How Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Turns Meetings Into Repeat Leisure

Glenn: [00:00:00] Everybody at your hospitality, friend. You land here. I’m excited because I’m at the Margaritaville Margaritaville Beach Resort. I’m already having too many margaritas. I think over here we got Michael Cook over here, director of sales and marketing. So we’re at Margaritaville, Hollywood Beach, the first the original ten years plus here. Now we got our pop flip flop over here. Michael, your director of sales and marketing. And one of the things that I love about this brand is you have such brand clarity and everything you do expresses it. And this flip flop over here, I don’t I don’t mean to get too excited, but it really turned me on back in 2015 because as really social media and Instagram was starting to rise, this became almost your mascot for the, for the property. So what’s it been like over here?

Michael: [00:00:45] It is, you know, when you walk through the door here, it sets the tone, right? It literally just sets the tone and a nice brand entrance here at Margaritaville. It’s been an exciting I’ve been here eight plus years. Yeah, it’s been an exciting, an exciting time for me. And again, that door every day someone I’m.

Speaker 3: [00:01:01] Gonna go through this door right over here.

Glenn: [00:01:03] There we go.

Michael: [00:01:03] Somebody new walks through here for the first time every day. Although the property’s been ten years plus. And that’s what makes it exciting for me, is that we get to sell our story every day, and people get to experience something new. And just have fun and escapism and what we provide with Margaritaville.

Glenn: [00:01:19] Yeah, it’s really great. I happen to be attending an event here the other day. Oh, and by the way, I should want to, I gotta, I gotta say, thanks to Actabl. Actable, they give you the power to profit. They’re supporting this podcast, so don’t want to forget them. actabl.com. But I was at an event yesterday and it was really nice how you carried the, the theming throughout. We, you know, we had like a tropical foods, for example the opening night party, we had coconuts.

Michael: [00:01:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, throughout the whole process, when you come through here, from the time you walk through the door until you exit, you are going to feel that fun and escapism through the check in process. You’re going to be welcomed with a smile. Right on the very top over here. Yep. No passport required. Right. You have that Caribbean feel, but no passport required. So easy to get here, easy to get out. But at the same point in time, you really get that Caribbean experience. Like you’re on some island deserted on your own.

Speaker 3: [00:02:09] That’s right. I’ve I’ve.

Glenn: [00:02:10] Actually stayed at one in Bahamas and I got the actual Caribbean experience. And this is a, this is great. I love this property because it really helped define the brand itself. So when you’re thinking about the brand DNA, who is your core audience here for guests? And then maybe meetings and you know, how does it, how do you meet them where they are psychologically and psychologically?

Michael: [00:02:33] It’s funny, the poor changes, the core changes with the seasonality. Yeah. And that’s one of the best things about the property. And I think most all the properties with Margaritaville is that you could have the couple that’s coming to maybe celebrate an anniversary. And they can have a really great stay here. And it’s more couple focused from utilizing the spa during the day, utilizing license to chill our 21 and older pool bar up on the 11th floor that most people don’t even know about that.

Glenn: [00:02:59] No. It’s great. Well, I know about it because of those great aerial pictures, but. Right. I forgot about it. And then I discovered it while walking around.

Michael: [00:03:07] And then having a nice romantic dinner at our top tier steakhouse and seafood house at J.w.b. So that experience can be one experience for that couple. But at the same point in time, you got a couple of a family of four coming in, and their experience at the same time is mom and dad are here and you have the teenage son and maybe the the smaller daughter. And they’re like, what? What are we going to do for the family? And that family can have the same fun and escapism, but in a different way, right? They may have a nice one bedroom or two bedroom suite, a nice ocean view. And during the day, the teenager may be on the flowrider using that the teenage girls out on the beach building sand castles with mom, and then dad can go hang out and have a cup of some great food and beverage options, but mom can go hit the spot or dad can hit the spot. We got Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Glenn: [00:03:54] I wish you I wish you had this when my twins were little, because my wife would always, like, cuddle with them and make them go to sleep. And I’d have to go to the hotel bar and I would have many, many choices over here. All right, so let’s flip around and take a look at the the steakhouse that we got going on here and the rest of this lobby. I love the depth of the lobby. I love how appealing it is. And one of the cool things about this lobby, Mike, is that you have little areas for people to kind of be alone together in this area over there. And over here, it’s just big open spaces with high ceilings.

Michael: [00:04:28] Besides the flip flop, there are some signature pieces to the lobbies, and you’ll find these in most of the Margaritaville that you find is one is the upside down margarita chandelier here.

Glenn: [00:04:39] Yes, I love that here. I’m gonna go focus up on that for a second. Keep talking. Mike.

Michael: [00:04:44] I see that’s for every site visit a month I do is a margarita that I get. But just a great, unique something that that comes in and again, gets you ready for that stay. Yeah. And then also, as you mentioned, the cabanas and look on the cabanas, you’ll see all these little lyrics on top of those demands when.

