You go to the Amman website and you're trying to find out anything.
 
You just get these videos, like, of like, a curtain blowing in the wind with some ocean in the background, and you don't they don't really give away what the experience is. But once you get to their hotels, it is incredible, the service and the the the eye for detail that they have. So they don't use their websites to to to get bookings. They they know that people know this is a very special brand.
 
Just book it. You're gonna love it. And they under promise and then they over deliver. And that is what true luxury is.
 
I look at other brands, like some of the the more corporate luxury brands, like the Mandarin Oriental.
 
And I just visited the Mandarin Oriental. And I often like to walk into lobbies and just see. And I thought the design, I can see it was expensive, but it didn't it didn't move me. And and I think luxury travel should be moving.
 
It should engage with you, and they should exceed expectations through the service. And and that's the thing that I look for. You know, will this brand exceed and deliver more? And that's what you get when you go to a Taylor Swift concert, an Adele concert, a Beyonce concert.
 
You know when you go there, they give it their all, and it's going to be a life changing experience. And I think that's what great travel experiences should be like as well. Number eight,

Chapter
Lesson 8. Moving across genres
 
moving across genres. The one thing that I love about both, Taylor Swift who has come out of the country and is now squarely in the pop space and she's, moved across different genres.
 
And then you look at what Beyonce is doing with her, you know, acts one, two, and three, she's going into genres like like country, which makes the country world really uncomfortable. But she realizes that her audience is you know, enjoys multiple types of music, and it also opens them up to new genres. So what they're doing is they're opening up an audience. So they're bringing in new fans from these new genres, but also they're creating their existing fan base and opening up to new genres.
 
And I think that's the most important thing when you think about hotels. You know, you've got your typical business hotel and your business, leisure hotel and your leisure hotel. And those are the three genres. And hotels don't differentiate in the experience, but we should because guests are truly unique, and we all have different needs.
 
So whilst I am a business traveler, I might also have, you know, different interests whilst I'm in a in a city.
 
I love my conversation that I had with Maison Mare at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ Unfold where this Parisian hotelier talked about how they had twelve personas that they had figured out. They had done the analysis and came up with twelve personas. So, for example, that would be family with young kids, family with, like, teenage kids, individual business traveler. And these twelve personas, they had figured out through their experience from listening to customers, And then they created twelve curated experiences for these guests that all were looking you know, they're different genres guests that they want to engage with really deeply.

Chapter
Lesson 9. Advocating for fairness in the industry
 
And they are happy to switch genres based on the guest that's in front of them.
 
And the experience changes. And I think that is the essence of hospitality. If you truly understand your audience and that they might look for more than the genre that you serve them, and you can give them that extra thing, they will become fans, and they will return and and bring back more business. The ninth and last category is Taylor Swift versus Spotify.
 
I loved when she stood up and said, I don't agree with how my music, how much money I'm earning for my music because I know that you, Spotify, are making a lot more money and there should be a fair share. How Taylor Swift pushed back on when she couldn't buy the rights to her own music. And she really fights for things that she stands for and making sure that she makes the music industry a better space.
 
And we, as Ateliers, I think sometimes need to push back harder on the very traditional big brands that are holding us back as an industry from innovation.
 
I love, Barry Sternlites who just relaunched Starwood. So he he he built this incredible company with brands like Sheraton, and then he sold that to Marriott where they merged in some way. And he's now come back in. He now owns the Starwood brand, and he's like, our industry is so commoditized that I think somebody needs to start another big brand and really rethink, you know, design and wellness and innovation.
 
And I love people that stand up and that that that are making a point and saying we can do better and I will be the one that steps up and do this and fights back against the systems or the the legacy thinking or the inertia that we have as an industry. We need more Taylor Swifts in hospitality people that have a voice, that change the narrative, that listen to what guests are needing, and then building a brand that builds on top of that. As I said, this was gonna be a different Matt Talks. I really wanted to explore my passions for Adele, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift and figure out if I can find an angle to hospitality.
 
Ultimately, I think what I learned from talking through this is that we have to listen very closely to what our guests are saying and figure out a way to respond to that, either instantly or through building a brand that really talks to your audience because they will be your most loyal customers if you turn them into fans. If you can figure out the way to emotionally connect with your customers, they will continue to buy from you and they'll buy more and they will be a lifelong fan.
 
And I think that's ultimately what hospitality should be all about. We should create an emotional connection, and make sure that people have incredible memories as they travel around the world. Hope you enjoy that.