The Group Business Edge Hotels Keep Missing

Glenn: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. It’s your hospitality friend. Glenn, thank you so much for tuning in today. I’m excited because we’re going to be peeling back some of these layers of technology and stuff like that to help you understand some of the corporate travel trends are doing out there, how you can benefit from those trends in the market, some other observations that are going to help empower you to be more successful. Speaking of successful empowerment, have you visited my friends over at Actabl because you know what? They give you the power to profit. Please check out actabl.com. All right. Haven’t had him on in a while, so I’m so glad they reached out because we can. I love touching base with this guy. I’m talking about Lukasz Dabrowski, SVP, Global Supplier Relations at HR Group. How you doing, bro? How’s it going?

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:00:45] Doing fantastic. Thank you very much. Summer’s not over, Glenn. It just moves to Greece.

Glenn: [00:00:51] All right, all right, all right. Now I’m. Now I’m offended because number one, I’m not in Greece. And number two, I saw a leaf on my driveway this morning and can’t have any of that. It has a slight yellow tinge to it as well. But I will tell you what, Lucas. I have been out there on the road, and one of the things that I’m noticing, at least when it comes to the leisure side of hospitality, is here in the United States, I think hospitality has become completely uncoupled from the overall economy. People want to travel, people need to travel, and people are putting a priority on travel while stopping maybe buying things. I’m curious as to what trends you’re seeing on your side of the world, and is there any sort of mirroring with that, perhaps with the need to get together to get stuff actually done?

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:01:42] Glenn 100% in the US are not an exception. It started right after Covid with what we used to call revenge travel. And I think the trend continues. So if it’s about leisure related decisions no doubt about it. People want to make up for the lost time. And in this volatile, uncertain world that is surrounding us tomorrow may never come, I guess, is the you know what sticks in the back of the heads of those who are making those travel decisions? That’s right.

Glenn: [00:02:12] That’s right. Although with the price of some of the flights that I’ve seen right now, like maybe I could walk, you know, I could wait till tomorrow.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:02:21] Oh, they’re, you know, they will wait. They will wait to get the right bang for their buck and right. And, but.

Glenn: [00:02:27] They may not be able to go to Greece. Like I’m going to have to as soon as we finish recording, but they can certainly hop in the car and go somewhere local. The point is, people are continuing to travel no matter what is going on. So what is the actual picture that you’re seeing in your side of the, in your side of the equation?

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:02:44] So my side, for those of you who don’t remember or are seeing me for the first time, my side.

Glenn: [00:02:51] For teeing.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:02:51] It up is global business travel. So anything to do with large corporations moving around the world. And and we have seen some very heavy and healthy growth since post pandemic, we have reached the pre-pandemic levels in terms of the the overall spend globally already back in 2024, 2024 to 2025, we’ve grown by another 8.5% and another 7.2% is expected for 2026 seven. According to our dear friends from the Global Business Travel Association.

Glenn: [00:03:28] That’s exciting. Here’s one question for you. I, I’m not saying you know the answer to it, but I gotta ask the question, how much of that is actually more people traveling versus just more expensive to travel? Yeah, I.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:03:40] Think it’s a combination. You know, we’ve.

Glenn: [00:03:42] Gotta be right.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:03:43] We’ve come across a really interesting study and the surveys that basically say most of the travel decision makers in the corporate environment, they they do expect their travel spend will rise. I think well over 62% is actually saying that for 2027, they will see their budgets rising. But only 50% are saying that this actually means more bookings. So that tells you a story that that basically means the overall expense is going up and it’s going up rapidly.

Glenn: [00:04:21] And yeah, and if I’m half the half the respondents are saying people are going to travel more. That’s a really good sign for the business. But my guess is on the corporate side, they’re getting more discriminating. They’re trying to figure out ways to kind of strip out expenses where they can, maybe not from the actual hotel experience, but from figuring out where their people are going to stay and all of that kind of stuff. How is that kind of changing and morphing as, as we enter this new, incredible technology era?

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:04:52] I think there’s there’s a couple of major trends that that we should continue to watch. So so large corporations are obviously interested in and getting the most for their combined aggregated buying power and what that means from a, you know, hotel perspective or a hotel chain perspective is that from one account for one big organization, corporate organization, you will see streams of demand that span across individual travel. So transient business as well as meetings, groups, long stay demand, and the way that the corporate decision makers will want to see it is bundled, consolidated into converged demands to be negotiated with the preferred hotel partners.

Glenn: [00:05:34] Okay, so converged demand means hey, I have a real strong understanding of how much I’m actually bringing to the table to create something that’s more accurate for them. So what are hoteliers got to do then, in order to be able to make sure that they’re in a great position to.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:05:53] I gotta say, you know, looking back a few years, I know for a fact we were not ready. As the supply industry for business travel, to actually appoint that single point of contact to deal with multiple streams of demand, even the largest global hotel organizations struggle with that. You know, you, you usually manage your transient individual business travel centrally, you have key account management teams and so on and so forth. But then meetings and events usually sits with the regions, with the markets, with the clusters. Similar story for long stay demand. So I think it’s taken some time, you know, for for the suppliers out there to get educated on how to make the most out of convergence in this attractive segment.

