GMH Hotels: What Happens After You Sell Your Brand to Marriott

0:00ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters.

1:05Sarah Dandashy: hello sarah good morning steve how are you i'm feeling pretty good how are you doing where are you coming from you're coming from a different location what's i am

1:20Sarah Dandashy: it's casa of my grandmother um no it is uh i'm in allentown pennsylvania for those that have been following me for some time they probably recognize this background because i stayed here for a little bit during the pandemic and i actually did a lot of videos from this room which is clearly not designed for today's audience that's all right i know that your grandma's happy there didn't you tell me it was her birthday is that her birthday it is my grandmother's 97th birthday so here's a reminder if you've got grandparents parents do whatever you can to make a point to see them when they hit these birthdays because man it's great yeah so we said it was how old is she gonna be 97 97 let's give her a happy birthday listeners and viewers put a little happy birthday she deserves it what do we call her nana grandma i call her grandma but she now goes by gg because she has grandchildren but i i don't participate in that i not you're not the great grandchild so that's only so you have to be a certain rank just call it that totally but then i was in new york this past weekend and i'm in new york this next weekend so but you had some exciting stuff going on i had some fun stuff going on i got uh i don't call a jet set train set around uh yeah florida so i stayed at uh my good friend michael's hotel the Marriott Stanton in South Beach.

2:43Okay. We're looking for a nice hotel in South Beach right in the South of Fifth Neighborhood. It is a sneaky good hotel called the Marriott Stanton. Make sure to check it out. We stayed there for my dad's birthday. And then, yeah, it was a great time on the beach. So if you saw me out there, we were definitely enjoying the sands of South Beach over the weekend. And then on Sunday, we surprised my kids. They thought they were just going home and we got on the Brightline train straight from the hotel. Bright Line train into Orlando, stayed at the Signia by Hilton, which I have a lot to say about that versus a Disney hotel.

3:17And then we went to the Disney park the next day, which was awesome. So Disney always does a great job. So my brother came along, my parents, my kids. It was an awesome, awesome time at the Hollywood studios. So I'm happy to chat Hollywood studios or Disney or lightning lanes with anybody if they need any advice.

3:33Sarah Dandashy: So I should have talked to you two weeks ago when I had a client ask me about this but I will say this I feel like Disney does a good job of making sure like they have a they do a good job of managing crowds yes that there are multiple ways that like that you don't go and you like waste your entire day waiting yes there's going to be long waits at here but like you can kind of construct the day um and I think they do a really good job about that. They do a great job. As long as you know how to do it, you do have to pay in to use lightning lanes. And if you don't want to wait in any lines, you can pay for their premier pass, but that's double the price of a ticket.

4:14So like an example, a normal ticket, I think was $179 per person. And if you want that premier pass, you have to pay an extra$298 on top of 179. If you don't want to wait in lines, but if you just want to like manage the lines on an app, you pay 23 bucks and you go about your day but this is what i found um because i've done

4:34Sarah Dandashy: experiences where like i didn't have to wait and i could just go on like ride after ride and maybe because maybe because i'm older but i realized like oh it's actually kind of nice to have that downtime in between rides because if you're going from one to another to another it's like it's very it's stimulating like people can get sick and come with me i plan the day very nicely it's a nice cadence you always break it up in the middle of the day with an air conditioned lunch venue that's served you don't stand in line i was just you know you got to save up and pay for these things but we have a nice cadence to the day in the park so your your kids they're living the fine perfect cadence of the way through a disney day i can make sure you have a great time it reminds me of when you told me you went to the beach and your daughter's like where's our where's our server and you're like oh we need to we need to change that yeah we know the cabana at the on the on the beach is not how they go to the beach every time so listeners that's a different story for a different time listen we get nice things because we worked in hotels and people want to take care of us and i'm always happy to share that with my kids but they also have to see what it's like before you can get all those perks you really gotta understand what it's like so they get a nice mix of both too funny oh my gosh i just had to do a nice air-conditioned lunch i may have had a mojito or two at my disney lunch before we got there it was nice nice little nice little break wow oh my gosh i haven't had one a long time but they sold me i sold but always a good time so good hotel signia hotel it was actually one of our whose brand is it anyways and i hadn't stayed but it was a great hotel oh yeah quickly tell us about that hotel what's the quick nutshell version so i would say upscale four-star resort is connected to the waldorf astoria through the banquet area so really if you don't want to stay at the waldorf and pay all the extra money you stay next door to signia which about half price but the same facilities and their pool is better because you have a lazy river hot tubs slide all the fun things for kids but they have great bar great restaurants everyone was ultra nice there everyone very helpful.