Glenn: [00:05:00] You turn it around. Keep talking. Mike.

Michael: [00:05:02] As you’re moving through the property, you see these lyrics that really just continue to put you in a good mood, a good spirit.

Glenn: [00:05:10] It’s great. All right, back to you. All right. I think, Mike, maybe we should go outside and take a look at the outside area. All right. So let’s keep walking. Let’s do it. Let’s go this way.

Michael: [00:05:23] And off in the morning. You wake up, right? You come over, stop and get a nice.

Glenn: [00:05:27] Yep. I’m gonna flip the camera around. We can see the coffee. Keep talking. All right.

Michael: [00:05:30] Get yourself a nice coffee. Specialized coffee. They make it in the morning and anything you’re looking to get there and start off with your coffee in the morning. And if you don’t have the right attire at the moment, you think, hey, what? I want to really fit in here. Stop at our Margaritaville retail outlet here and get yourself a nice t shirt or a nice swimsuit or whatever.

Glenn: [00:05:48] You know, Mike, what I really like about this is that it’s very light and airy and just feels good. It doesn’t feel pretentious, it feels open, and it feels welcoming.

Michael: [00:06:00] Be who you.

Glenn: [00:06:00] Be who you are. Yeah. Enjoy yourself. Let’s head outside. So obviously, the outdoor portion is as integral to the operation as absolutely everything as absolutely anything else, right. So how do you go about how do you go about making sure there’s something for everyone out here? And how did you decide on how to put it all together?

Michael: [00:06:23] The pools are a little bit different here. When you.

Glenn: [00:06:24] Walked over here.

Michael: [00:06:25] Landshark.

Glenn: [00:06:26] Pool.

Michael: [00:06:26] Do you walk in?

Glenn: [00:06:27] Yeah, let’s do that.

Michael: [00:06:27] Walk in.

Glenn: [00:06:29] All right. So you’re saying they’re all a little bit different.

Michael: [00:06:33] So landshark pool you’re going to find with the water features and the water slides and kind of a beach feel here that you’re going to find your your families with the smaller children.

Glenn: [00:06:47] All right. We got security. Good, good security. Mike. I’m surprised they let me in. All right. So this is more of the family pool. I love the slide that you have over here. So you’re.

Michael: [00:06:56] Fine. Yeah. So you’ll find most of your families and everything over here for this pool experience. Younger children and mothers and everything playing and dads playing with the younger children and restaurant and bar right off of here. So, and then also too, if you’re looking to upgrade your experience a little bit, you have cabanas with TVs. Oh that’s.

Glenn: [00:07:15] Nice. Let’s take a look at the cabanas. It’s great. A little bit of and this is where a little bit of a getaway.

Michael: [00:07:20] This gentleman right here. There’s a way to.

Glenn: [00:07:22] Hey, how are you doing? Thanks for bringing us those drinks. Very nice guy. It seems to be 5:00 somewhere, but not right here. This is depressing. Somewhere, though. Somewhere? Yeah. It’s a way to kick off that.

Michael: [00:07:32] Beginning experience.

Glenn: [00:07:33] Right? Yeah. That’s great. Hey, I love how friendly everybody is.

Michael: [00:07:38] And that’s going to be your key throughout. As we walk around here today is the team members here. They just are natural and who they are and their natural hospitality caregivers. And they want to take care of our guests. And as part of the hiring process here to make sure we’re finding the right people in the right positions.

Glenn: [00:07:54] Yeah, I was I think that you’ve done an exceptional job. And before. Before. Honestly, we went on air. We were with the with the manager. And I was actually complimenting some of the people that I’ve seen here. Every single person you know, my I got the smile test. I always smile and nod and see if they respond. Not only that, but it’s like, it’s great to see you. How can we help you? Is there something we can do better for our trip? So you’re doing something real, right, with the hiring.

Michael: [00:08:20] You know, you look at that and you just hospitality, right? Open ended questions, right. Ask people how their trips done and and they’ll talk to you. They’ll tell you how things are going. Yeah. That’s right. Right. And they’ll tell you if it’s going really, really good. And I’ll also tell you if things are something that needs to be fixed and worked on, and let’s get on that quickly. But if you don’t ask the open ended questions, you’re not going to find.

Glenn: [00:08:39] That is a really great tip, Mike, because you could say if your trip going good and then that’s, that doesn’t really get you an answer that you want to hear. I love it, but if you ask an open ended question, the guest gives the information and then you can translate that into creating more success. What are you here for? What do you celebrate?

Michael: [00:08:56] What do you do? What are your family? What are you.

Glenn: [00:08:58] Doing? Okay, now you’re getting me excited.

Michael: [00:08:59] Now you find out the information of why they’re here, right?

