Most Hotel Websites Don’t Use Video—That’s Why Guests Bounce

Glenn: [00:00:01] Look at your hospitality, friend Glenn. I don’t know where I am today. I think I’m at my desk, but I’ve been traveling so much I’m not entirely sure. But one of the things that I do know is when I’ve been on the road lately, I’ve been needing to book a lot of rooms, and I like having a little bit more experiences and starting to get frustrated with the same old, same old way that things look out there. Fortunately, I’ve got some friends out there that are trying to change that as us, as travelers want to get more connected to the places we’re staying. That’s why I got Mister Jason Craparo, CEO of hovr and Ethan Wiseman VP of product management with aven hospitality specifically. Guys, so great to see you here. Thank you so much for joining. Jason. Your goal is to get people to spend some time on websites, really draw it in. So that way we get a chance to make a good decision. Yeah.

Jason: [00:00:57] That’s right. Yeah. Your average person on hotel, your average hotel actually only has 1 to 2 videos throughout the whole site. The average hover client has 25 and it really is helping. It’s really helping the traveler book with confidence.

Glenn: [00:01:10] Yeah. Ethan, you’re all about videos. He said 1 to 2 videos on average. That’s obviously every hotel website known to mankind, because I think I’ve yet to come across one that has a good video in it. You guys are are creating videos out there. How are you helping make a difference?

Ethan: [00:01:27] Yeah, I think for us, the main thing is, is that today, static content, where it’s just an image truly doesn’t bring out the image and likeness of the hotel you’re in the brand that they’re serving. And so what, what hover does as a partnership is it really allows us to give depth contextually to the consumer in a fast, consumable way. That I don’t think anybody else is able to help with today.

Glenn: [00:01:48] Yeah. Because Jason, the fact of the matter is we’re all making, we’re all making decisions, but when we want to, to take a vacation or create a special experience for ourselves or for somebody that we’re with, that’s when we have a little bit more time in our brains to explore a little bit. And I guess that’s kind of where you come in because we were talking before and you said you’re all about creating those moments that matter.

Jason: [00:02:12] Yeah, absolutely. So if you I have three little kids, six, eight and ten. If I’m flying from Philadelphia to Denver, renting a car, going up into the mountains, I’m not winging it. I want to know every single element of this experience. What’s it’s going to be like. And so we, we usually deal in high consideration items, luxury boutique, independent properties that have a story to tell. And they’re causing people to they’re pulling people from across the country. And those people want clarity in their decisions.

Glenn: [00:02:37] Yeah, I feel like this partnership you guys have here, you’re going to be like the the SeatGeek of hotels, right? Because when I’m trying to go to a concert at Madison Square Garden where I know you’re the 200th above 12, you’re screwed, because then that thing is going to, you know, the skybridge is going to come down. I don’t know why I’m going to be looking at it. My hotel. Am I going to be like, am I going to be stretching my head to see the ocean, or am I going to be seeing it at a 45 degree angle? Ethan, you’re solving those problems.

Ethan: [00:03:05] Exactly. You know, and at the end of the day, we’ve got properties that have so much unique character and nature to them that a an image alone does not pay justice to to what has been curated by that property. And so by being able to give that depth, it really helps out the over 10,000 properties on Synexis booking engine.

Glenn: [00:03:26] So, Jason, how does all of this kind of come together for you and the vision of where you want to be and how you can help hoteliers?

Jason: [00:03:32] Yeah, I think Avon’s a perfect partner. They’ve got scale. They’ve they’ve got all of these partners that have trusted them for many years. And culturally, there’s just this spirit of experience. They want to actually bring in partners that take a risk take a and try it. So they, they went through a big pilot with them to, to prove that it works. And so once they vetted the technology, it was, okay, let’s, let’s get this out and help our hoteliers. And for us, we, we’ve got the ability to scale. So this is, this is actually partnering with a group that is experts at video, ultra low latency videos got to be lightning fast. There can be no lag in today’s environment. And then out of the box, it’s Ada compliant. So it sort of checks all the boxes that the hoteliers are looking for, but allows them to scale and deploy very rapidly.

Glenn: [00:04:21] Yeah, if I, if I’m not mistaken, you guys work with Hotel Polaris. I’m doing a video series on the customer journey featuring those guys right now. I’ve been rolling it out for very forward thinking hotel group with with coral tree. And those are the types of products that I think are right on for where people really want to take a deeper dive in what that experience is going to be like, right? Ethan.

Ethan: [00:04:44] Yeah. And I think the, the unique thing is like, we, we’ve had properties like Saint Andrews and things like that within our, our broader network and the global partners that we work with that, you know, there’s nothing out of the box about their property, right. And so you just really have to bring the, the consumer on that journey and the guests on that journey when they land on their website. And you can literally see yourself walking through the doors of that property or even the back door out onto a beautiful estate, right? No, no standalone image is going to help to describe that. And the other thing, you know, we’re talking before about, you know, icons and things, I’ve had a lot of hoteliers go, hey, Ethan, you don’t have an icon for this one random thing. You don’t need icons. You can literally have a consumer or the guest walk through your entire room and experience it for themselves. They know if that bathroom is going to make sense for them. They’re going to know if they want this suite or the other suite with the property. We work with hoteliers that, you know, average order value through our booking engine is over $1,000 in order. So these are exceptional, exceptional properties. Most of the booking engines are down around the 300 to 400. So partnering with with hover truly allowed us to have something that resonates with the type of hotelier that expects this level of curated experience for their guest.

Glenn: [00:06:03] I love it, Jason. Any final thoughts?

Jason: [00:06:06] No, I just think, Glenn, you’re you’re the consumer, right? We we have data that shows linearly, the more videos you watch on a site, the more money you will spend in a hotel. Polaris. In particular, they’ve got flight simulators. I’m a private pilot. I just heard that they had these simulators. Now we’ve got video that shows this high octane activity. People love it. It’s very good for the consumer.

Glenn: [00:06:27] It’s all right. How do how do we learn more? Give us a website for you guys.

Jason: [00:06:31] Yeah. Go to github.com. There’s a banner there that’ll take you right to the partnership page where you can learn more about all of the great things hover and even hospitality are doing.

Glenn: [00:06:40] Great. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate you being here and I appreciate you guys being here because listen, I’m getting so tired of their not being great ways to make that emotional connection with the customers. And now that everything is changing out there, now that you’re thinking about that AI kind of stuff, then computers taking over the world, how do you connect better emotionally with people through great video and giving them a reason to stay in your hotel? Thanks for watching. Please like, share, subscribe if you guys are the best. Thanks for keeping me and my family in business. And hey, maybe I’ll get some of this kind of stuff and you can see different angles here at the House of resort Pool Club and Smokehouse. Yeah. Probably not. See you later. Bye.