6:46They do have transportation to Disney parks because it is a Disney affiliated hotel, but it doesn't take you directly to it. So I've got a whole breakdown of that. I may write a little blog post about it.

6:57Sarah Dandashy: I think you should. I think I should. The difference between an official deluxe resort and, you know, you could, you could alt, you could become a Disney blogger. Those people make a lot of money. I know, but I don't know if I could be there all the time. no no you don't have to be there all the time it's just you share your tips all right hospitality mentor podcast episode on my other podcast i'll do one just yeah i think you i'm not even joking i know it sounds really silly but i have uh friends of mine who that is what that is a good part of their contact content and that part of their content does exceptionally well so all right i'm gonna take that tip i'll record one this week but i gotta tell you something else about this Tell me, tell me.

7:43This episode is brought to you by StayFi. StayFi helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded Wi-Fi portals, email marketing, and guest data tools that turn one-time bookers into repeat guests. So start growing your direct booking revenue today at stayfi.com backslash goodmorninghospitality and at stayfi.com backslash goodmorninghospitality. Get that one in there for us. Thank you, State 5, for being a sponsor.

8:13Sarah Dandashy: Love that. Thank you. That was great. Should we get into a show today? I'm sure people are done. Yes, let's get into our show. I guess we're still. All right. So first topic here, Citizen M, one year later, learning to love Marriott audits. One year after Marriott paid$355 million for Citizen M, 50 % of Citizen M's occupancy now comes from Marriott Bomboy members across the portfolio. we've talked about this before um yeah so i think you did it you by the way i'm a big fan well you love citizen you and i have podcasts from a citizen hotel you've stayed in a citizen owned hotel um and as we talk about it i want to first give a shout out to dahlia i see you commenting here thanks for watching the show lou appreciate the uh the highlight of your days my ad reads i'm gonna take that every day we talk about citizen m hotel here and like sarah said they paid $355 million Marriott did for Citizen M.

9:11And what's happened now, we're starting to see the power of the Marriott Bonvoy app and their 300 plus million members. All of a sudden now, 50 % of Citizen M's hotel's occupancy now comes from Marriott Bonvoy members across their portfolio, which is an incredible number. So half of their guests now are Marriott Bonvoy members. And they're saying that's just like a cherry on the top. It didn't cannibalize what they had before. So it kind of makes me think like, what was their business model before? Like, how well were they actually doing? Yeah. They're getting this much that are a cherry on top.

9:45But it also shows that the previous owners are still the franchisee of this now, right? So they don't own the brand anymore, but they still are operating the hotels and they had to get into Marriott's standards and understand and get audited. and their CEO, Mr. DeJong, was saying, who are you guys to audit us? We created this brand, but now he comes to find that he likes it a lot because the Marriott Bonvoy app brings in Marriott members. They have to meet certain standards. They have to answer the phone a certain way. They have to have certain things on their property. And he now comes to enjoy these audits because it shows his team what they need to do and holds them accountable.

10:26So every month he gets a nice report showing how well his team is doing across those properties but now they want to build even more places because citizen m is doing so well within marriott they are looking at more and more locations i think um they did one in georgetown in dc right where you went to school yeah looking in dublin ireland now london they've got a lot of places coming up but i mean what do you think of citizen m you've stayed there i've actually hung out in the lobbies i've never stayed overnight