Glenn: [00:09:01] And are you able to turn that into actionable insights?

Michael: [00:09:04] For sure. We know that there’s anniversary. We can have something sent out, but we know it’s a birthday. We can have a birthday sent up a lot of times too. If they if if it’s a birthday, we have pre packages for birthdays and they can purchase all that stuff before and we do it already. But if we get that surprise, like, hey, we just found out it’s somebody’s birthday, they can get that to the front desk, ask for an amenity, have it sent up and say happy birthday. And it could be any team member here that wants to do that.

Glenn: [00:09:25] I love that. Let’s keep let’s keep walking. That’s great. So all right, so you say any team member could do that. One of the questions that I like to ask, Mike, is sure you say that, but how do you make sure you create a culture that that is the reality of how your staff responds to create those experiences?

Michael: [00:09:42] When, you know, the Vic is that when you do do that and it happens, you celebrate it, you talk about it because a lot of times the customers will write about it. Oh my God, what a great surprise. You know, I got this. We talk about it here, make it a culture. Yeah. Right. And then it becomes a reality as everyday work.

Glenn: [00:09:59] I love all right. So we’re headed out now towards this other pool area here.

Michael: [00:10:05] So so this is lone palm pool.

Glenn: [00:10:12] I know I see more than one pond Mike. This is great. I saw this I really got I really got a chuckle. I love how you did this. It really creates a sense of theming and experience. And it’s, it’s just a, it’s just a little bit it’s just a little bit fun, right?

Michael: [00:10:30] When you look at Margaritaville, if we walk through there in just a moment, you’re going to see it’s based on being in the water. This is the ship. And we walk inside to it has docks and other boats and everything. And the lighthouse too.

Glenn: [00:10:40] So yeah, when I was at the the one in the Bahamas it was right by the the cruise ship terminal. And it was so much fun watching the cruise ships go by, you know? And I was at the Orlando one. It was equally fun watching the families and their big cruise ship cars go and go by to Disney.

Michael: [00:10:56] That’s They’re both great properties.

Glenn: [00:10:58] Yeah. So let’s, let’s turn around and take a look at at the, at this experience over here.

Michael: [00:11:03] Additional cabanas and things over here. And you’ll see this is a little bit more relaxed. Yeah. In a hot tub and Jacuzzi over there too. So you’ll find a different kind of age group over here than with the younger families over there. And then lone palm pool is right over here too, as well. I’m sorry, the bar. Excuse me. The bar is here too, as well, so. And that’s open to also outside guests and inside guests. So you kind of see a little fencing there. So we have a lot of people.

Glenn: [00:11:27] So yeah, one side.

Michael: [00:11:29] Coming up on the outside so we can walk through there and walk outside.

Glenn: [00:11:32] Well, that’s an integral part of your business. And for those of you who don’t know, we’re really on the beach with boardwalk. I don’t use that term literally, but it’s a way for everybody to get down the beach, go to the beach, and there’s lots of little stores and there’s a real good drinking culture. And I think you’re allowed to take your booze with you on the go out here and drink outside. Right.

Michael: [00:11:49] You are as a Margaritaville customer, you can in this area right here and on the beach. And that’s pretty awesome. We have food and beverage service on the beach as well.

Glenn: [00:11:56] Oh really? Oh yeah. And then you also have the the happy hour joint that I went to the other day on the other side.

Michael: [00:12:01] 5:00. Yeah. So we’re connected to the Intracoastal. And the reason why that’s also a really big deal, too, is the water taxi from Fort Lauderdale comes here and picks up and drops off on the hour. So it’s just a connectivity to the Venice of America here in Fort Lauderdale area too, as well.

Glenn: [00:12:16] Awesome. You know what I think I want to do, Mike, I think let’s go up to the 11th floor to that cool pool and finish up up there. What do you say? All right. Hold on. With the magic of the of editing. Here we go. Woo! We made it up to the to the roof. The with with my magic powers over there. And one of the things, though, when you use magic powers to transport from downstairs to upstairs, you get rather hungry. And I’m I wanted to talk a little bit about the food and beverage offerings over here.

Michael: [00:12:41] Well, this is this is an amazing, amazing spaces we have. And this is where you’ve just earned your license to chill. So if you look over here, we have an adult pool 21 year aging up our own licensed restaurant and bar. So you can come up here and show and just have a nice, easy experience. All of our rooms start right here too, as well. Yeah, some of our guest rooms, you can just get on this floor and walk right out and do.

Glenn: [00:13:03] A little stand around. Yeah. All right, so you got the license to chill. What kind of food is over here? Because of probably more on the the the lighter side.

Michael: [00:13:10] This is on the side.

Glenn: [00:13:12] Yeah.