Glenn: [00:06:40] Right. So. All right, so then how do they, how can they make the most maybe you’ve got, maybe you got a tool out there or something like that that can help them, or maybe they just need to go to Imax, or maybe they just need to, you know, give me a call and maybe I’ll stay, I don’t know.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:06:58] Hey, brings me brings me straight into my other favorite topic, which is the power of data. You know, all the, all the AI talk of the industry, you know, it actually.

Glenn: [00:07:09] Lucas, I’m actually not allowed to do a podcast anymore without using the word a. There you go. I know. So.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:07:15] So guess what? It actually materializes into some very concrete, tangible benefits. And one of them is understanding every detail about where people go. What is the format of travel, whether it’s transient, whether it’s meetings and groups, what is the total spend? And, and far deeper than that, we can analyze average availability, average pay acceptance the overall quality of on stay and stay experience. So all of those KPIs. All of those measurable touchpoints of the customer journey are communicated to the customers in real time. Big corporations as well as to the hotel partners so that they know how to react to it. That transparency is something that without artificial intelligence, was just too much to digest, too much to handle.

Glenn: [00:08:10] Yeah, it really is, because we can only take in so much information. And that’s one of the great things that I’m seeing about AI. You could, you could make a list of maybe the not great things, but one of the great things is that it really synthesizes information very quickly in a way that we could leverage that data in a very smart way. You know, spot on the spot.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:08:32] You know, I mean, as a as a travel decision maker these days, you don’t have to wait for months to evaluate the performance of what we call your hotel program. So your preferred hotels performance worldwide, you know, instantly you have a problem in business district Sydney and you’re getting a great opportunity in Manhattan, New York. And you can do something about both in real time without waiting for the RFP cycle of procurement to to arrive in in nine months.

Glenn: [00:09:03] So, so what you’re really talking about is the edge, right? Giving people that little something extra so they can react quicker and, you know, and take advantage of, you know, during the Covid times and the pre Covid times, there’s a lot of people out there who weren’t actually salespeople. They just answered the phone, but they wouldn’t call you back sometimes for a day or two. And if you’re not responding immediately, you’re leaving money on the table. So it’s really becoming an issue of like minutes and seconds these days, right? Lucas.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:09:36] Totally. And and again, AI is only accelerating that. So, you know, spotting trends early enough and reacting to whatever is either an opportunity or an issue that you have to address. I’m talking about direct customer experience and account management for a large corporation. This is basically what drives the market these days.

Glenn: [00:09:59] Yeah. All right. So what else do we need to know?

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:10:04] Hey, I I do believe that the transparency is something that is way underestimated in terms of the hotelier’s perception these days. So we, we spend a lot of time talking about, hey, you know, let’s negotiate rates, let’s negotiate the static, let’s negotiate the dynamic. And and we are very stuck to this very traditional way of finding some form of a consensus between what is the ambition of revenue strategy decision makers and the ambition of a travel manager or a, or a purchasing persona in a corporation. The reality though is what happens right after right after we finalize those negotiations. Are we first and foremost Finalizing the request for pricing on time. Are we loading the rates correctly? You know, it’s September. It’s the right month to remind everybody back to school, back to business, and already start thinking not just about the end of the year. Start thinking about your rate extensions for 2027. And and with that comes a wealth of knowledge that also points out, okay, that negotiated rate, how many times out of ten was it available? And that is the sort of data that ends up in front of the eyes of corporate decision makers. How many times out of ten was my virtual payment successful on property level? And monitoring those KPIs has become a daily dynamic thing.

Glenn: [00:11:40] Yeah. I know. Also running out of time. So I want to make sure. Don’t forget everybody. Small meetings rule these days. So don’t get confused when you hear about the CES event and 150,000 people showing up there, there’s a lot of smaller bread and butter meetings that are happening by you, and responding to RFPs immediately will give you that edge, right?

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:12:02] Lucas 100%. Every third room night booked all over the world is in meetings and groups related room night, and 60% out of that is only small medium meetings. So up to maximum 4045 attendees.

Glenn: [00:12:19] Wow. People don’t think about meetings like that. And I really want you all out there to, to, to really reorient yourself. And Lucas, how can we learn more? How can we find what’s going on with you guys over there? Hopefully this is the right address over here.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:12:35] Definitely, definitely. And absolutely hit us up and listen, make sure you check out some of my latest LinkedIn posts. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Glenn: [00:12:44] Yeah, totally. All right. So I’m gonna just, I’m going to put up his name because it’s not how you think it’s spelled. There’s lots of lots of consonants in a row. I think it took me. What? I had to know you 3 or 4 years before I got dobrovsky down or something. That might.

Glenn: Lukasz: [00:13:00] Be right.

Glenn: [00:13:00] I don’t know, I, I, I have no idea. What I do know is his information is really good. Thank you so much for being here, Lucas. Please hang out, stick around. I want to thank all of you guys for being here today. You’re going to want to rewatch this because there’s some good stuff in there. Remember meetings, meetings, meetings. That’s how you can make more money. You need that edge. Technology can give you that edge in order to break through the clutter and get your property to stand out. Learn more about this and lots of other things. But of course, watching, listening, following us here on No Vacancy. I want to thank you all so much for being here. And remember, you’ve got one life. So blaze on and I’ll see you next time. Bye, everybody.