10:53Sarah Dandashy: oh i'm a fan i'm a fan um but look i think i'd have a hard time sharing that room with somebody um i i think it's like it's definitely uh it's great if it's just yourself and it's you're there for a work trip maybe you don't have that much um like maybe you're not necessarily having that much time in the room i mean really the room is a bed like it's the bed up against the window uh but i like i like the different features like there's cool like lighting that you can play with the lighting you can turn the color of the lights in the room and like the shower area to pretty much whatever color you'd like um it's comfortable i like that they have the bed right up against the window i that to me is kind of cool um but i'm a fan i always do find it interesting because they they talk about oh well we don't have a front desk and well and so you do check in yourself but there's always a front desk attendant and i always just find that so funny because it's like i get it you might just have one attendant versus like having three front desk um employees checking in people but half the time they have to help check people anyway and that's not just it's an really yeah look they're keeping their they say they keep their they thought marriott may change some things but marriott's like no we like cis m for what it is keeping the business model intact we don't want a front desk but you said they kind of have a front desk kiosk check-in is the model that they like yeah ai handling most of the guest inquiries but what changed for them is where their energy goes is what they're saying is that before the deal the owners was spending heavily on business model innovation and customer acquisition getting guests to come learn about citizen and them come be at the property really spending a lot of money on marketing now they get that visibility yeah mario handles distribution distribution and focus has shifted entirely to the guest experience to make sure all that spending that was going to marketing they can now use and spend it on the guest experience to enhance it so you know it's really interesting to see because we talk about how many things that these companies you know mario's and hilton's and hi it's they acquire these companies and this is a big sign it shows if you can really do it the right way and you have a product people like it really is a giant boost because those are expensive bookings like those owners still have to pay for those every time one of those marriott bond boy people stay like there is not so we just got extra people like you're paying a fee to marry and we've talked about this before and i was even just thinking about it because when i was looking at places to stay in new york and i had uh like i had a little bit of a struggle because I want to get like a certain number of Marriott nights so that I can like hit my whatever status for next year uh so and so I was like okay well this would be good because I could at least get like three more nights and then go towards that but the hotel I was looking at was fine mediocre fantastic we got a phone ringing we got a phone ringing sorry my aunt is calling anyway landline in the grandma's house i love it totally um and then um but i really like this kimpton hotel and it was a really great rate and it was brand new and i love staying at like brand new hotels because it's just cool to see what they're doing and i have i mean i have a i'm part of like the rewards program with ihg but it's just it's i don't stay at that many so i was like hemming and hawing like do i stay at the hotel i really want to stay at or do i stay at one that i may i'm not as excited about staying at but it would like get me closer to having some sort of status so again and i wouldn't have necessarily discovered that other hotel if it weren't for going through like the bigger umbrella of of the hotel brand so it is very interesting as they're absolutely where did you stay at this story oh i ended up staying at the kimpton era hotel in midtown it was fantastic all right so you didn't use the marriott the pool almost got you to use the points but you stayed at the place that i ended up doing that yeah just because it looked it was like nice and cool it was just cool it was great um and there's nothing wrong with marriott and i will say this because it was i was actually looking at a courtyard marriott um and the courtyard marriott's in new york city um are actually really nice and i do as a brand i think a lot of people will think oh courtyard but we're thinking about the courtyard marriott from over 10 years ago.

15:20Sarah Dandashy: They have, they rebranded in 2018 and just what they are now in general. I mean, it's a perfectly fine product if you're staying for business day. So, but I want to Paul Manzi saying about the physical front desk, he's saying a physical front desk does not improve the hospitality experience is what he's thinking. Lonnie Wolf, good to see you. Hello. Welcome to the show. So we've got a lot going on at Marriott's world, but they continue to do a good job. So we'll keep an eye on what they continue to do and where they continue to grow citizen m we're fans we are podcast some more when we get by the way if it would have been a citizen m i would have stuck with it and stayed but there wasn't one that made sense for me so just saying all right citizen m sarah needs more locations in new york okay let's make this happen i do why are we going to our next little sponsor here would you like to read it sir or what should i read it listen sarah before we move on okay a quick shout out to our sponsor built they're helping restaurants and hotel fmb teams better understand their guests and create more personalized experiences that drive repeat visits if you care about loyalty and guest experience it's worth checking out head to jointbuilt.com backslash gmh and that's joinbuilt.com backslash gmh and now back to the show whoa that dramatic read right there love it um this is great actually funny because we were just talking about maria and then i also mentioned ihg this goes into our next topic here ihg joins hilton and marriott with ai search um this is cool so obviously we've talked about before how maria and and ihg have been sort of leading the charge with with um the ai search options um and ihg is now basically in on it they've launched a conversational search on its u.s site and app um and what's cool is just because it just it's more conversational so instead of the oh i want two nights in this destination etc it's like we're going to be a family of four going to orlando and we're looking for this type of style um which is great i mean we're just going to continue to see more and more of that but uh yeah one detail that stands out about them is that ihg users can shop in points cash or a combination inside the chat which is interesting so like when marriott launched ask bonvoy said point-based searches would be supported over time ihg launched it when it's already working already so they were working on this we talked about actually they've been like eight years in advance we talked about a couple weeks ago like working on their you know, new tech stack.

18:04They had been building it from scratch so they could be ready for AI. So now it's finally starting to jump ahead. Some others, it looks like. Totally. And really, if you haven't tried it yet, it's going to be rolled out to different users. You're not going to be able to kind of like get in there. They're testing it out randomly, it sounds like as a beta version, but you start just talking to like a normal human. I don't know if you've been doing that at all, Sarah, with all the new models coming out with like Like Chachi Batiste's voice one, Claude, I know a lot of people use. I started messing around with Gemini because it's connected to everything I use in Gmail and Google.

