Gen Z, Millennials, and the Vacation Ownership Shift

Glenn: [00:00:00] Everybody is your hospitality friend Glenn, here at the ARDA Spring Conference. I’m stoked because I found a new friend, Gordon Gurnik, COO of Hilton Grand Vacations. I’m looking forward to have a real grand chat with him today. How you doing, man?

Gordon: [00:00:12] Oh very good. I’m excited to be here. I’m very excited to get a chance to spend some time with you.

Glenn: [00:00:16] And I’m excited. I’m excited because we’ve never had a chance to speak before we just met. So I’m curious is you’ve been in the industry. We just I just learned 38 years. What drew you to timeshare? Why do you love timeshare? And I know that that’s not the topic we’re talking about.

Gordon: [00:00:29] Oh, no. Well, yeah. I mean, what drew me to temperature was an accident. It was a summer job that turned into a lifelong career. That’s awesome. Which often happens. You get addicted to the hospitality, spending time with all these owners, you know, building these beautiful resorts, getting a chance to travel around the world. It’s a great industry to work in, and it’s great to see all these lifelong memories you make for all these owners. It’s hard not to love this place.

Glenn: [00:00:50] So tell me a little bit about what you do as chief Operating Officer. What are you thinking about? What are the big issues that you’re considering in order to make sure the company is profitable and guests are crazily happy now.

Gordon: [00:01:00] Well, the first thing is the last thing you just said. How can we deliver inspired hospitality? How can we do the best by these 720,000 members that we have across.

Glenn: [00:01:09] 720,000.

Gordon: [00:01:10] 720,000.

Glenn: [00:01:11] Members.

Gordon: [00:01:12] Across over 200 properties across the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan. And so first, how can we deliver those great experiences? How can we deliver those great stays? The beautiful thing about time, Sheriff, none of you have experienced it before. You get all the added space, you get kitchens, you get, you know, laundry, you get the bedroom to put your kids to sleep so you can watch TV. And then we deliver all these great experiences for all those owners across, you know, all the resorts that we have. We do about 3800 experiences for our members a year. So there’s one going on virtually every day at one of our properties.

Glenn: [00:01:43] All right. So what does that mean? The word experience is very vague. So let’s break it down 3800 experiences does that. That probably ranges from everything from arts and crafts to special passes to F1.

Gordon: [00:01:54] Well, we certainly do all the things like arts and crafts, but it’s more than just that. Yeah, yeah, it could be anything from, say, a chef’s dinner or wine tasting with some other owners getting to go to a baseball game, or we’ll take you there, we’ll put you in a suite, maybe talk to a retired player. Do we do a whole concert series where you have a private concert, you know, with somebody like a, a Bebe Rexha or a Tucker Whittemore or, you know, someone like that? Once again, we’ll bring you to that event. You get a chance to see that with just other owners. Yeah. All the way up to our, we have a couple signature events. One is F1. We’re here in Las Vegas. We do the F1 race here in Las Vegas. We have a resort called Elara. It’s actually the largest freestanding timeshare in the world.

Glenn: [00:02:32] I had no idea. Yeah, really 1300 rooms. I didn’t know it was the largest one in the world. It is like that. That’s pretty cool. Seven stories I just took. I was just over there last week because I was preparing for Arda and I happened to be in town, so I went to a number of places just to check it out. And that place is it’s.

Gordon: [00:02:49] A beautiful property. So we’re very excited. And it sits nicely right on Las Vegas Boulevard and Harmon. So you have the turn coming right into the paddock. We put about a 400 foot viewing platform right on on Harmon Avenue. We do three concerts over the three days, and then when you get a chance to watch the race, food and beverage, that’s a great experience.

Glenn: [00:03:07] Because the pool area is like already looking over Harmon. So it’s probably very easy for you to just extend that.

Gordon: [00:03:11] We, we actually, because it’s in the late fall, we cover the pool. That’s where we do our concerts. And then we actually build a whole viewing stand. So you have a beautiful view of the track.

Glenn: [00:03:19] I love that. So how essential are creating curated experiences to getting new people to join and to get admission, and to get people that are already members to tell the world how amazing it is. And they should do it too.

Gordon: [00:03:34] Well, I think it’s really essential. I mean, if you look what’s happening with demographics and with travel, I mean, it used to be about the room. It used to be about the stage. These great properties, people are really craving experience. It’s about curating and gathering experiences these days. You know, a lot of it is social media. And people want to be able to show all these things they’ve done. So to us, I think it’s essential and it’s part of that club membership. Being a member, it gives you these experiences. You couldn’t get any other.

Glenn: [00:03:57] Way, right? Access, access access. Now I’m gonna I’m gonna take you to task because you’re making it sound really easy. It is easy. Come on. Whatever. I mean, it’s it is very difficult to create an idea, do a deal, a partnership like that, and actuate it, and then make sure you follow it all the way through. So how do all of these things kind of come together? Where do you dream them up? How do you know what people are really loving so you can make that real emotional connection with them?