Michael: [00:13:12] Pools with burgers and tacos and things like that to as well. So very casual and approachable. Yeah. And then when you step out over, over to here, this is where it really gets fun. So six acres of fun and escapism total. And again, we mentioned the pools with lone palm pool and then landshark pool. But let’s look at this beach access. So all the beach access out in front of you. And what we didn’t mention is the broadwalk. We talked maybe a little bit about it, but it’s two and a half miles that you can just walk out and you can ride bikes, you can run just casual, but go out and there’s different entertainment from restaurants and shops and shopping. All right. Outside the door of the property.

Glenn: [00:13:47] It must be terrible having to work here.

Michael: [00:13:51] It is a place I enjoy driving to every day. And you know, I always appreciate when I drive home. What a great day it was.

Glenn: [00:13:58] All right, Mike, so you talked about the bar up here, but it’s really important to have like a lot of variety when it comes to the food and beverage offerings to create the full experience from a wonderful happy hour to the steakhouse that we talked about, how do you think about balancing the offerings in order to maximize revenue and tell me that incredible statistic that you shared with me when we were transported magically up here?

Michael: [00:14:20] Yes. So when you look at the property for a how much revenue the property does, almost half of the revenue is in food and beverage on a yearly annual basis. And the reason for that is all of the outlets that we have, our major outlets that we have are Landshark restaurant here at the pool area. One of the best views of looking at the ocean and boardwalk and enjoying the entertainment and music at night time that we provide. And then we provide F and B on the pool area. We have the lone palm pool license to chill here. Margaritaville restaurant downstairs. Then we have J.w.b, which is our high end Steakhouse and then across the street on intercoastal. We have 5:00 somewhere, so all the fruit is approachable, it’s affordable, and everyone’s going to enjoy something off of that menu. So capturing and making sure everyone has that great experience here at Margaritaville was part of it.

Glenn: [00:15:11] I love it. I’m coming back to you, Mike. All right. So let’s just talk one real quick about the the meetings. The meeting facility is great. I don’t think we need to to go check it out. I was just there yesterday, and I shot some stuff that people see, but tell me a little bit about how you create a great meeting and how it’s different than maybe some competitors.

Michael: [00:15:32] It, it is different. It’s different because again, that transient leisure experience that someone feels, you can feel that in the corporate world, maybe outside that meeting space, the meeting space is all on the ninth floor here. So it’s all contained in its own area where you can convenient. Yeah. I mean, it’s all right there where it’s uninterrupted. It’s great space. It has ocean views to the Atlantic Ocean, and the foyer area is a 10,000 square foot ballroom with eight different breakouts.

Glenn: [00:16:01] Don’t forget the terrorist.

Michael: [00:16:02] As well and a great terrorist do as well, especially on those breaks to step outside. So we do about 3000 group room nights a year and we do a great job with the companies that are basically the blue collar companies, but the white collar executive executives, right? Those and, you know, a lot of sales meetings, a lot of incentives. And it just really relates with the customer and the customers, and they bring their families and they come for sales meetings and the family gets to enjoy while they’re doing the meetings and things. So it’s a lot of fun.

Glenn: [00:16:38] I just got Tingley because I’m thinking about a lot of those families that are extending from the weekdays over the weekend.

Michael: [00:16:44] You know what, I hear them, the planner I like to say the attendees actually say is, I can’t wait to come back with my family. Yeah, they come here and see it and they go, I’m making this my next vacation place. So it works both ways, right? We get them when they come, they’re like, hey, you guys do meetings here too? I’d like to see about having my meeting here and the other way with the attendees from the meeting saying, I want to bring my family here on vacation.

Glenn: [00:17:03] That’s refreshing because I’m I’m afraid to tell my wife where I am. I’ll get that. I’ll get in trouble, especially here. Mike, anything else you want to say before we wrap up?

Michael: [00:17:14] You know, there’s so much more to talk about, too. I don’t, you know, it’s we have a spa. We have kids programs. There’s just entertainment. We have live entertainment five, seven nights a week, sorry, seven nights a week of live entertainment.

Glenn: [00:17:29] And not only that, but the boardwalk’s got a lot of great stuff going on. There’s a bandshell there that’s got music multiple days a week. And as we’re recording this, it’s a big food and wine festival that’s going to be happening this weekend.

Michael: [00:17:38] Correct. We do. It’s an annual event here and the tents are all set up.

Glenn: [00:17:40] And yeah.

Michael: [00:17:41] It’s going to be a fun weekend.

Glenn: [00:17:42] That’s awesome. Well, Mike, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Michael: [00:17:45] We appreciate you as well.

Glenn: [00:17:46] I appreciate you guys for watching all this way. Please like, share, subscribe and check out our friends at Actable. They’re bringing you the power to profit just like this guy because he’s awesome. See you all later.

Michael: [00:17:55] Fins up!

Glenn: [00:17:56] Hahaha!