How Starwood Makes Its Hotels Feel Different: Nature, Soul, and Experience

Glenn: [00:00:00] Everybody. It’s your hospitality friend, Glenn, with a very special friend. Today I got Raul Leal, cEO of Starwood Hotels.

Raul: [00:00:07] Hello, everybody.

Glenn: [00:00:08] We’re hanging out at their annual conference right now. You know one hotels, treehouse hotels, baccarat. It’s great to see you.

Raul: [00:00:14] It’s great to see you. And thank you so much for being here. You’re the best host ever.

Glenn: [00:00:18] Hey, thanks. Yeah. Happy to be in seeing this event. I’m having so much fun doing this with you. One of the things that I really love about your company is that you see what everyone else is doing and you’re like, nah, we’re going to go do something else. How are you thinking about differentiating and making sure that consumers fully understand what you’re all about?

Raul: [00:00:35] Well, you know, it’s obviously embedded in our history with a chairman like Barry Sterling, right? So we’re always trying to innovate, but I think our positioning is pretty clear.

Glenn: [00:00:43] Let me just put a pin in that for one second. For those of younger people who don’t know, Barry Sternlicht really created the modern hotel industry going back to the 1990s with W. He saw what everyone was doing and said, we’re not taking any of those floral bread spreads. We’re going to change absolutely everything from the ground up and now is reinventing hospitality again. So sorry to interrupt.

Raul: [00:01:01] Not at all. But it was a novel idea. He fixed the bed, actually, in the hotel business. It was a great idea. But I think our perspective is today that products need to have some emotion behind them. Yeah. You know, there’s so many hotels around the world and you can sometimes walk into one and say it’s lacking a little soul. So when we talk about experiences a lot, it’s really about touching consumers at the very heart of it, understanding their preferences, using AI to understand them without being creepy, by the way. Right. And just giving them what they want when they’re on property and delight and surprise them as we go along the way with a lot of different benefits from the mission program.

Glenn: [00:01:32] So I’ll say there’s a duality going on. Number one is the first part of it is creating the the box. You call it the hardware, the hardware this morning. Right? That’s right. And what’s really great about what your philosophy is, you’re focused on nature and all of that. So you come in and you automatically start to feel well coming on the, you know, coming off the trend of bringing the outside inside, you’ve done that exceptionally well with reclaimed woods and, you know, fabrics and materials and all that. And that kind of sets the stage. Then it’s all about humanity. That’s right. Right?

Raul: [00:02:01] That’s right. Absolutely. And I think you know, Barry’s idea was of course, the one hotel sustainable brand. And the ethos of the brand is, you know, the world is beautiful. We want to keep it that way. And, you know, the, the, I think the, the consequence of what he did on the design side was this the natural materials just make you more grounded, feel you more relaxed. We get that from our consumers all the time. So that along with that, we also want to entertain our consumers. We want to make sure that we’re providing them what they need from a holistic perspective, but also great food and beverage dining choices at their own, with their own perspective about each one. They can select whatever they want to select.

Glenn: [00:02:36] And that’s really what’s, what’s critical is getting to know the consumers and then being able to give them what they really want. That’s right. What you’re doing is, I think, fundamentally different than what other folks are doing out there, right? By bringing in the humanity, by focusing on the nature, by focusing on the wellness, you’ve positioned yourselves in a way that you’re not going to be fighting on revenue per available room. You’re really looking more at the total revenue per customer and how to make them want to spend that money graciously and willingly.

Raul: [00:03:04] That’s right. And, you know, and we we have one of the highest tread bars in the industry.

Glenn: [00:03:08] I’m not surprised.

Raul: [00:03:09] Across the board. But again, most of our consumers tell us that they they don’t mind paying our high prices because they know we’re giving back. So it eases their guilt.

Glenn: [00:03:18] Yeah.

Raul: [00:03:19] We think it’s a great it’s a great way to look at it.

Glenn: [00:03:21] Right. So the point of the mission program is it’s not really just a loyalty program. Not at all. It’s a it’s a program that’s reinventing how we give back through our experiences.

Raul: [00:03:29] And letting people know that we actually are affecting other people by them, you know, selecting something they want to be affiliated with, but also getting perks of the hotels.

Glenn: [00:03:36] Yeah. All right. Listen, I wish we could talk for like a full 45 minutes or so, but we’re at a conference right now, so we’re not going to be able to do that. Anything you want to say before we do wrap up when we get out there?

Raul: [00:03:45] No. Look, the hotel world is amazing and hopefully we all continue to profit together in the future because it’s still the best industry in the world, in my opinion, and we’re happy to be a part of it.

Glenn: [00:03:56] Give me an example about how you focus on thinking differently than everybody else out there every day.

Raul: [00:04:01] I think we we do, we do look at data quite a bit and we look at what consumers are doing. Sometimes what they’re trying to tell us in signals sometimes doesn’t come through the data. So we have a lot of consumer focus groups and a lot of employee focus groups that tell us and guide us to where we’re headed. We listen to the employees so much and there’s so many great ideas. Now, we do believe that you know, most of the great ideas come from the people closest to the work. That’s part of the secret, right?

Glenn: [00:04:24] That makes that makes a whole lot of sense. And the good thing is he’s sharing all the secrets because a lot of people, they’re all talking. Well, it’s only a few of them, but they’re actually not going to put in the hard work in order to make it actually done right. You could be that person. Raul became that person. Glenn, he’s Raul, thanks so much for watching. Like share, subscribe. And I want to thank you. They give you the power to profit. See you later.

Raul: [00:04:40] Thank you everybody. Thanks.