Transcript: Episode 228: Lights Out, Newport

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor with Susan Barry, episode 228. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/228.

[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry. 

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Christine Malfair is a lifelong hotelier and champion of independent properties. She grew up north of Toronto, chased adventure on cruise ships, and eventually moved into hotels, working her way from the front desk to the GM's office. In 2010, after relocating and becoming an early remote hotel leader, she launched Malfair Marketing. For 15 years, she has helped independent hotels strengthen their marketing, build better foundations. And more recently, get practical about AI without feeling overwhelmed. She now lives in the Canadian Rockies and works closely with teams and owners across the industry. Today, we are going to talk about AI readiness for independent hotels. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.

Call button rings…

The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at (850) 404-9630. The emergency call button is brought to you by Cayuga Hospitality Consultants. Cayuga is a highly concentrated organization of the industry's best-connected consultants across multiple disciplines. Members are former senior executives who now work independently on projects worldwide. Learn more at cayugahospitality.com. Christine, today's question was submitted by Ling. This question is hard. I think it's hard. Maybe you won't. How dangerous is it for employees to use sites like ChatGPT to help with their work? Will our proprietary information be at risk? Christine, what do you think? 

[00:02:32] Christine Malfair: Well, this is not a deep area of knowledge for me, but I have worked closely with information technology people who have really set up boundaries within their LLM usage. I think one of the leading company is in Microsoft teams in this area where you're able to use Copilot in a very enclosed environment.

[00:03:03] Susan Barry: Oh, good to know. 

[00:03:03] Christine Malfair: In terms of loading proprietary information, revenue spreadsheets, any sort of inside details? Yes. Knowing that security settings are set up across and there is a very clear sort of boundary and protocol around usage. 

[00:03:21] Susan Barry: Understood. Well, let's take a step back from AI into your past. What are the lessons from working on cruise ships that still have an influence or still shape the way that you approach hospitality? 

[00:03:39] Christine Malfair: I don't think you can work on cruise ships and walk away without some sort of experience. Everybody just worked so well together, like we had 44 different nationalities. Like thousands of passengers. A thousand crew members. That was the size of the ship I was on, and everyone really worked very systematically, but it was so smooth that it didn't feel like this system. It was just something that I noticed. Everybody was just doing their job, nobody crossed over. There was very few conflicts. It was really rather amazing and I didn't really realize it at the time. But then, of course, coming off of cruise ships and coming back into the hotel environment. Cruise ships do give you some perspectives when things were going wrong at the hotel when I came back, shoreside, as they call it. When I came back to the hotel, there would be, oh my gosh, this problem happened, or that there's a major situation. And I would say, like, okay, what is that? Is it a fire? Is it flood or is it famine? Like it had to be those kinds of three things to really get attention because all of those were very bad on cruise ships, right? Everybody. So when you have thousands of people in this floating metal box, that with the capability of running in this very well-oiled machine system, delivering incredible guest experiences. I think my biggest takeaway was the value of systems and that they don't have to be complex. 

[00:05:16] Susan Barry: Do you think that there was less conflict on the cruise ship because there was nowhere to escape? Do you know what I mean?

[00:05:25] Christine Malfair: Absolutely. Yes. 

[00:05:27] Susan Barry: Interesting. 

[00:05:28] Christine Malfair: Yes. People were just very happy to have their jobs. And they knew that any sort of you, any sort of misstep, like gross missteps, but any sort of major infractions like you were getting off at the next port. 

[00:05:47] Susan Barry: And they did not want that.

[00:05:49] Christine Malfair: Well, and international law exists there. So there wasn't a whole lot of labor laws. There was maybe we'll pay your flight home, maybe not, depending. I think everybody sort of stayed in their lane. 

[00:06:03] Susan Barry: Got it. Well, another of your foundational experiences was opening a strata hotel, which is something I never heard of until I learned about it from you. So maybe first explain what that is and then talk about what the structure brings to the table in terms of the challenges. 

[00:06:24] Christine Malfair: Yeah, so a strata. So I had gone from RIMS division manager and somebody had come to me and said, I think you would make a great opening GM for this hotel. And I thought, like, of course. And so the learning curve was very steep because I had came from a single ownership property. They owned a few properties, but I came from single ownership into a strata hotel, which is a property that where units are individually owned. So owners have individual title.

[00:07:01] Susan Barry: So sort of like a condo hotel?

[00:07:03] Christine Malfair: Very much. So that would be probably the terminology that's interchangeable between condo hotels, strata hotels where there is like a rental agreement. Yeah. So they go into sort of a rental pool managed by an operator. And so I went from one owner to 45 different owners in this case was this property. And demands are different when you have 44 different owners that you're writing reports for with varying degrees of knowledge of how hospitality and hotels work and should operate, and understanding margins and seasonality. And then to add to that layer and complexity is a developer who is largely motivated by selling units. So with the promise of rental income. And so, yeah, in a ski town in April when skiing ends and the summer hasn't started, you'd have some lean months and some not so happy owners that work in my office are making phone calls and you become very creative through constraint, right? So you're like, how can we do the most with the staff we have? So I think it was very, very good training. Training ground hard but good. 

[00:08:23] Susan Barry: Interesting. I remember doing a consulting project at a condo hotel, so probably very similar, but the way that the ownership agreement was written, the owners of the individual units owned all of the public space in the hotel. And so in order to do any sales, you had to get individual permission for each booking because we had to have a place for them to meet and eat. And that was the public space. What? That's wild, right? That's not right. Is it? 

[00:09:04] Christine Malfair: I haven't heard of that myself. It's not to say obviously it exists, but I had never had that experience and I've worked in a few strata properties.

[00:09:12] Susan Barry: I mean, it was a super weird hotel. The owner, one of the owner's wives would come in and just take art off the wall and add new thing. It was a very strange situation. Okay. Well, you were an early adopter of remote work, especially for the hotel industry. This was early, talk about that and about how your company came to be.

[00:09:36] Christine Malfair: Yes. So I moved from, well, not physically moved, but I left the GM seat and that was in 2009. Well, there was a bit of a turning point in my personal life. Somebody asked me to marry them and I ended up having to leave the community that I knew and was very well networked in, and I thought, I'm moving to a town that was more urban, so going from a resort destination to an urban destination. And I really thought, what am I gonna do when I get there. And the owner of the hotel at that time said, we'd like you to stay on and continue doing our sales and marketing. You were doing it as sort of off the side of your desk as a GM and I knew as the GM, I was tiptoeing in on a Saturday to try and get revenue management done, to try get some marketing done and we just didn't have a marketing department. And it was a hotel that had a restaurant and a conference facility. But back in 2009, digital marketing was creating a bit of a groundswell. 

[00:10:49] Susan Barry: Oh, believe me, that's when I started my company and everyone's like, what are you talking about Facebook marketing? I'm like, I don't know. Do what I say. 

[00:10:59] Christine Malfair: That's right. And websites were more than just a URL. Everything was about your URL back then. But so yeah, I figured there's gotta be more GMs out there that don't have marketing teams. I mean, I sat with a lot of them in hotel lodging association meetings. They're trying to do it off the side of their desk, too. So that was really where it came from. I started back then in a remote, sort of fractional CMO before that term was ever really known. 

[00:11:30] Susan Barry: Well, I know lately you've been really focused on creating sort of tactical tools, workshops to help independent hotels become AI-ready. What does that mean for an independent hotel? What do you mean by AI-ready in sort of practical terms? 

[00:11:47] Christine Malfair: Being AI-ready, a lot of people when they hear AI, I think their brain jumps to tools, and so I attached the term AI ready because it's really about a lot of the tools that are existing currently that they're using, but it's adapting the content on those websites and social media and reviews and PR and different ads that are all going to work together in an ecosystem. That's going to help the hotel be found in AI search. And I think the misnomer around a lot of it is that it has to be this whole new thing, and I'm beating the drum lately. Definitely, use the tools that you have, adapt the content that you have. I was just in a webinar earlier this week with a big search engine company, and they were saying that two-thirds of their effort is going into refreshing their existing content. And I thought that that's it exactly. It doesn't have to be this whole new, new, new, new, new. It's about adapting and expanding so that it's an AI search-ready? 

[00:13:08] Susan Barry: What does that mean? What do you have to do? Do you just rewrite it?

[00:13:12] Christine Malfair: Yeah, good question. 

[00:13:13] Susan Barry: I mean, I understand you can't tell us every detail right now, but can you give a broad stroke of what you mean? 

[00:13:19] Christine Malfair: Yes. So what AI search is looking for is consistency. So, where the human brain can look across maybe a Google business profile and see an address and a website address and a phone number. And AI is looking for because it is token-driven. That's how it operates. So it's looking for the exact same information and inconsistencies across the internet where it gather information from is it just creates friction for it, and it leaves. So if it's trying to find information that one isn't consistent, two isn't clear, so very ambiguous terms. 

[00:14:09] Susan Barry: A new standard in luxury. 

[00:14:11] Christine Malfair: A new standard in luxury or wellness redefined or the generic language that doesn't really mean anything. That doesn't say anything. We have to be more specific for AI. Also, how you've structured your content on your website. Things that you're saying, like I think the best thing that hotels can do is just sort of think outside of putting what you do on a website and think about it more so as if I were a guest, what do they need to know about my hotel and destination? Everything from those two questions will help inform a really good AI strategy overall. Now, there is a lot of technical pieces that they need to involve their web developer in, but I think that those are great starts is looking at it from an AI question-based, so turning your site and your content, social media is so great. Just turn all your social posts into FAQs, ways of answering questions. 

[00:15:15] Susan Barry: Interesting. I think you and I probably have had similar career, like our careers have lasted over about the same amount of time. And so I think that you have this experience, but if you don't, just tell me. I remember the shift from print to digital in hotels very clearly. I remember we had a rack card or a card rack and then we didn’t. I remember when Priceline first came out and the executive committee people at my hotel were like, this will never last. This is a fad. It's going away soon. And then all of a sudden, the OTAs began to eat our lunch. Like, I remember all of that stuff happening. Thermal paper fax machines, and we weren't allowed to have email and internet access to your full-time job basically became keeping up with your email. Are there differences and or similarities between that shift from print to digital to now? I don't know if there's a good word for it yet, but like the digital that we knew and the AI future. Do you know what I mean? 

[00:16:28] Christine Malfair: I do. I remember it well as well because I remember having conversations around trying to get a hotel consider not spending $3,000 on their AAA guide app. Like, do you remember? Where, yes, they were thousands of dollars. 

[00:16:51] Susan Barry: I mean we were doing that up until people still do it, I'm sure, but yeah. 

[00:16:57] Christine Malfair: Yeah, yeah. We're looking for lean ways and I like to say, lean marketing, because it really is around what our goals are. Get more bookings, but when you look at the intent of your spend. That really helps sift out a lot. So, yes, I remember that shift to digital and sort of all the promises you'll be spending less. And yes, that kind of happened a little, but then there was these paid ads that came along and I feel like there was all these other pieces that started to get costly and were also a little bit tougher in a way to hotels are still asking ROI on social media, right? So, yeah, lots can be measured, which helps in the shift from digital. 

[00:17:55] Susan Barry: But it's a trick, I think. It's a trick because there are too many things to measure, but they don't give you the answer, which is did someone choose me over someone else because of this? You’re never gonna know.

[00:18:12] Christine Malfair: That's right. 

[00:18:13] Susan Barry: You can only judge by revenue, competitive performance, all that. The same things we've been judging performance by forever. 

[00:18:21] Christine Malfair: Yes. That's a great point. I'm glad you said that because I too feel like the journey is a ping pong, right? We can never say, oh, this was the absolute attribution for this particular revenue. We don't know that, but going from digital to AI. Like, I think they're cousins. I think they're cousins. I'd like to say it that way. But one is like where digital was a lot of impression-based, like it was about how many times are you in front of? Like, so when we think about print, print used to be about distribution. I think, right? Like we used to say, well, how many guys is it going to and how many houses is it gonna reach? 

[00:19:09] Susan Barry: And or like, I like to put an ad in a magazine because people keep a magazine around the house for a month or whatever. 

[00:19:15] Christine Malfair: Shelf life. 

[00:19:16] Susan Barry: Yeah. Right. That's it. 

[00:19:17] Christine Malfair: Yes. Yeah. But now it's moved from impressions. So it's the amount of times that you're seeing online to intent where we're really drilling down to being chosen by and adapting what we say. So we've taken digital used to be where your message lived and now you know the shift to AI is changing to who decides what's seen or what's shown or what's recommended. I know it feels a little harsh, but I think that's where things are going. It's about matching intent. 

[00:20:07] Susan Barry: What about for someone who's listening and feeling a little overwhelmed now about all of the things that we've talked about? What are some low effort, low overwhelm, first steps hotels can take to start using AI and their operations?

[00:20:26] Christine Malfair: At this point, a lot of hotels, a lot of people across the world are using the LLMs on a daily basis. And some activities, I think have gotten faster. There are certain things that we're able to do faster without a doubt. And I also think, conversely, that some of it has also added to the overwhelm because we can go faster, do more. And the slowing down and the sort of thought process required behind the usage. I think this is an area that I am interested in because we're at the early stage of all of this. And yes. Is it going to become distracting? Is it going to lead to better work? Is it going to contribute to overwhelm? I think the promise is no, but I actually think it's playing out that it is. 

[00:21:25] Susan Barry: I think you're right. I keep hearing these people say like, especially people who have automation companies or AI-driven tools or whatever the case maybe, and they're like, well, our goal is not to do anything but eliminate the scut work from hotel employees day so they can focus on what they do best, taking care of their guests. Give me a flip and break. Like an owner is sitting back going, oh, thank God. We can now let this person wander around the lobby talking to people instead of doing measurable tasks that we can check off of a checklist that's never happening.

[00:22:05] Christine Malfair: Yeah. And I think there's like a false sense too. That's really the owner is excited by those promises, but what's actually realized is different. And to this point a little bit, the LLMs give you a sense of heightened education, right? It's telling you something maybe you didn't know before. I'd like to see probably some more discerning thinking, like some more challenging of that. As opposed to just take and run. And I think that's gonna come over time, as the models improve and yeah, we get a little bit more discerning with how we use it. But one way that I think that hotels can use AI, particularly for marketers and GMs, where maybe you've already been using the LLMs, you've got different projects set up in ChatGPT or whichever you're using. It's really good at recognizing patterns. 

[00:23:14] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from each episode of Top Floor with a couple of very practical and tangible tips to try in their businesses or their lives. You've already given some good ones for AI, but I'm gonna ask you for more 'cause that's what we're here for. So, what do you think are some simple use cases that can help independent hoteliers right now?

[00:23:37] Christine Malfair: First one is setting up a plan to refresh your existing content. And so when you think about a website for a hotel, that could be like 30, 50, 70 pages. Don't know how big that is. You don't need to eat the elephant all at one time. Go to your analytics, look at your top five pages, and just commit to doing the top five and adapt that content in a manageable way. That is question oriented includes FAQs. Yeah. Look for the top five ones where traffic or conversions are happening so that you can really make an improvement there. 

[00:24:23] Susan Barry: That is so smart. I love that idea. 

[00:24:25] Christine Malfair: I'm all about what is manageable. I think that's my former like GM brain kicking. Like, what is actually manageable? And then, yeah, number two is related to social which I don't work in as much. I'm more into content marketing and strategy pieces. But for social media marketers, or anybody in the social media space, using AI to help, not just like take the photo and give me a caption, that kind of thing. But like, really flip it around in terms of those questions. One of the lowest-hanging fruit that I think you can do that contributes a lot to how AI search is gonna find you is having all of those FAQs answered in your social media posts. And it also helps in your Google business profile, 'cause just earlier this week I noticed that some of the amenities for a hotel was being sourced from an actual webpage and from a social post. And I thought that is new. It really is this whole web of things are working together. And the third one is like really easy, and I think I've shared this one on LinkedIn, but it's about reviews. So a guest loves your hotel, says “We love the breakfast buffet and Andrew at the front desk was fantastic. And the pool lounge side of the pool was fantastic with good mountain views” or whatever it might be, and doubling down. And actually, when you respond to those reviews, including the same language that the guest had done is like a double down on that original review. So if you're talking about we loved our guests often rave about the mountain views by the pool. So you're doubling down on great mountain views by the pool now show up not once in the original review, but the second time as well. And I think that that's amiss just to say. We're glad you enjoyed your stay. Please come back again. 

[00:26:48] Susan Barry: Thanks for the kind words. All the best. Yeah. Got it. Yes. Interesting. What about techniques to help reduce fear or skepticism when you're introducing some of these ideas to a hotel team?

[00:27:04] Christine Malfair: I think the best thing is by showing. In my experience as a GM and thinking about the pain that comes with changing a system or introducing a new system, you almost get like a small-scale mutiny at a hotel when this happens in a department. 

[00:27:26] Susan Barry: Yes. I've led one before. I remember. 

[00:27:31] Christine Malfair: And participate like including your team members in the onboarding or even the acquisition of a tech piece because if one of those department members is sent, they're like the representative of that department. And they become that we have a person on the inside of this process. And then you can get better buy-in. But I think showing them that you're using the tool as well and how. So if you're using ChatGPT and you have some advanced skills or you have the time to do some learning, but your front desk team doesn't. Just taking the time to say, we're gonna help you up your skills, you're gonna get better outputs. And I was part of like a hotel company's retreat a couple of weeks ago and they were doing a whole how to use copilot across Excel and Word and I just thought that was really great. He took the time to bring in an expert, showed how he was using it himself. Just learning, neutral learning. Don't be the keeper of your own knowledge. 

[00:28:45] Susan Barry: Well, we have reached the fortune telling portion of the show, so now you have to predict the future and we will figure out if you got it right. What is a prediction that you have? I mean, this whole conversation has really been about this, but if you've got a specific prediction about the future of AI in independent hotel marketing, I would love to hear it.

[00:29:08] Christine Malfair: I think this will probably like summarize a lot of the points that we've talked about here, Susan. So hotels, I think, are thinking of AI as a tool or a channel in the traditional sense that you would think of. Oh, well, we have our email, that's a channel. We have, Google, that's a channel. But really, AI is a whole network. It is the intermediary. If you're thinking of like, if we only had one travel agent ever, like in a traditional sense. A digital concierge that speaks on a hotel's behalf. And then, there's a lot of talk about agents to agents, but we're not quite there yet at the time of this recording. Like it's all being built by people while we're talking right now, but right now the AI search piece is really about how everything is connected. So the independent hotels are gonna be the winners won't have the biggest budgets. They're not gonna have the most content. They're not gonna have all the ads and all the spend. They're gonna be consistent and clear and helpful and different. Let's not forget, be different. Be different.

[00:30:39] Susan Barry: I'm so glad you said that. 

[00:30:40] Christine Malfair: Yeah. I think that is one of the biggest things that transcends whatever stage we're in, whether it was print back then, digital and now with AI. It's just really lean into what your guests love you for. Go all in on it. Know who you are. Stand, I like to say, stand up, stand tall for whatever it is. However, you're different. 

[00:31:03] Susan Barry: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the hotel industry's approach to technology and innovation in general, what would it be?

[00:31:14] Christine Malfair: I think I touched on it before, but that would be involve your team and I think that's just the heart of the general manager. 

[00:31:20] Susan Barry: That makes a lot of sense. 

[00:31:22] Christine Malfair: Involve your team. We see so many times tech adoption go wrong. Implementation. The people that are using it feel really misunderstood when you get the tech wrong. They feel like you don't understand their job and that leads to a lot of problems, I think. 

[00:31:46] Susan Barry: Yeah, it's a huge problem if you do not understand your team's jobs, for sure. Okay, folks, before we tell Christine goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”

[00:32:03] Susan Barry: Christine, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock? 

[00:32:08] Christine Malfair: It's funny that this is called the loading dock 'cause I do think very much in the back to my cruise ship life. Although hotel stories are many, but I don't think that there's one that tops this one. And that was back in 2000. I worked for a cruise ship company that we were late, we were running late, and we were out of Manhattan. So we were boarded passengers running late. Got to Newport, Rhode Island, and we run a tender where you take the little boats, shore sides, so a boat takes you from the cruise ship because it can't dock all the way. And we were at Newport, at Rhode Island. So if you know Newport, it's kind of fancy. And the ship came in and I remember being on the bridge and the pilot and I was like saying, you can't drop anchor here. And I think it happened anyway, this is from my memory and there was a storm that set in like sideways rain was coming and all the passengers were back as shore, but we couldn't get the anchor up. And they kept pulling and the ship is like being pulled slightly on this anchor and eventually it came up but not all the way. So I believe my memory serves me correct. The anchor was cut off.

[00:33:44] Susan Barry: Wait, they cut off and left it there? 

[00:33:47] Christine Malfair: Yeah, these are like mega ship-like chains. And we pulled away and then all of a sudden I was getting, now this was pre satellite phones were a thing, but I was getting calls because we were headed to Boston and I was getting calls like, nobody comes off the ship passengers can get off crew or not to get off, we have a major PR thing going on and what actually happened was the anchor from the severed underwater power. Like the anchor had hooked onto the underwater power cables. And blacked out like 6,000 residents. 

[00:34:34] Susan Barry: You are kidding me. That is insane. 

[00:34:39] Christine Malfair: It was on the cover of USA Today. And there was media all over the pier and I was the chief purser at the time, so I was trying to do on ship crisis control. But anyways, it was very, very, very bad 

[00:35:01] Susan Barry: Holy map, so, okay. Yeah. Someone said, don't do this, and then the person did it anyway.

[00:35:10] Christine Malfair: Probably didn't come out until now. 

[00:35:12] Susan Barry: Oh, okay. Got it, got it. That's what I was curious about. 

[00:35:15] Christine Malfair: That was my memory of it, I will say but yes.

[00:35:18] Susan Barry: I mean, we talked about mutiny before, like, did that person get thrown over more? 

[00:35:23] Christine Malfair: Well, it was a yes. I won't say who the person, but yes, it was a decision maker. So that story. Yeah, that was probably one of the biggest things and then that whole cruise just really went sideways after that. We had power outages on the ship and where you're dragging mattresses, passengers have lost air conditioning. So everybody's uncomfortable inside this metal box. People are dragging mattresses up to the uppers to and then you have all sorts of other problems that happen when people are out in the open and theft and assaults. After all that experience was like pretty crazy. Literally. 

[00:36:15] Susan Barry: That was a piece of cake. That is hilarious. Christine Malfair, thank you so much for being here. I know that the wheels are turning in our listeners minds, and I really appreciate you riding with me to the top floor. 

[00:36:30] Christine Malfair: Thank you so much, Susan. This is great. 

[00:36:33] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/228. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all-around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.

[00:37:08] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.