18:36And it's like, wow, this is everything about me from scanning all my emails in my calendar. I need to play on Gemini. To see what's going on out there in the world. And it just seems to get faster and faster. But we see it now. I'm sure you use Amazon. Most of us use Amazon.

18:51Sarah Dandashy: Yes. Rufus. Rufus is their AI. and that's pretty wild to see, you know, and understands me based on what I've searched for and what I bought and suggests certain things. And it seems like that pace is picking up. I don't know what you feel like when you're using tech now for travel or just your regular day-to-day, but you book a lot of travel. Are you starting to see more and more of it infiltrating different platforms as you book other people's trips? Yes and no. I mean, my clients are very tech savvy. Most of my clients are very tech savvy. And so we almost like use chat and Claude together, you know, where it's like, they'll very clearly use it.

19:33Sarah Dandashy: Then they'll be like, Hey, like double check this based off of that. And what do you think? You know, so it's like, it's very interesting that it's like, they're not using it to replace me. They might use it for a starting point. And then we have like open conversations like, Hey, can you check it out? Can you do this? So, um, and then, yeah. And then I also use it at times because sometimes like, I don't know all of the restaurants in a specific city or specific area. So I'll be like, okay, we like this, this, this based off of this, what else do you suggest? And then I can go through and like really kind of fine tune.

20:10Sarah Dandashy: So it is, it's very helpful for me and in a lot of different ways. I mean, that's just one minor, minor way of doing it, but, uh, but yeah, it's changing rapidly. It's going very fast. So hotels, everyone's busy, but it's going to be part of our daily life. I'm just curious to see. Again, they want people in their world. ISG, Hilton, Marriott, they want people on their apps, using their apps, speaking within it. But I don't think that's people's first reaction of what to do, right? It's, I'm going to use the AI that's on my phone. Siri is getting smarter on the Apple phone. You know, I'm not sure what Android uses.

20:42So everyone's kind of doing their searches. I watched my mom and dad, who are the same age, search in complete different ways while yeah which is very interesting my dad an attorney and my mom you know who's okay so how are they search you know my mom just talking to siri or typing it in and my dad using ai sometimes using google verifying different ways and then my brother was there too using his meta glasses asking meta ai you know like how to start doing things while we're there so it's everywhere it's everywhere so we'll see what happens uh yeah you need to but i think it's good for hotels meet people where they're at hey i'm traveling with five people i need two beds with a view of x y or z what do you have available for me at this price point yeah things like that and it pops up that's great yo totally it's interesting so kind of quickly going back to this is kind of

21:38Sarah Dandashy: an interesting part of it um right now even though we've got these hotel groups that are implementing more AI into their apps and their sites. They don't have yet the number of travelers, visitors to their sites that are using these actual tools. But it was, interestingly enough, retailers are ahead of it. So I know that you obviously were mentioning Amazon, this like Walmart says roughly half of its app users have tried their AI assistant Sparky. And then shoppers use it to build about their basket that use it, they spend about 35 % more. So I think that's interesting. Yeah. If you have somebody helping you along, that's like supporting things that you want.

22:22Like I'm about to get a doggy, our first puppy. And now everything being shown to me on every single app is about doggies. So it knows, but Dolly asked a question, a couple of, one thing, why do I like Gemini? I haven't used it enough yet, but what I've realized is that Gemini is part of Google. It's connected to YouTube. So it has all of YouTube's history, all the videos, all the transcripts from those things that it's learning from. And it's also, I use Gmail and Google office and it's connected to everything I've got. So it's already built into everything I have. So I haven't played enough with it yet, but I'll get back to you on a future episode.

22:55I'll let you know.

22:56Sarah Dandashy: Yeah, it is interesting because it's, it really is kind of like a combination of bouncing around. I'm trying to figure out one that kind of, I can kind of use, I'm using Chachi Bittie right now for that. I've connected a lot of things to it, but I'm a little bit nervous to put it in full power because I'm saying, hey, you can connect finances to me and your health and X and this and that. I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want all that yet. Yeah, get there. Get there in time. Yeah, definitely interesting. All right, let's do, why don't we do one more topic? I think we got time for a while. Yeah, yeah.

23:27We got Southwest for sure.

23:29Sarah Dandashy: Southwest Airlines, all big changes. Now they want to get into lounges. So their CEO gave, we're kind of like talking about this. And I mean, basically they're going into doing lounges specifically with co-branded credit cards. And I find this really fascinating because they've done a lot of significant changes with their business model in the past year. And they're doing better than ever, you know, financially. you know it's like okay well we're not like now you get assigned seats now you don't get those two free so all the things that were the the elements of the brand that people loved they went they flipped it and they kind of made it more like the traditional airline model um but and they did well because they still have a lot of southwest diehard fans um that are still continuing to fly Southwest.

