00:02.325 –> 00:04.288
Ah, I smell hospitality.

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And we get to talk about it.

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I’m Anthony.

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Welcome to No Vacancy Lives.

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That’s my friend Glenn.

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You’re watching the number one show in hospitality.

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Everybody, welcome to No Vacancy Live.

00:27.029 –> 00:29.511
I, of course, am your host, Glenn Hausman.

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Anthony’s not here today, but I’m here.

00:31.333 –> 00:31.673
Why?

00:32.194 –> 00:33.955
Because I don’t like taking time off.

00:34.215 –> 00:37.778
I feel it is my responsibility to be with you here every single day

00:38.544 –> 00:40.585
This would be an awkward time to say we’re taking off next week.

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No new shows next week, but we’re going to have a lot of best ofs.

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If you guys have a suggestion for a show that you really love this year that you’d like others to see, let me know.

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We’ll post it next week.

00:49.972 –> 00:53.134
I might also have some special content planned as well.

00:53.174 –> 00:59.698
And don’t worry, we will have an all new Friday night audit this Friday night, 5 p.m.

00:59.778 –> 01:02.380
with the incredible Bruce Ford of Lodging Accounting Metrics.

01:02.680 –> 01:07.566
Apparently he’s going to be reading us some holiday stories while I probably have too much eggnog over there.

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So stick around for that.

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We’ll also have a show on the 29th.

01:09.888 –> 01:12.010
I’m so excited today because, uh,

01:13.174 –> 01:19.476
I really enjoy working with different management companies and talking to them all the time and seeing what they’re up to.

01:19.516 –> 01:21.977
And today, I’ve got Craig Estechman.

01:21.997 –> 01:25.398
He’s with Delisart Hospitality, who is an SVP of business development.

01:25.418 –> 01:32.120
I want to talk to them today because they got a lot of interesting things going off, including the direction of the company and the developments that they are working on.

01:32.140 –> 01:33.321
So let’s welcome Craig to the show.

01:33.341 –> 01:35.602
Craig, great to see you.

01:35.662 –> 01:36.642
Happy holidays to you.

01:37.210 –> 01:38.210
Happy holidays to you, Glenn.

01:38.250 –> 01:38.610
How are you?

01:39.131 –> 01:39.591
I’m doing all right.

01:39.611 –> 01:48.454
I apologize for wearing more casual clothes today, but my house is so cold today that I can’t get the heat working up all the way.

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So I’m freezing over here.

01:50.234 –> 01:53.455
Like if I touched your face with my hand, you’d be like, ah, this is kind of crazy.

01:53.976 –> 01:54.656
I didn’t think about it.

01:54.676 –> 01:57.217
We should have done the ugly Christmas sweater thing today.

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I really screwed that up.

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I probably have some in my closet.

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I didn’t even realize that.

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But happy holidays to you.

02:07.337 –> 02:09.838
You’re going to be taking some time off next week, I hope.

02:10.798 –> 02:13.119
You know, it’s funny.

02:13.219 –> 02:17.461
Working remote, I think I feel like I work 24-7.

02:18.301 –> 02:22.143
Because if the phone rings and it’s a client, I answer it.

02:22.163 –> 02:22.403
Yep.

02:23.812 –> 02:25.073
I just take time when I can.

02:25.133 –> 02:29.537
So it works out really well for me just to do the schedule that I’m doing.

02:30.238 –> 02:31.278
Yeah, it is funny.

02:31.298 –> 02:36.783
The thing about working at home, you’d think you would spend less time working, but I believe you’re correct.

02:37.003 –> 02:41.007
I spend pretty much every waking hour that I’m not with my family working.

02:41.067 –> 02:42.468
That might just be a personal problem.

02:42.848 –> 03:09.946
that i have but the fact is when you’re there and your computer’s right there you don’t have that separation from work and it’s real easy to have cheap time and uh just go back to it even though you’ve sworn to yourself i’m gonna put the uh i’m gonna put the computer away or not answer the phone right yeah i was in a cabana in january in maroma beach in mexico right drinking a cup of coffee and i got a call and i answered the call and talked to a client and

03:10.387 –> 03:13.373
got along great and went upstairs and sent a DocuSign.

03:13.834 –> 03:17.682
My wife woke up and I said, I think we just paid for our vacation this week.

03:21.360 –> 03:22.760
Yeah, that’s really awesome.

03:23.060 –> 03:23.521
I love that.

03:23.601 –> 03:30.602
So, you know, yesterday we did a show with another gentleman from a management company, a president of a management company.

03:30.642 –> 03:34.123
We talked all about the operations side, a little bit about development.

03:34.163 –> 03:45.406
But I’m curious as to, before we get into some more of the specifics, I’d like to get a report card from you on where you think your company was in 2023 when it comes to development and how overall you

03:45.726 –> 03:51.791
you feel the industry is doing, uh, with development and what your perceptions of the, uh, the state of the market are.

03:52.351 –> 04:00.698
Well, I heard one of your other folks talk about, you know, the fact that, uh, you know, just getting financing is such a big problem right now.

04:00.758 –> 04:03.980
So that’s been a common theme here on, uh, no vacancy.

04:04.200 –> 04:08.564
As we talk to all of these professionals over the last six months, that is a huge issues.

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Please continue.

04:09.825 –> 04:12.327
No, but we do something a little bit different.

04:12.667 –> 04:12.707
Um,

04:13.168 –> 04:21.571
We’re not as concerned with that right now as far as developing new projects or even acquiring hotels.

04:22.331 –> 04:24.993
I work really on the third party side of the business.

04:25.033 –> 04:26.553
We’re a hotel owner and operator.

04:27.133 –> 04:41.819
We own and operate Hyatt brands and ISG brands, but we also serve almost every major brand out there because we do full management, which a lot of other companies do, of course, but we do something a little different.

04:42.369 –> 04:52.793
We actually can serve clients almost in an a la carte sense in that if they just want remote sales, we have a great program called Hotel Sales Max.

04:53.233 –> 04:54.353
We can do that separately.

04:54.853 –> 04:56.374
We do revenue management.

04:56.394 –> 04:58.115
We’re certified by all the major brands.

04:58.175 –> 05:01.796
So we handle over 50 hotels and revenue management now.

05:02.436 –> 05:09.919
We also do digital marketing and we can bundle those services together or we can offer them separately, but many owners,

05:10.441 –> 05:18.404
really want to put their toe in the water and try to increase revenue, maybe through sales or revenue, but they don’t want the whole full management package.

05:19.024 –> 05:22.626
Yeah, and that’s an interesting philosophy.

05:22.646 –> 05:30.369
I wish Anthony was here today because he’s got an organization where he trains people, right?

05:30.669 –> 05:32.750
He gets them ready to manage their own hotels.

05:32.790 –> 05:34.551
He doesn’t want to do it all.

05:35.191 –> 05:51.977
But it’s really cool that you could go in there with laser-like precision to help out current owners and operators with specific areas that they might need a little bit more assistance or have lacked the budget for full-time personnel, particularly when it comes to that sales effort.

05:51.997 –> 05:54.258
I’m seeing a larger shift in general

05:54.818 –> 06:07.785
to organizations that handle sales for many, many hotels around countries, which creates an economy of scale and leaving the local property of the needs to have as many personnel.

06:07.825 –> 06:13.187
So how are you seeing your clients and potential clients out there with this particular issue?

06:13.988 –> 06:20.731
Well, for example, Hotel Salesmax was really kind of born out of a need for our own company after COVID.

06:21.564 –> 06:29.109
you know, so many salespeople were furloughed and went into real estate and pharmaceutical and pretty much other areas of business.

06:29.249 –> 06:37.154
And then when they really, the demand started to come back, there wasn’t, there was a real lack of good hotel salespeople out there.

06:37.715 –> 06:40.477
And we had the same problem with our own company.

06:41.277 –> 06:45.840
And we took a look and tried to find some solutions outside of our own company.

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And it just didn’t really kind of like the business models that I saw.

06:49.683 –> 06:49.763
And

06:50.700 –> 06:55.284
Our CEO, Doug Artusio, said, well, you’ve been in sales all your life.

06:55.304 –> 06:56.625
Why don’t you create your own program?

06:57.666 –> 06:58.066
We did.

06:59.087 –> 07:10.516
Our program serves not only the hotels that we own and operate, but now we’re serving many other hotel owners, operators, REITs, the brands, that sort of thing.

07:11.096 –> 07:18.262
What we found was even if they could find somebody that was a good salesperson, that meant that

07:18.649 –> 07:22.710
trying to find somebody for their particular market perhaps was a real challenge.

07:23.491 –> 07:25.912
And so they couldn’t find well-trained people.

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And typically a lot of the smaller hotels, especially, they don’t really have the bandwidth to train and manage salespeople or really don’t know how.

07:37.716 –> 07:39.936
And they don’t have to pay the benefits.

07:39.956 –> 07:42.777
They don’t have to pay any kind of incentives.

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And we handle all that for them.

07:44.638 –> 07:47.039
So it’s kind of a win-win where, you know,

07:47.628 –> 08:14.814
right now operators are so tight on labor yeah totally i have hotel owners that saying i’ve been doing this for 30 years and i’m here picking up trash out of the parking lot and checking people in yeah listen so just for uh some of our younger viewers obviously uh you know covet turned upside down the entire industry and the only reason why i’m mentioning it now is because craig is absolutely correct a lot of people were let go during that time not anyone’s fault

08:15.214 –> 08:19.757
it had to happen in order to protect some of these businesses so they can keep people employed in the future.

08:20.097 –> 08:25.421
So what happened is, as we remember, a lot of people left and then found other areas of employment.

08:25.741 –> 08:37.629
While some have come back now, thankfully, others haven’t, which is leaving hoteliers who are a little bit cash-strapped and a little bit frustrated looking for more efficient solutions for the future.

08:38.129 –> 08:41.170
That’s kind of like why I like what you’re talking about, Craig.

08:41.290 –> 08:54.956
And one of the other things is a lot of younger people don’t necessarily know how to sell yet, and owners need that help because they may have come on board in 2019 when they didn’t really have to sell.

08:54.976 –> 09:01.078
They just had to answer the phone, and then they got let go in 2020, and things have only started to heat up in the last year or so.

09:01.218 –> 09:04.239
So how do you find the people that are going to be –

09:06.360 –> 09:13.603
able to sell properties such as this beautiful Staybridge Suites here that you guys operate in Irvine and other hotels throughout the country?

09:14.544 –> 09:28.950
Well, first of all, training itself has really, there’s been a little void there as well, because not only did they not have salespeople, when they did bring people back, sales programs, sales trainers, those folks were

09:30.185 –> 09:32.628
a lot of those people deleted that from their budget.

09:32.668 –> 09:33.910
They just went to bare bones.

09:34.010 –> 09:38.117
So not only do we have people that maybe have

09:38.834 –> 09:40.635
you know, the desire and the passion for it.

09:40.795 –> 09:43.496
They just don’t have really formalized training.

09:44.016 –> 09:44.216
Yeah.

09:44.576 –> 10:03.364
And I, you know, I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to, you know, disparage anybody because a lot of tough decisions, but I’ve noticed in my career now, which is, I don’t know how it’s been nearly 30 years at this point that I’ve been at this, but I’ve noticed that anytime there’s any down, down,

10:04.324 –> 10:07.767
downward word trend in profitability.

10:07.807 –> 10:15.975
I mean, COVID was just ridiculous, but every other downward trend that we’ve seen when the cycle starts to turn against us, uh,

10:16.966 –> 10:20.908
Sales and marketing is always the first division to go.

10:21.489 –> 10:30.774
And I get it, but it’s one of those things that makes sense for today because you won’t, but you you’re going to feel those effects six months from now.

10:31.014 –> 10:36.097
So it’s very dangerous proposition to get into, to allow that to happen.

10:36.698 –> 10:36.898
Right.

10:37.158 –> 10:39.539
And let me just say, I missed a car just saying, Hey, it’s still challenging.

10:39.579 –> 10:40.480
I mentor everyone.

10:40.500 –> 10:43.462
It’s part of my training, right?

10:43.502 –> 10:43.722
Correct.

10:44.622 –> 10:44.722
Yeah.

10:44.742 –> 10:45.922
I mean, it’s a chicken and the egg.

10:45.962 –> 11:01.887
I mean, some of these properties are like 60, 70% index when I look at their star and they’re saying, well, I really need help and revenue, but I don’t have the money to support a revenue department, a revenue generating department.

11:02.627 –> 11:11.150
But if you don’t really look outside of your own hotel and look, sometimes the incoming business is not the best business to have.

11:11.770 –> 11:13.791
You have to find somebody that has the

11:14.824 –> 11:18.988
the training to do proper prospecting and going after the right business.

11:19.428 –> 11:24.632
And the other thing I was going to say about training is a lot of people forget, you know, the brands have great training.

11:25.673 –> 11:32.019
And like for IHG, IHG Way of Sales, Choice, Hilton, all have good training programs and

11:32.950 –> 11:40.614
the operators sometimes forget to make sure they follow up with the salespeople that they’re being properly trained with the resources that are available to them.

11:40.994 –> 11:41.154
Right.

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No additional costs.

11:42.755 –> 11:42.955
Right.

11:43.075 –> 11:55.262
So, you know, make sure that your folks are being brand trained and certified, first of all, so they know how to properly answer RPs and handle the sales process and all of that, because that training is free.

11:55.282 –> 11:59.004
And on top of that, we do a lot of more, you know, kind of in-depth training.

11:59.488 –> 12:03.130
training on prospecting and working multiple hotels and multiple markets.

12:03.190 –> 12:11.975
So, but you know, that’s the first, you know, I, my first question is if you have a salesperson, they said, well, you know, they, they really aren’t doing a whole lot.

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And I said, well, who’s training them?

12:13.436 –> 12:13.576
No.

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Right.

12:14.855 –> 12:36.088
right and who’s really monitoring their you know what do you you have to inspect what you expect and a lot of them don’t even ask those questions that’s another great point over there right and when you’re entering a career and getting a job at a hotel you’re unfamiliar with and maybe a market you’re unfamiliar with you don’t know what you don’t know and unless there’s somebody there

12:36.728 –> 12:48.032
to give you that information, you’re going to be working under an erroneous, you know, an erroneous assumption on how to get things done in your particular in your particular market.

12:48.072 –> 12:57.855
So how do you make sure that you are focused and on point for each individual property, even if that sales representative might live, you know, hundreds of miles away?

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Well, one of the first things we do, you know, is I don’t really I’m not a strong believer in cold calling.

13:05.378 –> 13:05.478
Yeah.

13:05.848 –> 13:14.389
With today’s technology and all the brand resources and the resources that we have available and via internet, I mean, you can Google Earth.

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the comp set and look at logo vehicles in their parking lot for crying.

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Right.

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Hey, all right, hold on.

13:20.269 –> 13:24.472
Stop right there, because that’s absolutely a brilliant thing that you just said.

13:24.512 –> 13:26.534
That’s like an old school tactic, right?

13:26.894 –> 13:28.415
And people don’t really think about that anymore.

13:28.456 –> 13:36.382
We’ve gotten so focused looking at our screens, we’ve lost our ability to go out there and think about how business was created 30 years ago or so.

13:36.522 –> 13:36.682
Right.

13:36.983 –> 13:38.164
When I first started, Craig,

13:38.744 –> 13:43.388
And I guess you’ve been probably around, you know, as long or nearly as long as I have.

13:45.089 –> 13:45.349
Right.

13:46.330 –> 13:51.274
So I remember, you know, people saying I remember the epiphany I had, like, oh, cool.

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People get in their cars and drive around all their competitors.

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And see who was parking in the parking lots in the early in the mornings, in the evenings.

14:00.522 –> 14:06.407
And they would say, oh, the Acme Construction Company is here or whatever it is.

14:06.427 –> 14:08.329
And then they’d find a way to get that business.

14:08.610 –> 14:10.772
You also mentioned cold calling.

14:10.952 –> 14:11.693
I never liked that.

14:12.233 –> 14:19.576
I was never involved in the hospitality industry, but in jobs that I had in my days back in the day, I would have to do cold calling.

14:19.957 –> 14:21.177
It was never well received.

14:21.837 –> 14:23.058
Nobody wanted to hear it.

14:23.658 –> 14:27.060
And it’s a terrible medium in order to get people’s attention.

14:27.380 –> 14:32.542
So how do you look at that then beyond the cold calling?

14:32.622 –> 14:35.744
What are some of your strategies besides those parking lot visits?

14:36.087 –> 14:41.671
Well, the very first thing that I do is I take a look at their star, look at their performance history.

14:42.232 –> 14:47.335
Right, so the star report, I’m trying to educate people as much as we possibly can.

14:48.616 –> 14:51.479
Could you explain it to everybody since you’re looking at it all the time?

14:51.879 –> 14:52.259
Of course.

14:52.499 –> 14:54.521
Well, I mean, Smith Travel Research came from

14:55.602 –> 14:57.103
Randy Smith and his wife.

14:57.163 –> 15:02.844
And I think if I’m not mistaken, they start out in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is 20 miles from my hometown.

15:02.864 –> 15:03.984
They start in Lancaster?

15:04.345 –> 15:05.085
I believe so.

15:05.385 –> 15:07.765
I know that they round up in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

15:08.026 –> 15:09.286
Well, that’s where they are now.

15:09.386 –> 15:11.446
But I did not know they started in Lancaster.

15:12.487 –> 15:15.908
And as this is my podcast, I like to make all things about me.

15:16.048 –> 15:18.448
My son goes to Franklin and Marshall in Lancaster.

15:18.468 –> 15:19.189
Oh, I know that.

15:19.289 –> 15:20.269
I know that so well.

15:20.409 –> 15:21.609
Yeah, I really do.

15:21.729 –> 15:23.550
I’m from Hershey, Lancaster area.

15:23.790 –> 15:23.870
Oh.

15:24.150 –> 15:24.931
That’s pretty cool.

15:25.091 –> 15:31.695
We have our good friend of the show and personal friend, Matt Hostetler, chief development officer at Red Roof lives up there.

15:31.895 –> 15:32.455
He does.

15:32.535 –> 15:33.816
I know exactly where he is.

15:33.896 –> 15:38.239
I just spoke to him about Hershey and we did a trip down memory lane not too long ago.

15:38.659 –> 15:40.180
So I was kind of between Hershey.

15:40.200 –> 15:43.082
I worked for Hershey Entertainment Resort Company for six or seven years.

15:43.342 –> 15:44.042
Oh, that’s pretty cool.

15:44.062 –> 15:45.303
I started at Hotel Hershey.

15:45.323 –> 15:46.544
That was where I started my sales.

15:46.664 –> 15:47.325
No way.

15:47.465 –> 15:48.545
I stayed at Hotel Hershey.

15:48.565 –> 15:49.706
I’m sorry we’re getting so off track.

15:49.746 –> 15:51.087
This is what I love about this show.

15:51.447 –> 15:55.930
I stayed at the Hotel Hershey back in the 70s, and I must have been eight, nine years old at the time.

15:56.350 –> 16:03.275
And getting a complimentary chocolate bar when we checked in blew my mind.

16:03.675 –> 16:05.516
I thought that was the most incredible thing ever.

16:05.556 –> 16:07.178
And then going on the Hershey chocolate world ride.

16:07.198 –> 16:07.658
Yep.

16:09.687 –> 16:14.093
When I was at DOS at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, pretty big hotel.

16:14.113 –> 16:16.977
It was over 600 rooms now and 100,000 square feet of space.

16:17.377 –> 16:19.680
We had an entire candy closet.

16:20.461 –> 16:24.386
And they had these one-pound boxes of chocolate almond bars.

16:25.316 –> 16:31.078
And I could get into any appointment I wanted to, Harrisburg, Philly, no matter what.

16:31.118 –> 16:34.419
I remember I was executive at Exxon in Philly.

16:35.019 –> 16:36.420
And he knew that I worked for Hershey.

16:36.460 –> 16:37.940
He said, do you have chocolate bars?

16:37.980 –> 16:40.741
I said, I’ll bring you a one-pound box of golden almond bars.

16:41.442 –> 16:44.603
And they sent me up the elevator up to the executive suite.

16:44.723 –> 16:47.124
And this guy didn’t even want to talk to me.

16:47.164 –> 16:49.164
He just wanted to open the chocolate bars.

16:49.584 –> 16:54.186
But, you know, the Star Report,

16:54.853 –> 17:23.815
is a really great tool for me because i can quickly look at the star report and see what their red part index is are they at their 100 share are they really behind what’s the history looking at the running 12 you can figure out what their revenue is and the comp set revenue and you can find very quickly how much money are you leaving on the table by not even being at 100 share right then more importantly in this sense that we your question is we look at the comp set very closely

17:24.548 –> 17:30.715
And using today’s technology, I mean, we use a lot of old school techniques because that’s where I come from.

17:30.735 –> 17:38.663
But I also have a lot of younger, hungry salespeople that are fantastic with new technology.

17:39.084 –> 17:43.549
And we marry those two things together to really find out where the accounts are.

17:44.289 –> 17:45.771
What are the accounts of the comp set?

17:46.263 –> 17:47.324
And what do we need to do?

17:47.524 –> 17:51.166
We use our revenue management team to talk about pricing and strategy.

17:51.626 –> 17:56.389
And then basically we go after the comp set and shift share to our client’s hotel.

17:56.869 –> 17:59.470
That’s the fastest way to move business.

17:59.630 –> 18:02.352
And you’re not cold calling because you’re calling on companies

18:02.759 –> 18:06.081
that definitely use hotels in your comp set.

18:06.521 –> 18:16.146
Right, because if you’re doing a cold call, it’s like, hey, receptionist person, and they’re like, I don’t know, I’ll put you through to a voicemail, right?

18:16.206 –> 18:17.787
And then that’s the end of that.

18:17.847 –> 18:27.993
And even if you got through to somebody, you’re wasting their time if you don’t already have a lot of actionable insights that you could utilize to close that sales deal, right, Craig?

18:28.453 –> 18:29.855
Well, we hear this again.

18:29.915 –> 18:31.516
We also hear we what?

18:31.637 –> 18:33.619
Oh, we have to have somebody with boots on the ground.

18:33.879 –> 18:37.623
I said, well, do you realize your clients are also working remote?

18:38.164 –> 18:39.345
Right.

18:39.425 –> 18:40.526
Who are we going to visit?

18:40.686 –> 18:49.576
You know, I can I can reach so many more people working with the phone, Internet, LinkedIn, you know, various different mediums that we have now that.

18:50.049 –> 18:53.732
driving around handing out koozies is not, not really.

18:53.772 –> 19:00.097
I want to, although who doesn’t love a good koozies, particularly if it’s keeping my beer warm.

19:00.137 –> 19:01.578
I think I have about 300 of them.

19:01.878 –> 19:02.158
Yeah.

19:02.819 –> 19:05.541
So, but you did bring up a good point.

19:05.621 –> 19:19.011
And I think generally in society and the hospitality industry, I think we all have a tendency to look at the shiny new thing, that new technology, that new way of doing things and automatically discount what came before it.

19:19.272 –> 19:19.412
Like,

19:19.972 –> 19:22.173
Yeah, that was never any good anyway.

19:22.933 –> 19:34.798
And then after we digest that new technology, I think we have a tendency to realize that we’ve lost something by just eschewing everything that came before.

19:35.098 –> 19:47.983
So I really love your idea of marrying the newer way of doing things and the current things that younger people know that older folks like us don’t know and sharing that the vice versa as well.

19:48.063 –> 19:53.346
Are there any other ways that you’re seeing that you’re able to bring some of your old school tactics to a new way of doing things?

19:54.007 –> 19:56.188
And of course, by using the SalesMax system?

19:56.849 –> 19:59.851
Well, I just want to go back to it.

19:59.911 –> 20:04.894
First of all, there is four-step sales to the sales process, and most people don’t even know what they are.

20:05.814 –> 20:14.520
Secondly, I think today we forget about, hey, we’re in the hospitality business.

20:14.540 –> 20:15.581
We’re in the people business.

20:15.641 –> 20:16.882
We should be hospitable.

20:17.362 –> 20:17.522
Yeah.

20:17.742 –> 20:31.772
You know, so what I’m seeing now is companies are just managing from accounting and spreadsheets and, you know, they forget about the value of creating a relationship with your clients.

20:32.293 –> 20:32.433
Right.

20:32.713 –> 20:34.234
Like, do you know anything about them?

20:34.294 –> 20:35.215
What are their interests?

20:35.255 –> 20:35.976
What are their passions?

20:35.996 –> 20:37.337
What are they trying to get accomplished?

20:37.737 –> 20:41.440
You marry all that together and you become valuable as a resource.

20:41.860 –> 20:46.403
If you’re just simply saying, I’m just selling a widget and how many widgets do you want today?

20:47.754 –> 21:04.110
It’s just a very cold type of process that, you know, in this business, as you well know, 30 years of being in this business, it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller because you know so many people and your reputation is everything.

21:04.831 –> 21:05.011
Yeah.

21:05.291 –> 21:10.776
The one thing I realized is our business, it might seem large, but if you know the right people,

21:11.417 –> 21:27.012
then you can find a lot of success because it’s not that big of a business you go you do a few a few uh laps around the sun going to the conferences and stuff like that you get to meet all the uh the players and establish relationships with them so i was a young salesperson

21:27.832 –> 21:34.854
What’s a good way for me to learn how to create long lasting relationships that are going to yield neat results?

21:35.274 –> 21:49.997
And no offense to younger people, but I find between what happened with COVID and the dedication to looking at screens constantly, because our society has shifted a lot in that way, that sometimes they don’t know the nuances of person to person connections.

21:50.657 –> 21:53.958
Well, how do you create relationships in your personal life?

21:55.153 –> 22:00.958
Usually I just say whatever I want online that’s opposite to their political views to piss them off.

22:01.919 –> 22:05.022
I’m sure that brings a lot of good friends.

22:06.343 –> 22:07.183
It gets me views.

22:09.385 –> 22:17.312
Well, I guess what I’m thinking is it’s not that much unlike even like a dating thing.

22:17.532 –> 22:17.712
Right.

22:18.951 –> 22:19.931
put yourself out there.

22:20.591 –> 22:27.513
First of all, be passionate about what you do and show that you have passion and that you really care about your clients.

22:27.654 –> 22:33.435
If you’re, if you’re really interested about, oh my God, I saw you, you know, the dog on your WebEx said, that’s really cool.

22:33.495 –> 22:39.097
And I have a similar breed or, and oh, I see you have cars on your back wall.

22:39.537 –> 22:41.858
I restore English sports cars, for example.

22:42.378 –> 22:46.899
So, I mean, try to, it makes the business much more fun if you,

22:47.580 –> 22:59.954
And it’s more, you’re more valuable if you know your clients, you know, not only your product and your service, but we’re in the people business and, and, you know, people want to do business with people they like.

23:01.242 –> 23:09.130
And the fact of the matter is I spent five seconds looking you up on your website, for example, right?

23:09.510 –> 23:18.318
And now I would have that really good information that I can tell you about this amazing sushi place I went to off the strip.

23:18.979 –> 23:23.100
that’s got, you know, that’s getting the fish straight from Japan before the people on the strip goes.

23:23.240 –> 23:25.541
And you’d like be totally into that.

23:25.881 –> 23:33.142
But conversely, if I told you my true feelings of Steven Tyler from Walk This Way Forward, I think we might have a fight.

23:33.323 –> 23:36.863
So, you know, I know to stay away from that.

23:38.304 –> 23:45.586
Well, you know, I mean, it’s just I think it really makes the business more fun if you really relax and try to enjoy yourself.

23:45.746 –> 23:47.306
And like you said earlier, you know,

23:47.827 –> 23:52.088
It’s a great point is look, like I said earlier, there’s so much technology.

23:52.188 –> 23:52.929
Do your homework.

23:53.509 –> 23:56.430
You know, look up the person that you’re going to call on LinkedIn.

23:56.550 –> 23:57.490
Look at their company.

23:57.550 –> 23:58.490
Look at their website.

23:58.991 –> 24:07.613
Have some idea of where their hotels are or their locations or whatever the case it might be or the clients and where’s their corporate office.

24:07.714 –> 24:08.274
Right.

24:08.614 –> 24:09.714
What’s their stock price?

24:10.194 –> 24:12.155
I mean, those are all things that.

24:12.625 –> 24:22.188
you come to the table and you already are building value by at least knowing something about your customer, their business, and maybe some things that they really enjoy doing.

24:22.508 –> 24:32.771
And conversely, if you don’t do some of that and you come in looking like a fool or like you didn’t do your homework, now all of a sudden you’re not working at equity anymore.

24:32.811 –> 24:38.573
You’ve dug yourself a big hole and people are not going to pay attention to you as more or take you as more

24:39.133 –> 24:40.294
Seriously, as you should.

24:40.394 –> 24:46.316
One example I have, again, I’m not in hotel sales, but I deal with public relations professionals every single day.

24:46.716 –> 24:52.359
And I get pitches all the time for people that appear on the show, news, blah, blah, blah, all of that kind of stuff.

24:52.959 –> 24:53.839
Nine out of 10.

24:55.140 –> 25:00.123
do not bother to understand what I do for a living.

25:01.484 –> 25:02.305
Super basic.

25:02.585 –> 25:13.272
If you’re going to pitch someone, you should probably know that they don’t do holiday seasonal roundups for a glossy magazine and instead do the type of content I do.

25:13.292 –> 25:20.677
I don’t want to be a jerk about it, but you should have a basic understanding of who you’re dealing with in order to be able to build a relationship.

25:20.797 –> 25:24.440
And if you don’t know what you don’t know in an easy, controllable situation where you could

25:24.540 –> 25:27.181
know, then why would anyone want to do business with you?

25:28.042 –> 25:32.984
Well, like you said earlier, you’re, you know, I think you said your son is going to Franklin and Marshall.

25:33.144 –> 25:33.444
Correct.

25:33.845 –> 25:36.686
So, I mean, right there, we made a connection.

25:36.826 –> 25:37.907
I’m from that area.

25:37.927 –> 25:40.068
I know Lancaster County very well.

25:40.748 –> 25:44.390
It’s from that, you know, I know the culture there very well.

25:45.290 –> 26:02.976
Dude, and if I wasn’t doing a podcast interview, that would have led us into a whole lot of different types of conversations where we would have connected on a human level in that way and probably would have ended the conversation with even if we don’t do business then, we’ve established something.

26:03.076 –> 26:07.477
So then you would call me back in a certain amount of time that I requested or whatever.

26:07.857 –> 26:10.438
And you knew that there would be opportunity in the future.

26:10.458 –> 26:13.519
And then next time you call back, what would you do?

26:14.465 –> 26:27.015
You know, I remember so many times doing a sales call and things weren’t, you know, the person didn’t seem terribly interested or was kind of cold, not really engaged with me.

26:27.756 –> 26:29.437
And then I found out something about them.

26:29.477 –> 26:31.158
We started talking about that instead.

26:31.699 –> 26:33.100
And the whole world opened up.

26:33.500 –> 26:36.343
And now all of a sudden, hey, you’re interested in me.

26:36.463 –> 26:37.584
I learned something about you.

26:37.784 –> 26:39.365
And again, it’s a people business.

26:39.565 –> 26:44.109
And sometimes we forget that in this business that it’s not always about

26:44.878 –> 26:46.499
you know, EBITDA and GOP.

26:46.619 –> 26:50.340
It’s about, you know, building relationships and all of that comes with it.

26:50.360 –> 26:50.680
Totally.

26:50.720 –> 27:00.644
And one of the things that I think we forget is that the person that we’re talking to is human too, and is bringing things and situations to the conversation that you may be wholly unaware of.

27:01.004 –> 27:02.584
See that famous Facebook post of, uh,

27:04.305 –> 27:05.466
You know, everybody’s struggling.

27:05.506 –> 27:07.407
You don’t know what their situation is.

27:07.447 –> 27:07.627
Right.

27:08.007 –> 27:12.030
That individual you were talking to might have been distracted by something.

27:12.390 –> 27:12.610
Right.

27:12.750 –> 27:15.792
And couldn’t and couldn’t give you the focus you needed to on the day.

27:15.832 –> 27:16.392
You don’t know.

27:16.792 –> 27:22.115
But me, anytime I have those kind of interactions up until I turn 50, then I stop caring.

27:22.416 –> 27:24.677
I would think, oh, my God, they don’t like me.

27:25.037 –> 27:27.878
I would initially have that response and personalize it.

27:28.259 –> 27:47.388
And then that would put me at a deficit where I’d be freaked out to call them again and create for no reason an inequitable relationship where I would never be able to have success because I made a lot of assumptions that I shouldn’t have based on preconceived biases about how I felt about myself at that time in life.

27:47.808 –> 27:55.744
you know that’s pretty deep dude we get real get real deep here oh no they can see live you should check our friday night audit show after i’ve had a couple

27:57.822 –> 28:04.846
I mean, I mean, but I think that one of the important things about sales, though, is really understanding that human psychology.

28:05.146 –> 28:05.346
Right.

28:05.706 –> 28:08.628
So you’re able to bond with people over those things.

28:08.688 –> 28:17.873
But if you don’t really understand the full picture of how somebody may or may not be in the condition that they’re in and all of those little nuances, then you’re going to have trouble like

28:19.734 –> 28:27.500
I had one instance with a client I’m working with that I’m trying to connect him with a hotelier.

28:28.000 –> 28:31.883
They didn’t have a very good situation with this company going on.

28:32.423 –> 28:38.468
And I could tell that I thought that this individual was probably personalizing things that they didn’t, that they didn’t need to.

28:38.748 –> 28:39.969
And I’m like, I bet.

28:40.814 –> 28:43.515
Dude doesn’t even remember you, right?

28:43.995 –> 28:51.636
I know you think so, but I bet it was just whatever interaction you had was just boom, boom, boom, out of sight, out of mind.

28:51.656 –> 28:52.836
A few months have gone by.

28:53.036 –> 28:53.696
They don’t know.

28:54.677 –> 28:55.497
Give it a try.

28:55.517 –> 28:57.597
And boom, it worked.

28:57.617 –> 28:58.877
Guy didn’t remember who he was.

28:59.157 –> 29:06.539
And this kid spent all this time worrying that he did something wrong when the answer was something completely different.

29:07.199 –> 29:08.301
And it’s not just sales.

29:08.462 –> 29:12.509
I mean, revenue management, digital marketing.

29:12.529 –> 29:15.695
We do the operations folks, you know, revenue management.

29:15.775 –> 29:17.198
We have clients that

29:17.659 –> 29:25.144
that came back to us and decided to do full management with us because they love their revenue manager because it’s somebody that they value.

29:25.384 –> 29:29.086
And they said, look, you know, this Lisa is so great.

29:29.527 –> 29:36.231
And, you know, not only is she smart and she does a great job with her, with, with revenue management, but she’s really knowledgeable about the market.

29:36.251 –> 29:42.315
And we talked about some other things and, and she said, you know, they, that’s the kind of quality of the folks that you have.

29:43.117 –> 29:57.080
you know, I think we should really consider full management and bringing your operations team in and get to know them and those folks, because it’s all about relationships, whether you’re in sales, you’re in a formal sales role or not, it’s all about connecting with people.

29:57.881 –> 30:05.583
And, you know, the, you kind of remember in, in what I do is that frankly, most of my clients are all connected in some way.

30:06.303 –> 30:06.523
Yeah.

30:06.603 –> 30:11.524
They are, they either are collaborating professionally, they know each other personally,

30:12.090 –> 30:17.913
They have lots of other brand, you know, relationships, or they own multiple brands, multiple markets.

30:18.494 –> 30:26.819
And if you do a great job with one of them and you’ve established that rapport, then they feel comfortable enough to say, hey, I’m going to refer you to somebody else.

30:27.039 –> 30:28.580
And you’ve got to remember that’s important.

30:28.860 –> 30:32.742
Which brings us back to, it’s a small community out there, right?

30:33.903 –> 30:35.924
We could go round and round on that.

30:35.944 –> 30:38.265
There’s only 40,000 hotels, so it’s pretty small.

30:38.526 –> 30:38.826
Right.

30:39.326 –> 30:39.746
Yeah.

30:40.026 –> 30:40.527
You know, and…

30:41.487 –> 31:01.915
i i and i i think that um before we uh before we uh we start to go i want to uh i want to talk to you a little bit about extended stay and how important that that’s been to your company uh so much so your chairman and ceo uh doug artugio’s um along with some others create an extended stay hospitality association we will be having them on soon enough

31:02.475 –> 31:03.255
Don’t worry.

31:03.675 –> 31:07.237
So how are you feeling about extended stay these days?

31:07.297 –> 31:12.338
Is it still going to be a huge driver or is the secret out now and it’s going to lose its luster?

31:12.899 –> 31:16.520
You know, the secret is out, but I mean, just look at the statistics.

31:17.540 –> 31:22.022
You know, we have friends, Mark Skinner, that puts out some great information on extended stay every month.

31:22.102 –> 31:23.162
Look at that information.

31:23.762 –> 31:24.683
That is still.

31:24.723 –> 31:26.103
They are the Highland Group.

31:26.243 –> 31:26.803
Check it out.

31:26.863 –> 31:27.443
Highland Group.

31:27.523 –> 31:31.505
And ESLA.org is Extended Stay Lodging Association.

31:32.287 –> 31:33.529
And that’s a nonprofit group.

31:33.569 –> 31:41.359
We just work with folks that want to learn about extended stay, want to buy one, already have one and want to make it more profitable.

31:41.920 –> 31:44.503
There’s just a lot of good educational information out there.

31:44.563 –> 31:46.846
But that segment…

31:48.123 –> 31:57.206
I mean, if you look at how that has expanded in how many brands there are now, and the business model works really well with the problems of tight labor.

31:58.106 –> 32:02.168
In some of these properties, you need less than 20 people to run.

32:02.428 –> 32:04.528
Some of them are 12 or even fewer.

32:04.568 –> 32:05.849
Because they’re long-term stay.

32:05.889 –> 32:08.610
And look at the biggest problem they have in labor with housekeeping.

32:08.650 –> 32:15.352
And if you’re only doing room cleaning once a week, that’s a perfect scenario for

32:16.004 –> 32:18.785
the times that we’re in right now and people want choices.

32:19.265 –> 32:26.187
Like if I go there, I, I, to be honest with you, I love having like the kitchenette and the refrigerator and just having the little extra space.

32:26.427 –> 32:26.587
Yep.

32:26.848 –> 32:32.089
And I like to be, I don’t like to be, you know, I, I just think the extended stay is, is here to stay.

32:32.109 –> 32:32.749
Yep.

32:32.769 –> 32:37.491
First of all, and it’s continuing to grow and, and I see the brands now are doing

32:38.137 –> 32:42.098
You know, like the father of Extended Stay, I guess, in my mind is Jack DeBoer.

32:42.559 –> 32:43.659
In everybody’s mind.

32:43.699 –> 32:45.260
And his company is doing now.

32:45.840 –> 32:46.560
One quick pause.

32:46.620 –> 33:00.105
Jack DeBoer, you know, the late Jack DeBoer, incredible human being who really created the Extended Stay market first with Residence Inn, other brands such as Candlewood and more in that category.

33:00.145 –> 33:00.905
Sorry, please continue.

33:01.185 –> 33:05.887
No, and they have a brand watermark and the waterwalk that they’re also doing.

33:06.499 –> 33:11.523
you can book an extended stay furnished or unfurnished.

33:12.023 –> 33:15.065
So it’s kind of creeping into the apartment space.

33:16.146 –> 33:16.806
It’s interesting.

33:17.007 –> 33:25.833
We’re seeing that with brands such as Waterwalk that’s doing some extended stay, some 30-day-plus apartment-like stays without having to do a lease.

33:25.853 –> 33:27.374
And we’re seeing more companies come in like that.

33:27.494 –> 33:30.276
Yeah, you can get them furnished or unfurnished, which is really different.

33:30.476 –> 33:32.158
I don’t think there’s a lot of companies doing that.

33:32.178 –> 33:35.140
But that’s going to continue to expand and expand.

33:36.007 –> 33:38.871
I think that segment’s a great segment to be in.

33:39.491 –> 33:52.207
How do you think that overall development in that sector is going to go forward, considering that development as a whole is slowing up, as we said at the beginning of our conversation, because of higher interest rates, et cetera, et cetera?

33:53.129 –> 33:55.011
Well, first of all, it’s a lower balance.

33:55.410 –> 33:58.531
you know, barrier to entry because it’s a small footprint.

33:58.831 –> 33:58.991
Yep.

33:59.211 –> 34:01.732
It doesn’t involve a lot of food and beverage most of the time.

34:01.752 –> 34:02.512
Yeah.

34:02.532 –> 34:05.193
Not even like maybe not even breakfast or anything.

34:06.093 –> 34:13.955
Some have breakfast, some don’t have breakfast, you know, with the different brands, you know, I saw the other day, you know, there’s a thousand hotel brands now.

34:15.274 –> 34:15.574
Wow.

34:16.535 –> 34:17.697
I was astonished.

34:18.397 –> 34:21.060
And this is the other thing that I thought was interesting.

34:21.801 –> 34:29.348
Out of a thousand hotels, you know, 60% of the world’s hotels, especially outside of the U.S.,

34:31.333 –> 34:33.114
60% are unbranded.

34:33.875 –> 34:34.976
And there’s 1,000 brands.

34:35.736 –> 34:38.618
So if you’re in the development game, there’s a lot of work to do.

34:39.919 –> 34:42.881
Yeah, particularly to break through that din.

34:42.921 –> 34:50.266
That’s why all the major hospitality companies have been adding their moniker to basically every single brand that they put out there.

34:50.746 –> 34:58.992
Because otherwise, it’s just going to be so impossible for anyone to have any understanding of what a brand means in their mind, right?

34:59.012 –> 35:00.833
There’s just so many competing for that headspace.

35:01.253 –> 35:07.837
There’s a lot of folks that are converting right now from one brand to another, trying to help brand doing different things.

35:08.598 –> 35:14.822
And that’s actually pretty good for everybody, I think, too, because obviously when you do a conversion, you have to do a pip and refresh the hotel.

35:14.902 –> 35:22.727
And so in general, I think the tide is rising and that hotel space looks a lot better than maybe it did a long time ago.

35:22.901 –> 35:24.002
Yeah, I agree with you.

35:24.062 –> 35:34.507
And I would say that the good thing about conversions is a lot of time in the hospitality industry, when the new development starts to ebb, those pips and stuff and conversions really start to take off.

35:34.587 –> 35:44.992
And that keeps everybody busy from the folks at the franchise companies making the deals to all of the suppliers out there that are helping recreate and reinvent properties out there.

35:45.092 –> 35:47.354
Craig, any final thoughts before we let you go, sir?

35:47.434 –> 35:48.774
I was going to say soft branding.

35:48.814 –> 35:51.816
We didn’t talk about that, but I think that’s really cool too, because

35:52.357 –> 35:57.676
now many hotels that are independent want to keep their individuality, but they need the power from the,

35:58.311 –> 36:25.854
franchise and the brand and the res system and i think i personally love that those types of products as well dude as for creative hoteliers out there that want to be able to do something on their own but also be able to tap into the power of those reservation systems combined with what you’re able to offer with sales max revenue max and digital max for example sounds like a real winning winning combination for the owners plus

36:26.694 –> 36:28.896
folks like me that just get to enjoy hotels.

36:29.256 –> 36:36.100
I love the guarantee of that brand name that I love, but also the independent spirit of those individual properties.

36:36.160 –> 36:38.242
Craig, how can we learn more about you and find you guys?

36:38.862 –> 36:40.343
Well, it’s very easy.

36:40.423 –> 36:48.729
Our website’s www.dellisart.com, D-E-L-L-I-S-A-R-T, or just look me up on LinkedIn.

36:49.209 –> 36:49.769
You’ll find me.

36:50.370 –> 36:51.470
I answer the phone.

36:51.490 –> 36:51.871
I answer all the

36:52.915 –> 36:54.276
the messages I get on LinkedIn.

36:54.336 –> 36:55.936
And I really appreciate your time.

36:55.996 –> 36:56.396
It was fun.

36:56.716 –> 36:57.337
Hey, thank you.

36:57.417 –> 36:59.798
And guys, don’t flood his calls.

36:59.918 –> 37:04.719
Don’t flood his phone on Christmas morning when he’s hanging out there on his balcony in Myrtle Beach.

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That would just be cruel.

37:06.120 –> 37:08.881
I’d be very proud to say I booked a piece of business on Christmas.

37:08.921 –> 37:09.961
Dude, seriously.

37:10.001 –> 37:11.402
But I would tell people about it.

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Listen, I’m sure she was delighted that you were able to pay for that Mexican vacation.

37:15.245 –> 37:19.148
Why not have an eggnog and close a deal on a Christmas day?

37:19.168 –> 37:21.230
That would be the best present Santa could give you, right?

37:21.610 –> 37:24.793
It’s amazing how much our families know about our business.

37:25.013 –> 37:27.956
Yeah, and I want everybody to know I’m very sad I did not –

37:28.456 –> 37:30.337
closed eight pieces of business during Klamaka.

37:30.417 –> 37:33.038
So I’m, you know, I’m really broken up.

37:33.358 –> 37:34.118
You better get busy.

37:34.158 –> 37:37.440
And I’m ready to have my cocktail shaker ready for your Friday night audit.

37:37.620 –> 37:38.620
Yeah, man, you should come on.

37:38.660 –> 37:41.281
So you should come on sometime, you know, do that with us.

37:41.321 –> 37:41.401
Yeah.

37:41.922 –> 37:44.082
All right, Craig, thank you so much for being here.

37:44.103 –> 37:46.103
I want to thank all of you guys for being here today.

37:46.123 –> 37:48.384
Remember, you can follow us, text the word hotel to 66866.

37:50.365 –> 37:53.867
in order to get subscribed to our Sunday night newsletter.

37:53.887 –> 37:56.007
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37:56.348 –> 37:58.028
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37:58.408 –> 38:00.949
All of our shows are at NoVacancyNews.com.

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Thanks for watching.

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We’ll be back tomorrow with our final new show of the year.

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What’s in store for it?

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I don’t know.

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You’ll have to tune in and find out.

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See you then.

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And remember, you’ve got one life, so blaze on.

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See ya.