Gordon: [00:04:25] As much as I joke to your point, it is really complicated. But the great thing is we have an amazing team, 22,000 team members across our resorts. They are fantastic people with just super high dedication. But it really starts with the members. We talk to them, we survey them all the time. We try and understand what are they thinking, what do they want next? What’s that next thing that’s happening? What’s the next trend? And how can we get in front of that and do that?

Glenn: [00:04:49] So what is that next trend and how are you thinking about getting in front of it?

Gordon: [00:04:52] I think it’s leaning more and more into experiences. I agree. You know, it’s it’s you know, we do a lot of these, what I call small group experiences, continuing to make them more and more personal is going to be the next thing that we really need to work on for us continuing to expand our resort network and, you know, creating those special experiences at our resort. Next week, I think is where it’s going. Artificial intelligence and all of that. It is going to change this whole space. It’s going to, I think actually for us though, show people what they can do even more and easier because to your point, you talk about it’s hard to create the events. Hey, it’s hard for a consumer to understand what what all can you do? Hey, you’re coming to Las Vegas. What can you do? Right? I think there’s great opportunities.

Glenn: [00:05:31] Because Las Vegas. Yeah. Las Vegas is one of those places where there’s so much to do. It can kind of be paralyzing because you don’t know what to do. And with AI, if it really knows who I am, then hey, if your next your next stay at Elara, why don’t you try these one, two, three things that it already knows that I’m into.

Gordon: [00:05:49] And more and more as we know what you’ve done and you tell us what you like to do. We can really help you plan those events and suggest where to go next and what the next opportunity can be for you.

Glenn: [00:05:57] All right, so I like eating too much. I like live music. And one day I hope to be able to get a good nap.

Gordon: [00:06:03] Then you need to be a member of HDB.

Speaker 3: [00:06:06] Sounds like it. Anything else you want to add?

Gordon: [00:06:09] Just. I think the future is bright for this space. When you think about what what our up and coming consumers looking for, they want a great stay. They want space and they want great experiences and we deliver all of that.

Glenn: [00:06:19] Okay, so I got another question for you then before we wrap up here. You’ve been in the business 38 years ish, give or take. So how is the consumer like thinking today about that investment in a vacation for X amount of decades versus what the product was like originally?

Speaker 3: [00:06:36] Well, you.

Gordon: [00:06:37] Know, it’s a lot different than people really think about it. And that’s why I think it’s great if you think of like a millennial that has young kids, this is the perfect product for them because.

Glenn: [00:06:44] And again, let me just mention, according to Jason Gammel, the CEO and president of ATA, 73% of new purchases are either Gen Z or millennials, and I think millennials is about 40% of that number.

Speaker 3: [00:06:56] I think that’s about right.

Gordon: [00:06:57] And I think they’re really attracted to the product. Just what.

Gordon: [00:06:59] You’re saying.

Gordon: [00:07:00] It’s really you’re buying a currency, you’re buying these points these days. And the great thing about that, you can go across our 200 properties. You can go and take that, break it up into a couple smaller unit vacations. You can save for a year and go and stay in that penthouse overlooking the ocean. If you want to do a big family reunion for us, because Hilton Grand Vacations, part of the Hilton network, you can convert your point to Hilton Honors. If you want to go stay somewhere in Asia where we don’t have a resort, you can do that. It has the ultimate inflexibility beyond all of those experiences that we give. And, you know, as your kids are growing up, you can get those big units when they’re off in college and you want to do some city stays. You can come and stay with us in New York. Maybe you only need a, you know, a studio unit for that. And you can do 2 or 3 of those.

Glenn: [00:07:41] Where were you before my kids just graduated college. Damn it. I had this opportunity to go away. I missed it.

Gordon: [00:07:46] You still got opportunities. I got a lot of travel.

Glenn: [00:07:48] Ahead.

Gordon: [00:07:49] Of you.

Glenn: [00:07:49] I think that is good. They may be living at home again, but they are old enough to be left alone. I like that idea. How about one last thing? How about a good piece of advice to young people out there about why hospitality is awesome and how they could excel in their careers?

Gordon: [00:08:03] Well, to me, I think what’s so amazing about hospitality, it’s why I’ve ended up being in my whole career. You get this opportunity to see these happy families, to impact people’s lives, to just, you know, you see those memories being made right in front of you. It’s just, it’s just so rewarding every day. It’s a great industry to be in. There’s tons of innovation, there’s tons of activity happening. It’s all kinds of things. It’s food and beverage. It’s construction, it’s marketing, it’s sales. It’s entertainment.

Glenn: [00:08:27] Gordon. I sum it up, sum it up by saying, no matter what you love to do, hospitality has it. He’s. Gordon. I’m Glenn. Please like share subscribe to this video. And I gotta run because I gotta go stay at a Lara over there across the street. See you all later. Bye.

Gordon: [00:08:43] Take care.