24:30And then they're like, we're just, we're just making even more

24:32Sarah Dandashy: money. It's, it just makes sense financially, which obviously it makes sense financially. That's how other business also, you know, it's, it's a proven model. But, um, I think what was curious to see was, would they be able to actually make that transition successfully? And they, they seem to be doing it. So, um, I think they saw the writing on the wall. I think they didn't want to end up like spirit and we're like, all right, we got to make some money here. And so they went traditional and they, and we learned like we've learned by doing this show. At least I have is that airlines make all their money with those people in first class and business class and the people paying up for upgrades.

25:03And, you know, if you're back in coach, that's why there's so many coach sections now, like the main cabin and this cabin, this one, right? So that's how they're making their money and stay in the float. And I get it, but we talked about this once too. Like, I think the whole airport's going to become its own separate lounges. Totally.

25:20Sarah Dandashy: Well, it's interesting because I think about it. So, you know, I don't, even though I have Amex and I can get, honestly, I feel like getting into an Amex lounge, it ends up being such a process that I don't really like try to even get into Amex lounges. I'm like not really fussed. I do the Delta lounges, but I have enough status that even if there is a line outside, I get to the front of the line. So I'm. You're also a celebrity. So it's like, miss, miss Dan. No, but you know, it's like, again, but I get it. Cause it's like you, more and more people want to have the lounge experience. But they are crowded.

26:01I did it the other day. If you're not there in the morning or the evening at Miami, it's hard to get into that lounge. And so I do the Delta Lounge in Miami all the time.

26:08Sarah Dandashy: Love it. Easy. There's a 25 minute wait. I was standing outside the American Express Lounge and I just turned around. I think it's a Friday's. You guys have to correct me if I'm wrong. Fridays or when I was like, I mean, that looks pretty good to grab a$10 beer and just sit there and people watch versus waiting in this line. And so that's what I end up doing sometimes. But I will say we can talk a whole other show on the points because my American Express card paid for itself this week. Just the fee by using it. For sure. I mean, it definitely it can definitely pay for itself. That's absolutely it.

26:39Sarah Dandashy: But yeah, we'll see just how more of these lounges open. I mean, I fly out of the Las Vegas airport. I personally don't like any of the lounges there. so i now just get to the airport and walk on my flight because i have no desire to be there any which one is this which airport the las vegas airport because it's either slot machines or there's like a capital one lounge yeah well yeah there's like people gambling right there you i was you i saw yeah no anyway by the way why don't we do our slot machines i know we're gonna go what two minutes late here slot machines if you're a slot machine fan.

27:17I just talked to a casino. I can't say which casino, but somewhere in the country, they know they're never going to lose. They make about$500 per day per machine. So if you think you're ever going to win on those, you may win a little bit here and there, but they win every single day.

27:31Sarah Dandashy: So they don't make sense to me. I don't even get it. It's the hope that you're going to be the big winner, but they're going to, they do it very strategically. They never going to lose. I learned the whole business. Now I want to open my own casino because it's the only a business i know or you can't lose anyhow we gotta get into lou's favorite my favorite dahlia you may love this one paul manzi and all the other viewers that come here every single week for whose brand is it anyway the game show where we show a sub brand and we try to guess who is the oh no oh no h collection hotels okay who owns an h collection let's put that one back on the screen for five more seconds monica who owns the nh collection let's just have the brand up there no cheating anybody you've got five seconds to guess i've got my guess in five four three two one i'm going with hilton i'm going with a core a core who do we got here today minor hotels we were way off that was my next one minor hotels only owns nh collection see but doesn't someone own minor hotel it's just levels to this it keeps going uh but we got jim alderman is the winner today with oh good job jim getting that guess in there everyone else way off but my favorite part today bad guesses today as Lou says I want to give a shout out to Monica our producer backstage Will's on vacation Monica filling in very nicely thank you Monica well man what a great show today love our great sponsors built and stay five thanks for joining us but we shared a lot of fun stuff today and listeners if you haven't yet make sure to hit subscribe it's always great to see our subscriber list growing and of course if you haven't yet share this with a friend, invite them to the party.

29:34We need some more players for whose game is it anyway? We love playing this game with everyone. So listen until next week, everyone.

29:42Sarah Dandashy: Yes. Stay hospitable.

30:16ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters.