How Better Guest Experiences Drive Hotel Revenue

Glenn: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. It’s your hospitality friend, Glenn. I’m excited today because I got my new friend Rihannon Reynolds. She’s the VP of operations with Innisfree. Company that I’ve never been able to talk to before. Maybe she didn’t get the memo. I’m finally able to do this. Rihanna, it’s so great to see you.

Rihannon: [00:00:15] It’s good to see you as well.

Glenn: [00:00:16] All right. So I’m recording this with you here in Pensacola, Florida, right after the July 4th weekend. Y’all were crushing it down here.

Rihannon: [00:00:23] Right after July 4th and right before Blue Angels. If you’ve not been here for Blue Angels, that is an experience that cannot be replicated.

Glenn: [00:00:31] And if for those of you international people that don’t know, they are an amazing group of ace fighters, and their planes are all blue, they fly in formation and do all sorts of really cool stuff. Yeah, but listen, things are really, really great on one level, but your life as an operator has become so much more complicated on another. How are you dealing with continually increasing prices? A ADR threshold which we may not have met, but it’s getting a little bit tougher out there and all of these other ancillary challenges we weren’t thinking about in the pre 2020 kind of days.

Rihannon: [00:01:04] Right, right. It’s a challenging world, that’s for sure. You know, whether we’re talking about insurance costs or labor costs or just the cost of operating. Right. Every cost is coming up and our revenues are not keeping pace with the inflation of the cost. So we’re always just like day to day, looking for creative solutions to make sure that we maintain the integrity of our bottom line for our partners. And, and also maintain guest satisfaction. Like we’re here at the beach, we want everyone to be happy all day long, every day. So that’s my day to day challenge every day.

Glenn: [00:01:42] Well, fortunately, from the looks of it back there, that seems to be a good guest satisfaction tool. So that’s probably very helpful.

Rihannon: [00:01:47] It helps. It helps. Right.

Glenn: [00:01:49] Some other hotels may not have that beautiful white sandy beach out there that I won’t touch because I’m wearing too many nice clothes. But I will say, I will say that it is difficult out there, and I’m thinking you need to change from a ADR mindset to kind of a total customer revenue mindset, right? Right now, I’m just guessing here that that’s what you’re thinking about. Yeah.

Rihannon: [00:02:10] We do look for ways to make incremental revenue. And it’s a key part of our success at this point, right?

Glenn: [00:02:17] So yeah, because the reason why I say that and for you folks out there, it’s because you get the threshold of how much guests are willing to pay. But once they’re in house, that guest might become extremely valuable to you, much more so than whatever you might be able to get in a room rate by cleverly connecting the dots. And this is a great location where I think people are coming and they’re on vacation, and the sun and the sand probably makes their wallets a little bit looser and gives you opportunities.

Rihannon: [00:02:40] It can, it certainly can. Right. And that’s really, and that increases the guest satisfaction as well, right? Because the more that we can offer you while you’re here and keep you here in insight, you don’t have to get in your car, you don’t have to deal with traffic. You don’t have to drive anywhere. You’re here. You can have a great pizza, you can have a great meal, you can have a fantastic virgin daiquiri or non virgin daiquiri, whichever you prefer.

Glenn: [00:03:04] I love that I’ve been doing a lot of content. Rhiannon on mocktails and all of that. Yeah. In fact, one resort I recently spoke to had an extensive high quality cocktail list, but mocktail versions of each one of those.

Rihannon: [00:03:17] So important, you know, the world is changing every day. And part of our job as hoteliers is to adapt to changing consumer wants, needs, desires. Right. How do you.

Glenn: [00:03:27] Tell between a real long term consumer change versus jumping on the fad wagon.

Rihannon: [00:03:34] A trend might be a special. Yeah, right. Might be a special for one Wednesday night. And a real consumer shift is going to be something that we’re going to adapt across our portfolio. Yeah.

Glenn: [00:03:45] I love it. What is what are you most excited about for potential opportunity even said against the backdrop of challenges?

Rihannon: [00:03:53] Well, you know, I’m always excited to watch our company grow, to watch a thing that I’m passionate about is watching young people become involved in the world of hospitality. We work really hard to host a lot of interns to work in a lot of universities and spread the word of hospitality. It is a career choice that people can make and not an accidental job. I think that we have just such an engaging time. So many people passionate about travel around the world. What an exciting opportunity for us to build a workforce that really cares about hospitality and knows how to be hospitable. I mean, I love the World Cup of footage, the like the PR for the US that like, oh my gosh, we’re so friendly. We’re here in the South. We really are friendly, right? So we love.

Glenn: [00:04:42] Except when you say, bless your heart. And I know let’s not call your heart. All right. That’s my message to wrap this up. But before I do, yeah. How did you get involved in hospitality and what made you fall in love?

Rihannon: [00:04:53] I got involved by accident. Right. And that’s why I want to spread the word. I never I never considered this a career choice. I have a degree in journalism. I worked in higher education, moved to a town where there was no higher education, and got involved in tourism, and have been in the industry for 26 years. Wow. So now I, you know, I teach and I constantly spread spread the love of hospitality far and wide.

Glenn: [00:05:21] Good. We need more people like you.

Rihannon: [00:05:23] We do. We absolutely.

Glenn: [00:05:24] Do. You said it best because too many accidental hoteliers, we all need to bounce, bind together and get young folks interested and understanding. There’s so many great opportunities out there, not just for you as hoteliers to make more money, but shape that next generation that’s going to rise all of our boats up. Thanks so much for watching. Be sure to like, share, subscribe and all that kind of good stuff. So Brianna and myself, thanks for watching.

Rihannon: [00:05:45] Thank you.